happened to him, but like a person who has caught a disease in the eyes from another, he is unable to assign the cause, and is not aware that he beholds himself in his lover, as in a mirror. And when the lover is present, he is freed from pain in the same way as the lover is; but, when he is absent, he in turn longs for him in the same manner that he is longed for, possessing love’s image, love returned; but he calls it and considers it to be not love but friendship. And he desires, in the same way as the lover, though more feebly, to see, to touch, to kiss, to lie down with him; and, as is probable, he soon afterwards does all this. 81. In this lying down together, then, the unbridled horse of the lover has something to say to its charioteer, and begs to be allowed some small enjoyment in recompence for his many toils, but the same horse of the favourite has nothing to say, but swelling with love and in doubt, embraces the lover, and kisses him as he would kiss a very dear friend, and when they are laid down together, he is unable to refuse, as far as in his power, to gratify his lover in whatever he requires. But his yoke-fellow, together with the charioteer, resists this familiarity with shame and reason. If, then, the better parts of their mind have prevailed so as to lead them to a well-regulated mode of living and philosophy, they pass their life here in bliss and concord, having obtained the mastery over themselves, and being orderly, through having brought into subjection that part of the soul in which vice was engendered, and having set free that in which was virtue: and when they depart this life, becoming winged and light, they have been victorious in one of the three truly Olympic contests, a greater good than which neither human prudence nor divine madness can possibly bestow on man. 82. If, however, they have adopted a coarser and less philosophic mode of living, yet still honourable, but perhaps in a fit of drunkenness or some other thoughtless moment, their two unbridled beasts finding their souls unguarded, and bringing them together to one place, have made and consummated that choice which most men deem blissful; and having once consummated it they continue to practise it for the future, though rarely, in that they are doing what is not approved by their whole mind. These too, then, pass their life dear to each other, but less so than the others, both during the period of love and after it, thinking that they have both given to and received from each other the strongest pledges, which it were impious to violate, and so at any time become alienated. 83. But in the end, without wings indeed, yet making an effort to become winged, they quit the body, so as to carry off no trifling prize of impassioned madness: for there is a law that those who have already set out in the heavenward path should never again enter on darkness and the paths beneath the earth, but that, passing a splendid