Love is young and also tender; he ought to have a
poet like Homer to describe his tenderness, as Homer says of Ate, that she
is a goddess and tender:--
'Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps,
Not on the ground but on the heads of men:'
herein is an excellent proof of her tenderness,--that she walks not upon
the hard but upon the soft. Let us adduce a similar proof of the
tenderness of Love; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon the
skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls of
both gods and men, which are of all things the softest: in them he walks
and dwells and makes his home. Not in every soul without exception, for
where there is hardness he departs, where there is softness there he
dwells; and nestling always with his feet and in all manner of ways in the
softest of soft places, how can he be other than the softest of all things?
Of a truth he is the tenderest as well as the youngest, and also he is of
flexile form; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold
all things, or wind his way into and out of every soul of man undiscovered.
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