Abstract

The current opinion on how Greeks lived and considered love is the following: love is seen as a sensual desire, a desire of possession. What we understand today by love did not interest the Greeks. The Greek love is the love as impulse, as desire, as need of reunification, so that any erotic act is the sign of an imperfection. The lover sees in the loved one just an existence of a higher degree. Only to love something inferior is a pathologic sign, and when love is like this, the inferior cannot get the best part of the love. Therefore, more valuable is to be loved than to love. Since the Greek feels the love as a necessity, he does not make anymore the distinction between love as such and the other needs of human nature. Maybe love is the most intense need, it can as well be the deepest or the noblest, but in the end, it remains what it is – a need, and it differs from the others not by nature but by degree and harmony. I used the last term for the following reason: because needs are of a sensitive nature, love seeks to satisfy itself in harmonious bodies, and the Greek is not ashamed of the natural part of love. As much chastity the natural love generates as the need of drinking, eating