kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that the memory of their
virtues, which still survives among us, would be immortal? Nay,' she said,
'I am persuaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the
more they do them, in hope of the glorious fame of immortal virtue; for
they desire the immortal.

'Those who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and
beget children--this is the character of their love; their offspring, as
they hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness and
immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which are pregnant
--for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in
their bodies--conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or
contain. And what are these conceptions?--wisdom and virtue in general.
And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name
inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which
is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called
temperance and justice. And he who in youth has the seed of these
implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity desires
to beget and generate. He wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget
offspring--for in deformity he will beget nothing--and naturally embraces
the beautiful rather than the deformed body; above all when he finds a fair
and noble and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to
such an one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits
of a good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the touch of the
beautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, he brings
forth that which he had conceived long before, and in company with him
tends that which he brings forth; and they are married by a far nearer tie
and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal children, for the
children who are their common offspring are fairer and more immortal. Who,
when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great poets, would not rather