I don't feel like I need to comment here about the status of women as possessions in the ancient world. I think that it is well enough understood, that anything I might add to the topic will be redundant, so this letter is not going to be a comparative history discussion.
I want to talk about the nature of love and beauty and so I will begin here...
"So you think, Cyrus, that the beauty of any human creature can compel a man to do wrong against his will? Surely if that were the nature of beauty, all men would feel its force alike. [10] See how fire burns all men equally; it is the nature of it so to do; but these flowers of beauty, one man loves them, and another loves them not, nor does every man love the same.
The common expression, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which Araspas seems to be putting forth is a good place to begin. He suggests that if it were a force of nature, then it would affect all in a like fashion, but does not one man feel hunger while another is satisfied? Does one not feel cold while the other is warm? Natural forces are not felt alike by all creatures, and so while beauty is perhaps not as universal as rain, or cold, it is a force of nature. It seems acceptable to suggest that nature selects for beneficial adaptations, and that beauty, though experienced subjectively, is an adaptation of nature that serves the reproduction of the species. But that is not the only need that it serves. The beauty of nature makes me feel at peace, and there is nothing quite like the scattering of autumn leaves that puts me in a frame of mind to write poetry. Beauty moves the heart and the body and the mind, it inspires and motivates. Beauty can be ferocious as well, and we can stand in fearful awe of the beauty of another person. Beauty when seen can make us feel ugly by comparison, can make us feel hungry to explore, to navigate the unknown paths of a forest when the shadows and light are just so as to make inaudible music from drifting pollen in the sunlight.
I think that beauty is a universal force of nature, felt differently by all, but a force nonetheless.
But that is not the end of the discussion...
For love is voluntary, and each man loves what he chooses to love... ...each man loves to himself alone, and according as he chooses, just as he chooses his cloak or his sandals.
"Then," said Cyrus, "if love be voluntary, why cannot a man cease to love when he wishes? I have seen men in love," said he, "who have wept for very agony, who were the very slaves of those they loved, though before the fever took them they thought slavery the worst of evils.
Love makes slaves of us all, and yet we think slavery to be the worst of evils. I think that I live in an age driven by passions, and the value of one's felt experience is considered to be a moral pursuit, one that serves the highest functions of human destiny. To deny one's feelings is to deny human nature, the consequences of which are a mixture of stomach ulcers, mental illness and cancer. The link between the emotional body and the physical body is well understood: stress is the biggest killer, so the common wisdom goes.
But it is this notion that a man may choose what he loves that really makes me itch to talk this through. Of course there are the 'pray away the gay' religious groups who heartily believe that a person can deny the urges of their body and make themselves love what does not come to them naturally. They believe that love can be trained, and that some kinds of love are harmful, while others are natural. This is a notion I believe to be both fallacious and deeply harmful, but that isn't really what you're talking about are you Xenephon.
But the nobler type of man, the true gentleman, beautiful and brave, though he desire gold and splendid horses and lovely women, can still abstain from each and all alike, and lay no finger on them against the law of honour.
What you're talking about is greed, lust, an insatiable hunger that never knows satisfaction and will seek to feed it's starving heart regardless of law, honour, or even benefit. This I think is the place where a man can love ugliness, and come to love his own ugliness, his own pursuit of power justifying the harm caused along the way. This is the dark love, this is the slavery that does not free a man from the shackles of loneliness, as love should, but rather seeks only possession.
Perhaps I did need to talk about the state of women as possessions after all. However, I think it is plain that my topic covers much more than a man's love of women (or a woman's love of men, or whatever other combination of genders you care to name). This is about the love of possessions. Certainly in your day, Xenophon, humans were possessions all the time. The slave trade was not just a business, it was an every day part of everyone's life, there were no moral considerations to be made about a human being's status as a possession. That was the truth. Slaves were owned.
So, do we who love, and becomes slaves of love, become the possessions of that spirit?
Does LOVE own us?
Or is it true that a man can choose what he loves? Can he break his own heart, break the chains of his own desire, and love only what is virtuous? Love itself seems to have no patience for incarceration, and seeks only the liberty of its own free movement. Are we the slaves of freedom?
Actually, I wrote something recently that relates to this. It's part of a new story...
https://zebulonstoryteller.bandcamp.com/album/the-creature-2020-home-studio-album
Can a slave ever love a master? I mean, I loved you, I lived for you...
You loved me, you wrote our names in the book love
on the bed of love
and in a better sort of heaven maybe we...
...angels of forgiveness and mercy that we were for each other, could have forgiven ourselves
There is something inside me, monstrous, something, irrational, untamable,
a part of me that can only live if it lives free, is only beautiful if it knows no boundaries, no borders, no fears, it is a wild horse, a proud lion, a two headed jackal
a story that only makes sense if it has no ending
*
There is a part of me that can only live, if it lives free, is only beautiful if it has no boundaries...
Is that part of me the Spirit of Love? Does that spirit live within me, sharing the body that I share with my children, my family, friends, my music, my writing, my art? Am I the slave of that spirit, or does it set me free to know happiness, balance, struggle and conflict? Is this a hint of what Araspas later describes as the theory of the twin soul, the two part contest within each person between virtue and vice?
I am a man, and these are the questions I ask you Xenophon.
I ask them as I read, and for your wisdom I am both grateful and humbled.
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