For in truth there is no sort of valor more respected by the gods than this which comes of love; yet they are even more admiring and delighted and beneficent when the beloved is fond of his lover than when the lover is fond of his favorite; since a lover, filled as he is with a god, surpasses his favorite in divinity. This is the reason why they honored Achilles above Alcestis, giving him his abode in the Isles of the Blest. —from Plato’s Symposium, lines 180a-b.

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