Ἔρως

"That no love [is] seemly [asteios]: this proposition is asserted universally. But it is refuted [by saying] that not every love is base. For we divide love [into different kinds]: as the intense longing for sexual acts, as Epicurus says, which cannot be seemly;¹ but also also as the attempt to make friends on account of an internally manifest beauty, as those from the Stoa [say];² or the recollection of a beauty once seen, as Plato [says]; for these loves are seemly."³
"When it is proposed that a wise man will be in love and we want to refute this, we might define "to be in love" and we will take it as "love takes someone"; and since the offered [term] is not yet known, we will proceed to define "love". Should we, in defining this, take [it] as an irrational desire for the pleasure of physical beauty or the intense longing for sexual acts, we should refute the issue: for it is clear that these things are foreign to the wise man. Likewise if we should define [love] as vehement desire,⁴ since what is vehement is unclear, then again we will bring the thing itself into argument."⁵
"They say that love is the attempt at doing good on account of an internally manifest beauty and not an [attempt] at intercourse, but at friendship.⁶ At any rate Thrasonides, although he had power over his beloved, because of being hated held himself back from her. Therefore, love is of friendship, it is not bestowed by the gods.⁷ But youth is the flower of virtue."⁸
In the Attic dialect it is declined o( e)/ros ["love"], tou= e)/rou ["of love"]. For thus they write and pronounce this word, just as a)mei/nwn ["better"] and xei/rwn ["worse"] they say a)/meinos and xei=ros.⁹
But Plato talks about love in more detail.¹⁰ It has been set down in the [entry] concerning a proverb under the letter epsilon.¹¹