Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato

From time to time he falls into certain dissertations about love, about demons, and other things, as the tenor of the dialogue and the Platonic words suggests. From all these, the following can be expressed.

On love.

Love is something that unites beings among themselves, a movement of beings carrying themselves toward others, which obtains the power of a medium in itself and is carried spontaneously toward higher things, binding the chain of beings to the higher cause which is the Beautiful itself, the Good, the One, and the Lovable.

Love is the son of the first cause: the Beautiful, the Good, and the One. From there it comes and to there it refers itself, placing and constituting the Gods first, but afterwards connecting Demons and Angels to the Gods, and in an amatory way connecting heroes and human souls to the Demons and Angels.

The male lover is he who performs the role of love, converts the beloved to the lovable, that is, he raises him through the grades of beings to higher things, acting as a medium between beauty and the beloved, whom he desires and is able to make most beautiful. The lover is, as it were, the providence of the beloved.