The Stoic definition of love is an effort toward friendliness due to visible beauty appearing, its sole end being friendship, not bodily enjoyment.
At all events, they allege that Thrasonides, although he had his mistress in his power, abstained from her because she hated him.
By which it is shown, they think, that love depends upon regard, as Chrysippus says in his treatise Of Love, and is not sent by the gods.
And beauty they describe as the bloom or flower of virtue.
—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.130
IMAGE: Alessandro Rosi, Love of Virtue (c. 1660)
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