Sexuality And Gender In The Classical World - Readings And Sources / quote 4 of 8
Aphrodisia, eros and philia
Sexual intercourse was aphrodisia, "the things of Aphrodite"...sexual desire could be denoted by general words for desire, but the obsessive desire for a particular person was eros... Plato finds it philosophically necessary in Phaedrus and Symposium to treat eros a respons to beauty... Eros generates philia, 'love'; the same word can denote milder degrees of affection, just as "my philoi "can mean my friends or my inner-most family circle, according to context. pp.19-20