to drive the lover into a state of depression, causing lamentation and illness. Occasionally, the loved one was depicted as an unwitting ensnarer of the lover, because of her sublime beauty—a "divine curse" which inspires men to kidnap her or try to rape her. Stories in which unwitting men catch sight of the naked body of Artemis the huntress (and sometimes Aphrodite) lead to similar ravages (as in the tale of Actaeon). There are few written records of women's lives and loves in ancient Greece. Nevertheless, some historians have suggested that women may have been the objects of love more often than was previously believed and that men's love for women may have been an ideal, although not one realized much in fact. In ancient Athens the dominance of man in the marital relationship is expressed by figures such as the prominent Greek statesman and general Alcibiades. Another famous relationship between a man and a woman in ancient Athens was the romantic involvement of Aspasia with the statesman Pericles. In Sparta, the social status of women was stronger and the marital rituals were solemnized. There was an elaborate preparation for the first night after the marriage, while the man in a symbolic rite had to abduct his future wife before the official ceremony, while she had her hair cut short and dressed in boy's clothes. The ideal outcome of marital eros in Sparta was the birth of a healthy boy. In The Symposium by Plato, Aristophanes relays a myth of the origin of both heterosexual and homosexual love. Eros paidikos, or pedagogic pederasty, was apparently known since 200 years before Plato. Originally, according to Aristophanes, each human being had two heads, four arms, and four legs, before Zeus decided to split every person in two. After everyone was split, each half searched for their other half, to make themselves whole again. Some people were originally half-male and half-female, and when Zeus split them they became men and women who sought opposite-sex partners. Some people were originally all-female, and they split into females who sought female partners. Some were all-male, and they split into males who sought other males. Plato The ancient Greek philosopher Plato developed an idealistic concept of eros which would prove to be very influential in modern times. In general, Plato did not consider physical attraction to be a necessary part of eros. According to Plato, eros could