Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride
Frank Cole Babbitt, Ed.

It might appear that Hesiod,¹ in making the very first things of all to be Chaos and Earth and Tartarus and Love, did not accept any other origins but only these, if we transfer the names somewhat and assign to Isis the name of Earth and to Osiris the name of Love and to Typhon the name of Tartarus ; for the poet seems to place Chaos at the bottom as a sort of region that serves as a resting-place for the Universe.

This subject seems in some wise to call up the myth of Plato, which Socrates in the Symposium ² gives at some length in regard to the birth of Love, saying that Poverty, wishing for children, insinuated herself [p. 139] beside Plenty while he was asleep, and having become pregnant by him, gave birth to Love, who is of a mixed and utterly variable nature, inasmuch as he is the son of a father who is good and wise and self-sufficient in all things, but of a mother who is helpless and without means and because of want always clinging close to another and always importunate over another. For Plenty is none other than the first beloved and desired, the perfect and self-sufficient ; and Plato calls raw material Poverty, utterly lacking of herself in the Good, but being filled from him and always yearning for him and sharing with him. The World, or Horus,³ which is born of these, is not eternal nor unaffected nor imperishable, but, being ever reborn, contrives to remain always young and never subject to destruction in the changes and cycles of events.