 Marinella’s own account of beauty is simply this: it is “a ray of light from the soul that pervades the body in which it finds itself,” citing Plotinus as the source. She also cites Ficino’s letters, and a variety of poets, in support of the view that beauty is a kind of light—or like a ray of light—from the soul, which is compared to the sun. On this account, then, beauty does not lie in the symmetry of features, or youth, or indeed in any material feature of women’s bodies. It is rather an ineffable aura that pervades womankind. Marinella has support for this view from Platonist philosophers, and indeed from those who oppose her and yet allow that “women’s lovely faces shine with the grace and splendor of paradise” and she uses it to undermine the claim for superiority of men. If men were in fact superior to women, then it would be women who desired men, not men who desired women, whereas in fact, 