 The philosophical sources for the view that women’s beauty is a sign of a virtuous soul are interpretations of Plato’s dialogue, the Symposium. Ficino’s translation of the Symposium was especially influential at the time Marinella was writing, and she does refer to it, but she seems to have based much of her discussion on Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore. Two aspects of Platonic theory are pertinent here. The first is the view that particular beings in this world have the features they do by means of participation in ideal Forms. So women are beautiful because they participate in the Form of the Beautiful Itself; and their beauty is itself a mark or sign of their participation. “Divine beauty is…the first and principal cause of women’s beauty,” (1601b, 60). The Platonist understanding of causation allows that while divine being is the first and principal cause, there are creaturely causes which mediate the effects of that first cause, so that the soul of a woman can be the immediate cause and origin of her physical beauty while divine beauty is its first cause. Marinella cites Ebreo for the claim that corporeal beauty is an image of divine beauty, and then argues: 