 and adds that “all are dazzled by her beauty and love and venerate her on many accounts” (51). Marinella reports that ‘Platonists’ say: “External beauty is the image of divine beauty,” (1601b, 58). She agrees with the poets who say that beauty is a path that guides us directly to the contemplation of divine wisdom; and in her own voice asserts that beauty is a golden chain, that “always raises us toward God, from whom it is derived,” (64–5). So the fact that men experience desire for women, because they perceive them as beautiful, is a sign that men recognize that women are good, and indeed better than men. This is because we desire to possess the good forever, and we do not desire what we already have. If, then, men desire women it must be that women are better than men, and closer to the divine.