Page:Symonds - A Problem in Greek Ethics.djvu/23

and he taught him all things as a father teaches his child, all whereby himself became a mighty man and renowned in minstrelsy. Never was he apart from Hylas, . . . . . and all this that the lad might be fashioned to his mind, and might drive a straight furrow, and come to the true measure of man."^[1]

IX.

Passing from myth to semi-legendary history, we find frequent mention made of lovers in connection with the great achievements of the earliest age of Hellas. What Pausanias and Phædrus are reported to have said in the Symposium of Plato, is fully borne out by the records of the numerous tyrannicides and self-devoted patriots who helped to establish the liberties of the Greek cities. When Epimenides of Crete required a human victim in his purification of Athens from the Musos of the Megacleidæ, two lovers, Cratinus and Aristodemus, offered themselves as a voluntary sacrifice for the city.^[2] The youth died to propitiate the gods; the lover refused to live without him. Chariton and Melanippus, who attempted to assassinate Phalaris of Agrigentum, were lovers.^[3] So were Diocles and Philolaus, natives of Corinth, who removed to Thebes, and after giving laws to their adopted city, died and were buried in one grave.^[4] Not less celebrated was another Diocles, the Athenian exile, who fell near Megara in battle, fighting for the boy he loved.^[5] His tomb was honoured with the rites and sacrifices specially reserved for heroes. A similar story is told of the Thessalian horseman Cleomachus.^[6] This soldier rode into a battle which was being fought between the people of Eretria and Chalkis, inflamed with such enthusiasm for the youth he beloved, that he broke the foemen's ranks and won the victory for the Chalkidians. After the fight was over Cleomachus was found among the slain, but his corpse was nobly buried; and from that time forward love was honoured by the men of Chalkis. These stories might be paralleled from actual Greek history. Plutarch, commenting upon the courage of the sacred band of Thebans,^[7] tells of a man "who, when his enemy was going to kill him, earnestly requested him to run

1. Lang's translation, p. 63.
2. See Athenæus, xiii. 602, for the details.
3. See Athenæus, xiii. 602, who reports an oracle in praise of these lovers.
4. Ar., Pol., ii. 9.
5. See Theocr. Aites and the Scholia.
6. See Plutarch's Eroticus, 760, 42, where the story is reported on the faith of Aristotle.
7. Pelopidas, Clough's trans., vol. ii. 218.