LOVE. And Pindar, who was of an exceedingly amorous disposition, says—
Oh may it ever be to me to love,
And to indulge my love, remote from fear;
And do not thou, my mind, pursue a chase
Beyond the present number of your years.
On which account Timon, in his Silli, says—
There is a time to love, a time to wed,
A time to leave off loving;
and adds that it is not well to wait until some one else shall say, in the words of this same philosopher—
When this man ought to set ([Greek: dynein]) he now begins
To follow pleasure ([Greek: hêdynesthai]).
Pindar also mentions Theoxenus of Tenedos, who was much beloved by him; and what does he say about him?—
And now (for seasonable is the time)
You ought, my soul, to pluck the flowers of love,
Which suit your age.
And he who, looking on the brilliant light that beams
From the sweet countenance of Theoxenus,
Is not subdued by love,
Must have a dark discolour'd heart,
Of adamant or iron made,
And harden'd long in the smith's glowing furnace.
That man is scorn'd by bright-eyed Venus.
Or else he's poor, and care doth fill his breast;
Or else beneath some female insolence
He withers, and so drags on an anxious life:
But I, like comb of wily bees,
Melt under Venus's warm rays,
And waste away while I behold
The budding graces of the youth I love.
Surely at Tenedos, persuasion soft,
And every grace,
Abides in the lovely son of wise Agesilas.
77. And many men used to be as fond of having boys for their favourites as women for their mistresses. And this was a frequent fashion in many very well regulated cities of Greece. Accordingly, the Cretans, as I have said before, and the Chalcidians in Eubœa, were very much addicted to the custom of having boy-favourites. Therefore Echemenes, in his History of Crete, says that it was not Jupiter who carried off Ganymede, but Minos. But the before-mentioned Chalcidians say that Ganymede was carried off from them by
