always saying that "the proper object of love is not the body, but the mind;" you who say at the same time, that you ought to remain faithful to the objects of your love, till they are eight-and-twenty years of age. And Ariston of Ceos, the Peripatetic, appears to me to have said very well (in the second book of his treatise on Likenesses connected with Love), to some Athenian who was very tall for his age, and at the same time was boasting of his beauty, (and his name was Dorus,) "It seems to me that one may very well apply to you the line which Ulysses uttered when he met Dolon—
Great was thy aim, and mighty is the prize.[1]
16. But Hegesander, in his Commentaries, says that all men love seasoned dishes, but not plain meats, or plainly dressed fish. And accordingly, when seasoned dishes are wanting, no one willingly eats either meat or fish; nor does any one desire meat which is raw and unseasoned. For anciently men used to love boys (as Aristophon relates); on which account it came to pass that the objects of their love were called [Greek: paidika]. And it was with truth (as Clearchus says in the first book of his treatise on Love and the Affairs of Love) that Lycophronides said—
No boy, no maid with golden ornaments,
No woman with a deep and ample robe,
Is so much beautiful as modest; for
'Tis modesty that gives the bloom to beauty.
And Aristotle said that lovers look at no other part of the objects of their affection, but only at their eyes, in which modesty makes her abode. And Sophocles somewhere represents Hippodamia as speaking of the beauty of Pelops, and saying—
And in his eyes the charm which love compels
Shines forth a light, embellishing his face:
He glows himself, and he makes me glow too,
Measuring my eyes with his,—as any builder
Makes his work correspond to his careful rule.[2]
17. And Licymnius the Chian, saying that Somnus was in love with Endymion, represents him as refusing to close the eyes of the youth even when he is asleep; but the God sends his beloved object to sleep with his eyelids still open,
