They cried, "No wonder such celestial charms
For nine long years have set the world in arms;—
What winning graces! what majestic mien!
She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen."[1]
And even Priam himself is moved at the beauty of the woman, though he is in great distress. And also he admires Agamemnon for his beauty, and uses the following language respecting him—
Say, what Greek is he
Around whose brow such martial graces shine,—
So tall, so awful, and almost divine?
Though some of larger stature tread the green,
None match his grandeur and exalted mien.[2]
And many nations have made the handsomest men their kings on that account. As even to this day that Æthiopian tribe called the Immortals does; as Bion relates in his History of the Affairs of Æthiopia. For, as it would seem, they consider beauty as the especial attribute of kings. And goddesses have contended with one another respecting beauty; and it was on account of his beauty that the gods carried off Ganymede to be their cupbearer—
The matchless Ganymede, divinely fair,
Whom Heaven, enamour'd, snatch'd to upper air.[3]
And who are they whom the goddesses have carried off? are they not the handsomest of men? And they cohabit with them; as Aurora does with Cephalus and Clitus and Tithonus; and Ceres with Jason; and Venus with Anchises and Adonis. And it was for the sake of beauty also that the greatest of the gods entered through a roof under the form of gold, and became a bull, and often transformed himself into a winged eagle, as he did in the case of Ægina. And Socrates the philosopher, who despised everything, was, for all that, subdued by the beauty of Alcibiades; as also was the venerable Aristotle by the beauty of his pupil Phaselites. And do not we too, even in the case of inanimate things, prefer what is the most beautiful? The fashion, too, of Sparta is much praised, I mean that of displaying their virgins naked to their guests; and in the island of Chios it is a beautiful sight to go to the gymnasia and the race-courses, and to see the young men wrestling naked with the maidens, who are also naked.
