"Hadst thou no reverence for the unsullied holiness of thighs, O thou ungrateful for the showers of kisses given." What we have here chiefly to notice is the change which the tale of Achilles had undergone since Homer.[82] Homer represented Patroclus as older in years than the son of Peleus, but inferior to him in station; nor did he hint which of the friends was the _Erastes_ of the other. That view of their comradeship had not occurred to him. Æschylus makes Achilles the lover; and for this distortion of the Homeric legend he was severely criticised by Plato.[83] At the same time, as the two lines quoted from the _Threnos_ prove, he treated their affection from the point of view of post-Homeric paiderastia. Sophocles also wrote a play upon the legend of Achilles, which bears for its title _Achilles' Loves_. Very little is left of this drama; but Hesychius has preserved one phrase which illustrates the Greek notion that love was an effluence from the beloved person through the eyes into the lover's soul,[84] while Stobæus quotes the beautiful simile by which love is compared to a piece of ice held in the hand by children.[85] Another play of Sophocles, the _Niobe_, is alluded to by Plutarch and by Athenæus for the paiderastia which it contained. Plutarch's words are these:[86] "When the children of Niobe, in Sophocles, are being pierced and dying, one of them cries out, appealing to no other rescuer or ally than his lover: Ho! comrade, up and aid me!" Finally, Athenæus quotes a single line from the _Colchian Women_ of Sophocles, which alludes to Ganymede, and runs as follows:[87] "Inflaming with his thighs the royalty of Zeus." Whether Euripides treated paiderastia directly in any of his plays is not quite certain, though the title _Chrysippus_, and one fragment preserved from that tragedy-- "Nature constrains me though I have sound judgment"--