[158] This is a remark of Diotima's. Maximus Tyrius (_Dissert._, xxvi. 8) gives it a very rational interpretation. Nowhere else, he says, but in the human form, does the light of the divine beauty shine so clear. This is the word of classic art, the word of the humanities, to use a phrase of the Renaissance. It finds an echo in many beautiful sonnets of Michelangelo. [159] See Bergk., vol. ii. pp. 616-629, for a critique of the canon of the highly paiderastic epigrams which bear Plato's name and for their text. [160] I select the _Vita Nuova_ as the most eminent example of mediæval erotic mysticism. [161] _Tusc._, iv. 33; _Decline and Fall_, cap. xliv. note 192. [162] See Meier, cap. 15. [163] Cap. 23. [164] Cap. 54. [165] Page 4. [166] It is noticeable that in all ages men of learning have been obnoxious to paiderastic passions. Dante says (_Inferno_, xv. 106):-- "In somma sappi, che tutti fur cherci, E letterati grandi e di gran fama, D'un medesmo poccato al mondo lerci." Compare Ariosto, _Satire_, vii. [167] _Dissert._, xxvi. 9. [168] I am aware that the genuineness of the essay has been questioned. [169] _Mousa Paidiké_, i. [170] _Ibid._, 208. [171] _Ibid._, 258, 2. [172] _Ibid._, 70, 65, 69, 194, 220, 221, 67, 68, 78, and others. [173] Perhaps ten are of this sort. [174] 8, 125, for example. [175] 132, 256, 221. [176] 219. [177] 7. [178] 17. Compare 86. [179] Ed. Kayser, pp. 343-366. [180] It is worth comparing the letters of Philostratus with those of Alciphron, a contemporary of Lucian. In the latter there is no hint of paiderastia. The life of parasites, grisettes, lorettes, and young men about town at Athens is set forth in imitation probably of the later comedy. Athens is shown to have been a Paris _à la Murger_. [181] See the introduction by Marcus Aurelius to his _Meditations_. [182] See quotations in Rosenbaum, 119-140. [183] See Athen., xii. 517, for an account of their grotesque sensuality. [184] The following passage may be extracted from a letter of Winckelmann (see Pater's _Studies in the History of the Renaissance_, p. 162): "As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art. To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem wanting, because its supreme beauty is rather male than female." To this I think we ought to add that, while it is true that "the supreme beauty of Greek art is rather male than female," this is due not so much to any passion of the Greeks for male beauty as to the fact that the male body exhibits a higher organisation of the human form than the female. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Problem in Greek Ethics, by John Addington Symonds