——Their love of beautiful boys is explicable not merely by their interest in beautiful forms, but especially by their interest in individuality. The low condition of the women could not lie at the foundation of it, for among the Spartans they were educated as nearly as possible like the men, and yet among them and the Cretans the love of boys was recognized in their legislation. To be without a beloved (ἀïιτης), or a lover (εἴσπνηλας), was among them considered as disgraceful as the degradation of the love by unchastity was contemptible. What charm was there, then, in love? Manifestly only beauty and culture. But that a person should be attracted by one and not by another can be accounted for only by the peculiar character, and in so far the boy-love and the man-friendship which sprang from it, among the Greeks, are very characteristic and noteworthy phenomena.—— § 210. It was the task of Music, by its rhythm and measure, to fill the soul with well-proportioned harmony. So highly did the Greeks prize music, and so variously did they practise it, that to be a musical man meant the same with them as to be a cultivated man with us. Education in this respect was very painstaking, inasmuch as music exercises a very powerful influence in developing discreet behavior and self-possession into a graceful naturalness. ——Among the Greeks we find an unrestricted delight in nature——a listening to her manifestations, the tone of which betrays the subjectivity of things as subjectivity. In comparison with this tender sympathy with nature of the Greeks——who heard in the murmur of the fountains, in the dashing of the waves, in the rustling of the trees, and in the cry of animals, the voice of divine personality——the sight and hearing of the Eastern nations for nature is dull.—— § 211. The stringed instrument, the cithern, was preferred by the Greeks to all wind instruments because it was not exciting, and allowed the accompaniment of recitation or song, i.e. the contemporaneous activity of the spirit in poetry. Flute-playing was first brought from Asia Minor after the victorious progress of the Persian war, and was especially cultivated in Thebes. They sought in vain afterwards to oppose the wild excitement raised by its influence. § 212. Grammar comprehended Letters (γράμματα), i.e. the elements of literary culture, reading and writing. Much attention was given to correct expression. The Fables of Æsop, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, and later the tragic poets, were read, and partly learned by heart. The orators borrowed from them often the ornament of their commonplace remarks.