Sec. XVII. "Consider also how Love excels in warlike feats, and is by no means idle, as Euripides called him,[108] nor a carpet-knight, nor 'sleeping on a maiden's soft cheeks.'[109] For a man inspired by Love needs not Ares to help him when he goes out as a warrior against the enemy, but at the bidding of his own god is 'ready' for his friend 'to go through fire and water and whirlwinds.' And in Sophocles' play,[110] when the sons of Niobe are being shot at and dying, one of them calls out for no helper or assister but his lover. And you know of course how it was that Cleomachus the Pharsalian fell in battle?" "We certainly don't," said Pemptides and those near him, "but we should very much like to." "Well," said my father, "the tale's worth hearing. When the war between the Eretrians and Chalcidians was at its height, Cleomachus had come to aid the latter with a Thessalian force; and the Chalcidian infantry seemed strong enough, but they had great difficulty in repelling the enemy's cavalry. So they begged that high-souled hero Cleomachus to charge the Eretrian cavalry first. And he asked his boy-love, who was by, if he would be a spectator of the fight, and he saying he would, and affectionately kissing him and putting his helmet on his head, Cleomachus with a proud joy put himself at the head of the bravest of the Thessalians, and charged the enemy's cavalry with such impetuosity that he threw them into disorder and routed them; and the Eretrian infantry also fleeing in consequence, the Chalcidians won a splendid victory. However, Cleomachus got killed, and they show his tomb in the market-place at Chalcis, over which a huge pillar stands to this day, and whereas before that the people of Chalcis had censured boy-loves, from that time forward they preferred that kind of love to the normal love. Aristotle gives a slightly different account, namely, that this Cleomachus came not from Thessaly, but from Chalcis in Thrace, to the help of the Chalcidians in Euboea; and that that was the origin of the song in vogue among the Chalcidians, 'Ye boys, who come of noble sires and beauteous are in face, Grudge not to give to valiant men the joy of your embrace: For Love that does the limbs relax combined with bravery In the Chalcidian cities has fame that ne'er shall die.' But according to the account of the poet Dionysius, in his 'Causes,'[111] the name of the lover was Anton, and that of the boy-love was Philistus. And among you Thebans, Pemptides, is it not usual for the lover to give his boy-love a complete suit of armour when he is enrolled among the men? And did not the erotic Pammenes change the disposition of the heavy-armed infantry, censuring Homer as knowing nothing about love, because he drew up the Achaeans in order of battle in tribes and clans, and did not put lover and love together, that so 'Spear should be next to spear, helmet to helmet,'[112]