_Thou wert the morning star among the living Ere thy fair light had fled;-- Now having died, thou art as Hesperus giving New light unto the dead._[7] [Footnote 7: Shelley's translation.] There is another poem by Plato dealing conjointly with the boys Alexis and Phaedrus: _I did but breathe the words 'Alexis fair', And all men gazed on him with wondering eyes, My soul, why point to questing beasts their prize? 'Twas thus we lost our Phaedrus; ah! beware!_ Without citing any further examples I will conclude by quoting a line addressed by Plato to Dion of Syracuse: _Dion, with love thou hast distraught my soul._ 11. Which of us is most to blame? I who am fool enough to speak seriously of such things in a law-court? or you who are slanderous enough to include such charges in your indictment? For sportive effusions in verse are valueless as evidence of a poet's morals. Have you not read Catullus, who replies thus to those who wish him ill: _A virtuous poet must be chaste. Agreed. But for his verses there is no such need._ The divine Hadrian, when he honoured the tomb of his friend the poet Voconius with an inscription in verse from his own pen, wrote thus: _Thy verse was wanton, but thy soul was chaste_, words which he would never have written had he regarded verse of somewhat too lively a wit as proving their author to be a man of immoral life. I remember that I have read not a few poems by the divine Hadrian himself which were of the same type. Come now, Aemilianus, I dare you to say that that was ill done which was done by an emperor and censor, the divine Hadrian, and once done was recorded for subsequent generations. But, apart from that, do you imagine that Maximus will censure anything that has Plato for its model, Plato whose verses, which I have just read, are all the purer for being frank, all the more modest for being outspoken? For in these matters and the like, dissimulation and concealment is the mark of the sinner, open acknowledgement and publication a sign that the writer is but exercising his wit. For nature has bestowed on innocence a voice wherewith to speak, but to guilt she has given silence to veil its sin.