"And one of the philosophers who was once drinking with us, when a flute-playing girl came in, and when there was plenty of room near him, when the girl wished to sit down near him, would not allow her, but drew himself up and looked grave. And then afterwards, when the girl was put up to auction, as is often the fashion at such entertainments, he was exceedingly eager to buy her, and quarrelled with the man who sold her, on the ground that he had knocked her down too speedily to some one else; and he said that the auctioneer had not fairly sold her. And at last this grave philosopher, he who at first would not permit the girl even to sit near him, came to blows about her." And perhaps this very philosopher, who came to blows about the flute-playing girl, may have been Persæus himself; for Antigonus the Carystian, in his treatise on Zeno, makes the following statement:—"Zeno the Cittiæan, when once Perseus at a drinking-party bought a flute-playing girl, and after that was afraid to bring her home, because he lived in the same house with Zeno, becoming acquainted with the circumstance, brought the girl home himself, and shut her up with Persæus." I know, also, that Polystratus the Athenian, who was a pupil of Theophrastus, and who was surnamed the Tyrrhenian, used often to put on the garments of the female flute-players. 87. Kings, too, have shown great anxiety about musical women; as Parmenion tells us in his Letter to Alexander, which he sent to that monarch after he had taken Damascus, and after he had become master of all the baggage of Darius. Accordingly, having enumerated all the things which he had taken, he writes as follows:—"I found three hundred and twenty-nine concubines of the king, all skilled in music; and forty-six men who were skilful in making garlands, and two hundred and seventy-seven confectioners, and twenty-nine boilers of pots, and thirteen cooks skilful in preparing milk, and seventeen artists who mixed drinks, and seventy slaves who strain wine, and forty preparers of perfumes." And I say to you, O my companions, that there is no sight which has a greater tendency to gladden the eyes than the beauty of a woman. Accordingly Œneus, in the play of Chæremon the tragedian, speaking of some maidens whom he had seen, says, in the play called Œneus,—