The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
General
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
Poetry
[135] The philosopher Jamblicus. The story of the raising of Eros and
Anteros may be found in his life by Eunapius. It is well told. ["It is
reported of him," says Eunapius, "that while he and his scholars were
bathing in the hot baths of Gadara, in Syria, a dispute arising
concerning the baths, he, smiling, ordered his disciples to ask the
inhabitants by what names the two lesser springs, that were fairer than
the rest, were called. To which the inhabitants replied, that 'the one
was called Love, and the other Love's Contrary, but for what reason they
knew not.' Upon which Iamblichus, who chanced to be sitting on the
fountain's edge where the stream flowed out, put his hand on the water,
and, having uttered a few words, called up from the depths of the
fountain a fair-skinned lad, not over-tall, whose golden locks fell in
sunny curls over his breast and back, so that he looked like one fresh
from the bath; and then, going to the other spring, and doing as he had
done before, called up another Amoretto like the first, save that his
long-flowing locks now seemed black, now shot with sunny gleams.
Whereupon both the Amoretti nestled and clung round Iamblichus as if
they had been his own children ... after this his disciples asked him no
more questions."--Eunapii Sardiani _Vitæ Philosophorum et Sophistarum_
(28, 29), _Philostratorum_, etc., _Opera_, Paris, 1829, p. 459, lines
20-50.]
[136] {107}[There may be some allusion here to "the squall off
Meillerie" on the Lake of Geneva (see Letter to Murray, June 27, 1816,
_Letters,_ 1899, iii. 333).]
[137] [Compare the concluding sentence of the Journal in Switzerland
(_ibid.,_ p. 364).]
[az] _And live--and live for ever_.--[Specimen sheet.]
[ba] {108}_As from a bath_--.--[MS, erased.]
[138] The story of Pausanias, king of Sparta, (who commanded the Greeks
at the battle of Platea, and afterwards perished for an attempt to
betray the Lacedæmonians), and Cleonice, is told in Plutarch's life of
Cimon; and in the Laconics of Pausanias the sophist in his description
of Greece.
[The following is the passage from Plutarch: "It is related that when
Pausanias was at Byzantium, he cast his eyes upon a young virgin named
Cleonice, of a noble family there, and insisted on having her for a
mistress. The parents, intimidated by his power, were under the hard
necessity of giving up their daughter. The young woman begged that the
light might be taken out of his apartment, that she might go to his bed
in secresy and silence. When she entered he was asleep, and she
unfortunately stumbled upon the candlestick, and threw it down. The
noise waked him suddenly, and he, in his confusion, thinking it was an
enemy coming to assassinate him, unsheathed a dagger that lay by him,
and plunged it into the virgin's heart. After this he could never rest.
Her image appeared to him every night, and with a menacing tone repeated
this heroic verse--
'Go to the fate which pride and lust prepare!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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