thus Crete sanctified the practice by the examples of the gods and demigods.  But when legislation came, the subject had qualified itself for legal limitation and as such was undertaken by Lycurgus and Solon, according to Xenophon (Lac. ii. 13), who draws a broad distinction between the honest love of boys and dishonest ({Greek}) lust.  They both approved of pure pederastia, like that of Harmodius and Aristogiton; but forbade it with serviles because degrading to a free man.  Hence the love of boys was spoken of like that of women (Plato:  Phaedrus; Repub. vi. c.  I9 and Xenophon, Synop. iv. 10), e.g., “There was once a boy, or rather a youth, of exceeding beauty and he had very many lovers”—­this is the language of Hafiz and Sa’adi.  AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were allowed to introduce it upon the stage, for “many men were as fond of having boys for their favourites as women for their mistresses; and this was a frequent fashion in many well-regulated cities of Greece.”  Poets like Alcaeus, Anacreon, Agathon and Pindar affected it and Theognis sang of a “beautiful boy in the flower of his youth.”  The statesmen Aristides and Themistocles quarrelled over Stesileus of Teos; and Pisistratus loved Charmus who first built an altar to Puerile Eros, while Charmus loved Hippias son of Pisistratus.  Demosthenes the Orator took into keeping a youth called Cnosion greatly to the indignation of his wife.  Xenophon loved Clinias and Autolycus; Aristotle, Hermeas, Theodectes[FN#373] and others; Empedocles, Pausanias; Epicurus, Pytocles; Aristippus, Eutichydes and Zeno with his Stoics had a philosophic disregard for women, affecting only pederastia.  A man in Athenaeus (iv. c. 40) left in his will that certain youths he had loved should fight like gladiators at his funeral; and Charicles in Lucian abuses Callicratidas for his love of “sterile pleasures.”  Lastly there was the notable affair of Alcibiades and Socrates, the “sanctus paederasta"[FN#374] being violemment soupconne when under the mantle:—­non semper sine plaga ab eo surrexit.  Athenaeus (v. c.  I3) declares that Plato represents Socrates as absolutely intoxicated with his passion for Alcibiades.[FN#375] The Ancients seem to have held the connection impure, or Juvenal would not have written:—­

          Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos,

followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of “Socratici paedicones.”  It is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of the master of Hellenic Sophrosyne, the “Christian before Christianity;” but such a world-wide term as Socratic love can hardly be explained by the lucus-a-non-lucendo theory.  We are overapt to apply our nineteenth century prejudices and prepossessions to the morality of the ancient Greeks who would have specimen’d such squeamishness in Attic salt.

The Spartans, according to Agnon the Academic (confirmed by Plato, Plutarch and Cicero), treated boys and girls in the same way before marriage:  hence Juvenal (xi. 173) uses ’’Lacedaemonius” for a pathic and other writers apply it to a tribade.  After the Peloponnesian War, which ended in B.C. 404, the use became merged in the abuse.  Yet some purity must have survived, even amongst the Boeotians who produced the famous Narcissus,[FN#376] described by Ovid (Met. iii. 339);—­