CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/Plutarch's MoralsPublic
Page 64 of 576
Table of Contents

ON LOVE.

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 Eubœa; and that that was the origin of the song in vogue among the Chalcidians,

But according to the account of the poet Dionysius, in his 'Causes,'39 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 Achæans in order of battle in tribes and clans, and did not put lover and love together, that so

64