hich was irksome enough to Aristippus and his kinsfolk; nevertheless
they let him be, awaiting to see what might be the cause of his change
of mind. Love's arrow having, then, through Iphigenia's beauty,
penetrated into Cimon's heart, whereinto no teaching had ever availed
to win an entrance, in a very brief time, proceeding from one idea to
another, he made his father marvel and all his kinsfolk and every
other that knew him. In the first place he besought his father that he
would cause him go bedecked with clothes and every other thing, even
as his brothers, the which Aristippus right gladly did. Then,
consorting with young men of condition and learning the fashions and
carriage that behoved unto gentlemen and especially unto lovers, he
first, to the utmost wonderment of every one, in a very brief space of
time, not only learned the first [elements of] letters, but became
very eminent among the students of philosophy, and after (the love
which he bore Iphigenia being the cause of all this) he not only
reduced his rude and rustical manner of speech to seemliness and
civility, but became a past master of song and sound[264] and
exceeding expert and doughty in riding and martial exercises, both by
land and by sea. In short, not to go recounting every particular of
his merits, the fourth year was not accomplished from the day of his
first falling in love, ere he was grown the sprightliest and most
accomplished gentleman of all the young men in the island of Cyprus,
ay, and the best endowed with every particular excellence. What, then,
charming ladies, shall we say of Cimon? Certes, none other thing than
that the lofty virtues implanted by heaven in his generous soul had
been bounden with exceeding strong bonds of jealous fortune and shut
in some straitest corner of his heart, all which bonds Love, as a
mightier than fortune, broke and burst in sunder and in its quality of
awakener and quickener of drowsed and sluggish wits, urged forth into
broad daylight the virtues aforesaid, which had till then been
overdarkened with a barbarous obscurity, thus manifestly discovering
from how mean a room it can avail to uplift those souls that are
subject unto it and to what an eminence it can conduct them with its
beams.

[Footnote 264: _i.e._ of music, vocal and instrumental.]

Although Cimon, loving Iphigenia as he did, might exceed in certain
things, as young men in love very often do, nevertheless Aristippus,
considering that Lo