rseness. A favourite topic is the superiority of boys over girls.
This sometimes takes a gross form;[177] but once or twice the treatment
of the subject touches a real psychological distinction, as in the
following epigram:[178]--

"The love of women is not after my heart's desire; but the fires of
male desire have placed me under inextinguishable coals of burning.
The heat there is mightier; for the more powerful is male than
female, the keener is that desire."

These four lines give the key to much of the Greek preference for
paiderastia. The love of the male, when it has been apprehended and
entertained, is more exciting, they thought, more absorbent of the whole
nature, than the love of the female. It is, to use another kind of
phraseology, more of a mania and more of a disease.

With the _Anthology_ we might compare the curious _Epistolai Erotikai_
of Philostratus.[179] They were in all probability rhetorical
compositions, not intended for particular persons; yet they indicate the
kind of wooing to which youths were subjected in later Hellas.[180] The
discrepancy between the triviality of their subject-matter and the
exquisiteness of their diction is striking. The second of these
qualities has made them a mine for poets. Ben Jonson, for example,
borrowed the loveliest of his lyrics from the following _concetto_:--"I
sent thee a crown of roses, not so much honouring thee, though this,
too, was my meaning, but wishing to do some kindness to the roses that
they might not wither." Take, again, the phrase: "Well, and love himself
is naked, and the graces and the stars;" or this, "O rose, that has a
voice to speak with!"--or this metaphor for the footsteps of the
beloved, "O rhythms of most beloved feet, O kisses pressed upon the
ground!"

While the paiderastia of the Greeks was sinking into grossness,
effeminacy, and aesthetic prettiness, the moral instincts of humanity
began to assert themselves in earnest. It became part of the higher
doctrine of the Roman Stoics to suppress this form of passion.[181] The
Christians, from St. Paul onwards, instituted an uncompromising crusade
against it. Theirs was no mere speculative warfare, like that of the
philosophers at Athens. They fought with all the forces of their
manhood, with the sword of the Lord and with the excommunications of the
Church, to suppress what seemed to them an unutterable scandal. Dio
Chrysostom, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Athanasius,