hat therefore the
majority of the race were not susceptible in a far higher degree to
female charms. On the contrary, our best authorities speak of boy-love
as a characteristic which distinguished warriors, gymnasts, poets, and
philosophers from the common multitude. As far as regards artists, the
anecdotes which are preserved about them turn chiefly upon their
preference for women. For one tale concerning the Pantarkes of Pheidias,
we have a score relating to the Campaspe of Apelles and the Phryne of
Praxiteles.

It may be judged superfluous to have proved that the female form was
idealised in sculpture by the Hellenes at least as nobly as the male;
nor need we seek elaborate reasons why paiderastia left no perceptible
stain upon the art of a race distinguished before all things by the
reserve of good taste. At the same time, there can be no reasonable
doubt that the artistic temperament of the Greeks had something to do
with its wide diffusion and many sided development. Sensitive to every
form of loveliness, and unrestrained by moral or religious prohibition,
they could not fail to be enthusiastic for that corporeal beauty, unlike
all other beauties of the human form, which marks male adolescence no
less triumphantly than does the male soprano voice upon the point of
breaking. The power of this corporeal loveliness to sway their
imagination by its unique aethetic charm is abundantly illustrated in the
passages which I have quoted above from the _Charmides_ of Plato and
Xenophon's _Symposium_. An expressive Greek phrase, "Youths in their
prime of adolescence, but not distinguished by a special beauty,"
recognises the persuasive influence, separate from that of true beauty,
which belongs to a certain period of masculine growth. The very
evanescence of this "bloom of youth" made it in Greek eyes desirable,
since nothing more clearly characterises the poetic myths which
adumbrate their special sensibility than the pathos of a blossom that
must fade. When distinction of feature and symmetry of form were added
to this charm of youthfulness, the Greeks admitted, as true artists are
obliged to do, that the male body displays harmonies of proportion and
melodies of outline more comprehensive, more indicative of strength
expressed in terms of grace, than that of women.[184] I guard myself
against saying--more seductive to the senses, more soft, more delicate,
more undulating. The superiority of male beauty does not consist in