sake of insinuating compliments. Yet no one shared in
fuller measure the Greek admiration for health and grace and vigour of
limb. This is obvious in the many radiant pictures of masculine
perfection he has drawn, as well as in the images by which he loves to
bring the beauty-bloom of youth to mind. The true Hellenic spirit may be
better studied in Pindar than in any other poet of his age; and after we
have weighed his high morality, sound counsel, and reverence for all
things good, together with the passion he avows, we shall have done
something toward comprehending the inner nature of Greek love.

XII.

The treatment of paiderastia upon the Attic stage requires separate
considerations. Nothing proves the popular acceptance and national
approval of Greek love more forcibly to modern minds than the fact that
the tragedians like AEschylus and Sophocles made it the subject of their
dramas. From a notice in Athenaeus it appears that Stesichorus, who first
gave dramatic form to lyric poetry, composed interludes upon paiderastic
subjects.[79] But of these it is impossible to speak, since their very
titles have been lost. What immediately follows, in the narrative of
Athenaeus, will serve as text for what I have to say upon this topic.
"And AEshylus, that mighty poet, and Sophocles, brought masculine loves
into the theatre through their tragedies. Wherefore some are wont to
call tragedy a paiderast; and the spectators welcome such." Nothing,
unfortunately, remains of the plays which justified this language but a
few fragments cited by Aristophanes, Plutarch, Lucian, and Athenaeus. To
examine these will be the business of this section.

The tragedy of the _Myrmidones_, which formed part of a trilogy by
AEschylus upon the legend of Achilles, must have been popular at Athens,
for Aristophanes quotes it no less than four times--twice in the
_Frogs_, once in the _Birds_, and once in the _Ecclesiazusae_. We can
reconstruct its general plan from the lines which have come down to us
on the authority of the writers above mentioned.[80] The play opened
with an anapaestic speech of the chorus, composed of the clansmen of
Achilles, who upbraided him for staying idle in his tent while the
Achaians suffered at the hands of Hector. Achilles replied with the
metaphor of the eagle stricken by an arrow winged from one of his own
feathers. Then the embassy of Phoenix arrived, and Patroclus was sent
forth to battle. Achilles, meanwhil