ng of wantonness. Those who are inspired by this love turn
to the male, and delight in him who is the most valiant and
intelligent nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in
the very character of their attachments; for they love not boys,
but intelligent beings whose reason is beginning to be developed,
much about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in
choosing them as their companions they mean to be faithful to them,
and pass their whole life in company with them, not to take them in
their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them,
or run away from one to another of them. But the love of young boys
should be forbidden by law, because their future is uncertain; they
may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much noble
enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the good
are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be
restrained by force, as we restrain or attempt to restrain them
from fixing their affections on women of free birth."

These long quotations from a work accessible to every reader may require
apology. My excuse for giving them must be that they express in pure
Athenian diction a true Athenian view of this matter. The most salient
characteristics of the whole speech are, first, the definition of a code
of honour, distinguishing the nobler from the baser forms of
paiderastia; secondly, the decided preference of male over female love;
thirdly, the belief in the possibility of permanent affection between
paiderastic friends; and, fourthly, the passing allusion to rules of
domestic surveillance under which Athenian boys were placed. To the
first of these points I shall have to return on another occasion. With
regard to the second, it is sufficient for the present purpose to
remember that free Athenian women were comparatively uneducated and
uninteresting, and that the hetairai had proverbially bad manners. While
men transacted business and enjoyed life in public, their wives and
daughters stayed in the seclusion of the household, conversing to a
great extent with slaves, and ignorant of nearly all that happened in
the world around them. They were treated throughout their lives as
minors by the law, nor could they dispose by will of more than the worth
of a bushel of barley. It followed that marriages at Athens were usually
matches of arrangement between