hows,

'Hunter Apollo, make my bolt go straight!'[97]

And shall no god or good genius assist and prosper the man who hunts in
the best chase of all, the chase of friendship? For I cannot for my
part, my dear Daphnaeus, consider man a less beautiful or important plant
than the oak, or sacred olive, or the vine which Homer glorifies,[98]
seeing that man too has his growth and glorious prime alike of soul and
body."

Sec. XV. Then said Daphnaeus, "In the name of the gods, who thinks
differently?" "All those certainly must," answered my father, "who think
that the gods care only about ploughing and planting and sowing. Have
they not Nymphs attending upon them, called Dryads, 'whose age is coeval
with the trees they live in: and Dionysus the mirth-giving does he not
increase the yield of the trees, the sacred splendour of Autumn,' as
Pindar says?[99] And if they care about all this, is there no god or
genius who is interested in the nurture and growth of boys and youths in
all their glorious flower? is there no one that cares that the growing
man may be upright and virtuous, and that the nobility of his nature may
not be warped and corrupted, either through want of a guardian or by the
depravity of those he associates with? Is it not monstrous and thankless
to say so, seeing that we enjoy the divine bounty, which is dealt out to
us richly, and never abandons us in our straits? And yet some of these
same straits have more necessity than beauty. For example, our birth, in
spite of the unpleasant circumstances attending it, is witnessed by the
divine Ilithyia and Artemis: and it would be better not to be born at
all than to become bad through want of a good guardian and guide.
Moreover in sickness the god who is over that province does not desert
us, nor even in death: for even then there is a conductor and guide for
the departed, to lay them to sleep, and convey their souls to
Hades,[100] as the poet says,

'Night bore me not to be lord of the lyre,
Nor to be seer, or healer of diseases,
But to conduct the souls of the departed.'

And yet these duties involve much unpleasantness, whereas we cannot
mention a holier work, nor any struggle or contest more fitting for a
god to attend and play the umpire in, than the guidance of the young and
beautiful in the prosecution of their love-affairs. For there is here
nothing of an unpleasant nature, no compulsion of any kind, but
persuasion and grace, truly making toil s