s favour, and often talking about him, and seeing that many
noble young men were in love with him, she fell violently in love with
him, and, being resolved to do nothing unbecoming to her fair fame,
determined to marry and live openly with him. And the matter seeming in
itself rather odd, Baccho's mother looked rather askance at the proposed
matrimonial alliance as being too high and splendid for her son, while
some of his companions who used to go out hunting with him, frightening
him and flouting him with Ismenodora's being rather too old for him,
really did more to break off the match than those who seriously opposed
it. And Baccho, being only a youth, somehow felt a little ashamed at the
idea of marrying a widow, but, neglecting the opinions of everybody
else, he submitted the decision as to the expediency of the marriage to
Pisias and Anthemion, the latter being his cousin, though older than
him, and the former the gravest[63] of his lovers. Pisias objected to
the marriage, and upbraided Anthemion with throwing the youth away on
Ismenodora. Anthemion replied that it was not well in Pisias, being a
good fellow in other respects, to imitate depraved lovers by shutting
out his friend from house and marriage and wealth, merely that he might
enjoy the sight of him as long as possible naked and in all his virgin
bloom at the wrestling-schools.

Sec. III. To avoid getting estranged by provoking one another on the
question, they came and chose our father and his companions as umpires
on the matter. And of the other friends, as if by concerted arrangement,
Daphnaeus espoused the view of Anthemion, and Protogenes the view of
Pisias. And Protogenes inveighing somewhat too freely against
Ismenodora, Daphnaeus took him up and said, "Hercules, what are we not to
expect, if Protogenes is going to be hostile to love? he whose whole
life, whether in work or at play, has been devoted to love, in
forgetfulness of letters, in forgetfulness of his country, not like
Laius, away from his country only five days, his was only a torpid and
land love: whereas your love 'unfolding its swift wings,' flew over the
sea from Cilicia to Athens, merely to gaze at and saunter about with
handsome boys. For that was the original reason, doubtless, of
Protogenes' journey abroad."

Sec. IV. And some laughter ensuing, Protogenes replied, "Do I really seem
to you now to be hostile to love, and not to be fighting for love
against ungovernable lust, which