Having collected these notices of tragedies which dealt with boy-love, it may be well to add a word upon comedies in the same relation. We hear of a _Paidika_ by Sophron, a _Malthakoi_ by the older Cratinus, a _Baptoee_ by Empolis, in which Alcibiades and his society were satirised. _Paiderastes_ is the title of plays by Diphilis and Antiphanes; _Ganymedes_ of plays of Alkaeus, Antiphanes and Eubulus.
What has been quoted from Æschylus and Sophocles sufficiently establishes the fact that paiderastia was publicly received with approbation on the tragic stage. This should make us cautious in rejecting the stories which are told about the love adventures of Sophocles.[89] Athenæus calls him a lover of lads, nor is it strange if, in the age of Pericles, and while he was producing the _Achilles' Loves_, he should have shared the tastes of which his race approved.
At this point it may be as well to mention a few illustrious names which, to the student of Greek art and literature, are indissolubly connected with paiderastia. Parmenides, whose life, like that of Pythagoras, was accounted peculiarly holy, loved his pupil Zeno.[90] Pheidias loved Pantarkes, a youth of Elis, and carved his portrait in the figure of a victorious athlete at the foot of the Olympian Zeus.[91] Euripides is said to have loved the adult Agathon Lysias, Demosthenes, and Æschines, orators whose conduct was open to the most searching censure of malicious criticism, did not scruple to avow their love. Socrates described his philosophy as the science of erotics. Plato defined the highest form of human existence to be "philosophy together with paiderastia," and composed the celebrated epigrams on Aster and on Agathon. This list might be indefinitely lengthened.
Before proceeding to collect some notes upon the state of paiderastia at Athens, I will recapitulate the points which I have already attempted to establish. In the first place, paiderastia was unknown to Homer.[92] Secondly, soon after the heroic age, two forms of paiderastia appeared in Greece--the one chivalrous and martial, which received a formal organisation in the Dorian states; the other sensual and lustful which, though localised to some extent at Crete, pervaded the Greek cities like a vice. Of the distinction between these two loves the Greek conscience was well aware, though they came in course of time to be confounded. Thirdly, I traced the character of Greek love, using that term to indicate masculine affection of a permanent and enthusiastic temper, without further ethical qualification, in early Greek history and in the institutions of the Dorians. In the fourth place, I showed what kind of treatment it received at the hands of the elegiac, lyric, and tragic poets.