[149] The poems of Strato form, of course, an exception; but then the incidents on which they are based are professedly the product of his own, not always very charming, imagination. Cp. Anth. Pal. xii. 258. A further fact worth noticing is that abstract love-poems (e.g. xii. 50) are regularly placed among the Παιδικά.
[150] The reader will perhaps be thinking of another love “passing the love of women.” One might write many pages on the differences between these two similar emotions.
[151] Whatever opinion one may have as to Homer’s own intention, it cannot be denied that this was the Greek view of the relation between Achilles and Patroclus from a very early period. This is clearly shown by the fact that Aeschylus of all people treated it in this way in his Myrmidones. That the attachment was further regarded as a perfectly pure one might be equally proved from the fragments of that tragedy, if indeed proof were necessary. Insinuations like those elaborated at the end of Lucian’s Amores are a much later aftergrowth.
[152] Vide supra, [pp. 21, 22].
[154] Theocr. xxix. and xxx.
[155] E.g. the image of Time with wings on his shoulders (xxix. 29). For this reason I have not cared to urge the expression Ἀχιλλέϊοι φίλοι in xxix. 34, as a proof that Alcaeus took this view of the relation between Achilles and Patroclus. (Vide supra, [p. 82].)
[156] Thus Maximus Tyrius (xxiv. 9) compares the love of Sappho to that of Socrates. ὁ δὲ τῆς Λεσβίας (ἔρως) ... τί ἂν εἴη ἄλλο, ἢ ἡ Σωκράτους τέχνη ἐρωτική; δοκοῦσι γάρ μοι τὴν κατὰ ταυτὸ ἑκάτερος φιλίαν, ἡ μὲν γυναικῶν, ὁ δὲ ἀρρένων, ἐπιτηδεῦσαι.
[158] Cp. Theocr. xxix. 10,