[156] Aelian, Varia historia, iii. 10. Cf. Plato, Leges, viii. 910.
[157] Aelian, op. cit. iii. 12. Cf. Maximus Tyrius, op. cit. xxvi. 8.
[158] Cf. Symonds, loc. cit. p. 92 sqq.
[159] Plato, Symposium, p. 178.
[160] Plato, Symposium, p. 182.
[161] Hieronymus, the Peripatetic, referred to by Athenaeus, op. cit. xiii. 78, p. 602. See also Maximus Tyrius, op. cit. xxiv. 2.
[162] Plutarch, Amatorius, xvii. 14.
[163] Plato, Symposium, p. 178.
Herodotus asserts that the love of boys was introduced from Greece into Persia.[164] Whether his statement be correct or not, such love could certainly not have been a habit of the Mazda worshippers.[165] In the Zoroastrian books “unnatural sin” is treated with a severity to which there is a parallel only in Hebrewism and Christianity. According to the Vendîdâd, there is no atonement for it.[166] It is punished with torments in the other world, and is capital here below.[167] Even he who committed it involuntarily, by force, is subject to corporal punishment.[168] Indeed, it is a more heinous sin than the slaying of a righteous man.[169] “There is no worse sin than this in the good religion, and it is proper to call those who commit it worthy of death in reality. If any one comes forth to them, and shall see them in the act, and is working with an axe, it is requisite for him to cut off the heads or to rip up the bellies of both, and it is no sin for him. But it is not proper to kill any person without the authority of high-priests and kings, except on account of committing or permitting unnatural intercourse.”[170]
[164] Herodotus, i. 135.