Favorinus who had been engaged in talk with Ptolemaeus, the astronomer, Apollonius, and the philosopher and poet Pancrates in another part of the hall, looked after the two men and said:
"A handsome couple. One the personification of imperial and dignified
Rome; the other with his Hermes-like figure."
"The other"—interrupted the philologist with stern displeasure, "the other is the very incarnation of the haughtiness, the luxury pushed to insanity, and the infamous depravity of the metropolis. That dissipated ladies-man."
"I will not defend his character," said Favorinus in his pleasant voice, and with an elegance in his pronunciation of Greek which delighted even the grammarian. "His ways and doings are disgraceful; still you must allow that his manners are tinged with the charm of Hellenic beauty, that the Charites kissed him at his birth, and though, by the stern laws of virtue we must condemn him, he deserves to be crowned with praise and garlands from the point of view of the feeling for beauty."
"Oh! for the artist who wants a model he is a choice morsel."
"The Athenian judges acquitted Phryne because she was beautiful."
"They did wrong."
"Hardly in the eyes of the gods, whose fairest works must deserve our respect."
"Still poison may be kept in the most beautiful vessels."
"And yet body and soul always to a certain extent correspond."