[38] The general opinion of the Greeks with regard to the best type of Dorian love is well expressed by Maximus Tyrius, Dissert., xxvi. 8. "It is esteemed a disgrace to a Cretan youth to have no lover. It is a disgrace for a Cretan youth to tamper with the boy he loves. O custom, beautifully blent of self-restraint and passion! The man of Sparta loves the lad of Lacedæmon, but loves him only as one loves a fair statue; and many love one, and one loves many."
[39] Laws, i. 636.
[40] Pol., ii. 7, 4.
[41] Lib. 13,602, E.
[42] It is not unimportant to note in this connection that paiderastia of no ignoble type still prevails among the Albanian mountaineers.
[43] The foregoing attempt to reconstruct a possible environment for the Dorian form of paiderastia is, of course, wholly imaginative. Yet it receives certain support from what we know about the manners of the Albanian mountaineers and the nomadic Tartar tribes. Aristotle remarks upon the paiderastic customs of the Kelts, who in his times were immigrant.
[44] See above, Section V.
[45] It appears from the reports of travellers that this form of passion is not common among those African tribes who have not been corrupted by Musselmans or Europeans.
[46] It may be plausibly argued that Æschylus drew the subject of his Myrmidones from some such non-Homeric epic. See below, Section XII.
[47] 182 A. Cp. Laws, i. 636.