"Onomarchus also gave," as he says, "to his favourite Lycolas, and to Physcidas the son of Tricholaus (who was very handsome), a crown of laurel, the offering of the Ephesians. This boy was brought also to Philip by his father, but was dismissed without any favour. Onomarchus also gave to Damippus, the son of Epilycus of Amphipolis, who was a youth of great beauty, a present which had been consecrated to the god by Plisthenes.
"And Philomelus gave to Pharsalia, a dancing-woman from Thessaly, a golden crown of laurel-leaves, which had been offered by the Lampsacenes. But Pharsalia herself was afterwards torn to pieces at Metapontum, by the soothsayers, in the market-place, on the occasion of a voice coming forth out of the brazen laurel which the people of Metapontum had set up at the time when Aristeas of Proconnesus was sojourning among them, on his return, as he stated, from the Hyperboreans, the first moment that she was seen entering the market-place. And when men afterwards inquired into the reason for this violence, she was found to have been put to death on account of this crown which belonged to the god."
84. Now I warn you, O philosophers, who indulge in unnatural passions, and who treat the great goddess Venus with impiety, to beware, lest you be destroyed in the same manner. For boys are only handsome, as Glycera the courtesan said, while they are like women: at least, this is the saying attributed to her by Clearchus. But my opinion is that the conduct of Cleonymus the Spartan was in strict conformity with nature, who was the first man to take such hostages as he took from the Metapontines—namely, two hundred of their most respectable and beautiful virgins; as is related by Duris the Samian, in the third book of his History of Agathocles. And I too, as is said by Epicrates in his Antilais,
Have learnt by heart completely all the songs
Breathing of love which sweetest Sappho sang,
Or the Lamynthian Cleomenes.
But you, my philosophical friends, even when you are in love with women . . . as Clearchus says. For a bull was excited by the sight of the brazen cow at Pirene: and in a picture that existed of a bitch, and a pigeon, and a goose; and a gander came up to the goose, and a dog to the bitch, and a male pigeon to the pigeon, and not one of them discovered the deception till they got close to them; but when they got near enough to touch them, they desisted; just as Clisophus the Salymbrian did. For he fell in love with a statue of Parian marble that then was at Samos, and shut himself up in the temple to gratify his affection; but when he found that he could make no impression on the coldness and unimpressibility of the stone, then he discarded his passion. And Alexis the poet mentions this circumstance in his drama entitled The Picture, where he says—
And such another circumstance, they say,
Took place in Samos: there a man did fall
In love with a fair maiden wrought in marble,