[504] Ibid., In Epist. I ad Corinth., xii, 7 (in Migne, x, 105).
[505] Ibid., De Consol. Mort. 6 (in Migne, vi, 303).
[506] Ibid., Expos. in Psalm cxi, 4 (in Migne, v, 297), etc. He often protests against this form of luxury. At Rome especially, when the ownership of these costly piles had passed into oblivion, it was the habit of builders to pillage them in order to use their architectural adornments and materials for new erections; Cod. Theod., IX, xvii. Apparently the sepulchres were sometimes violated for the supply of false relics.
[507] Chrysostom. Habentes autem eumdem, etc. Hom. ii, 9 (in Migne, iii, 284).
[508] See Plato’s Phaedrus, Symposium, etc.; Plutarch, Pelopidas, 19. A modern Democritus might smile at the conclusion of Lucian that, whilst the commerce of the sexes is necessary for the propagation of the race, paederasty is the ideal sphere for the love of philosophers; Amores. According to Aristotle, Minos introduced the practice into Crete as an antidote against over-population; Politics, ii, 10; vii, 16. In this respect the Greeks, perhaps, corrupted on the one hand and on the other Romans and Persians alike; Herodotus, i, 135. It was indigenous, however, among the Etruscans; Athenaeus, xii, 14, etc.
[509] The shadowy Scantinian law was enacted against it, but remained a dead letter; Cicero, Ad Famil., viii, 12, 14, etc.; cf. Plutarch, Marcellus, 2.
[510] I have not, however, fallen in with any account of the dedication of a temple to Amor Virilis. Such a shrine would have been quite worthy of Nero or Elagabalus, indeed of Hadrian.
[511] Suetonius, Nero, 28; Hist. Aug. Hadrian, 14; Heliogabalus, 6, 15, etc.; Statius, Silvae, iii, 4, etc. The adulation of this vice pervaded even the golden age of Latin poetry:
But Virgil’s songs are pure except that horrid one
Beginning with “Formosum pastor Corydon.”