18.3
Nor is this a wonder since men have more regard for their lovers even when absent than for others who are present, as was true of him who, when his enemy was about to slay him where he lay, earnestly besought him to run his sword through his breast, in order, as he said, that my beloved may not have to blush at sight of my body with a wound in the back.
18.4
It is related, too, that Iolaüs, who shared the labours of Heracles and fought by his side, was beloved of him. And Aristotle saysFragment 97 (Rose). Cf. Morals, p. 761 d. that even down to his day the tomb of Iolaüs was a place where lovers and beloved plighted mutual faith. It was natural, then, that the band should also be called sacred, because even Plato calls the lover a friend inspired of God. Symposium, p. 179 a.
18.5
It is said, moreover, that the band was never beaten, until the battle of Chaeroneia;338 B.C. and when, after the battle, Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the three hundred were lying, all where they had faced the long spears of his phalanx, with their armour, and mingled one with another, he was amazed, and on learning that this was the band of lovers and beloved, burst into tears and said: Perish miserably they who think that these men did or suffered aught disgraceful.
19.1
Speaking generally, however, it was not the passion of Laius that, as the poets say, first made this form of love customary among the Thebans;Laius was enamoured of Chrysippus, a young son of Pelops (Apollodorus, iii. 5, 5, 10). but their law-givers, wishing to relax and mollify their strong and impetuous natures in earliest boyhood, gave the flute great prominence both in their work and in their play, bringing this instrument into preeminence and honour, and reared them to give love a conspicuous place in the life of the palaestra, thus tempering the dispositions of the young men.
