4
An evident proof of this is also the shrinking and withdrawal of the private parts, which hold their peace and remain quiet in the presence of such beautiful maidens and youths as neither reason nor law allows us to touch. This is particularly the case with those who first fall in love and then hear that they have unwittingly become enamoured of a sister or a daughter; for lust cowers as reason asserts itself and, at the same time, the body brings its parts into decent conformity with the judgement. Indeed, very often with foods and meat, when men have partaken of them with gusto, if they then perceive or come to know that they have eaten something unclean or unlawful, not only is this judgement of theirs attended by displeasure and remorse, but the body itself, revolted and sharing the mind’s disgust, falls a prey to the retchings and vomitings of nausea.
4
But I fear that I shall be thought to be rounding out my discourse with instances which are altogether seductive and exotic, if I recount in full how harps and lyres, pipes and flutes, and all the other harmonious and consonant instruments which musical art has devised, void of soul though they be, accord in songs of both joy and grief, in stately measures and dissolute tunes, with human experiences, reproducing the judgements, the experiences, and the morals of those who use them. And yet they say that even ZenoVon Arnim, Stoic. Vet. Frag., i. p. 67; Cf. also Moralia, 1029 e. on his way to the theatre when Amoebeus Cf.Life of Aratus, xvii. (1034 e); Athenaeus, xiv. 623 d; Aelian, Varia Historia, iii. 30. was singing to the lyre, remarked to his pupils, Come, let us observe what harmony and music gut and sinew, wood and bone, send forth when they partake of reason, proportion, and order.
