s abroad; but when old age draws nigh,
you find them as threadbare as an old coat. Suppose a man has
wrestled well, or runs fast, or has hurled a quoit, or given a
black eye in fine style, has he done the State a service by the
crowns he won? Do soldiers fight with quoits in hand, or without
the press of shields can kicks expel the foeman from the gate?
Nobody is fool enough to do these things with steel before his
face. Keep, then, your laurels for the wise and good, for him who
rules a city well, the just and temperate, who by his speeches
wards off ill, allaying wars and civil strife. These are the things
for cities, yea, and for all Greece to boast of."

Lucian represents, of course, a late period of Attic life. But his
picture of the perfect boy completes, and in some points supplements,
that of Aristophanes. Callicratidas, in the _Dialogue on Love_, has
just drawn an unpleasing picture of a woman, surrounded in a fusty
boudoir with her rouge-pots and cosmetics, perfumes, paints, combs,
looking-glasses, hair-dyes, and curling irons. Then he turns to praise
boys:[104]

"How different is the boy! In the morning, he rises from his chaste
couch, washes the sleep from his eyes with cold water, puts on his
chlamys,[105] and takes his way to the school of the musician or
the gymnast. His tutors and guardians attend him, and his eyes are
bent upon the ground. He spends the morning in studying the poets
and philosophers, in riding, or in military drill. Then he betakes
himself to the wrestling-ground, and hardens his body with noontide
heat and sweat and dust. The bath follows and a modest meal. After
this he returns for awhile to study the lives of heroes and great
men. After a frugal supper sleep at last is shed upon his eyelids."

Such is Lucian's sketch of the day spent by a young Greek at the famous
University of Athens. Much is, undoubtedly, omitted; but enough is said
to indicate the simple occupations to which an Athenian youth, capable
of inspiring an enthusiastic affection, was addicted. Then follows a
burst of rhetoric, which reveals, when we compare it with the dislike
expressed for women, the deeply-seated virile nature of Greek love.

"Truly he is worthy to be loved. Who would not love Hermes in the
palaestra, or Phoebus at the lyre, or Castor on the racing-ground?
Who would not wish to sit fac