Note * — Chapter XVII · The Afternoon at the Gymnasia.

For pertinent commentary on the effect of meeting a beautiful youth upon very grave men, see, e.g., Plato’s Charmides (esp. 158 a) and Lysis (esp. 206 d). Or better still in Xenophon’s Symposium (I.9), where we hear of the beautiful youth Autolycus, “even as a bright light at night draws every eye, so by his beauty drew on him the gaze of all the company [at the banquet]. Not a man was present who did not feel his emotions stirred by the sight of him.”