Note 508 — Chapter I · CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY[3] (continued 2)

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.