carnal; and in this they differ from Epicurus, who, I think, is not
much mistaken. For what is that love of friendship? How comes it that
no one is in love with a deformed young man, or a handsome old one? I
am of opinion that this love of men had its rise from the Gymnastics of
the Greeks, where these kinds of loves are admissible and permitted;
therefore Ennius spoke well:

The censure of this crime to those is due
Who naked bodies first exposed to view.

Now, supposing them chaste, which I think is hardly possible, they are
uneasy and distressed, and the more so because they contain and refrain
themselves. But, to pass over the love of women, where nature has
allowed more liberty, who can misunderstand the poets in their rape of
Ganymede, or not apprehend what Laius says, and what he desires, in
Euripides? Lastly, what have the principal poets and the most learned
men published of themselves in their poems and songs? What doth Alcæus,
who was distinguished in his own republic for his bravery, write on the
love of young men? And as for Anacreon's poetry, it is wholly on love.
But Ibycus of Rhegium appears, from his writings, to have had this love
stronger on him than all the rest.

XXXIV. Now we see that the loves of all these writers were entirely
libidinous. There have arisen also some among us philosophers (and
Plato is at the head of them, whom Dicæarchus blames not without
reason) who have countenanced love. The Stoics, in truth, say, not only
that their wise man may be a lover, but they even define love itself as
an endeavor to originate friendship out of the appearance of beauty.
Now, provided there is any one in the nature of things without desire,
without care, without a sigh, such a one may be a lover; for he is free