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 bring leisure and caution to his undertaking, they do strictly require it of the beloved, inasmuch as he had to judge of an inward beauty, difficult to know and dark to discover); then there arose in the beloved the desire of a spiritual conception by the agency of a spiritual beauty. This then was the principal thing; the bodily was accidental and secondary: just the opposite from the lover. For which reason they prefer the beloved, and prove that the gods also prefer him; and severely reprove the poet Æschylus because in the love of Achilles and Patroclus he gave the rôle of lover to Achilles, who was in the first beardless verdure of his youth and the most beautiful of the Greeks. After this general intimacy was arranged, the chief and worthiest part of it performing its duties and predominating, they say that there resulted fruits of great utility to the individuals concerned and to the public; that it was the strength of the countries that recognized the custom, and the principal defense of law and liberty: witness the salutary love of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Therefore they call it sacred and divine; and nothing, in their opinion, except the violence of