“But now, not only scents,” as Clearchus says in the third book of his Lives, “but also dyes, being full of luxury, tend to make those men effeminate who have anything to do with them. And do you think that effeminacy without virtue has anything desirable in it? But even Sappho, a thorough woman, and a poetess into the bargain, was ashamed to separate honour from elegance; and speaks thus—
But elegance I truly love;making it evident to everybody that the desire of life that she confessed had respectability and honour in it; and these things especially belong to virtue. But Parrhasius the painter, although he was a man beyond all measure arrogant about his art, and though he got the credit of a liberal profession by some mere pencils and pallets, still in words set up a claim to virtue, and put this inscription on all his works that are at Lindus:—
And this my love of life has brilliancy,
And honour, too, attached to it:
This is Parrhasius' the painter's work,And a wit being indignant at this, because, I suppose, he seemed to be a disgrace to the delicacy and beauty of virtue, having perverted the gifts which fortune had bestowed upon him to luxury, proposed to change the inscription into ῥαβδοδίαιτος ἀνήρ: Still, said he, the man must be endured, since he says that he honours virtue.” These are the words of Clearchus. But Sophocles the poet, in his play called The Judgment, represents Venus, being a sort of Goddess of Pleasure, as anointed with perfumes, and looking in a glass; but Minerva, as being a sort of Goddess of Intellect and Mind, and also of Virtue, as using oil and gymnastic exercises.
A most luxurious (ἁβροδίαιτος) and virtuous man.
