Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶52 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶52

However, we may allow the poets to trifle, in whose fables we see Jupiter himself engaged in these debaucheries. But let us apply to the masters of virtue—the philosophers who deny love to be anything 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 does Alcaeus, 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.