Pelopidas (18.5-19.1)

It is said, moreover, that the band was never beaten, until the battle of Chaeroneia;[*] and when, after the battle, Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the three hundred were lying, all where they had faced the long spears of his phalanx, with their armour, and mingled one with another, he was amazed, and on learning that this was the band of lovers and beloved, burst into tears and said: Perish miserably they who think that these men did or suffered aught disgraceful.

Speaking generally, however, it was not the passion of Laius that, as the poets say, first made this form of love customary among the Thebans;[*] but their law-givers, wishing to relax and mollify their strong and impetuous natures in earliest boyhood, gave the flute great prominence both in their work and in their play, bringing this instrument into preeminence and honour, and reared them to give love a conspicuous place in the life of the palaestra, thus tempering the dispositions of the young men.