APHRODITE 
Here I am close by; examine me thoroughly, part
by part, slighting none, but lingering upon each.
And if you will be so good, my handsome lad, let me
tell you this. I have long seen that you are young
and more handsome than perhaps anyone else whom
Phrygia nurtures. While I congratulate you upon
your beauty, I find’ fault with you because, instead
of abandoning these crags and cliffs and living in
town, you are letting your beauty go to waste in
the solitude. What joy can you get of the mountains? What good can your beauty do the kine?
Moreover, you ought to have married by this time—
not a country girl, however, a peasant, like the
women about Ida, but someone from Greece, either
from Argos or Corinth or a Spartan like Helen, who
is young and beautiful and not a bit inferior to me,
and above all, susceptible to love. If she but saw
you, I know very well that, abandoning everything
and surrendering without conditions, she would
follow you and make her home with you. No doubt
you yourself have heard something of her.


 

 PARIS 
Nothing, Aphrodite, but I should be glad to hear
you tell all about her now.