Beauty becomes a distinction, like genius, or
noble place.
"By no people," says Winckelmann, "has beauty been so highly esteemed as
by the Greeks. The priests of a youthful Jupiter at Aegae, of the
Ismenian Apollo, and the priest who at Tanagra led the procession of
Mercury, bearing a lamb upon his shoulders, were always youths to whom
the prize of beauty had been awarded. The citizens of Egesta, in Sicily,
erected a monument to a certain Philip, who was not their fellow-citizen,
but of Croton, for his distinguished beauty; and the people made
offerings at it. In an ancient song, ascribed to Simonides or Epicharmus,
of four wishes, the first was health, the second beauty. And as beauty
was so longed for and prized by the Greeks, every beautiful person sought
to become known to the whole people by this distinction, and above all to
approve himself to the artists, because they awarded the prize; and this
was for the artists an opportunity of having supreme beauty ever before
their eyes. Beauty even gave a right to fame; and we find in Greek
histories the most beautiful people distinguished.
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