Classic Poem

Paint for me Bathyllus, the lover, as I tell you. Make his hair bright; black at the roots, yet golden at the ends; and let the free tendrils of his hair lie lawless as they choose.
Let his eyebrow, which is darker than a serpent, garland his dew-soft brow. Let his fierce dark eye be tempered with grace — the fierceness of Ares, the grace of Aphrodite — so that any one who flees from the one surrenders to the other.
Make his downy cheek like a rose-tinted apple. Make the flush of his skin like that of Modesty if you had to paint him. And I know not in what fashion you should make his lips — soft and full like Persuasion; yet the wax keeps all his speech in silence.
After his face set down his ivory throat, surpassing Adonis. Paint his chest and two hands like Hermes, his thighs like Polydeuces, and his belly like Dionysus; and above his soft thighs, make his smooth sex, the fire near his thighs, already desirous of the Paphian.
Yours is a poor art since you cannot show his back as well. And what shall I say to you of his feet?
Take your money, take whatever you ask. Depose Apollo himself and make Bathyllus, and if ever you come to Samos set up Bathyllus instead of Phaebus.