["I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion."--Martial]

Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, that
he never made love to any but old women. For my part, I take more
pleasure in but seeing the just and sweet mixture of two young beauties,
or only in meditating on it in my fancy, than myself in acting second in
a pitiful and imperfect conjunction;

[Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second
with a deformed creature."]

I leave that fantastic appetite to the Emperor Galba, who was only for
old curried flesh: and to this poor wretch:

"O ego Di faciant talem to cernere possim,
Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis,
Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis!"

[Ovid, who (Ex. Ponto, i. 4, 49) writes to his wife, "O would the
gods arrange that such I might see thee, and bring dear kisses to
thy changed locks, and embrace thy withered body with my arms"]

Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon,
a young boy of Chios, thinking by fine dressing to acquire the beauty
that nature had denied him, came to the philosopher Arcesilaus and asked
him if it was possible for a wise man to be in love--"Yes," replied he,
"provided it be not with a farded and adulterated beauty like thine."

[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36. The question was whether a wise man
could love him. Cotton has "Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios."]