This passage has been quite misunderstood by _Stark_, loco citato p. 27, for he has made it too refer to the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease); in this error indeed _Camerarius_, (Explic. Ethic. Aristot. Nicomach.—Explanations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics—Frankfort 1578, 4to., p. 344) whom he cites, had preceded him. _Stark_ says: Excusat autor eos, qui propter naturae quandam mollitiem et levitatem vitiorum illecebris resistere nequeant. Haec infirmitas vel ex morbo procreata vel a sexus differente natura profecta esse potest. Quarum rationum exempla et _quidem alterius_ _διὰ νόσον_, _Scytharum morbum_, alterius διὰ φύσιν τοῦ γένους mulierum debilitatem affert. (The author is excusing such as on account of a certain softness and lightness of nature cannot resist the allurements of vice. This weakness may have been either induced by disease, or have sprung from the different nature of the sexes. Of which cases he gives two examples—_of the one_ διὰ νόσον (_on account of disease_), _the disease of the Scythians_, of the other διὰ φύσιν τοῦ γένους (on account of congenital nature), the relative weakness of women). But Aristotle says expressly in the passage that the μαλακία (softness, effeminacy) of the Scythians, as well as of a woman, was διὰ γένους (congenital),—that Scythians equally with women are weakly by birth; while his examples of the διὰ νόσον (on account of disease) do not come till further on. The Scythians, he says, like women, are μαλακοί (soft), and the same is true of the man who practises vices with boys (παιδιώδης); it is a part of their nature, and so they are not ἀκόλαστοι (“intemperate”), for the ἀκόλαστος is such a man as cannot owing to disease govern himself (ἀκρασία, ἀσθενεία, διὰ τὸ πάθος—incontinence, weakness, owing to passion). Thus the question cannot possibly be here of the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease), but merely of a weakly, effeminate mode of life; and this is properly speaking μαλακία, while the vice of the pathic is called μαλθακία,—but the two words were constantly interchanged, and thus a part of the blame for the mistake may very well lie with the transcribers. A Pathic is habitually μαλακός, but the μαλακὸς is not necessarily also a Pathic. Hence it might very probably be right to read, as Aspasius and other editors have actually done, Περσῶν for Σκυθῶν (kings _of the Persians_ for kings _of the Scythians_), even though the MSS. show no variants; and indeed to confirm this one might bring forward the trailing of the cloak (ὃς ἕλκει τὸ ἱμάτιον—the man who trails his cloak) which is mentioned as an example, and which was, as is well known, a fashion among the Persians.—ch. 10., οὐ γὰρ πᾶς ὁ δι’ ἡδονήν τι πράττων οὔτ’ ἀκόλαστος οὔτε φαῦλος οὔτ’ ἀκρατής, ἀλλ’ ὁ δι’ αἰσχράν. (For not every man that does a thing for pleasure is “intemperate” or base or incontinent, but he that does it for _disgraceful_ pleasure).