Reminds me of a scene out of a movie called The circle of iron 1978.
Carradin breaks the nose of a young boy and Cooper demands to know why. After a long journey with no answer. Carradine replies, "because the boy was too beautiful and would have been a tyrant to not only the parents yet also on the whole village. The boy just just too vain".
I think that's the answer you, nor anyone else, really don't want to think about.
Both the village and the parents were very poor. And the parents were somewhat relieved when it happened.
The morale? Vanity has no place among the poor. Only when a society can sustain such vanity can it be over looked.
We are in a vain society in the USA though. Yet can we really afford such vanity indefinitely?
Ask this when you see hundreds of homeless people laying on the street.
Yet beauty and vanity comes at a price no matter what. Perhaps he was afraid of that price.
I have known and even lived with beautiful women. There was always a price to be paid. Yet never the same price.