Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

THE HuMAN FIGURE

dresses can be seen, e.g., from a passage in Hippolochus (Ath., iv, 1294), who tells us of a wedding-feast at which Rhodian flute-players entered who appeared to him completely naked until the other guests informed him that they wore Coan garments. Lucian even says (Amores, 41) that these “ clothes of a tissue as fine as a spider’s web are only pretence, so as to prevent the appearance of complete nakedness”. Petronius (§ 55) calls them “ woven stuff light as air”, and the somewhat pedantic Seneca gives vent to his indignation at this fondness of women for display in the following words (De Beneficiis, 7, 9): “1 see silken clothes, if those can be called clothes, with which the body or only the private parts could be covered ; dressed in them, the woman can hardly swear with a good conscience that she is not naked. These clothes are imported at considerable expense from most distant countries, only that our women may have no more to show their lovers in the bedroom than in the street”. The frequent mention of these Coan dresses in old authors shows how very popular they were; the Tarentine veils often mentioned were very similar.

If by preference the hetaerae made use of this costume, which was more than generous in displaying their charms, yet we see, e.g. from a passage in Theocritus (ldyll xxviii: sddrwa Bpden), that respectable women also were not afraid to appear in such attire. In 'Theocritus they are called ‘‘ wet garments’, an expression easy to understand, and one which is still used by modern artists when speaking of clothes that allow the outline of the body to show through.

2. NAKEDNESS

The Coan dresses, which as we saw did but pretend to be clothing, and not only did not cover but erotically accentuated the form of the body,

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