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

FESTIVALS

wild orgies, of which we can get a clear idea from numerous pictorial representations and descriptions in the poets.

It does not belong to the task of this book to enter more closely into the other very numerous festivals which were celebrated in the most different places in Greece ; instead of this, we give a concise survey of those Greek festivals in which the sexual impulse plays a part.

In the month of Hekatombaion (July-August) the Hyacinthia was celebrated in honour of Hyacinthus. He was the favourite of Apollo; but Zephyrus, the wind-god, also loved the boy; wherefore, out of jealousy, when Apollo was amusing himself in a game of discus with his favourite, Zephyrus directed the heavy ring of the discus against the head of Hyacinthus, so that he died. The festival lasted three days : on the first, sacrifices were offered to the dead in solemn melancholy in memory of the beautiful youth ; on the two days following joyous processions and contests took place in honour of Apollo Carneus. Athenzeus (iv, 139d) gives a detailed description of the Hyacinthia : “The Spartans keep the sacrificial festival Hyacinthia for three days; owing to their sorrow for the death of Hyacinthus they neither crown themselves at their meals, nor set on table bread nor cakes nor any kind of other pastry ; they sing no pzan to the god, nor do anything else of the kind such as is usual in the other sacrifices, but after they have taken their meal in a most orderly manner they depart. On the second day a varied spectacle takes place and an assembly that is well worth seeing and magnificent. For boys come on, playing the cithara with their chiton girt high, and, singing to the flute, run over all the strings at once with the plectrum, and praise the god in anapestic rhythm and with shrill voices. Others, well-equipped, ride on horseback through the place of meeting; then numerous choruses of

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