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

OTHER FESTIVALS

whom they strove to emulate. Any one who as a gymnast showed efficiency, proudly called himself a Theside and also, as a dutiful son and pupil Theseus, was a model for the boys of Attica. Even at the Epitaphia, the festivals of the dead, races and gymnastic contests of large numbers of boys and ephebi were common.

In Munychion (April-May) the Adonia was celebrated in various parts of the ancient world. According to the originally Oriental myth Adonis, a youth whose beauty has become proverbial, the favourite of Aphrodite, was slain by a boar while hunting; as he was passionately mourned by the goddess Zeus consented to his returning to her from the shades for a short time once a year. This was symbolized by the Adonis festival, on the first day of which his disappearance was lamented, while on the second joy and exultation at his return prevailed. The festival was especially celebrated with great magnificence by women. Images of Adonis and Aphrodite were exhibited or carried round ; lamentations for his death and rejoicings for his return were sung, of which beautiful specimens are preserved in the poems of Theocritus and Bion (Theocritus, xv ; Bion, 1).

In Thargelion (May—June) every nine years the Daphnephoria was celebrated. ‘The name means “ the festival of bearing the laurel ”’, and is explained by the fact that, in the solemn procession, a boy, both of whose parents were alive, a beautiful boy, the so-called daphnephorus (laurel-bearer) carried the so-called kopo (see Proclus in Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 239), a piece of olive-wood, adorned with laurel, flowers, and wound round with wool, to the temple of Apollo Ismenius. It was furnished with a bronze globe above, from which smaller globes were suspended, and below with a similar, smaller globe; these globes were supposed to represent the heavenly bodies.

At the festival of Munychia, held in memory of

IIg