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

FESTIVALS

Theophrastus (Characters, 16). From this passage it is clear that one or more images of Hermaphroditos, which were set up inside the house, were crowned on the fifth and seventh days of the month, in reference to which we may notice that the fourth day was sacred to Hermes and Aphrodite and, according to Proclus (On Hesiod, 800), was considered specially favourable to sexual enjoyment. Thus we may see in Hermaphroditos a being that has its root in the dim consciousness of the androgynous idea of life, artistically perfected by sensually esthetic longings, who was worshipped as the good spirit of the house and private life, more than as a divinity who was the object of public worship. Hence we hear nothing of special sanctuaries or even of temples of Hermaphroditos ; only for the Attic deme of Alopeke is anything of the kind, perhaps only a chapel, attested (Alciphron, Epist., iii, 37). But the importance of Hermaphroditos for plastic and pictorial art is much greater. After the fourth century B.c. rooms in private houses, gymnasia, and baths were adorned with statues or pictures representing Hermaphroditos (Anth. Pal., ix, 783 ; Martial, xiv, 174), mostly as a blooming, beautiful youth with female luxuriantly developed hip-muscles and male genitals. Especially beautiful are the numerous sleeping hermaphrodites that have come down to us; resting comfortably in a graceful attitude, which brings into full relief all the charms of the male-female body, the hermaphrodite lies half on his side on a couch adorned with a magnificent covering, the arms crossed beneath the head. This type was especially popular, as the numerous replicas show: the most beautiful are to be seen in the Uffizi at Florence, and the Villa Borghese in Rome, others in the Thermz museum at Rome, the Louvre in Paris, and the Hermitage in Petrograd. For this reason already mentioned cult-images of Hermaphroditos are rare; one had been carved by the elder Polycles

126