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

FURTHER REMARKS ON FESTIVALS

in the subconsciousness of the Greek people (Plutarch, An seni, 875e; Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, 1097€).

4. FURTHER REMARKS ON THE PopuLaR FESTIVALS

The Aphrodisia, celebrated everywhere on Greek soil, certainly did not enjoy recognition by the State, but so much greater was its popularity. As the name shows, they were originally festivals held in honour of Aphrodite, from which obliging servants of Aphrodite, prostitutes and hetaire, might not be absent. Indeed, it is clear from Plutarch that at least in later times the name Aphrodisia denoted the excesses in which sailors indulged after the long privations of a journey by sea without women’s society.

A genuine festival of the hetairze was the Aphrodisia on the island of gina, which formed the conclusion of the festival of Poseidon. There Phryne played the famous scene described by Athenzus (xiii, 59of): “ But it was really Phryne who was more beautiful in her private parts. Wherefore it was not easy to get sight of her naked; for she wore round her body a tight-fitting small chiton and did not make use of the public baths. But at the festival of the Eleusinia and the Poseidonia, in the sight of all the Hellenes, she used to put off her /imation, \et down her hair, and go into the sea; and Apelles made her the model of his Aphrodite Anadyomene.”

The Aphrodisia, as can be understood, were celebrated in a most sensual and lascivious manner at the noisy harbour of Corinth, with its babel of tongues, where according to Alexis (Ath., xiii, 574, (Kock, ii, 389, frag. 253)), the numerous prostitutes even had their own festivals of Aphrodite. Of course, such festivals lasted into the night, even until morning, during which the hetaire, “ the foals of Aphrodite,” poured through the streets in

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