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

FURTHER REMARKS ON FESTIVALS

Tanagra, the most exquisitely beautiful and brightest of the ephebi was obliged to carry a ram on his shoulders round the city wall. So Pausanias tells us (1x, 22, 1), who adds that this custom was intended to preserve the memory of Hermes himself having once averted a plague from the city in this manner. The ram carried round, which was then presumably sacrificed or chased beyond the city boundaries, was supposed to take the sins of the whole city upon itself and thereby to expiate them. This is a custom known to us elsewhere, the characteristic point being that the most beautiful boy in the city was chosen to perform this service.

On the island of Crete (Ath., xiv, 639 ; vi, 263.) a Hermes festival was held, which reminds us of the Roman Saturnalia. The relation between master and servant was reversed; the master waited on the slave who even was allowed the right to beat him, and on this day every sexual licence was permitted.

We further hear of Hermes festivals with which were combined gymnic contests of boys and young men; no more exact details have been handed down, yet they can hardly have been different from other usual gymnic games. That Hermes, together with Heracles, Apollo, and the Muses was the patron god of the gymnasia, hardly needs mention, any more than that images of Eros were to be seen in all the gymnasia, where special reverence was paid him. On the island of Samos the Eleutheria were held in his honour, in memory of a political act of liberation, which originated in a bond of love between man and man, and often led to heroism and genuine patriotism in Greece (Eleutheria, Ath., xili, 561). Nothing further is known of the festival in honour of Hylas, held by the inhabitants of KiosPrusias on the Black Sea (Antoninus Liberalis, 26 ;

_ * On gyrmmnic Hermes festivals in Pheneus, cf. Pausanias, viii, 14, 10; in Arcadia, Pindar, Olympia, vi, 77, and Scholiast on vii, 153 ; in Pellene, Schol. on Pindar, Olympia, vii, 156; ix, 146; Aristoph., Birds, 1421 ; in Sparta, Pindar, Nemea, x, 52.

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