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

ATTIC COMEDY

(the name of a hetaira). The scanty fragments give us no information as to the subject-matter, but it is certain that Misgolas of the Attic deme Collytus played some part in it. His passion for beautiful boys, especially those who could play the lute, is confirmed by several passages: e.g. in Alschines (Tim., i, 41) : “ It is this Misgolas, son of Naucrates, of Collytus, in other respects a man of beautiful body and soul; but he has always been fond of boys and is constantly in the habit of having about him players on the lute, both male and female.” Antiphanes (frag. 26, 14-18) had already alluded to him in the Fishermen and Timocles (frag. 30) in Sappho. In the Agonis of Alexis (frag. 3) a girl said to her mother: “‘O mother dear, do not give me, I beg, to Misgolas, for I do not play the lute.”

Frag. 242 (from Hypnos, Sleep): “The young man does not eat chives, to avoid disgusting his lover when

he kisses him.” 5. TIMocLes

In his comedy Orestautocleides the amours of Autocleides played a certain part. Autocleides of Hagnus is meant, to whom the orator /Eschines refers in his well-known speech against ‘Timarchus (1, 52). The situation was perhaps thought of as one in which, as Orestes was once pursued by the Furies, so the pzderast Autocleides is pursued by a host of hetaire ; at least, frag. 25 seems to point to this, in which it is described how a number of hetairee, no fewer than eleven, keep watch over the unhappy man even when he is asleep.

6. MENANDER

Menander of Athens, the son of Diopeithes and Hegesistrate, who lived from 342 to 291, was a nephew of Alexis already spoken of, a poet of the Middle Comedy who introduced Menander into the technique of comedy. As early as the age of 21 he won a victory, yet if this success became his seven times more, he belongs to those poets on whom posterity bestowed greater admiration and affection

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