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

THE THEATRE

than his contemporaries. We have already spoken of his Androgynos or the Cretans.

In frag. 363 the behaviour of a cinedus (lewd fellow) is described, with a sly hit at Ctesippus,* son of Chabrias, of whom it is said that he even sold the stones from his father’s grave, to be able to indulge his life of pleasure: ““ And yet, wife, I too was once a young man, but then I did not bathe five times a day. But now I do. Nor did I even have a fine over-cloak. But now I have. Nor even scented oil. But now I have. And I will dye my hair, and I will pluck me smooth, and in short shrift will turn into a Ctesippus.”’

Retrospect and Supplementary Remarks on Tragic and Conuc Poetry

The tragedy of the older period rarely employs erotic motives; and with the exception of the Agamemnon of Aéschylus, the subject of which is the murder of Agamemnon by an adulterous wite seized with raging jealousy, we can hardly quote any tragedy the nucleus of which is love, apart from homosexual motives, of which we have already spoken. At first, love stories with a tragic ending were not regarded as adapted to allow men to Teel the sublime in tragic destiny at the feast of the god of the highest enthusiasm.

Sophocles employed the passion of love much more frequently, but only as a subsidiary motive, e.g. the love of Medea for Jason in the Women of Colchis, of Hippodameia for Pelops in the Enomaus. As the essential and only subject the passion of love appears in only one of his dramas, the Phedra, in which the irresistible love of Phaedra for her

1 On Ctesippus, see Diphilus, frag. 38 (ii, 552, Kock), and Timocles, frag. 5 (ii, 452, Kock); frag. 480: 7dc8wy, penis, and a caressing word for a little boy. Cf. Hesychius, s.v. cpdpdwves: UmOKOpPLaTLKAs amo tav popiav, as Toabwves ; Apollodorus, frag. 13, 8; riv yap ataxvvny mdNat naoav amoAwAékact Kab’ érépas Gupas. Further sexual allusions, witticisms, and obscenities from Attic comedy have been collected by myself in Anthropophyteia, vol. vii, 1910, pp. 173, 495-

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