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

ATTIC COMEDY

the wearing of the phallus, mostly made of leather, by the actors as servants of the fertilizing god. Atter what we have already said about the phallus cult, this custom will at least no longer appear unintelligible ; comedy had grown up from the songs of the phallus-processions.

If a part were to be played naked the actor wore a close-fitting bodice with, usually, a false breast and false belly on which the nipples and navel were clearly marked. The phallus appears to have fallen more and more into disuse in the course of time ; at least, not a few vase-pictures with scenic representations in which it is missing are known to us. It clearly belonged to the Old Comedy, in which, in scenes where mythological motives were comically made use of, it emphasized the grotesqueness and strengthened the comedy of the situation. The chorus of the satyric drama wore an apron of goat’s skin in front of the phallus, behind which the little tail of the satyr appeared.

The modern man will perhaps ask whether comedy, with its strongly erotic, often highly obscene performance, was also visited by women and children. Certainly it was not forbidden ; It is possible that comedy was frequented more by hetaire than by respectable wives of citizens, but the presence of boys is sufficiently attested. Anyone who finds this singular or even offensive, must again be reminded that the ancients faced the sexual quite naively; that, as being a matter of course, they did not surround it with a veil of mystery, but paid it religious homage as the preliminary condition of all existence, whose last offshoots in comedy, although distorted into the grotesque, are yet not difficult to recognize.

Ill. Satyric Drama. Pantomime. Ballet

As may be generally known, the performance of serious tragedies was followed by the so-called Satyric drama, which, recalling the cheerfulness of

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