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

THE ‘THEATRE

invited me to supper, and to spend the night with her. I accepted her invitation, thinking that 1t would be unworthy of me, if, now that I was a man, I were to despise one who had loved me so much when I bore the form of an animal. I supped with her, rubbed myself with perfumes and put on a crown of that dear flower which had made me a man again. When the night was far advanced and it was time to retire, I got up from the table, and, thinking that I was doing something grand, I stripped and stood quite naked, thinking that I should please her more, in comparison with what she had done with the ass. But when she saw that I was a man from head to foot, she spat at me and said: ‘ Away with you! get out of my house, go and sleep somewhere else.’ When I asked what enormous crime I had committed, she replied : ‘Really, I was not in love with you, but with the ass; it was not with you, but with the ass that I spent such pleasant nights; I thought that you now also would certainly preserve the great sign of the ass and drag it along, but you have come to me changed from that beautiful and useful animal into a ridiculous little ape.’ Then she called her servants, and ordered them to take me by the shoulders and put me outside. Thus thrust out of the house, there I was in the street, in the open air, naked, beautifully crowned and perfumed, forced to embrace the bare earth and to sleep on its bosom. At daybreak, I ran naked to the vessel, where, laughing heartily, I told my brother what had happened to me. Then, as a favourable wind sprang up, we set sail, and in a few days reached my country. There I offered sacrifice to the protecting gods and consecrated votive gifts to them for having brought me home safe and sound, and for having saved me, after a long time and with difficulty, not from the dog’s mouth, as the proverb says, but from the curiosity which had made me take the shape of an ass.”

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