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

DANCE AND BaLu-Games

and a lame man to dance. The philosopher Agapestor, who was very weak on his legs, was ordered to stand on his right leg and to empty his glass or to pay a forfeit. But when it came to his turn to settle the conditions, he demanded that they should all drink in such a manner that they saw his foot. Then he sent for an empty vessel, got into it with his lame foot and drank up his glass; but the guests, since they could not see his foot, paid the penalty agreed upon.”

According to Lucian (Saturnalia, 4), it was a favourite “punishment” to be made to dance round naked or to carry the flute-player three times round the room.

The guests were served at the Symposion chiefly by young slaves, whose special dexterity was shown in the graceful presentation of the full drinking goblets. In the enchanting fourth Dialogue of the Gods by Lucian, in which is described the abduction of the Trojan royal child Ganymede and his installation in office as cupbearer and favourite of Zeus, prominence is given to the manner in which the boy must first learn to hand the goblet. If we may believe Xenophon (Cyrop., i, 3, 8), Persian cupbearers, who offered the goblets very charmingly with three fingers, best understood this graceful attitude. In any case, as Pollux (vi, 95; ct. Heliodorus, Athiopica, vii, 27) expressly observes, etiquette demanded that boys who served should balance the drinking-cups on the tips of their fingers. The boy in waiting went from guest to guest, filling their drinking-cups or offering them jugs of wine and water freshly filled. Anyone who knows the Greek spirit would conjecture that, while he went round, the guests touched the cupbearer tenderly and gently, even if this is not expressly confirmed by different literary authorities and plastic and pictorial representations. Thus Lucian (Symposium Lapith., 1 5, 26, 29, 39) tells us: “ Here I must in passing mention a trifling incident,

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