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

Dances, Games, MEALS

such as that in Ath., xii, 576@). No doubt the merry mood of intoxication might sometimes entrust to the obliging hetairee who stimulated the drinkingbout with their nakedness the business of pouring out wine and similar duties; but according to the entirely zesthetic opinion of the Hellenes this was a privilege of their young slaves. Certainly Micali (L’ Italia avanti il dominio det Romam, plate 107) describes a relief, on which a girl is filling the cups of the guests reclining on two couches from a jug, while three other girls are playing music, but this can certainly be only an exception.

How greatly the service of cupbearer was appreciated is clear from the fact that at public festivals this office was performed by boys and young men from the best families. Thus Athenzus (x, 424e) says: “ Among the ancients one of the noblest boys poured out the wine, as in Homer the son of Menelaus ; Euripides also was a cupbearer in his youth. At any rate Theophrastus in his treatise on drunkenness says: ‘I hear that the poet Euripides at Athens also acted as cupbearer for the so-called dancers.’ These danced in the temple of the Delian Apollo, were the best-born of the Athenians, and also wore garments made at Thera. And Sappho often praises her brother Larichus, since he was cupbearer in the Prytaneum (town-hall) at Mitylene. And also among the Romans the noblest boys had to perform the office of cupbearers at the public sacrifices, imitating the 7Eolians in every respect.”

That the joys of the winecup were seasoned, according to taste and caprice, by many kinds of exhibitions of dancers, acrobats, and singers of both sexes, hardly needs special mention : we have already spoken of the female dancers, who danced at the banquets of Thessalian nobles. Song and dance in Homer (Od., i, 152) were already inseparable from the drinking bout ; and few pictorial representations are found in which flute or cithara-players

2