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

Dances, GAMES, MEALS

At the extravagantly luxurious wedding-feast of the Macedonian Caranus, described in detail by Athenzus (iv, 128¢ ff.), among its delights by the side of the flute-players sambykistrie are named, that is, girls who played the sambyke (on the sambyke, see Ath., xiv, 633 ff., Aristot., Pol., viii, 6, 11), a three-cornered stringed instrument. In this case they came from the island of Rhodes, and appeared in clothes as light as air, so that many of the guests thought them naked. Later in the feast ithyphalli appeared as dancers, who also sang phallic songs ; in addition, jugglers, male and female, danced naked over swords fixed in the ground and spat fire. Later, a chorus of 100 singers came on, which recited the nuptial song, afterwards again female dancers, dressed as nereids and nymphs. While the bottle went the rounds of the guests, and twilight came on, a room was opened, lined with white cloths. In it youthful forms presented themselves in the costume of naiads, Eros, Artemis, Pan, Hermes, and other mythological forms, distributing light with silver candlesticks, in the most graceful attitudes of their more or less bare bodies (BeckerGoll, Charicles, i, p. 152, chiefly after Xenophon, Sympos., 2, 1 ff.). The sambyke-players, owing to their ever ready willingness to oblige, enjoyed great popularity. In Plutarch they are once mentioned in the same breath with the cinedi.

From other passages of Greek authors it is clear that at drinking-bouts acrobatic tricks were greatly enjoyed, thus described by Becker : “ A professional dancer, who exhibited his accomplishments for money brought in a charming girl and a beautiful boy, grown to a young man’s size, and a female flute-player followed. ‘The boy seized the cithara and beat the strings to the accompaniment of the flute. Then the sound of the cithara ceased; the girl had some hoops given her, which, while dancing to the tones of the flute, she skilfully whirled in the air and caught, one after the other, as they fell.

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