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

RELIGION AND EROTIC

spring, as “the sacred wedding”, the wedding, rich in blessing, of two heavenly powers, whom earth has to thank for all its fertility. A reminiscence of the first consummation of the marriage in the blessed countries of the Ocean, where according to Euripides (Hippolytus, 743 ff.) ambrosia flows and where the earth had made the tree of life grow with the golden apples of the Hesperides, is the wonderful narrative in the [lad (xiv, 152 ff.), in which Hera, after she had adorned her immortal body with all the charms of youth and beauty, draws near to her husband. Aphrodite had given her the wonderfully precious girdle, “ the charm of love and longing, which subdues all the hearts of the immortal gods and mortal men.’ Thus the goddess of the lily-white arms appears before her husband, who is looking at the battle between the Greeks and Trojans on the high mountain, but, infatuated by her bodily charm, forgets everything around him and, full of ardour, embraces his wife.

In memory of the sacred marriage, besides, in many places in Greece spring-time festivals were celebrated with flowers and garlands; the image of Hera was carried round, dressed in bridal attire, a bridal bed woven with flowers was prepared for her, in short, everything was arranged as for a human marriage, since, indeed, that heavenly marriage was usually regarded as the model and origin of marriage generally.

But even this divine marriage did not pass off without storm and tempest, which cosmologically is only the logical consequence of the significance of the two divinities as powers of nature. As it is just in Greece that atmospheric phenomena, such as rain, storm, and tempest, develop with special violence and suddenness, so the idea of wedded strife between the two heavenly powers lay tolerably close at hand. With the naivety and vividness peculiar to them, the Greek poets have also humanized this. Thus, as early as Homer, in the

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