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

RELIGION AND EROTIC

how he tended the oxen of Laomedon in the gorges of the tree-clad mountain range of Ida and performed the same service for his friend Admetus in Thessaly (Eurip., Alcestis, 569 ff.). When he drove the herds on before him Apollo played and sang so wonderfully that the wild animals came forth from their hiding-places on the mountains and listened , but the dappled hind, Apollo’s favourite animal, danced gracefully to the music, as is said in a beautiful choral song of Euripides. But he is still ever the god of shining beauty and irresistible lovableness, now solitary, rejoicing in the shepherd’s pipe, now chasing with the Nymphs or playing tenderly with the beautiful boys. Among the maidens loved by Apollo, the beautiful but prudish Daphne is best known; she refuses to sacrifice her virginity, and, in order to escape persecution by Apollo, is changed at her wish by the gods into a laurel-tree, which henceforth is sacred to Apollo. Individual local stories enumerate an imposing number of Apollo’s darlings, which the Fathers of the Church (Clem. Alex., Protrept., p.27 (ed. Potter) ; Arnobius, iv, 26; Julius Firmicus, De Erroribus, 16) in their lack of understanding enter in their lists with moral indignation, which almost amounts to falsification, even though they gather together local traditions throughout Greece into a single uniform story and thereby make it appear as though large numbers of love-affairs could be correctly attributed to the god. This point, which holds good for other amours of the gods still to be mentioned ought to be settled once for all.

Less known, but illuminated by Pindar (Olympia, vi, 36) with the gold of genuine poetry, is the love of Apollo for Evadne, the foster-daughter of the Arcadian king /Epytus. When she can no longer avoid her pregnancy her foster-father repairs to Delphi to question the oracle. Meantime, the pains of labour come upon the king’s daughter, as she is going to draw water, after the simple custom of

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