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

RELIGION AND EROTIC

But those groups are especially popular which represent Ares with Aphrodite and of which many have come down to us, in marble, on gems, and in pictures from Pompeii. ‘The latter in particular strike a strongly sensual note; as a rule Ares voluptuously grasps the loved one’s breast and draws aside the garment that conceals her charms.

If in these pictures Aphrodite is merely the woman that grants and asks for love, this is only the final gradation of her originally far more comprehensive functions. Aphrodite denotes at first the love of the sky for mother earth and the joy of seeing the growth of the Cosmos; then the creative instinct of life generally, especially in sexual generation, which the religion of nature carries over from men—and animals also—to the gods. The cult of Aphrodite, originally of an Oriental character, unites the Beautiful and the Ugly, the Lofty and the Low, the Moral and (according to our view) the Immoral in a singular mixture.

The worship of Aphrodite conjecturally reached Greece through the Pheenicians, from that great Semitic family of peoples which spread from Asia Minor to Babylon and Arabia; hence the two chief emporiums of Phenician commerce, the islands of Cythera and Cyprus, were regarded as the oldest seats of her cult, indeed as her birthplace.

We have already spoken of the birth of the goddess from the generative member of Uranus that was hurled into the sea (p. 182). In the words of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Homeric Hymns, 6 ; Hesiod, Theogony, 194 ff.) we read: “ Gentle west winds bore her in the soft foam of the waves in motion to the coast of Cyprus, where the Hours received her, clothed her in sumptuous garments and adorned her, and led her into the circle of the immortal gods. Eros also and beautiful Himeros (Desire) accompanied her; and this honour is the portion allotted to her among men and the immortal

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