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

RELIGION AND EROTIC

gods—girlish caress and smile and roguery, sweet pleasure and love and gentle grace.”

Greek poetry and plastic art never tired of representing the myth of the birth of Aphrodite and her reception amongst the gods in ever new variety and embellishing it with all the colours of sensual enjoyment. Indeed, the whole of ancient poetry and plastic art is really a single hymn on the almighty power of Aphrodite and Eros, and it would fill an imposing volume if one were to attempt to collect the relevant passages with only approximate completeness.

From Plato (Sympos., 180d) onwards philosophical speculation distinguished an Aphrodite Urania, the goddess of pure and wedded love, from Aphrodite Pandemos, the goddess of free love and_ its purchasable joys. ‘The subtlety can hardly have made its way into the popular consciousness ; at least, it is clear from Lucian (Dialogi meretr., 7, 1 5 cf. Ath., xiii, 572d ff.) that the hetere made offerings to both Urania and Pandemos.

The power of Aphrodite extends over the whole world. She is the heavenly Aphrodite in the narrower sense of the word, that is, she is the goddess of the atmosphere and of all the heavenly phenomena. But she also rules on the sea, whose waves she stills when excited by storms, and she bestows lucky voyages and joyful homecoming.

With these two sides in the nature of the goddess we have no need to deal more closely here, but may refer the reader to the mythological handbooks. But it is certainly our duty to speak of that Aphrodite who bestows upon gods and men the joys of love. Love and beauty are for the Greeks inseparable : therefore Aphrodite is the goddess of spring, of flowers and blossoms, especially of myrtles and roses, which thrive through her and with which she crowns and adorns herself. In and through her in early springtime love awakens , adorned with flowers she walks through the woods to the loved

198