Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates
RELIGION AND EROTIC
the first priest of Aphrodite in Cyprus, and had introduced civilization into the island by teaching men to shear sheep and prepare wool, to dig the metal from the bowels of the earth, and work it up into artistic productions. Of an intoxicating beauty he combines with the manliness of the strong ruler and bringer of civilization the luxurious effeminacy of the Oriental prince of lovers.
Oriental influence also shows itself in the appearance of another favourite of AphroditeParis, sufficiently well known from the story of the Trojan war. He also is a dazzingly beautiful youth, adorned with every charm, brilliant in the exercise of music and elegant in the dance. But he is unwarlike and effeminate, quite an Oriental type, so that, to use Virgil’s expression (A‘merd, iv, 215), ‘“‘half-men,” that is, castrated associates, are given him as his retinue.
Aphrodite has given him an almost uncanny power over women, so that it is easy for him, when the guest-friend of King Menelaus in Sparta, to infatuate his wife Helen, who follows the beautiful stranger to Troy and thereby invokes the misery of the deplorable Trojan war. Aphrodite indeed, by promising him the most beautiful wife in the world, had known how to secure the victory in the judgment of Paris (p. 155.) ; at the same time a symbol worth observing for the painful fact that it matters nothing to the woman, if she causes misery and sorrow, provided only that she can attain the object of her paltry vanity. How under the influence of Aphrodite and with her aid Paris captivates the heart of Helen, has been constantly represented by the poets and artists of antiquity. Of the old poets, perhaps none has painted the devilishly infatuating side of the character of Paris in more glowing colours than the great teacher of love, Ovid (Heroides, 15 and 16), the most elegant of all Roman poets.
The love of Aphrodite for Anchises, which is
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