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

RELIGION AND ERoTIC

with the nymphs of the forests and mountains. Already, when a little child in the cradle, he had behaved in an unmannerly fashion in the wellknown quarrel with his brother Apollo, so wonderfully described in the Homeric hymn (tv, 295 ff.; cf. Dion Chrysostom, vi, 104) to Hermes, “ while then, conceiving a plan, the mighty slayer of Argos, raising himself on his hands, broke wind against Apollo, sending forth an omen, a miserable servant of his belly, a presumptuous messenger.”

We have already spoken of the meaning of the Hermes-pillars, as also of Hermes as manager and protector of the gymnasia and palestre and of the manly youth who met there. As such he has also inspired artists to continually new representations ; they make him a mature, vigorous youth, his chlamys generally thrown open, so that the grace of the youthful form is most beautifully asserted. But also in amorous sport with the nymphs Hermes is a favourite subject of plastic art; perhaps most beautiful and characteristic is the famous group in the Villa Farnesina at Rome, which shows Hermes with tender looks inclining towards an almost naked nymph, while with one hand he caresses her bosom and with the other withdraws the scanty garment from it.

An ever amorous goddess is Eos (Aurora), the goddess of dawn, whom Homer calls rosy-fingered trom the phenomenon often observed in the south, that the sun, before it rises, sends over the sky a tosy-coloured image of its beams like a fan, as an outspread hand.

According to Apollodorus (i, 27), this ever amorous nature in Eos was due to Aphrodite having had intercourse with Ares. She loves everything that is beautiful, especially young men, and she seizes forcibly anyone who inspires her heart with passion, thereby symbolizing the necessity of grasping without delay the delights of the short-lived mornings, fresh with dew. Thus she carries off Cleitus,

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