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

RELIGION AND EROTIC

expression ‘“‘naked as the Graces” became proverbial.

With the Graces the Muses, the goddesses of the arts in the widest sense of the word, are often coupled ; they are generally regarded as nine in number, and among them Erato, the Muse of erotic poetry, should especially be mentioned.

Among the poets and plastic artists Hebe appears as the personification of youthful bloom, who with the Hours, Charities, and nymphs belongs to the retinue of Aphrodite. It is known from Homer (I1., v, 905; Hymn. Apol., 17; Il., iv, 2. Hebe in the train of Venus: Horace, Odes, i, 30, 7; Hymn. Apol., 195) how she assists Ares in the bath, how while Apollo is playing she dances with the Muses for the gods and presents the winecups at their banquets. When Heracles, after a life full of never-ending troubles, was received amongst the gods he obtained Hebe as his wife. Her duty as cupbearer had in the meantime become superfluous, since Eros had stirred the heart of Zeus so that he carried away the beautiful Trojan royal boy, Ganymede, to his heaven, so that he might, as his page, offer him the cup filled with wine and, as his favourite, share his bed with him. We shall have occasion to speak more in detail of Eros and Ganymede when we come to discuss the love of boys.

Lastly, Hermaphroditos, of whom we have already spoken, is to be mentioned as one of the following of Aphrodite. It may be added that according to Pliny (Hist. Nat., xxxvi, 33), plastic art also knew of Hermerotes.

Female sexual life, and especially confinement, according to the ideas of the ancients, stands in intimate relation to the moon; so that all the goddesses who are in any way connected with the moon, such as Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Athene, are at the same time protectresses of women throughout their sexual life, but chiefly during childbirth. Yet a special goddess of childbirth was also known, Ilithyia, supposed to be the daughter

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