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

INTRODUCTION

Full well we know that mortals may not fare In all things well: albeit to crave a share In what is well is not denied, if Heaven be on our side.

Anactoria was apparently in Lydia.

It is to be observed that here also (in the fourth verse of the original) the expression is purposely vague and the words chosen are intentionally ambiguous, but the meaning is: whether you now as a. woman crave for a woman, as a man for a woman, or as a man for a boy.

However this may be, this much is beyond doubt, that beauty and love especially belong to the joys of life desired by the Greeks and proclaimed by their poets as ideal. This is clear from every page of a Greek author, but it may be enough to quote the charming little song (PLG., iii, Scholion 8), which the Greeks certainly may have sung often enough under the influence of wine when the joy of living is intensified :—

“ Best for mortal man is health; second best, charming personal beauty ; third, wealth obtained without fraud ; fourth, to be young amongst one’s friends.”

Cheerful enjoyment of life generally is already reckoned by Solon, the famous wise man, statesman, and poet, as one of the possessions worth striving for, and other great intellects (such as Pindar, Bacchylides, and Simonides) entirely agree with him. Indeed, the culture of the Greeks is entirely and solely a song of praise on Hedone (7807), that is, the cheerful enjoyment of life, especially of the joys of love. The inmost nature of the Greeks is naked sensuality, which, indeed, rarely becomes brutality—as in the case of the Romans—but yet impresses its stamp upon their collective life, while the confession of sensuality or its manifestations in life is unchecked by rigorous state laws or the hypocritical condemnation of public opinion. ‘That this statement is not exaggerated will be clear from this book, which shows that the whole life of the Greeks (not only their private life) represents solely

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