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

RELIGION AND EROTIC

brought into close relations with Hermaphroditos, with whom indeed he actually has many points of similarity : e.g. in plastic art, in the way he lifts up his dress (Diod. Sic., iv, 6, 5. Bekker, Anecdota Greca, |, 472, 21; FHG., III, 155, 35) in order to exhibit his erotically strongly intensified charms ; and frequently his breasts have the form of a woman’s, so that in many representations it may be doubted whether a Hermaphroditos or a Priapus is intended ; note also that Priapus is often represented by artists together with Hermaphroditos. (On Priapus and Hermaphroditos cf. W. Helbig, Wandgeméilde Campaniens, No. 1369, Gerhardt, Antike Bildwerke (plate 306, 1)).

Since it was held that the principle of generation embodied in Priapus contained the conditions and origin of the nature of all existence he was also identified with those divinities in whom the men of antiquity saw the gods of life generally. It was believed at that time that sexual impulse and the principle of life are synonymous. Thus Priapus was identified with the sun-god Helios (Eustathius on lad, 691, 45) or with the Kosmos (Cornutus, 27); on a Dacian dedicatory inscription (CIL., Iil, 1139) Priapus is indicated as the universal god, Pantheus, and a plastic representation of the male organs of generation in the highest erotic power bears the subscription S@THP KOZMOY, “the saviour of the world” (E. Fuchs, Geschichte der erotischen Kuast (1908, p. 133)). The Greeks were acquainted with yet other ithyphallic divinities; thus Phanes (with the epithet Protogonos, the first-born) was one of the numerous names of the original principle of creation in the later Orphic mysticism (on Phanes, cf. Orphica, ed. Abel, frag.62; 6,9; 56, 4; 69,1; also Stobzeus, Eclog. 1,2, 11; Nonnus, Dion., xiv, 187). ‘The story goes that Phanes came forth from the silver egg created by Chronos in the ether, double-sexed ; we are again astonished to find how the results of modern natural science

223