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

RELIGION AND EROTIC

nymphs of the mountain,” said he, “ I have nothing more to do with you, Omphale the beautiful, alone, is now my love.’’ He was never tired of looking at her, with her unbound hair smelling of costly perfume and hanging down over her bare shoulders; he admired her naked breasts, whose rosy buds were coloured with a tincture of gold1 Heracles and Omphale prepare a meal in an idyllic grotto by the side of a babbling brook which, as it rushes by invites to sweet dreams, and Omphale puts her own clothes on the hero; she hands him the purple-coloured shift and the elegant girdle, which is too small for the hero’s body; she enlarges the tunic that is too cramped for him, neither will the bangles nor the tight shoes fit. Omphale herself puts on the dress of Heracles, wraps herself in the lion’s skin, and proudly sees the conquered hero lying at her feet. After the meal they ascend their common bed.

About midnight, Pan sneaks along: already he has reached the bed, and, feeling carefully, stretches out his hand. Then he touches the lion’s skin and starts back terrified, like some wayfarer who has incautiously trodden on a snake. Groping on the other side, he feels the softness of a woman’s clothing, and so gets into bed and lies down by the supposed Omphale. With quaking hand he lifts up the light garment ; then he feels the hairs on the thighs of Heracles, who, while Pan is groping about further, wakes up and throws the impudent rascal with a mighty swing down from the bed, so that he can hardly lift himself from the ground for pain and is also heartily laughed at by Heracles and Omphale.

This brief survey of the erotic in the legends concerning the gods of Greece by no means exhausts the subject. We are unable, without extending the chapter to a disproportionate length, to treat

1 Ovid is speaking of his own time, when such refinement may not

have been unusual. In Juv., vi, 122, Messalina appears in the brothel “ naked with gilded breasts ” (i.e. “‘ tinctured with gold id) 3

226