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

RELIGION aNpD EROTIC

The so-called Nostoi, that is, the poems in which the return of the heroes from Troy is narrated, afforded many opportunities for the description of erotic adventures. Thus also the most beautiful and best known of these poems, the Odyssey, is rich in erotic situations. We need only mention the names of Calypso, Circe, Nausicaa, the Sirens, the Phzacians and others, to awaken in every reader the recollection of richly coloured and sensually painted pictures.

We have reached the end of our treatment of the religious and mythological views of the Greeks. Although this chapter has proved longer than was either expected or intended, I am fully conscious of the inadequacy of the representation, for the material is too vast and gigantic for the subject to be treated other than briefly in a single sketch. But even so the reader will have learnt, perhaps to his amazement, how the religion and mythology of the Greeks is saturated by erotic. I must point out again that what has been here discussed represents only a fragmentary selection ; anyone who desires to be fully acquainted with erotic, which is at the bottom of the mythological conceptions of the Greeks, must refer to any of the elaborate handbooks on this subject.

2317