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

INTRODUCTION

about with a cloud, fair and golden, wherefrom fell drops of glistening dew. Thus in quiet slept the Father on topmost Gargarus, by sleep and lover overmastered, and clasped in his arms his wife.”

If this scene in the fourteenth book of the Ihad is a hymn of the omnipotent rights of sensuality, such as could never again have found its poetical expression with an equally self-evident naivete, yet even the Oydssey knows of a unique instance of the glorification of the victorious power of beauty. I mean the episode in the eighth book of the Odyssey (viii, 266, etc.) (later to be given in greater detail), in which Aphrodite makes a cuckold of her husband, the insignificant, limping Hephestus, and abandons herself together with the handsome Ares, the war-god in the vigour of youth, to the certainly illegitimate, but for that’ reason only Sweeter, joys of a forbidden love. But the deceived husband, instead of painfully concealing his disgrace, summons all the gods to witness the piquant spectacle, in which the two lovers are exposed naked and in closest embrace to lascivious eyes. Homer concludes the description of this love-scene with the words: “But to Hermes said the lord Apollo, son of Zeus: ‘ Hermes, son of Zeus, messenger, giver of good things, wouldst thou in sooth be willing, even though ensnared with strong bonds, to lie on a couch by the side of golden Aphrodite?’ Then the messenger, Argeiphontes, answered him : ‘Would that this might befall, lord Apollo, thou archer god—that thrice as many bonds _inextricable might clasp me about and ye gods, aye, and all the goddesses, too, might be looking on, but that I might sleep by the side of golden Aphrodite.’ So he spoke and laughter arose among the immortal gods.”

Thus there is not a word of blame nor even of moral indignation ; only jest and merriment prepare this mockery of marriage fidelity by the goddess of love herself for the blessed immortals. The whole

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