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

EROTIC IN GREEK LITERATURE

Essentially better known than the entirely mythical Pamphos is the half-fabulous Orpheus, who might be regarded as an emblem of the union of Dionysiac and Apolline religion. Although Aristotle (according to Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i, 38, 107) denied his existence, the poetical production of his time was so widely attributed to him personally that even to-day the historian of literature calls those times and that school “‘ Orphic ”. Everyone knows how Orpheus descended into the lower world to gain back from its ruler, Hades, by the power of song, his wife Eurydice who had previously died from the bite of a snake. Hades was touched by the wonderful singing of Orpheus and allowed him to lead back his wife into life, but only on condition that he should not look round at her until he reached the light of day. This condition was too hard for mortal man and, compelled by longing, Orpheus looked back and his wife disappeared as a shade into the infernal regions, never more to be seen. Thus Orpheus, standing at the beginning of Greek literary history, is a shining example of the touching love of a husband; we shall meet him again (p. 462), though in somewhat other circumstances. (For Orpheus and Eurydice see Apollodorus, i, 14, and Conon, 45; cf. also Ath., xii, 597 (Hermesianax) ; Virgil, Geor., iv, 454 ff. ; Ovid, Met., x, 1 ff.)

The fact that the two great national epics of the Greeks, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, are saturated with erotic and contain many pictures of highly sensual charm, glowing with colours and enriched by every device known to literary art, has been already frequently mentioned, so that their discussion is superfluous. The same holds good of the so-called Homeric Hymns, in the fifth of which the love of Aphrodite for Anchises is described with great charm, sensual passion, and not without a peculiar piquant flavour. I have elsewhere often had occasion to refer to the erotic contained in the Homeric Hymns. Nor need 1 go more closely

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