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

THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

into the poems of the so-called Epic Cycle, since the erotic contained in them is for the most part based on the glorification of youthful beauty and their male and female components have been previously examined. I need not even here discuss the poems of Hesiod, since the erotic elements therein, such as the myth of Pandora, the unamiable characteristics of women, their coquetry even at that time and their constant readiness to spring upon their victim, have been mentioned before.

Further, we possess a poem by Hesiod, entitled The Shield of Heracles. It describes the struggles of Heracles with the monster Cycnus, and derives its name from the description of the shield of Heracles that fills a great part of the poem. At the beginning, the poet relates how Zeus, in order to present the world with a saviour and healer, is inflamed with love for the beautiful Alcmene, the wife of the Theban King Amphitryon. “ She far surpassed all earthly women in beauty of form and stature, and in intellect no woman born of mortals could vie with her. From her face and from her dark eyes breathed a charm like that of the gold-adorned Aphrodite. While Amphitryon, who, to atone for a deed of bloodguiltiness, did not touch his wife, is engaged in a campaign, Zeus approaches her. After he had enjoyed her love and departed, the husband returns, his heart filled with violent longing for his wife. As when a man with joy has escaped severe sickness or evil captivity, so joyfully and gladly did Amphitryon then return from the hard toil of war to his house. All the rest of the night he lay in the arms of his dear wife, rejoicing in the gifts of the gold-adorned Aphrodite.” Alcmene becomes pregnant and bears twin boys, of which Heracles is the son of Zeus and Iphitus of Amphitryon.

Hesiod’s Melampodia, 3, is interesting: “ They say that Teiresias was once looking on two snakes in Arcadia while they were copulating. He wounded

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