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

EROTIC IN GREEK LITERATURE

who wrote lyrical satirical poems called Melambh1, in the time of king Philip, only the following verse interests us: ‘‘ There once lived in Syracuse a pair of girls with fat buttocks ”—a convincing proof of what the Greeks first and foremost thought of in their love for the female sex.

Alczeus of Mitylene, one of the greatest and most versatile of the Greek lyric poets, wrote a large number of love-songs, of which, however, only miserable fragments are preserved, like most of Greek lyric poetry. Sappho, “ the sweetly smiling, with violet curly locks’ was glorified by him in his poems, but he found no hearing from the beautiful poetess, whose heart would have nothing to do with a man’s love.

Anacreon of Teos, who even in ripe old age would not give up wine or women, was a perfect harbinger of love and the more cheerful enjoyment of life. The remains of his poetry that have come down to us are quite scanty, for what was formerly admired as the poetry of Anacreon (the so-called Anacreontea) has proved to be a trifling imitation belonging to very different periods. What here meets us as love is certainly pretty, delicate, and agreeable to read, but it can make no claim to be considered genuine poetry.

But the purest gold of poetry meets us in the poems of Sappho, who undoubtedly must be reckoned among the greatest poetical geniuses of alltime. In her verses speaks only the heart, loving and eager for love, and the figures and ideas which she evoked with the refined and never-failing feeling of genuine emotion remained for centuries the model, often imitated but rarely again attained, of the erotic poets. However, Sappho cannot here be discussed in detail, since it is homosexuality which fills up the life and poetry of the Lesbian prodigy ; hence we return to her later, and content here ourselves with pointing out that again the homosexual love of the Greeks does not indicate

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