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

THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

victor’s native town. ‘The main substance of the song of victory is nearly always a myth told, by Pindar with masterly art, which has some special relation to the victor or his family. An imposing number of erotic motives could be elicited from these myths, if there were room in this book for a detailed analysis of them.

3. PROSE

Prose works of the classical period of literature also offer erotic rewards of various kinds to those who seek for them.

Pherecydes of Syros, whom the Greeks regarded as their oldest prose writer, had already written erotic stories, as is proved by the fragment only found a quarter of a century ago on an Egyptian papyrus, in which the “ sacred wedding ” of Zeus is pleasantly described (first ed. Grenfell-Hunt, Greek Papyri, series II, 1897 (No. 11)). In the historical work of Herodotus are also to be found some erotic tales, as that of the incest of Mycerinus and his daughter or the story of the wite of Intaphernes or the beautiful story of Hippocleides (already told by us, p. 164), who had ~ danced away his bride”, and several others of which I have treated in a special essay The oldest example of a love-story in Greek, related in detail and with self-conscious art, is the touching history of Stryangeus, king of the Medes, and Zarineza, queen of the Sace, written by the physician and historian Ctesias (Ctesias, 25-28 ; cf. Nic. Damasc. in FHG., III, 364), who had lived seventeen years in Persia. Timzeus (in Parthenius, 29, and frag. 23) told of the love-adventures of the beautiful Daphnis. He was also the first who mentioned the unhappy love of Dido for A®neas.

_* “Sexuelles aus dem Geschichtswerke des Herodot.” in Yahrbuch fity sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Jahrgang, xxii (Leipzig, 1922), p. 65 ff. For Mycerinus see Herodot., ii, 131 ; for Intaphernes, iii, 118.

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