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

TRIVIALITIES

together of clouds and endeavours to make it clear to him by the example of his body: “ Were you ever, after being stuffed with broth at the Panathenza, disturbed in your belly so that a tumult rumbled through it?” to which Strepsiades answers: “ Yes, by Apollo! a little broth immediately plays the devil, and causes a grumbling and rumbling like thunder ; at first gently —pappax, then—papapappax and when I relieve myself it thunders aloudpapapappax, just as the clouds do!”

The servant in the Plutus who has become well-to-do takes fresh garlic to clean himself every time after defecation (817).

The most grotesque scatological scene on the stage is perhaps that in the Frogs (479) in which the god Dionysus in his fear evacuates, and is wiped by Xanthias with a sponge.

Of pictorial representations I mention a Pompeian picture, thus described by Hellig : “ In some rushes stands a hippopotamus staring up with wide-opened mouth at a naked dwarf who, standing on the edge of a boat and stretching forward his posteriors, evacuates down the animal’s throat. At the same time he holds out his hands with satisfaction and looks round at the beast as if asking a question.”

Almost more frequent than the secretion of the excrements, breaking wind, whether voluntary or accidental, becomes matter for jest and ridicule in grotesque poetry. The terms are 7 70pd7 for the noun, 7épSoua: for the verb, as well as fdoAos and fdéw,

There is a very amusing conversation, hardly translatable owing to the play on words, in the Knights of Aristophanes (639 ff.).

7. TRIVIALITIES AND SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

In Greek literature we often meet with osphresiological passages, that is, passages in which sexual smells are spoken of (see Lysistrata, 686).

Philostratus writes to a boy, asking him to return

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