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

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later the roses sent to him, which he had strewn over his bed, “ since they then will have, not only the smell of roses, but also the fragrance of your body” (Hp. 18).

The inhabitants of Argyra in Achaia related that Selemnus was a beautiful youth, who was loved by the sea-nymph Argyra. It came to pass, however, that his bloom faded, whereupon the nymph deserted him and he died of love-sickness and was changed by Aphrodite into a brook with healing properties, so that any man or woman who bathed in it was for all time cured of the torments of love. Pausanias, who tells the story (vil, 23, 2, 3), adds: “Tf there is any truth in this great riches are less precious to mankind than the waters of the Selemnus.”

According to Aélian (Var. hist., xii, 63), Archedicus fell in love with an hetaira at Naucratis. “ But she was very conceited and demanded a very large sum ; when she had received the money, she only consented to his wishes for a short time and then would have nothing more to do with him. Thus the youth, who was not greatly blessed with earthly goods, could not secure the object of his wishes. But after he had dreamed one night that he held her in his arms, he was at once cured of his passion.”

This story is also told by Plutarch (Demeir., 27), who adds that the hetaira then demanded payment for the “ night of love’, although it had been only a dream. ‘The judge decided that the youth must bring the money in a vessel, but that the hetaira might only stretch out her hand for its shadow—a decision which Lamia, another member of the sisterhood, found most unjust, for while the dream had satisfied the youth, the vessel’s shadow could afford no satisfaction to the hetaira.

On the couvade Diodorus Siculus (v, 14) says: “Tf a woman has borne a child in the island of Cyrnos (Corsica), no attention is paid to the woman in childbed. But the man lies down, as if he were

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