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

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

enough!’ while outside, in front of the shut door, the trusty protector lifts up his gigantic body ready in position for battle, by no means disinclined for a merry struggle with the ‘ sturdy harlots ’.

“Yet the girls do not oblige him, they know his weak side and know how to work him up. Instead of forcing the entrance, which he would have been only too glad to have defended, amidst merry surprise and general laughter they make the satirical song resound, which with its prosaic expressions forms a droll contrast to the highly poetical songs previously heard: ‘Seven fathoms the feet of the door-keeper, five ox-hides used for the soles, and ten cobblers have made them !’

‘“‘ But the merry banter lasts only for a moment. Yet it still remains to offer the last demonstration of affection, the last congratulations, the last farewell, to their playmate who, on her entry into the nuptial chamber ‘ has already become a mistress of a household’. ‘The young maidens have rapidly arranged themselves anew and now sing the nuptial chamber song, the Epithalamium in the narrower sense, which forms the last act of the whole ceremony, even if this should be followed on the next day by a song of awakening as a conclusion of the entertainment.”

Several Epithalamia have been preserved, not indeed from ancient times, but certainly the most beautiful is the highly artistic imitation of Theocritus (Idylls, xviii), which is the more valuable to us, since, as is expressly attested, it has turned to account corresponding poems of Stesichorus and Sappho, and for this reason may be quoted as a specimen of this kind of wedding poetry.

After a few introductory lines, the epithalamium in the narrower sense begins, the song sung before the door of the nuptial chamber in praise of the newly wedded pair.

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