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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

THE EPITHALAMY OF HELEN

(THE EIGHTEENTH IpyLL oF THEOCRITUs) +

It seems that once upon a time at the house of flaxen-haired Menelaus in Sparta, the first twelve maidens of the town, fine pieces all of Laconian womanhood, came crowned with fresh flowering luces, and before a new-painted chamber took up the dance, when the younger child of Atreus shut the wedding door upon the girl of his wooing, upon the daughter of Tyndaretis, to wit the beloved Helen. There with their pretty feet criss-crossing all to the time of one tune they sang till the place rang again with the echoes of this wedding-song :—

What Bridegroom ! dear Bridegroom ! thus early abed and asleep ? Wast born a man of sluggardye, Or is thy pillow sweet to thee, Or ere thou cam’st to bed maybe Didst drink a little deep ? If thou wert so fain to sleep betimes, ’twere better sleep alone, And leave a maid with maids to play By a fond mother’s side till dawn of day, Sith for the morrow and its morn, For this and all the years unborn, This sweet bride is thine own.

When thou like others of high degree cam’st here thy suit a-pressing, Sure some good body, well is thee, sneezed thee a proper blessing ; For of all these lordings, there’s but one shall be son of the High Godhead,

Aye, ’neath one coverlet with thee

Great Zeus his daughter is come to be,

A lady whose like is not to see

Where Grecian women tread. And if she bring a mother’s bairn twill be of a wondrous grace ; For sure all we which her fellows be, that ran with her the race, Anointed lasses like the lads, Eurstas’ pools beside©’ the four-times threescore maidens that were Sparta’s flower and pride

There was none so fair as might compare with Menelats’ bride.

O Lady Night, ’tis passing bright the face o’ the rising day ; *Tis like the white spring 0’ the year When winter is no longer here ; But so shines golden Helen clear Among our meinie so gay. . And the crops that upstand in a fat ploughland do make it fair to see, And a cypress the garden where she grows, And a Thessaly steed the chariot he knows ; But so doth Helen red as the rose Make fair her dear countrye. And never doth women on bobbin wind such thread as her baskets teem,

1 The translation is reproduced, by kind permission of the Editors and Publishers, from Mr. J. M. Edmonds’ The Greek Bucolic Poets, in the Loeb Classical Library (Heinemann, 1912).

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