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

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

a long-drawn moan was heard, the door was then opened, but the girl had disappeared.t

We cannot any longer verify how far the story told by Plutarch (Lycurg., 15) in which the purity of Spartan marriages is praised, is based upon truth, but it may be given here as very characteristic : ‘“ Geradas, one of the old Spartans, being asked by a guest, how the Spartans punished adulterers, replied: ‘There are no adulterers amongst us.’ ‘ But if there should be?’ insisted the guest. ‘ Then, as a punishment, he will have to give a bull large enough to stretch out his head over mount Taygetus and to drink from the river Eurotas.. When the

guest in amazement asked: ‘Wherever in the world could so big a bull be found?’ Geradas laughed and said: ‘How could there be an

adulterer in Sparta?’”

Although Plutarch expressly puts forward the statement that in this case it was a question of old times, yet the same writer informs us, concerning the same Spartans, that a man unhesitatingly allowed another man to fill his nuptial bed, if he thought him better fitted for begetting descendants.

At least in Athens, as it appears, there was nothing extraordinary in the insulted husband killing the adulterer. This, for instance, was done by Euphiletus, who had surprised Eratosthenes in bed with his wife. We quote the following passage from Lysias: ‘“‘ When I had thrust open the door of the bedroom those who entered first saw a man still lying beside my wife, those who came afterwards saw him standing naked on the bed. I, gentlemen, knocked him down, bound both his arms behind him and asked him why he had insulted the honour of my house. He admitted that he had done wrong, but begged and prayed me not to kill him, but to take from him a sum of money. To this I answered, ‘I will not kill you, but the

* Aelian in his Var. Hist. (xi, 6) tells a similar story of the

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dragon’s cave near Lanuvium.