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

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

was dragged to the market-place and exposed on a certain stone in the sight of all. Afterwards she was made to ride on an ass through the city. The ride ended with a second exposure on the stone, and the dishonouring name “ Rider on the Ass” stuck to the woman ever afterwards. At Lepreum (Heracleides Ponticus, Pol., 14) in Elis adulterers were led through the city for three days bound, and were deprived of their civil rights for the rest of their life; the woman was obliged to stand for eleven days in the market without a girdle and in transparent vest and remained disgraced. The way for adulterous intercourse was, of course, paved by willing maidservants and greedy chambermaids, a class that took a special interest in such matters. They attended to the notes and little presents, flowers and fruit, especially the favourite apples (Alciphron, Epist., i, 62; Lucian, Tov., 13, Dial. Meretr., 12, 1; Theocritus, xi, 10) even those that had been bitten—it is remarkable how here also the apple plays a similar part as in the case of Eve; in short, they performed all matters by which secret love-affairs were arranged, as is described so vividly and with great refinement by Ovid in his Art of Love (i, 351 ff.; u, 251 ff.). The nurse of Phaedra, who had fallen madly in love with her beautiful stepson, Hippolytas, attempted similar arts of the pander with infernal cunning, as Euripides describes in a masterly manner in his Hzppolytus. With the help of obliging servants ladders were procured and set up, by means of which the amorous friend could get into the women’s room through the window or a dormer-window (Xenarchus, frag. 4 (Kock) ; Ath., xiii, 569), and all the other tricks were practised by which adulterous love attained its object. That the readiness of the go-betweens to oblige was enhanced by cash presents (Dion Chrysost., vii, 144) may be conjectured, although not many passages expressly confirm it. ‘The universally-

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