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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

known myth of the beautiful Danaé, whose father, worried by an oracle, shut her away from the outer world in a double and triple brazen “ tower-like room” (and yet she was visited by Zeus), attests this and nothing else, for the rain, in the form in which he came, was of gold.

Of course the adjustment of the forbidden joys of love did not remain confined to nurses, servants, or lady’s maids; rather, a special class of “ opportunity-makers”’, procuresses? at all times ready to oblige for love or money, was gradually formed. With perfect plastic art and in a highly realistic manner Herondas (third century B.C.) has sketched such a person in the first of his mimzambz (discovered in 1891). He takes us into the room of the highly respectable madam Metriche, who is sitting alone with her maid at her needlework; her husband has gone to Egypt on business, and ten months have passed without her having heard anything of him. Then there is a knock at the door; she jumps up, full of joyful expectation, that it may be the husband whom she has missed so long; but it is not he who stands without, but Gyllis, in whom the poet introduces us to one of those dismal and cowardly, but obtrusive and extremely cunning “ opportunity-makers ”’. After a few unimportant words of greeting the two ladies carry on the following conversation :

Metriche: ‘Threissa, someone’s knocking at the door; go and see if anyone has come from our friends in the country.

Threissa: Who’s knocking ?

Gyllis: It’s I.

Thr.: Who are you? are you afraid to come nearer ?

Gy.: Look, I am nearer.

Thr.: But who are you?

Gy.: Gyllis, Philenion’s mother. Go in and tell Metriche that I am here.

1 TTIpoxukXs, mpopryictpia, mpoaywyeés and other names.