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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

no one can rouse us from the grave, dear lady. You know a violent storm can arise from a calm, and none of us knows the future. For the time of our youth is uncertain—but there’s nobody near ? [Looks at the door.]|

Met.: Not a soul.

Gy.: Listen then to what I came to tell you. Gryllos, the son of Mataline, the daughter of Pataekion, the winner of five victories—once when a boy at Pytho, twice at Corinth where he defeated youths with the first bloom upon their cheeks, and twice at Pisa where he overcame men in boxing—he is gloriously wealthy, so quiet that he doesn’t even move a straw from the ground, heartwhole, as secure as a seal for secrecy. He saw you at the feast of the descent of Mise? and his vitals swelled with passion and his heart was goaded to madness ; and he never leaves my house day and night, my dear, but bewails loudly to me and calls me “little mother”, and is dying in his desire for you. Now, my dear child Metriche, grant me this one sin; attach yourself to the goddess, lest old age steal over you before you know. You will gain two advantages; you will live in pleasure and you will also secure greater rewards than you think. Think it over, listen to me. I love you, by the Fates I do.

Met.: Gyllis, your grey hairs are dulling your wits. For, as I hope to see Mandris return safely, by our lady Demeter, I would not have listened quietly to such words as these from any other woman —I would have taught her to come here with her crooked advice and made her go limping away, hating my very doorstep. Never come again to see me with a single proposal of the kind. Tell young women words which befit wearers of the girdle, but leave Metriche the daughter of Pytheés

1 Mise’s descent: a festival of the religious sacred cult of that time. Mise is a mystical female divinity, belonging to the cult of Eleusis. A similar cult existed on the island of Cos, the home of Herondas. See Roscher, Lexikon der Mythologie, ti, 3025.

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