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

INTRODUCTION

love-episode is a hymn of sensuality naked and unconcealed and an almost brutal justification of what is called “sin” after the modern triumphal march of spurious morality.

Athenzus (xii, 511c) further draws attention to the fact that according to a remark of Theophrastus, no one calls the life of the virtuous Aristeides happy, but they do those of the Sybarite Smindurides and Sardanapalus.?

Heracleides Ponticus (Ath., xii, 512@), a pupil of Plato and himself a famous philosopher, had written a book “‘ On Pleasure’’, many passages of which have been preserved. For instance, in it it is afirmed and proved that luxury in the conduct of life, and especially voluptuousness, is a right reserved for the governing classes, whereas work and toil fall to the lot of slaves and the poor; and that all who prize luxury and voluptuousness are broad-minded men of fine character, and hence more to be esteemed than others. This is also shown in the case of the Athenians, who, in spite of, or rather because of, their sensual conduct of life, developed into the heroic people of the victors of Marathon.

Such trains of thought cannot be subscribed to unconditionally; it is only important in_ this connection to register these views as very significant in the general opinion as to the right of sensuality. The great poet Simonides (PLG., frag. 71) openly asked: ‘‘ Would the life of mortals be delightful without sensual happiness? Is not even the life of the blessed gods unenviable without this?” Indeed, the historian Megacleides (Ath., xi, 512¢ ; FHG., iv, 443) blames the poets for laying too much stress upon the labours and privations of his earthly career in the life of Heracles, the Greek national hero. He rather points to the fact that Heracles, in his association with mankind, took the

_? Smindurides was famous in antiquity for his luxury. In the time of Athenzus (xii, 518c) the inhabitants of Sybaris in lower Italy were still proverbial gluttons, fond of eating and drinking. Sardanaplus, the last King of Assyria, is the typical debauchee.