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

RETROSPECT

unconcern as it was brought into the sphere of their philosophical conversations by great intellects such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Because the fascinations of the sexual were not made still more alluring by being shrouded in a veil of mystery or branded as sinful and forbidden, and—turtherbecause the almost unchecked sensuality of the Greeks was always dignified by the desire for beauty, their sexual life developed in overflowing force, but also in enviable healthiness. That this is so may be certainly adduced from the fact that sexual perversions, which play so lamentable a part in modern life, seldom occurred in ancient Greece, and that it is difficult to find even occasional traces of them in the classical writings.

We felt, while undertaking and discharging our task, that Greek morality must be known and understood by any who wished to form a right judgment upon the life and culture of the Hellenes ; and that there must be added to this wish a serious will to transplant oneself into the spirit of the times of ancient Greece, rather than to make of the totally different views of modern men a standard by which to criticize the ethics of the Greeks. But anyone who is able to set himself free in the spirit from modern views, and to penetrate with unprejudiced mind into the thoughts of these ancient people, will comprehend the lofty ethics of the Hellenes, whose highest ideal expressed itself in «ados Kdyabes, “the beautiful both in body and in soul.”