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

Epic POETRY

the man only loved a boy as a beautiful statue, many men one boy and one boy many men.

This is not only improbable according to the Greek idea of the nature of the love of boys that has been sufficiently described, and above all from physiological reasons, but has also been abundantly proved incredible by the following considerations. Xenophon (Rep. Lac., 2, 14) himself is obliged to admit that it never occurred to any Greek to believe in this ideal side of the Spartan love of boys and no more ; the Attic comic poets also have in constant outbursts thrown light upon just that sensual character of the Spartan love of boys, which is still further strengthened by the terms collected by Hesychius and Suidas (s.v. xvoodAdcwv, Aakaviley, Aaxéyikov tpd7ov), with which the language of daily life indicated the Spartan peculiarity. But that which turns the scale is that the man who was best acquainted with such matters, namely Plato (Laws, i, 636; viii, 836; cf. also Cicero, Rep., iv, 4), decidedly rejects the idea that the Dorian love of boys dispensed with sensuality.

I. Epic Poetry 1. THE MyruicaL Pre-Hisroric PERIOD

Pamphos (Pausan., 1x, 27, 2) had already written hymns to Eros, so that it may be justly affirmed that Eros stands at the beginning of Hellenic culture.

Part of the story of Orpheus, whose existence is denied by Aristotle (Cic., De nat. deor., i, 38, 107), and who is taken by Erwin Rohde! to be a symbol of the union of the religions of Apollo and Dionysus,

* Psyche (3rd edn.), ii, 52. On Orpheus see Apollod., i, 14; Conon, 45; Hermesianax in Book III of the Aedvriov (Ath., xiii, 597) ; Virgil, Georg.iv, 454; and Ovid, Metam., i, 10; for the head of Orpheus see Phanocles (acc. to Stobzeus, Flor., 64, 14); similarly Lucian, Adv.indoct, 11; Ovid, Metam., xi, 50 ff.

461