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

MaLe HOMOSEXUALITY

has been already told (see p. 240), but after the final disappearance of Eurydice, his wife, into Hades, there comes a singular sequel. Orpheus, in his loneliness, returns to his Thracian mountain home, where the famous singer is surrounded by enthusiastic crowds of women and girls because of his touching love for his wife. But he “ rejects all female love”’, whether it be that he has had unfortunate experience of it before, or whether he was unwilling to be unfaithful to his wife. But he certainly taught the Thracians to turn their affection to the love of tender boys, and, “so long as youth laughs, to enjoy the brief spring of life and its flowers.” So says Ovid. An extremely important passage, since it shows that the solitary husband compensates himself with the love of boys, and, what is even more important, that according to the ancient idea of homosexual intercourse this was not regarded as an offence against wedded faithfulness, ‘‘ since he was unwilling to be unfaithful to his wife.” And henceforth he is so devoted to this Greek form of love, that not only does marriage become for him merely an episode but the songs now sung by him contain nothing but the glorification of the love of boys.!_ Thus the paradox becomes a fact; Orpheus, who even at the present day is most widely known as a model of conjugal fidelity, is for antiquity the man who introduced the love of boys in his home in Thrace and was so devoted to it that girls and women, who felt themselves spurned, finally attacked him, cruelly mutilated and killed him. Further, the legend informs us that his head was thrown into the sea and finally cast up on the shore of the island of Lesbos. Of Lesbos? That is, of course, not accidental, for there later Sappho arose, who was for Greeks the greatest advocate of homosexual love.

1 The songs which Ovid (Met., x) makes Orpheus sing are: “The love of Apollo to Cyparissus’ (86-142); “‘ The rape of Ganymede ” by Zeus (155-61) ; ‘‘ The Love of Apollo for Hyacinthus ”’ (162-219).

462