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

Mate HOMOSEXUALITY

entitled “Epwres 7 xadot (“ Love stories, or Beautiful Boys”). ‘These elegies represented what may be called a history of the love of boys in poetic form with abundant examples from stories of the gods and heroes. Among the fragments a longer one of 28 lines (longer frag. in Stobzeus, Flor., 64, 14) in which the love of Orpheus for the boy Calais and the fearful murder of the singer by the Thracian women is described, is prominent. It is interesting to find that the Christian Fathers of the Churchsuch as Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, and Orosius—used the poems of Phanocles to prove the immorality of paganism, while Friedrich Schlegel (Werke, iv, 52) translated fragments from him.

5. Dr1oTiImus AND APOLLONIUS

Diotimus (Ath., xii, 603d; Schol., lad, xv, 639; Clem. Rom., Homil., v, 15; Suidas, s.v. EdvpvBaros) of Adramyttium in Mysia in the third century B.C. wrote an epos—the Struggles of Heracles, in which he endeavoured to prove the rather silly idea that the mighty deeds of Heracles are to be ascribed to his love for Eurystheus.

Apollonius of Rhodes (Apol. Rhod., I, 1207; III, 114 ff.), the most important of the Alexandrine epic writers, lived in the third century B.c. Only the most famous of his poems is preserved, namely, Argonautica, that is, the adventure of the Argonauts, in four books. The poem, abounding in charming details, contains the story of the love of Heracles for Hylas, his carrying off by the nymphs of the spring, and the boundless sorrow of the hero at the loss of the boy.

I here quote the episode of Eros and Ganymede : “ They were playing for golden dice, as like minded boys are wont to do. And already greedy Eros was holding the palm of his left hand quite full of them under his breast, standing upright and on

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