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

Epic POETRY

became enamoured of Cyparissus”’; and, further to console the bereaved deity and to encourage him to take a fresh love, Eros then gives him a detailed account of the story of Calamus and his favourite Carpus.

“Calamus (Kalamos), a son of the river-god Meeander, was united in tenderest love with Carpus (Karpos), the son of Zephyrus and one of the Hore, a youth of surpassing beauty. When both were bathing in the Mzeander and swimming for a wager, Carpus was drowned. In his grief Calamus is changed into a reed, and when it rustled in the wind the ancients heard in the sound a song of lamentation ; but Carpus becomes the produce of the fields, which returns every year.”

A gap in the text does not allow us to know what effect this had on Dionysus. Probably very little, for now with glowing sensuality a wanton round dance of the Hore is described, which can be introduced here only with intent to bring the god, who is consumed by longing, to other thoughts. With this “ orgy of the legs, which in the furious whirlwind of the dance are seen through their transparent robes ’’, the eleventh book of the story of Dionysus closes.

In the twelfth it is related how the gods, out of compassion for the sorrow of Dionysus, change the boy Ampelos into a vine. The god, enchanted, accepts the glorious plant, which is henceforth sacred to him, and so invents the precious gift of wine, which he praises in an enthusiastic address. Then the first gathering and pressing of the newly created wine takes place, after which a Bacchic orgy concludes the feast that has developed into a riotous merry-making after a time of deepest sadness.

Between Rome and Florence a beautiful marble group of Dionysus and Ampelos was found (cf. Himerius, Ovat., 9, 560; Pliny, xviii, 31, 74) which is to-day one of the most valued treasures

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