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

MALE HoMOSEXUALITY

of the British Museum. The boy + is represented just in the act of being changed, offering a bunch of grapes to Dionysus who is tenderly embracing him?

All our extracts from Nonnus, the last epic offshoot of Hellenic beauty and sensual enjoyment, have been taken from the first twelve books, a quarter of the vast poem; the remaining thirty-six cantos contain numerous other homosexual episodes and many descriptions of boyish beauty.

Il. Lyric Poetry

As lyric poetry is the most direct expression of personal states of mind and feelings, it is only to be expected that in that of the Greeks homosexual love should occupy a large space ; and it is, indeed, quite correct to say that lyric poetry generally had its origin in homosexual love. But unfortunately only a lamentably small fragment of Greek lyric has come down to us.

1. THEOGNIS

Under the name of Theognis, who lived, chiefly in Megara, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., a collection of maxims and rules of life in 1,388 lines has come down to us. The last 158 lines are entirely devoted to the love of youths, especially to the poet’s favourite Cyrus. The latter, the son of Polypais, was a noble and beautiful youth, to whom the poet was attached by paternal, but also by sensual love. He desires to teach him worldly wisdom and to bring him up as a true aristocrat. The collection is therefore rich in intrinsic ethical value, which caused it to be used in ancient times as

1 According to Ovid (Fasti, III, 407), the boy met with an accident while trying to break off a tendril from a vine which was creeping up an elm-tree, whereupon he was placed among the stars by Dionysus as Vindemitor (vine-dresser, vintager).

2 It should be mentioned that the Brit. Mus. authorities disagree with Herr Licht’s interpretation of this group (No. 1636): the figure

that Dionysus is embracing, they say, is female and represents not Ampelos but the personification of the vine-—Ed.

468