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

Lyric POETRY

aschool-book, and at the same time contains a number of love-terms of strong, sometimes ardent sensuality.

The poet hesitates between love and indifference, he cannot do without Cyrnus, and yet it is hard to love the modest boy. Indeed, he even threatens to put an end to his life, so that the boy may realize what he has lost. Another time he complained of offended love ; that he was sympathetic to Cyrnus, but not Cyrnus to him. The loved one will be famous through him; at all festivals he will be sung of, and even after death he will never be forgotten.

2. PLATO

Under the name of Plato (PLG., frag. 1,7, 14, 15 ; cf. Apuleius, De magia, 10), the great philosopher and pupil of Socrates, several homosexual epigrams have come down to us. A tender epigram is: “ When I kissed you, Agathon, I felt your soul on my lips: as if it would penetrate into my heart with quivering longing.” Another epigram is an epitaph on the favourite Dion, ‘“‘ who filled the heart with the madness of love.’ Two epigrams owe their origin to the beautiful Aster (star). The poet envies the sky, which looks down on his Aster with many eyes, when he, himself a star, looks up at the stars.

3. ARCHILOCHUS AND ALCEUS

Even among the fragments of Archilochus of Paros, who is known for his passionate love for Neobulé, the beautiful little daughter of Lycambes, there is one (frag. 85) containing the admission that " yearning for the boy relaxes his limbs and overpowers him”.

Of Alczus of Mitylene, who was both a poet and hero, mention has already been made (p. 433). The Lycus there referred to (if Bergk’s reading be correct) occurs in a fragment (58) in which the poet, in an attack of ill-humour, says that he will no longer celebrate him in his songs. In another

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