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

Mate HOMOSEXUALITY

extant fragments at least four are addressed to Smerdis. ‘Thus we read of a stormy wooing, in which he confesses to him that Eros had dashed him down again as powerfully as the smith wields his hammer.

His love for Cleobulus was inflamed in the poet by avenging Nemesis herself, as Maximus of Tyre insists in an anecdote (frag. 3). ‘This love filled the poet with fervent ardour; he entreats Dionysus (frag. 2) to incline the heart of the boy towards him and confesses that he loves Cleobulus, raves after him, looks out only for him.

There is a fragment, in which it is said that no one, if Bathyllus plays the flute, may dance to it, since he cannot turn his gaze away from the charming form of the player (frag. 30). Another fragment is addressed to Megistes (frag. 41; and see Bergk, Der Ausgabe des Anakreon, p. 151, Leipzig, 1834), who takes part in the feast, crowned with a wreath of agnus castus, or “tree of chastity”, a plant concerning which the ancients gave profound and curious accounts (see esp. Pliny, Nat. /ust., XXIV, 38).

Other fragments treat of his love for Leukaspis and Simalos (frags. 18, 22), while others again have come down to us without the name of the favourite. The boy at the mixing-jug is to bring wine and garlands, “that I may not succumb in a boxing-match with Eros.” Of a song to Eros, “to whom gods like men are subject,” five lines are preserved. ‘The poet also has to complain of rejected love, and at another time he threatens that he will fly up to Olympus, and complain to the Loves, that “‘ my boy will not pass the time of youth with me”. He complains that Eros, when, already grown so grey, at last he saw him, waving his gold-glittering wings, flew heedless by. He comically threatens Eros, that he will no longer sing a beautiful hymn in his praise, since he will not wound the ephebus he longs for with his arrow.

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