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

MALE HOMOSEXUALITY

2. Mexeacer. (Anth. Pal., xii, 86, 117, 47, 92, 132, 54, 122, 52 (cf. 53), 125, 137, 84, 164, 256, 154, 59, 106, 159, I10, 23, 101, 65, 133, 60, 127, 12

Meleager of Gadara in Ccelo-Syria, of whose erotic poems to girls we have already spoken (p. 261), lived during his youth at Tyre. There he would have nothing to do with girls, and for that reason was the more susceptible to the beauty of boys, and although the number of those with love of whom he is consumed is very considerable it is a youth Myiscus whom he loves best, and whose name meets us most frequently in the epigrams.

Of the sixty poems of Meleager in the twelfth book of the Anthology, thirty-seven are addressed to boys whose names are given, and we find no fewer than eighteen to whom special poems are devoted ; but in addition there are so many others mentioned, that one is astounded at the easy susceptibility of the poet, whether we conceive many of the poems to be exercises in poetry without any real background, or if we assume that the same boy perhaps appears several times, but under different names. In any case, Meleager is firmly convinced that preference is due to the love of boys, and he knows how to offer confirmation of his answer to the question by a new and unexpected argument: © It is Cypris, a woman, who casts at us the fire of passion for women, but Love himself rules over desire for males. Whither shall I incline, to the boy or to his mother? I tell you for sure that even Cypris herself will say ‘ The bold brat wins ’.”

When the marvel of Eros blazes up, then reason is done for and passion prevails. This is intelligible, for Eros has already played with the poet’s soul in his tenderest age as with dice. But in everything it is the eyes of the poet, which eagerly drink in the beauty of boys so that Eros gains power over the soul, that are to blame.

Nothing is of avail any longer; the soul is captured and endeavours to escape, as a bird strives

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