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

MaLeE HOMOSEXUALITY

from toil, brought pain to me, imaging in my soul a loveliness which is living fire.”

‘‘ Pain has begun to touch my heart, for hot Love as he strayed, scratched it with the tip of his nails, and, smiling, said: ‘ Again, O unhappy lover, thou shalt have the sweet wound, burnt by biting honey.’ Since when, seeing among the youths the fresh sapling Diophantus, I can neither fly nor abide.”

3. Ascieprapes. (Anth. Pal., xii, 135, 162, 163)

Asclepiades of Samos was regarded as the teacher of Theocritus, by whom he was highly praised as a man and a poet. The epigrams handed down under his name are distinguished by graceful form and tender feeling; eleven of them are preserved in the “‘ boyish Muse ” of the Anthology, of which the following isa specimen: ‘‘ Wine is the proof of love. Nicagoras denied to us that he was in love, but those many toasts convicted him.

“‘Yes! he shed tears and bent his head, and had a certain downcast look, and the wreath bound tight round his head kept not its place.”

In another epigram the poet imagines how the little Love is introduced by his mother into the secrets of reading and writing. But the result of her efforts as a teacher are essentially different from what is expected ; instead of a text the docile pupil only reads over and over again the names of two beautiful boys, who are devoted to each other in hearty friendship—a tender glorification of boyfriendship, such as is also described in epigram 163 by the same author.

4. CaLiimacuus. (Anth. Pal., xu, I02)

Callimachus of Cyrene in North Africa lived about 310-240 B.c. He is by far the most important epigrammatist of the Alexandrian period. After having studied in Athens together with the poet Aratus, already known to us, we find him in

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