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

THE PorEMS OF THE ANTHOLOGY

Alexandria, first as a celebrated teacher and grammarian, and then at the luxurious court of Ptolemy Philadelphus as one of the most important collaborators in the business of the world-famed library with its many branches. His literary activity was mainly directed to the department of learning, but he was not disinclined to poetry. In the epigrams left by him, the erotic note is generally heard, and in the twelfth book of the Anthology, no fewer than twelve of them are preserved, which sing the praises of beautiful boys and are devoted to the mysteries of Eros. He knows how to vary the inexhaustible subject with a pleasantly surprising new point :—

“The huntsman on the hills, Epicydes, tracks every hare and the slot of every hind through the frost and snow. But if one say to him, ‘ Look, here is a beast lying wounded,’ he will not take it. And eyen so is my love; it is wont to pursue the fleeing game, but flies past what lies in its path.”

5. THE OTHER POETS

Besides the great poets hitherto mentioned, in the twelfth book of the Anthology, twenty-four poets of the lower class are represented by epigrams on the love of boys.

From Dioscorides (second century B.C.) we have, among a number of other epigrams :—

“Zephyr, gentlest of the winds, bring back to me the lovely pilgrim Euphragoras, even as thou didst receive him, not extending his absence beyond a few month’s space ; for to a lover’s mind a short time is as a thousand years ” (171).

Rhianus of Crete (flourished third century B.C.), a slave by birth, had originally been the inspector of a boys’ wrestling school. His preference for youths is also to be recognized in his poetry : thus we know that he referred Apollo’s service with King

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