Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates, стр. 328

EROTIC IN GREEK LITERATURE

most of which appear to have been travesties of pieces by Euripides. Nothing of them has been preserved that is worth mentioning, but from vase paintings with phlyakian stage-scenes or from the Plautine tragi-comedy Amphitruo we can get an idea of the coarse, and in parts, highly obscene character of these popular entertainments. According to a note in Athenzeus (Ath., xiv, 621 f.) phlyakes was also nothing but the lower Italian name for phallus-wearers. According to Aristoxenus (Ath., xiv, 620d, where there is more about these farces), the famous musician and biographer, there were two classes of these popular farces, the ‘hilarodia”’ or ‘“‘ Simodia,” and the ‘“‘ magodia”’ or ‘‘ Lysiodia ” (the names are explained by the names of their poets—Simos and Lysis; “magodia”’ may perhaps indicate their magic effect), both accompanied by song and dance, yet with the difference that, in the first kind, the actor played male and female parts to the accompaniment of stringed instruments, while, in the second, kettledrums and cymbals supplied the accompaniment, the female parts being played in men’s clothes, and indecent dances an important element (pp. 153-60).

According to Semos (Ath., xiv, 622), the ithyphallic actors wore the Tarentimdia already mentioned, by which we are to understand a sort of “tights”. These were also, according to Pollux (iv, 104), usually worn by the so-called Gypones, that is, dancers on stilts.

What is known as Cinedic poetry was not far behind the phlyakian in grotesque indecency. We shall return to the name and content of this poetical degeneracy in the chapter on homosexual literature, yet it must be mentioned here, since one of its most prominent exponents, Sotades of Maroneia in Crete (Ath., XIV, 621a: els ovr oolny Tpupaduiy TO xévtpov ®Oets), used this form when he attempted to tell the entire truth about the great men and princes of his time, especially with reference to

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