Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates, стр. 330

EROTIC IN GREEK LITERATURE

of bucolic love poetry, his sufferings and premature death, are related by two shepherds. The second is the wonderful song of the lament of the abandoned girl and her attempt to win back her faithless lover by magic arts. In the depth of the night, by the light of the moon, she begins her sorcery, in which neither the magic iynx-wheel (p. 205) is wanting nor a waxen image of her loved one which she has made and melts in the fire, that the faithless one may melt away with heat like hers: “ look, now the sea rests, the winds rest and are hushed; yet my sorrow rests not, my sorrow deep within my bosom, but I am so utterly tortured with longing for him, who instead of a wife has made me a wretched harlot.”

Her incantations grow stronger and stronger, and from them we can gain considerable insight into the love superstitions of that time. The mysterious herb hippomanes* is said to help, a flock of wool is pulled from the faithless one’s garment and burnt in the fire, a lizard (for the erotic meaning of the lizard see p. 194) is ground to powder and mixed with a love-potion, which she intends to offer him at the first opportunity.

And now, alone and abandoned, in the depth of night, when everything sleeps and even the barking of the watchful dogs is mute, she recalls to mind the story of her unhappy love, how everything happened from the first glance she had of the wonderful youth in the company of his handsome friend, how then she returned home lovesick, and for ten days and nights lay prostrate in a burning fever. At last she can no longer restrain her yearning, and she sends her confidential friend to him: ‘And when thou’rt sure he’s alone, give

1 There were different ideas about hippomanes: (1) the herb mentioned here, which grew chiefly in Arcadia; (2) a fleshy, tough excrescence on the forehead of a new-born foal, which the mother bites off immediately after its birth; (3) a slime-like mass, which mares on heat drop from their private parts.

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