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

SUPPLEMENT

they are cleansing but they weaken the eyesight, and they also stimulate sexual desire.”

In an epigram of Lucian (46) a Cynic is spoken of, who refuses lupines and radishes, “since the virtuous man may not be a slave to his belly.” But when acid snow-white onions are put on table, he eats them greedily. Wieland may be right in thinking that the sensuality of the Cynics is here ridiculed.

In 414 B.c. Aristophanes had put on the stage a comedy named Amphiareus in which it is described how a “highly pitiable old man” (S<ordatpova év trois pdduora) with his young wife undertakes a pilgrimage to the oracle of Amphiaraus at Oropus on the borders of Beeotia and Attica, whose aid sick persons invoked, especially after fasting, abstinence from wine, and sacrifice, and how to these two in a dream the desired revelation was made. ‘Thus also the old man in the comedy of Aristophanes has his longed-for youthful vigour restored. As to exactly how this happened, the scanty fragments afford no satisfactory explanation ; but on piecing together certain disjointed portions we find that a dish of lentils, evidently considered stimulating, is put before the old man.*

If local massage also is mentioned in the comedy for the renewal of impotence, this was at all times a very favourite remedy which, although not always successful, is often mentioned by old authors.

The physician Theodorus Priscianus in the fourth century A.D. wrote a medical work which is still preserved, in which he had occasion to speak of the cure for masculine impotence. ‘There (1i, 11) it is said: ‘‘ Let the patient be surrounded by beautiful

1 The comedy is not only a joke but, like all the comedies of Aristophanes, had a serious political background, for we may at least conjecture thatit is fairly probable that by the old manwho had beccme impotent the Athenian people is meant, who during seventeen long years of war, were considerably weakened, and to heal whom many more than suspicious means had been tried.

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