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

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

both choruses (after Sappho, frag. 99 (193); cf. 101 (105)): “Hail to thee, O bride; hail to the bridegroom!’ They have taken a seat side by side, and a new contest of song begins. First the young men praise the bride: ‘She blooms like a rose, much brighter than gold her beauty beams, only comparable to golden Aphrodite, more melodious than the music of the lyre sounds her voice: a gentle charm flows o’er her gracious face.’ 1

‘Therefore, she is long and often assailed with all kinds of wooing, but in vain:

As a sweet apple—rosy, O maid, art thou

At the uttermost tip of the uttermost bough, Unseen in the autumn by gatherers—

Nay, seen, but only to tantalize.

“So also the bride: she has remained pure, inaccessible to all attempts ; none of the many who desired to win her hand, can boast that he has ever touched her even with the tip of his finger. But at length he has approached her; he it is who has attained the highest goal. Naturally, he is worthy of his great happiness. And thus the bride’s playmates need have no scruples for her sake about praising the bridegroom on their own part:

Dear bridegroom, in what likeness were it well hy praise in song to tell ? To the fresh tender sapling of a tree I best may liken thee.

“But he is not simply young and beautiful, he is also strong and bold; girls may compare him to an Achilles, the eternal ideal of flourishing heroic strength. Both are worthy of each other; in this mutual admission peace is concluded, upon which

* These two lines and the five next passages are from the fragments of Sappho.