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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

the seal is set by the marriage feast which now formally begins. To glorify it, to crown the newly-wedded with her blessing, Aphrodite is invoked: ‘Come, O Cypris, come and mix in the shimmering golden goblet for us the nectar for the festal carouse, come and fill the goblet full.’ That she is ready to come with her train, Eros the charming boy and the Three Graces, we know already. If the other heavenly ones do not come and fill the earthly hall, yet above, in the hall of the gods, they celebrate the festival of happy men ; as the song of an inspired guest who, in his ecstasy, sees the heavens open and the gods carousing and drinking the health of the bridal pair, paints the scene in quite a lively manner: * The mixing-jar was full of ambrosial drink ; Hermes took the ladle and poured in the drink to the gods; then all held each his goblet up, and poured drink-offerings, and wished much that was good and beautiful for the bridegroom and the charming bride together.’

“Thus with song and games night comes on darker and darker. The long-yearned for hour has come. The bridegroom has rapidly got up, with bold grasp embraced the modestly resisting bride and, after an old custom of the heroic age, rapidly carried away his beautiful prize, followed by his most confidential friend, a youth ‘of high stature and strong arm’, capable of protecting the door of the nuptial chamber even against a more dangerous enemy than the girls—who rise up in haste and in well-imitated terror rush after the robber to rescue their playmate from his hands ; they are as powerless as fowls in pursuit of a hawk which has carried off one of their number in its talons. When, breathless, they reach the nuptial chamber, then the door is slammed; at the same time they hear the bridegroom, now in concealment, push forward the mighty bolt and in a mocking voice call out to them the old saying, ‘ Back, here there are girls

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