portrait of the youth depicted on its surface, attended by winged genii of health and love. The word "Fair" was inscribed beneath, and symbols of games were added—a hoop or a fighting-cock.[1] Nor must I here omit the custom which induced lovers of a literary turn to praise their friends in prose or verse. Hippothales, in the Lysis of Plato, is ridiculed by his friends for recording the great deeds of the boy's ancestors, and deafening his ears with odes and sonnets. A diatribe on love, written by Lysias with a view to winning Phædrus, forms the starting-point of the dialogue between that youth and Socrates.[2] We have, besides, a curious panegyrical oration (called Eroticos Logos), falsely ascribed to Demosthenes, in honour of a youth, Epicrates, from which some information may be gathered concerning the topics usually developed in these compositions.
Presents were of course a common way of trying to win favour. It was reckoned shameful for boys to take money from their lovers, but fashion permitted them to accept gifts of quails and fighting cocks, pheasants, horses, dogs and clothes.[3] There existed, therefore, at Athens frequent temptations for boys of wanton disposition, or for those who needed money to indulge expensive tastes. The speech of Æschines, from which I have already frequently quoted, affords a lively picture of the Greek rake's progress, in which Timarchus is described as having sold his person in order to gratify his gluttony and lust and love of gaming. The whole of this passage,[4] it may be observed in passing, reads like a description of Florentine manners in a sermon of Savonarola.
The shops of the barbers, surgeons, perfumers, and flower-sellers had an evil notoriety, and lads who frequented these resorts rendered themselves liable to suspicion. Thus Æschines accuses Timarchus of having exposed himself for hire in a surgeon's shop at the Peiræus; while one of Straton's most beautiful epigrams[5] describes an assignation which he made with a boy who had attracted his attention in a garland-weaver's stall. In a fragment from the Pyraunos of
- ↑ See Sir William Hamilton's Vases.
- ↑ Lysias, according to Suidas, was the author of five erotic epistles adressed to young men.
- ↑ See Aristoph., Plutus, 153-159; Birds, 704-707. Cp. Mousa Paidiké, 44, 239, 237. The boys made extraordinary demands upon their lovers' generosity. The curious tale told about Alcibiades points in this direction. In Crete they did the like, but also set their lovers to execute difficult tasks, as Eurystheus imposed the twelve labours on Herakles.
- ↑ Page 29.
- ↑ Mousa Paidiké, 8: cp. a fragment of Crates, Poetæ Comici, Didot, p. 83.
