The one commendable feature which the stories of Acontius and Cydippe
and of Medea and Jason have in common is that the heroine in each case
is a respectable and pure maiden (see _Argon._, IV., 1018-1025). But,
although the later romance writers followed this example, it would be
a great mistake to suppose, with Mahaffy (272), that this touch of
virgin purity was felt by the Alexandrians to be "the necessary
starting-point of the love-romance in a refined society." Alexandrian
society was anything but refined in matters of love, and the trait
referred to stands out by reason of its novelty and isolation in a
literature devoted chiefly to the hetairai. We see this especially
also in the epigrams of the period. It is astonishing, writes Couat
(173), how many of these are erotic; and "almost all," he adds, "are
addressed to courtesans or young boys." "Dans toutes l'auteur ne
chante que la beauté plastique et les plaisirs faciles; leur Cypris
est la Cypris [Greek: pandaemos], celle qui se vend à tout le monde."
In these verses of Callimachus, Asclepiades, Poseidippus and others,
he finds sentimentality but no sentiment; and on page 62 he sums up
Alexandria with French patness as a place "ou l'on faisait assidûment
des vers sur l'amour sans être amoureux"--"where they were ever
writing love-poems without ever being in love." But what repels modern
taste still more than this artificiality and lack of inspiration is
the effeminate degradation of the masculine type most admired. Helbig,
who, in his book on _Campanische Wandmalerei_, enforces the testimony
of literature with the inferences that can be drawn from mural
paintings and vases, remarks (258) that the favorite poetic ideals of
the time are tender youths with milk-white complexion, rosy cheeks and
long, soft tresses. Thus is Apollo represented by Callimachus, thus
even Achilles by the bucolic poets. In later representations
indicating Alexandrian influences we actually see Polyphemus no longer
as a rude giant, but as a handsome man, or even as a beardless
youth.[324]
That the Alexandrian period, far from marking the advent of purity and
refinement in literature and life, really represents the climax of
degradation, is made most obvious when we regard the role which the
hetairai played in social life. In Alexandria and at Athens they were
the centre of attraction at all the entertainments of the young men,
and to some of them great honors were paid. In the time of Polybius
the most beautiful houses in Alexandria were named after flute girls;
portrait statues of such were placed in temples and other public
places, by the side of those of generals and statesmen, and there were
few prominent men whose names were not associated with these
creatures.
The opinion has been promulgated countless times that these [Greek:
hetairai] were a mentally superior class of women, and on the strength
of this information I assumed, in _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_
(79), that, notwithstanding their frailty, they may have been able, in
some cases, to inspire a more refined, spiritual sort of love than the
uneducated domestic women. A study of the original sources has now
convinced me that this was a mistake. Aspasia no doubt was a
remarkable woman, but she stands entirely by herself, Theodota is
visited once by Socrates, but he excuses himself from calling again,
and as for Diotima, she is a seeress rather than a hetaira. Athenaeus
informs us that some of these women
"had a great opinion of themselves, paying attention to
education and spending a part of their time on literature;
so that they were very ready with their rejoinders and
replies;"
but the specimens he gives of these rejoinders and replies consist
chiefly of obscene jokes, cheap puns on names or pointless witticisms.
Here are two specimens of the better kind, relating to Gnathaena, who
was famed for her repartee:
"Once, when a man came to see her and saw some eggs on a
dish, and said, 'Are these raw, Gnathaena, or boiled?' she
replied, 'They are made of brass, my boy.'" "On one
occasion, when some poor lovers of the daughter of Gnathaena
came to feast at her house, and threatened to throw it down,
saying that they had brought spades and mattocks on purpose;
'But,' said Gnathaena, 'if you had these implements, you
should have pawned them and brought some money with you.'"
The pictures of the utter degradation of the most famous
of the hetairai--Leontium, Lais, Phryne, and others, drawn by
Athenaeus, need not be transferred to these pages. Combined with the
revelations made in Lucian's [Greek: Etairikoi dialogoi], they
demonstrate absolutely that these degraded, mercenary, mawkish
creatures could not have inspired romantic sentiment in the hearts of
the men, even if the latter had been capable of it.
It is to such vulgar persons that the poets of classical Greece and
Alexandria addressed their verses. And herein they were followed by
those of the Latins who may be regarded as imitators of the
Alexandrians--Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, the principal
erotic poets of Rome. They wrote all their love-poems to, for, or
about, a class of women corresponding to the Greek hetairai. Of Ovid I
have already spoken (189), and what I said of him practically applies
to the others. Propertius not only writes with the hetairai in his
mind, but, like his Alexandrian models, he appears as one who is
forever writing love-poems without ever being really in love. With
Catullus the sensual passion at least is sincere. Yet even Professor
Sellar, who declares that he is, "with the exception perhaps of
Sappho, the greatest and truest of all the ancient poets of love," is
obliged to admit that he "has not the romance and purity of modern
sentiment" (349, 22). Like the Greeks, he had a vague idea that there
is something higher than sensual passion, but, like a Greek, in
expressing it, he ignores women as a matter of course. "There was a
time," he writes to his profligate Lesbia, "when I loved you not as a
man loves his mistress, but _as a father loves his son or his
son-in-law_"!
Dicebas quondam solum te nosse Catullum,
Lesbia, nee prae me velle tenere Iovem.
Dilexi tum te non ut volgus amicam,
Sed pater ut gnatos diligit et generos.
In Tibullus there is a note of tenderness which, however, is a mark of
effeminacy rather than of an improved manliness. His passion is
fickle, his adoration little more than adulation, and the expressions
of unselfish devotion here and there do not mean more than the
altiloquent words of Achilles about Briseis or of Admetus about
Alcestis, for they are not backed up by altruistic actions. In a word,
his poems belong to the region of sentimentality, not sentiment.
Morally he is as rotten as any of his colleagues. He began his poetic
career with a glorification of [Greek: paiderastia], and continued it
as an admirer of the most abandoned women. A French author who wrote a
history of prostitution in three volumes quite properly devoted a
chapter to Tibullus and his love-affairs.[325]