Sex and the Countryside: The Special Case of Archaic Greek Lyric

Abstract

Archaic Greek lyric, as my talk aims to demonstrate, refashions the erotic symbolism of literary motifs in ways which reveal the special position it holds in Greek poetry. Two literary motifs, the locus amoenus (see Schonbeck 1966 and Has 1998) and the ‘meadow of love’ (Motte 1971, Bremer 1975 and Calame 1999), make clear that in ancient Greek poetry the favourite place for a sexual encounter is in the countryside. While the former motif is a pleasant place in the countryside which sets the scene for a sexual encounter between a man and a girl, the latter constitutes the locale for rape and/or brutal abduction of a girl who is deprived of her virginity. Archaic Greek lyric, however, deviates from these standard erotic associations in several ways. Firstly, the locus amoenus in archaic Greek lyric is not associated with heterosexual love as it is elsewhere in ancient Greek poetry. Rather the locus amoenus can be presented as place devoid of love. A case in point is Ibycus 286: I will argue that in this poem the presence of parthenoi in a spring scene evinces that the locus amoenus is a place of virginal chastity which is put in contrast to the speaker’s own, raging and torturous, passion. Moreover, when in other archaic lyric poems the locus amoenus is associated with love, this love is of a homo-erotic or lesbian nature. To elucidate this I will briefly refer to a poem of Theognis (lines 1249-1252) in which the locus amoenus is considered a place appropriate for homo-erotic, pederastic encounters, as well as to a poem by Sappho (fragment 2) about a locus amoenus located near a temple of Aphrodite. Secondly, the erotic symbolism of the meadow is strongly adapted in archaic Greek lyric. In my talk I will limit myself to one example, Anacreon 417, an allegory about a filly playing in a meadow, to demonstrate that in archaic Greek lyric the girl in the flowery meadow is no longer a victim of brutal abduction and/or rape, as she decides whether or not to partake in the sexual actions proposed by the man. By examining the special position of archaic Greek lyric in the literary history of erotic motifs, I aim to provide new insights into the reworking of traditional story-patterns in Greek lyric and the relationship of Greek lyric to earlier and later ancient Greek poetry. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bremer, J. M. (1975), ‘The Meadow of Love and Two Passages in Euripides’ Hippolytus’, Mnemosyne 28: 268-280 Calame, C. (1999), The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece (Princeton) Has, P. (1998), Der locus amoenus in der antiken Literatur: zu Theorie und Geschichte eines literarischen Motivs (Bamberg) Motte, A. (1971), Prairies et Jardins de la Grece Antique (Bruxelles) Schonbeck, G. (1966), Der locus amoenus von Homer bis Horaz (Heidelberg)