Copy 1, Volume 1

The history of the manners and customs of ancient Greece / By J.A. St. John.

  • James Augustus St. John
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the manners and customs of ancient Greece / By J.A. St. John. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    456/464 (page 420)
    a gift, must have been able to read it.1 They had likewise another fashion, particularly Greek, of ma¬ king known their sentiments, which was to suspend garlands of flowers, or perform sacrifice before the door where the person possessing their heart re¬ sided.2 Sometimes they repaired to the spot and poured forth libations of wine as at the entrance of a temple, a practice alluded to by the Scholiast on Aristophanes, who relates that a number of Thessalian gentlemen being in love with Lais,3 be¬ trayed their passion by publicly sprinkling her doors with wine. Among the symptoms which disclosed the condition of the feelings, a garland loosely thrown upon the head was one.4 Women suffered their secret to escape them by being discovered wreath¬ ing garlands for their hair.5 But in whatever way the existence of passion was externally manifested, a more interesting question is the modification which the passion6 itself under¬ went in the Greek mind.7 Numerous circumstances concur to mislead our judgment on this subject. In the first place, the writers who sprang up like fungi amid the corruption and profligacy which attended the decay of Hellenic society, standing nearer to us, obstruct our view. Among them a coarse unhealthy craving after excitement led to nefarious perversions of sentiment, and to countenance their own excesses they threw back their vile polluting shadows upon 1 Philostrat. Epist. xx. p. 921. Hermann. Com. in Arist. Poet. p. 87. 2 Athen. xv. 9. 3 Cf. Na'is according to Harpo- crat. in v. p. 203. Sch. Aristoph. Plat. 179. Cf. Athen. xiii. 51. 4 Athen. xv. 9. 5 Aristoph. Thesmoph. 400. ^/TTroii'a ruiv v-rrep rrov \6ywi', ’A<j>po(Hrrj, ere €cn]t)ov tit i-fial (Sei'icreiQ KaXovvir. Luc. A- mor. § 19. 7 See the whole question treated with peculiar ability by Maximus Tyrius viii. 105. sqq. Homer, in the opinion of this writer, exhibits especial felicity in his description of love, from the cool, timid dawn of passion to its fervid noon, pour- traying its operations, the age at which it is experienced, its forms, its feelings, chaste or unchaste. See too Lycophron Cassand. 104. with the commentary of Meur- sius, p. 1184. 1186. sqq.