Note 311 — FIRST SECTION. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Hence Iphis, in Ovid, Metam., IX. 723 sqq., says:
Iphis amat, qua posse frui desperat, et auget Hoc ipsum flammas: ardetque in virgine virgo. Vix tenens lacrimas: Quis me manet exitus, inquit, Cognita quam nulli, quam prodigiosa novaeque Cura tenet Veneris? si dii mihi parcere vellent. Naturale malum saltem et de more dedissent. Nec vaccam vaccae, nec equas amor urit equarum. Femina femineo correpta cupidine nulla est. Vellem nulla forem.
(Iphis loves one that she knows, alas! she can never enjoy, and this fact itself increases her passion. A maiden burns for a maiden. Hardly keeping back her tears she cries: What fate awaits me,—me who suffer sorrow of Venus known to none, a sorrow monstrous and of strange new sort? If the gods were willing to spare me, they would have given me a natural curse surely, one of ordinary kind. No cow burns for a cow, no mare for the love of mares, nor any woman is taken with love for a woman. Would I were no woman!)
Similarly Lucillius says of the paederast Cratippus in the Greek Anthology, bk. II. Tit. V. no. 1.;
Τὸν φιλόοπαιδα Κράτιππον ἀκούσατε· θαῦμα γὰρ ὑμῖν Καινὸν ἀπαγγέλλω· πλὴν μεγάλαι νεμέσεις· Τὸν φιλόπαιδα Κράτιππον ἀνεύρομεν ἄλλο γένος· τί; Τῶν ἑτεροζήλων ἤλπισα τοῦτ’ ἂν ἐγὼ; Ἤλπισα τοῦτο, Κράτιππε; μανήσομαι, εἰ λύκος εἶναι Πᾶσι λέγων ἐφάνης ἐξαπίνης ἔριφος.
(Of the boy-loving Cratippus will I tell you; for a strange new wonder I report. Yea! great are the penalties he pays. The boy-loving Cratippus we have found has another character. What character? I should have thought him to be of those whose love is eager on one side only. Did I think so, Cratippus? Well, I shall seem a madman, if—professing the while to all to be a wolf,—you of a sudden appear in the character of a kid).
But most important in this connection is the passage of Aeschines, Orat. in Timarch., p. 178., μὴ γὰρ οἴεσθαι, ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι, τὰς τῶν ἀτυχημάτων ἀρχὰς ἀπὸ θεῶν, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων ἀσελγείας γίνεσθαι, μηδὲ τοὺς ἠσεβηκότας, καθάπερ ἐπὶ ταῖς τραγῳδίαισι, Ποινὰς ἐλαύνειν καὶ κολάζειν δᾳσὶν ἡμμέναις· ἀλλ’ αἱ προπετεῖς τοῦ σώματος ἡδοναὶ, καὶ τὸ μηδὲν ἱκανὸν ἡγεῖσθαι. (For you must not dream, Athenians, that the causes of calamities are from the gods, and that such are not rather due to the wickedness of mankind. Do not imagine the impious are driven by Furies, as is represented in the Tragedies, and chastised with blazing torches; nay! it is reckless indulgence in bodily pleasures that is the scourge, and immoderate desires). Comp. Theon, Progymn., ch. 7.—Cicero, Orat. in Pison., 20., Nolite putare, Patres Conscripti, ut in scena videtis homines consceleratos impulso deorum terreri Furiarum taedis ardentibus. Sua quemque fraus, suum facinus, suum scelus, sua audacia de sanitate ac mente deturbat. Hae sunt impiorum Furiae, hae flammae, hae faces. (Dream not, Conscript Fathers, that wicked men, as you see represented on the stage, are driven in terror, at the instigation of the gods, by the blazing torches of the Furies. ’Tis his own dishonesty, his own wickedness, his own baseness, his own recklessness, that destroys each man’s health and sanity. These are the furies that torment the impious, these the flames and torches).