astic art. No prurient effeminacy
degraded, deformed, or unduly confounded, the types of sex idealised in
sculpture.

The first reflection which must occur to even prejudiced observers, is
that paiderastia did not corrupt the Greek imagination to any serious
extent. The license of Paganism found appropriate expression in female
forms, but hardly touched the male; nor would it, I think, be possible
to demonstrate that obscene works of painting or of sculpture were
provided for paiderastic sensualists similar to those pornographic
objects which fill the reserved cabinet of the Neapolitan Museum. Thus,
the testimony of Greek art might be used to confirm the asseveration of
Greek literature, that among free men, at least, and gentle, this
passion tended even to purify feelings which, in their lust for women,
verged on profligacy. For one androgynous statue of Hermaphroditus or
Dionysus there are at least a score of luxurious Aphrodites and
voluptuous Bacchantes. Eros himself, unless he is portrayed according to
the Roman type of Cupid, as a mischievous urchin, is a youth whose
modesty is no less noticeable than his beauty. His features are not
unfrequently shadowed with melancholy, as appears in the so-called
Genius of the Vatican, and in many statues which might pass for genii of
silence or of sleep as well as love. It would be difficult to adduce a
single wanton Eros, a single image of this god provocative of sensual
desires. There is not one before which we could say--The sculptor of
that statue had sold his soul to paiderastic lust. Yet Eros, it may be
remembered, was the special patron of paiderastia.

Greek art, like Greek mythology, embodied a finely graduated
half-unconscious analysis of human nature. The mystery of procreation
was indicated by phalli on the Hermae. Unbridled appetite found
incarnation in Priapus, who, moreover, was never a Greek god, but a
Lampsacene adopted from the Asian coast by the Romans. The natural
desires were symbolised in Aphrodite Praxis, Kallipugos, or Pandemos.
The higher sexual enthusiasm assumed celestial form in Aphrodite
Ouranios. Love itself appeared personified in the graceful Eros of
Praxiteles; and how sublimely Pheidias presented this god to the eyes of
his worshippers can now only be guessed at from a mutilated fragment
among the Elgin marbles. The wild and native instincts, wandering,
untutored and untamed, which still connect man with the life of woods
and beasts and Apri