APPENDIX C΄ ON DEPILATION: BODY COSMETICS IN CLASSICAL ...

582 APPENDIX C΄
built, large, smooth, shining body of a well-developed and welltrained
youth. It was the ridiculous affectation of what one does not
really possess, at which the Greeks were liable to, and did indeed, take
offence the more intensely, the more they cherished and loved the
natural manifestation of that ideal. The contrariety to nature of the
enterprise, and its corresponding futility, are well brought out by
Persius in his famous passage, Satyra IV, 33-41:
at sic unctus cesses et figas in cute solem,
est prope te ignotus cubito qui tangat et acre
despuat: hi mores! penemque arcanaque lumbi
runcantem populo marcentis pandere vulvas!
tunc cum maxillis balanatum gausape pectas,
inguinibus quare detonsus gurgulio extat?
Quinque palaestritae licet haec plantaria vellant
elixasque nates labefactent forcipe adunca,
non tamen ista felix ullo mansuescit aratro.
Before proceeding further, I shall adduce two more examples for
the qualifications required to be made in the more well-known
negative attitude. I shall mention them especially as they exhibit the
woman’s point of view, and are not located within the standard and
normal context of the love of the man for the young man (as e.g. in
Theocritus, E, 90; and in passage after passage of the XIIth book of
the Anthologia Graeca; v. e.g. 13; 191; 195). In Lucian, Dialogi
Marini, I, 1, two Nereides converse with each other, Doris making fun
of Galateia on account of the latter’s lover: whom she calls ironically
ηÏeÓ âÚ·ÛÙ‹Ó; she really disapproves of him because he is ôÁÚÈÔ˜
(the uncouth, rustic robustness we were talking about above - he is a
appleÔÈÌ‹Ó), Ï¿ÛÈÔ˜ (pilosus) and ÌÔÓfiÊı·ÏÌÔ˜. Galateia, it is true,
rejoins that his Ï¿ÛÈÔÓ and ôÁÚÈÔÓ is àÓ‰Úá‰Â˜, but the point is being
made that being (at least markedly) hairy can be considered to detract
from beauty even in a man past his youth. In Lysistrata, 800-804, we
see that an old woman scoffs at an old man on account of his dense
hair in the membrum’s area; the Ïfi¯ÌË (thicket) is there to be seen, as
is clear firstly from the immediately preceding verse (799: ÎàÓ·Ù›ӷ˜
Ï·ÎÙ›Û·È), which as the scholiast remarks (Ùe ÛΤÏÔ˜ j Ùe ·å‰ÔÖÔÓ) is
a play of double entendre: raising the foot or the membrum to kick