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SHELLEY ON GREEK LOVE
It is possible that Hegel may have read this book, for it appeared in
1798, while the first manuscript sketches of his lectures on esthetics
bear the date of 1818. He may have also read Robert Wood's book
entitled _An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer_,
dated 1775, in which this sentence occurs:
"Is it not very remarkable, that Homer, so great a master of
the tender and pathetic, who has exhibited human nature in
almost every shape, and under every view, has not given a
single instance of the powers and effects of love, distinct
from sensual enjoyment, in the _Iliad_?"
This is as far as I have been able to trace back this notion in modern
literature. But in the literature of the first half of the nineteenth
century I have come across several adumbrations of the truth regarding
the Greeks,[3] by Shelley, Lord Lytton, Lord Macaulay, and Theophile
Gautier. Shelley's ideas are confused and contradictory, but
interesting as showing the conflict between traditional opinion and
poetic intuition. In his fragmentary discourse on "The Manners of the
Ancients Relating to the Subject of Love," which was intended to serve
as an introduction to Plato's _Symposium_, he remarks that the women
of the ancient Greeks, with rare exceptions, possessed
"the habits and the qualities of slaves.
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