_, IV., 1018-1025). But,
although the later romance writers followed this example, it would be
a great mistake to suppose, with Mahaffy (272), that this touch of
virgin purity was felt by the Alexandrians to be "the necessary
starting-point of the love-romance in a refined society." Alexandrian
society was anything but refined in matters of love, and the trait
referred to stands out by reason of its novelty and isolation in a
literature devoted chiefly to the hetairai. We see this especially
also in the epigrams of the period. It is astonishing, writes Couat
(173), how many of these are erotic; and "almost all," he adds, "are
addressed to courtesans or young boys." "Dans toutes l'auteur ne
chante que la beaute plastique et les plaisirs faciles; leur Cypris
est la Cypris [Greek: pandaemos], celle qui se vend a tout le monde."
In these verses of Callimachus, Asclepiades, Poseidippus and others,
he finds sentimentality but no sentiment; and on page 62 he sums up
Alexandria with French patness as a place "ou l'on faisait assidument
des vers sur l'amour sans etre amoureux"--"where they were ever
writing love-poems without ever being in love." But what repels modern
taste still more than this artificiality and lack of inspiration is
the effeminate degradation of the masculine type most admired. Helbig,
who, in his book on _Campanische Wandmalerei_, enforces the testimony
of literature with the inferences that can be drawn from mural
paintings and vases, remarks (258) that the favorite poetic ideals of
the time are tender youths with milk-white complexion, rosy cheeks and
long, soft tresses.
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