Volume 25, Number 21 & 22 · January 25, 1979
The Socratic Method
By Bernard Knox
Eros in Greece
by John Boardman, by Eugenio La Rocca, photographs by Antonia Mulas
The Erotic Art Book Society, 175 pp., $25.00
Eros in Antiquity
photographed by Antonia Mulas
The Erotic Art Book Society, 153 pp., $25.00
Greek Homosexuality
by K. J. Dover
Harvard University Press, 244 pp., $22.50
When A.E. Housman, toward the end of his life, decided to correct the learned world's misunderstanding of some passages in the Latin poets which deal in detail with the mechanics of homosexual copulation, he published, in a German scholarly periodical, an article entitled Praefanda[1] (which means 'Dirty Words'). His meticulous explanation of the matter in hand was distinguished by the precise analysis, caustic wit, and elegant prose characteristic of all his writing, but this time the prose was not English but Latin. That was in 1931; in 1932 the New York publishing firm Covici-Friede livened up their list with a translation of Hans Licht's Sexual Life in Ancient Greece (Licht's real name was Brandt—he was director of a Gymnasium in Saxony). The 'thirty-two full-page plates' with which Covici-Friede tried to spice the rather stolid fare served up by Brandt-Licht included such daring images as the Medici Venus, the Hermes of Praxiteles, the Louvre Diana, a Parthenon metope, and, for a real thrill, the Naples Aphrodite Kallipygos.
Review, 3819 words
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