I know of no photography of sculpture nor sculpture itself

that has ever moved me as much as the two facing plates (110 and 111) entitled "Struggle," being parts of a group in marble from the Museo dei Conservatori in Rome. Here there is the agonized sensuality of the male animal who bears down with strength, the source of which he does not know, in order to bring his prey closer to him; and the partner, passionately struggling against the rape that she so ardently desires, tears away her body, but her struggle is in vain.

"There is no doubt," writes Marcadé, "that the paintings in the Villa of the Mysteries occupy a special place in the history of erotic art, even if one ignores the young beauty raising her round, braceleted arms to dress her hair, and the DionysusAriadne group. Aesthetically, the latter group is far from being the best, yet there is no doubt that the god leaning back on the knees of his companion, his body given over voluptuously to caresses, his eyes halfclosed is by far the most suggestive figure on the frieze. If he is to be taken as symbolizing the pleasures to which the initiates aspire, then these are pretty lascivious and down to earth.

In fact, the handsome youth depicted here could not be taken for a mortal; his pleasures belong to another world, and the carnal joys of this world are but a pale shadow of them."

Finally, one turns to Eros Kalos, subtitled Essay on Erotic Elements in Greek Art, likewise by Professor Marcadé. Here one finds sensuality for its own sake; the body beautiful because it is the body, not despite its being the body. Here is the enjoyment of pleasures, uninhibited love in every form in which it can find expression: man alone, man or woman with a lower animal (particularly a bird), man with woman (in numerous acts and in a variety of positions), and

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man with man (or rather with boy), and even an occasional suggestion of woman with woman.

The love of men for boys permeates this art, as it did the entire Hellenic and Hellenistic cultures, but never as an exclusive pursuit, seldom in competition with the love of men and women for each other. One was not on a higher level, with the other on a lower one; here were two independent pursuits, and Greek art (like all of Greek culture) cannot be imagined without either one of them.

And thus can be found the essential differences between the views of the world of sex in these three cultures, as expressed through the metaphor of art. In India, man and woman were brought together as the resolution of a mystic polarity; in Rome, sex was power (hence the penis of hyperbolic proportions), and power was used to subdue and to frighten; and in Greece, sex was the glorification of the body, with its subtle nuances and idealistic perfection a perfection that must be just beyond the reach of mankind. For there was always the fatal flaw: the hubris.

Particularly on the paintings of the vases does one find the depiction of homosexuality. "The two conceptions of male love are shown: the love of men for women, and the love of men for boys," writes Marcadé, and numerous illustrations attest to the accuracy of this statement. "On one side, we see youths paying court to heteræ, buying their favors with necklaces or other gifts, holding them close, and caressing and kissing them; on the other, men — usually bearded presenting youths with hares or cockerels, holding them close, and caressing and kissing them. As well as vases unabashedly depicting heterosexual love, there are vases showing men in bed with boys," and a little later the author quotes this passage from Aristophanes :

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