The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 69. An X-Rated Dialogue From Ancient Greece

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An X-Rated Dialogue from Ancient Greece

[Set under a pear tree, the following scene is like a verbal vignette of the type often painted in the bottom of drinking vessels; it’s “sketchy” for sure. Here, two divinities and a goat shepherd rest, drunk, in the cooling shade. Silenus was the step-father of Dionysus and raised him in the woods. He is always shown middle-aged, paunchy and balding. Hermaphroditus was the intersexed child of Aphrodite and Hermes; ‘he’ (as the Greeks always referred to them) had equal qualities of the genders. This god’s blessing was often invoked during wedding ceremonies.]

Hermaphroditus: [about Silenus] “Goatherd, I love

seeing the pears strike this foul-mouthed one on his bald pate.”

Silenus: [about Hermaphroditus] “Goatherd, I’ve fucked him three times,

and the young billy-goats were watching me and topping the young nannies in envy.”

Goatherd: “Is it true, Hermaphroditus? You let him cum three times?”

Hermaphroditus: “No, goatherd. So help me, I swear by Hermes.”

Silenus: “And I swear by Pan we did, because he knows

we were laughing the whole time.”

--Unknown[i]

date unknown

[after W.R. Paton]

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