sense was always subject to the
perturbation, of gross instincts. But with the first century of the new
age a change came over even the imagination of the Greeks. Though they
never lost their distinction of style, that precious gift of lightness
and good taste conferred upon them with their language, they borrowed
something of their conquerors' vein. This makes itself felt in the
_Anthology_. Straton and Rufinus suffered the contamination of the Roman
genius, stronger in political organisation than that of Hellas, but
coarser and less spiritually tempered in morals and in art. Straton was
a native of Sardis, who flourished in the second century. He compiled a
book of paiderastic poems, consisting in a great measure of his own and
Meleager's compositions, which now forms the twelfth section of the
_Palatine Anthology_. This book he dedicated, not to the Muse, but to
Zeus; for Zeus was the boy-lover among deities;[169] he bade it carry
forth his message of fair youths throughout the world;[170] and he
claimed a special inspiration from heaven for singing of one sole
subject, paiderastia.[171] It may be said with truth that Straton
understood the bent of his own genius. We trace a blunt earnestness of
intention in his epigrams, a certainty of feeling and directness of
artistic treatment, which show that he had only one object in view.
Meleager has far higher qualities as a poet, and his feeling, as well as
his style, is more exquisite. But he wavered between the love of boys
and women, seeking in both the satisfaction of emotional yearnings which
in the modern world would have marked him as a sentimentalist. The
so-called _Mousa Paidike_, "Muse of Boyhood," is a collection of two
hundred and fifty-eight short poems, some of them of great artistic
merit, in praise of boys and boy-love. The common-places of these
epigrams are Ganymede and Eros;[172] we hear but little of
Aphrodite--her domain is the other section of the _Anthology_, called
Erotika. A very small percentage of these compositions can be described
as obscene;[173] none are nasty, in the style of Martial or Ausonius;
some are exceedingly picturesque;[174] a few are written in a strain of
lofty or of lovely music;[175] one or two are delicate and subtle in
their humour.[176] The whole collection supplies good means of judging
how the Greeks of the decadence felt about this form of love. _Malakia_
is the real condemnation of this poetry, rather than brutality or
coa