Gods in the Garden
Roma Amor is an extremely lush production featuring a hundred-odd magnificent plates, many of them in colour, of 'curious' Roman, Etruscan and Hellenistic works of art. There is also a lucid and nicely printed essay by Professor Jean Marcade of Bordeaux University, in which he explains the traditional functions of ancient erotica in such a way as to render the volume respectable beyond question.
We must understand, says the professor, that then as now in Southern regions everyone was much disquieted by the evil eye. According to the pundits (and Democritus himself lent some 'weight to this theory) the evil eye might be explained as a discharge of malignant particles which, having their origin in the lust, envy or hatred of the transmitting agent, entered the bodies of those at whom they were directed and there caused ills both physical and spiritual. The best way to deal with this noxious effluvium was to disconcert its orginator by shocking him or making him laugh; and this might be done by dis- playing amulets, etcetera, which carried prom- inent and lewd devices of buttocks, phalli and what not. But if priapic decorations might be used for personal protection, they could also, by extension, be used to protect one's property, one's household, and even entire cities. So a phallus over the front door did not necessarily mean that the place was a brothel; it might have been there, like a horseshoe in Acacia Avenue, simply as a charm. Daring pictures in the dining-room were not ordinarily there to provoke the guests to orgies. They were to inhibit them from carrying off the plate.
Professor Marcadd then goes on to discuss other religious or superstitious matters with which erotic performances or representations are com- monly connected. There is fertility, of course (some splendid garden gods are reproduced to mark the point), and also death—an erotic paint- ing in the tomb was at once a reminder of good things past and a promise of even better things
to come in the next world: aucto splendore resurgo. But as the essay proceeds, one detects that the professor is becoming faintly uneasy, and at last the inevitable and unedifying admis- sion emerges : although erotic decorations and objets might originally have been the genuine products of superstitious fears and religious aspirations, as time went on religion ceased to be a cause and became just an excuse. The god was forgotten but the annual spree went on : no one gave a hoot for Jupiter Tonans, but his legendary exploits lent themselves to some very amusing sketches. On the whole, the professor concedes, this must have been the moral state of play at the time when the celebrated Pompeian paintings (a generous selection of which appears in this book) were executed. He can condone them only on the ground that some of them have a certain delicacy while yet others might be said to convey something of the eternal power of physical love.
And here at last I shall take issue with the professor. For it seems to me that the overwhelm- ing impression these paintings make is one of sheer gross jollity. I can discover little delicacy and only occasional ecstasy. What there is—and quite right too—is laughter. And therein, I think, pace Professor Marcadd, is the real value of the volume. God, to paraphrase the remark of a recent Graham Greene character, really cannot have been wholly serious when he distributed the sexual instinct: look at it which way you will, the two-backed beast is funny if not downright grotesque. This is the truth we are in danger of forgetting; with all our solemn talk of sex education and sexual 'adjustment,' with all the prate of Lawrence and the simpering love lessons of Marie Stopes, with all our idiotic jealousies and sensitivities and whining about 'relation- ships,' what we have forgotten is that sex is, among other things, extraordinarily comic. It is first-class entertainment : fond, amusing, ridicu- lous and gay; it is something to be laughed at, enjoyed, relished in retrospect and then laughed at once again. It is not something to take too seriously; if you are busy having high thoughts you will be wanting in zest and will miss the elementary fun of the thing, and this is the object of the exercise, so help me Hermes. If Roma Amor reminds a few people of this, if it makes us more lewd and less self-conscious, then it will have 'fulfilled a very valuable social ser- vice. And a happy Lupercalia to all readers.
SIMON RAVEN
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