§140. Inside the Greek poetry, maidens plus enjoy throughout the meadows, hence subject has already established a whole lot scholarly focus you to full dialogue we have found hopeless. ” Just like the Stehle Stigers demostrates, new meadow was a place of virginity, and in addition of their loss, the newest fate of the vegetation parallel to that particular out of an effective maiden. This new antique example of the latest theme is, however, Persephone’s fateful selecting of your own plants in a beautiful meadow and with her family. It has got for ages been pointed out that one of several meadow’s defining functions are the unproductiveness, hence really stands inside sharp compare towards fertility of ploughed occupation. Much like the metaphor of ploughing try conveyed about Athenian well-known dictum into purpose of relationship, it is therefore implicit regarding the Russian personalized out of clinging an excellent plough over the doorway of the newlywed’s bed room. The fresh new bride’s sounds, alternatively, will never be concerned about fertility, doubt from the the noisy silence the fact that one thing is provided to your bride to be during the compensation for what she will lose. The newest question of one’s maiden’s sounds plus the bride’s lament is actually maybe not generation, but natural beauty and its own irrevocable losings, illustrated given that natural destruction.

Alternatively, brand new meadow try an excellent locus from sensual potentiality and “awakening sexual feel,” an appealing yet , unsafe location for girls, in which, just like the Rosenmeyer places it, there aren’t any men, however, “risks regarding predation hover in the sides

§141. This new haunts of your own maidens are gorgeous and you will ineffective, be they nuts spaces, such as for example meadows and you may forests, or spaces that are, actually, expanded and you can protected. So it latter option is because the commonplace since previous, however, features additional connotations. From the meadows, the latest maiden was exposed and also in the organization out of their decades-mates-it is within mode that she can be seen because of the their own husband to be, and out of this means that she is generally snatched. The picture from a protected rose garden, at the same time, tend to is because of the fresh bride’s parents, with her sheltered and you may lavish existence in the parental household, that’s visiting an end since the undoubtedly because the to experience when you look at the the new meadows. Right here one particular hitting parallel to your Russian relationships songs arrives once more out-of Catullus 62, where chorus off maidens will not offer any benefit in order to relationships and measures up good maiden to a rose for the a beneficial walled garden in which neither cows neither plough can threaten it. Even though it is safe, the fresh new flower is breathtaking and preferred, however, when it is plucked it both is out and you may fades from see, not any longer “sweet” and you will “dear” in order to boys and you will girls, a fortune similar to that of the new maiden:

Ut flos qui in saeptis secretus nascitur hortis, ignotus pecori, nullo convulsus aratro, quem mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber. multiple illum pueri, multae optavere puellae: idem spunk tenui carptus defloruit ungui, nulli illum pueri, nullae optavere puellae: sic virgo, dum intacta manet, dum cara suis est; spunk castum amisit polluto corpore florem, nec pueris iucunda manet, nec cara puellis.

Suffice they to state that the brand new meadow could have been aptly described given that good “room filled up with Eros” and you will “structure to own online game that lead so you can fulfillment away from amorous desire,” but in addition to a gap that’s scarcely the newest locus from sex

Same as a rose increases invisible for the a shut garden, unfamiliar to cattle, uprooted by no plough, a rose that breezes caress, sunlight improves, the latest precipitation rears. Of numerous youngsters, of numerous maidens appeal they- You to definitely same flower once they withers, plucked by the a softer nail, No youths, no maidens notice: Simply thus an effective maiden, provided the woman is unblemished, is actually dear in order to their own nearest and dearest; After she will lose new natural rose, their own system defiled, She does not will always be fun to children, neither beloved so you’re able to maidens.