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basket out of bulrushes and placed him in the basket amid the reeds of the Nile. Moses was discovered by Pharaoh's daughter who took pity on him and decided to raise him as her own child, using the child's own mother for a nurse.

• See special entry • MOSES AND THE BOOK OF EXODUS on p. 264.

But going back to what's fundamental, Vic, it seems to me you guard everything you do like you were protecting baby Moses from the Pharaoh.

SARA PARETSKY Tunnel Vision, 1994

Samson

In the Bible, the Book of Judges relates how Samson, an Israelite leader known for his great strength, was betrayed to the Philistines by his lover, Delilah. She discovered that the secret of Samson's strength lay in his long hair and had it cut off while he slept. Delilah delivered Samson up to the Philistines, who blinded him and imprisoned him in Gaza. During his captivity, his hair grew back and, being brought out to make sport for the Philistines during a religious celebration, he called on God for strength and pulled down the pillars supporting the temple, destroying himself and a large number of Philistines.

Various aspects of the Samson story are dealt with throughout the book.

• See DELILAH at Betrayal and Cunning

PHILISTINES at Enemy

SAMSON at Blindness, Captives, Hair, Strength, and Weakness

SAMSON AND DELILAH at L o v e r s .

Sculptors

Literary allusions to sculptors have tended to be to those of antiquity or classical legend, typically in order to describe the seeming perfection of a person's physical beauty.

Galatea In Greek mythology, Galatea was the name of the ivory statue of a woman carved by the sculptor Pygmalion. He fell in love with his creation which, in answer to his prayer, the goddess Aphrodite brought to life. •See

PYGMALION.

Myron Myron (f.480-440 BC) was a Greek sculptor who produced very lifelike sculptures of people, most famously the Discobolus, a figure of a man throwing a discus.

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Phidias Phidias (or Pheidias) was a 5th-century BC Athenian sculptor, celebrated for his colossal gold-and-ivory Athena Parthenos at Athens and for his vast statue of Zeus at Olympia. He also designed many of the sculptures of the Parthenon and Acropolis.

In Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly seem the typical countenance of the future. Should there be a classical period to art hereafter, its Pheidias may produce such faces.

THOMAS HARDY The Return of the Native, 1880

Praxiteles Praxiteles (4th century BC) was an Athenian sculptor. Although only one of his works survives, a sculpture of Hermes carrying the infant Dionysus, he is considered to be one of the foremost Greek sculptors. One of his most famous works was a statue of Aphrodite, which is known through later copies.

She had bared her plump neck, shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as luminous and beautiful as some Praxitelean creation.

THOMAS HARDY Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 1891

He stood up slowly and went over to close the curtains. His silhouette against the window was like something Praxiteles might have knocked up for personal consumption.

LAUREN HENDERSON The Black Rubber Dress, 1997

Pygmalion In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a legendary king of Cyprus who made a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it and prayed to Aphrodite to give him a wife resembling the statue. Aphrodite responded by bringing the statue to life, and Pygmalion married the woman thus created, whose name was Galatea.

You see, he is after all building a woman of his own fancy, a face to a husband's own specifications; only Pygmalion had such a chance before!

LAWRENCE DURRELL MountoHve, 1958

Seducers and Male Lovers

Most of the allusions covered below epitomize male promiscuity or sexual predatoriness. The idea of a male lover free of such connotations can be represented by PRINCE CHARMING and, sometimes, ROMEO. • See also Lovers,

Sex and Sexuality.

Casanova Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-98) was an Italian adventurer, spy, gambler, and librarian who, according to his Memoirs, engaged in a prodigious number of promiscuous love affairs.

Everybody looked like a broken-down movie extra, a withered starlet; disenchanted stunt-men, midget auto-racers, poignant California characters with their end-of-the- continent sadness, handsome, decadent, Casanova-ish men, puffy-eyed motel

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Cinderella story, can also be applied to any idealized young lover or suitor.

OSCAR WILDE The Picture of Dorian Cray, 1891

It always happens this way. The right bridegroom turns up verily like the Prince Charming all of a sudden when the time comes.

R. K. NARAYAN Under the Banyan Tree, 1985

Romeo Romeo is the passionate and faithful young lover in Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1599). His name can be used to denote a young man in love, though it is now frequently, and somewhat unjustly, applied to a womanizer, as in the phrase 'the office Romeo'.

His personal feeling that loving Phoebe Wilson was a thing beyond the scope of the most determined Romeo he concealed. It could, apparently be done.

p. c. woDEHOusE Cocktail Time, 1958

It's that middle stretch of the night, when the curtains leak no light, the only streetnoise is the grizzle of a returning Romeo, and the birds haven't begun their routine yet cheering business.

JULIAN BARNES A History of the World in 10V2 Chapters, 1989

Zeus The greatest of the Greek gods, identified by the Romans with Jupiter, Zeus was the protector and ruler of mankind, the dispenser of justice, and the god of weather (whose most famous weapon was the thunderbolt). Although he was the husband of Hera, there are many stories of him amorously pursuing other goddesses and, usually having assumed a disguise, mortal women. For example, Zeus visited Danae in the form of a shower of gold, Leda as a swan, and Europa as a bull.

Sex and Sexuality

This theme overlaps with the closely related theme Love and Marriage. The entries below are largely concerned with sexual desire, and in some cases with lechery or debauchery. More specific aspects of human sexuality are associated with such names as LOLITA, OEDIPUS, MARQUIS DE SADE and SAPPHO. • See also Prostitutes, Seducers and Male Lovers, Sirens.

Adam According to the Book of Genesis, Adam was the first man on earth who, with Eve, the first woman, disobeyed God and was expelled from the Garden of Eden. The term 'old Adam' refers to the evil or sinfulness that is

As he put his arms around her again the still small voice of his conscience whispered

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'Rachel'; it was answered by the robust voice of the Old Adam pointing out that he had never claimed to be a saint.

RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS Matricide at St Martha's, 1994

Alcibiades Alcibiades (c.450-404 BC) was an Athenian general and statesman who had a reputation for debauchery. He had been a student and perhaps a lover of Socrates.

Aphrodite In Greek mythology, Aphrodite was the goddess of beauty, sexual love, and fertility, corresponding to the Roman goddess Venus. She is supposed to have been born from the sea-foam on the shores of the island of Cythera.

Who is this goddess who comes in a vision with uncovered breast cutting the air? It

Astarte Astarte was the Phoenician goddess of sexual love and fertility, corresponding to the Babylonian Ishtar, the Egyptian Isis, the Greek Aphrodite, and others. In the Bible she is referred to as Ashtoreth or Ashtaroth, and her worship is linked with that of the male god Baal.

Bacchus Bacchus was another name for the Greek god Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele. Originally a god of the fertility of nature, associated with wild and ecstatic religious rites, in later traditions he is a god of wine who loosens inhibitions and inspires creativity in music and poetry. The adjectives 'Bacchic' and 'Bacchanalian' usually describe orgiastic or drunken revelry.

She was shaken by a Bacchic and bawdy mood.

GRAHAM CREENE Brighton Rock, 1938

Her dreams began to become scenes of entangled limbs and uninhibited bacchanalia. People copulated and cavorted in improbable positions with superhuman

gusto.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, 1990

Byron George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) was an English romantic poet, famous for his passionate love affairs as much as for his poetry. His major works include Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-18) and Don Juan (1819-24) The term 'Byronic' can suggest both passionate romanticism and libertinism.

It appeared that he had been a Lincolnshire country doctor of Cornish extraction, striking appearance, and Byronic tendencies.

JOHN GALSWORTHY The Man of Property, 1906

Dionysian In Greek mythology, Dionysus (also called Bacchus) is a Greek god, the son of Zeus and Semele. Originally a god of the fertility of nature, associated with wild and ecstatic religious rites, in later traditions he is a god of wine who loosens inhibitions and inspires creativity in music and poetry. 'Dionysian' and 'Dionysiac' usually describe frenzied and unrestrained abandon or ecstasy.

Someone dimmed the lights and turned up the sitar music. They swayed and pressed and wriggled against each other in the twanging, orange, smoky twilight, it was a

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7th century BC. The poetry that survives consists mainly of love poems, many expressing her passionate friendships with women. This explains her association with female homosexuality and the derivation of the words 'lesbian' and 'Sapphic'.

She was one of the group known as the 'Dorm 5 Co' who were suspected of active homosexual relations which, if the stories were true, left the school's more normal Sapphic romances looking almost Christian.

PETER CAREY lllywhcicker, 1985

Satyr In classical mythology satyrs were lustful woodland spirits associated with Dionysian revelry. In Greek art they were represented with the tail and ears of a horse, whereas Roman sculptors represented them with the ears, horns, tail, and legs of a goat.

The looseness of his lower lip and the droop of his upper eyelids combined with the V's in his face to make his grin lewd as a satyr's.

DASHIELL HAMMETT The Maltese Falcon, 1930

It was hard to imagine H. E. sniffing after some other country woman, or being discovered mounting one of the milking girls. H. E., even when he was twenty-seven, would not have made a credible farmyard satyr.

THOMAS KENEALLY The Ploymciker, 1987

Sodom Sodom and Gomorrah were towns in ancient Palestine, probably south of the Dead Sea. According to Gen. 19: 24, they were destroyed byfireand brimstone from heaven as a punishment for the depravity and wickedness of their inhabitants. In particular 'the sin of Sodom' is traditionally taken to refer to buggery.

'Be serious. It's not just the wife. Dunny, we have to face it. You're queer! 'The sin of Sodom, you mean? If you knew boys as I do, you would not suggest anything so grotesque. If Oscar Wilde had pleaded insanity, he would have walked out of court a free man.'

ROBERTSON DAViES Fifth Business, 1970

Venus Venus, corresponding to the Greek Aphrodite, was the Roman goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. She was supposed to have been born from the seafoam and was herself the mother of Eros.

'As for Justine,' said Pursewarden to me when he was drunk once, 'I regard her as a tiresome old sexual turnstile through which presumably we must all pass—a somewhat vulpine Alexandrian Venus!

LAWRENCE DURRELL BalthOZOT, 1 9 5 8

Oscar Wilde The Irish writer Oscar Wilde (i854-1900), a dandy and a notorious homosexual, was imprisoned for two years in Reading gaol (1895-97) for homosexual offences. He has subsequently been revered as a martyr by the gay rights movement.

'Your brother Roderick, I think,' Colefax continued, 'had a fiancee and was engaged to be married?' 'Oh yes. They'd both dined with me that night at my club. There was absolutely none of the Oscar Wildes about Rory!

JOHN MORTIMER Rumpole's Return, 1980