title: The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New Ancient World Series)
author:  John J. Winkler 
description: "The entire work is an excellent one for courses on women in antiquity. . . History courses will profit from the section on male sexuality in classical Athens. . . this sophisticated and valuable work is accessible to a very wide audience."<br />-"Classical World <br />
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  # The World's Desire
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  ### H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  To
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  W. B. RICHMOND, A.R.A.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  ### PREFACE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  The period in which the story of The World's Desire is cast, was
  
  
  a period when, as Miss Braddon remarks of the age of the
  
  
  Plantagenets, "anything might happen." Recent discoveries, mainly
  
  
  by Dr. Schliemann and Mr. Flinders Petrie, have shown that there
  
  
  really was much intercourse between Heroic Greece, the Greece of
  
  
  the Achaeans, and the Egypt of the Ramessids. This connection,
  
  
  rumoured of in Greek legends, is attested by Egyptian relics found
  
  
  in the graves of Mycenae, and by very ancient Levantine pottery,
  
  
  found in contemporary sites in Egypt. Homer himself shows us
  
  
  Odysseus telling a feigned, but obviously not improbable, tale of
  
  
  an Achaean raid on Egypt. Meanwhile the sojourn of the Israelites,
  
  
  with their Exodus from the land of bondage, though n