The erotic symbolism of the apple in late Byzantine and meta-Byzantine demotic literature

Abstract

The erotic symbolism of the apple in the writers of pagan Greece afforded the Byzantines an oft-chosen field for demonstrating both their learning and their ingenuity. This exercise in antiquarianism, however, tends to conceal among at least some segments of the population a continuing daily use of such symbolism and indeed a persistent belief in the efficacy of fruits of the apple-kind in promoting fertility. Even in the Hochsprache we hear of supposedly historical tales of the ninth-century emperor Theophilos signifying his choice of bride by means of an apple and of two apples sent as lovers’ gifts, one by the fifth-century empress Eudokia (consort of Theodosios II) and the second by a twelfth-century commoner (Seth Skleros), the former leading to a divorce, the latter to a successful prosecution for sorcery; while the tenth-century author Ioannes Geometres gives an otherwise unattested erotic aition for the tree’s creation — a beautiful and bashful young girl is so saddened and embarrassed when her drunken would-be lovers quarrel over her, with results fatal to some of them, that in response to her prayer she is metamorphosed into an apple-tree.

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