Mirror Cover with Eros and erotic scene (symplegma)

The box mirror, a lidded container with a mirror as the base, came into use toward the end of the fifth century B.C. The mirror was a cast bronze disk with a highly polished metallic surface; the cover, usually decorated in relief, protected the reflective surface from damage. Some three hundred bronze box mirrors survive from the late Classical and Hellenistic periods, attesting to the popularity of these objects among Greek women. In fact, many epigrams and poems in Greek and Latin ridicule the female absorption with self-gazing and portray men who use mirrors as feminized. The frequency with which representations of Aphrodite and Eros, as well as images of mythical abductions, decorate mirror covers suggests a preference for erotic subject matter. This cover, however, is the only one thus far discovered to feature explicit sex scenes-a man and woman, in the act of making love, are embossed in relief on the exterior, and another amorous couple is engraved into a silver coating on the underside. Reportedly found in a grave in Corinth, the overtly erotic mirror has been linked with a hetaira (courtesan) named Leaina, who, according to an ancient source, was a favorite of a King Demetrios. Leaina was, in fact, famous for the position, referred to as "lioness," graphically illustrated on the mirror cover. The images offer remarkably rare and vivid insights into ancient erotic behavior: the presentation of a sexually assertive woman, shown in full frontal nudity, challenges traditional Greek gender stereotypes, in which women were presumed to be the passive sexual objects of male desire. The late fourth-century-B.C. Greek woman who owned this prized possession must have gazed upon it and into it with knowing interest.