SEX IN ANCIENT GREECE: SPELLS, POTIONS, LAWS, ADOLESCENTS AND GETTING IT UP

SEX IN ANCIENT GREECE

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The Greeks gave sexual matters a fair amount of attention. Men raised monuments to their genitalia and had sex with the sons of their friends. Some had slave lovers. Naughty images were featured on vases and drinking cups. Sexual themes were common in Greek drama and actors routinely wore conspicuously short costumes with massive woolen phalluses hanging out the bottom. The word "ecstacy comes from the Greek word “ ekstasis” , which means to "stand forth naked."

The Greek gods realized that sex was the driving force behind all things. According to Herodotus, “the Athenians were first to make statues of Hermes with an erect phallus. Hippocrates was one of the first to advise men to preserve their semen to boost vitality. The Greek poet Hero wrote in the 4th century B.C. that a man's sex drive decreases in the late summer when "goats are the fattest" and "the wine tastes best."

The Greeks believed that the root of purple-flowered mandrake was an aphrodisiac. The root is shaped like a pair of human legs. The Romans and Greeks regarded garlic and leeks as aphrodisiacs. Truffles, artichokes and oysters were also associated with sexuality. Anise-tasting fennel was popular with Greeks who thought it made a man strong. Romans thought it improved eyesight.

On the origin of the dildo, Ray Tannahill wrote in the “ History of Sex” : "Masturbation, to the Greeks, was not a vice but a safety valve, and there are numerous literary references to it...Miletus, a wealthy commercial city on the coast of Asia Minor, was the manufacturing and exporting center of what the Greeks called the “ olisbos” , and later generations, less euphoniously, the dildo...The imitation penis appears in Greek times to have been made either of wood or pressed leather and had to be liberally anointed with olive oil before use...Among the literary relics of the third century B.C., there is a short play consisting of a dialogue between two young women, Metro and Coritto, which begins with Metro trying to borrow Coritto's dildo. Coritto, unfortunately, his lent it to someone else, who has in turn lent it to another friend."

For women sex was used as a form of power. In Aristophanes’s “ Lysieria” the heroine leads the women of Athens in a sex strike in which wives refuse to sleep with their husbands to get even with the dominate male class. The strike paralyzes the city and the women seize the Acropolis and the treasure of the Parthenon. [Source: "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin,μ]

Websites on Ancient Greece:
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Lives and Social Culture of Ancient Greece, Maryville University online.maryville.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; ; Gutenberg.org gutenberg.org; British Museum ancientgreece.co.uk; Illustrated Greek History, Dr. Janice Siegel, Hampden–Sydney College hsc.edu/drjclassics ; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org/web; Ancient Greek Sites on the Web from Medea showgate.com/medea ; Greek History Course from Reed web.archive.org; Classics FAQ MIT classics.mit.edu

Book: “ Courtesand and Fishcakes: the Consuming Passions of Classical Athens” by James Davidson (St. Martins Press, 1998)

Views About Sex in Ancient Greece

Hope E. Ashby wrote: The Greeks were agrarian people. There was a sharp division between the roles of men and women. In ancient Greece, as in some isolated Greek rural areas of today, the woman's role was as wife, mother, and helpmate. Men, by contrast, were free to seek satisfaction outside the home, including homosexual pleasures. In ancient Greece, romantic love was viewed as interfering with reason and unsuitable as a basis for marriage. Still, sexual pleasure was seen in the context of other worldly satisfactions and as a sufficient goal unto itself. Sex did not necessarily have to be procreative, nor did it have to be heterosexual. Greek citizens were great admirers of beauty as an aesthetic value in all things. It was usual to be aesthetically attracted to those of either sex. Further, men customarily formed a mentor-protégé relationship with pubescent or postpubescent boys. These close associations frequently and normally included homosexual behavior. This practice was not customary among consenting adult males, however, unless there was no access to other sexual outlets. The relative availability of slaves of both sexes resulted in sexual exploitation of that group. Greek males were in essence frequently bisexual. Individuals were not categorized as to sexual preference, though unrestrained passions of whatever kind were discouraged, as were other worldly excesses. The ideal was to lead a self-disciplined life, albeit a sensually full one, within the confines of moderation. An aesthetically beautiful and ethically pleasing life was a commonly agreed-upon goal. [Source: “Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia”, Haeberle, Erwin J., Bullough, Vern L. and Bonnie Bullough, eds., sexarchive.info]

The Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos, born ca. 600 B.C., was a well-respected poet among the citizens of her time; she was not singled out as a "lesbian" poet, as so often is the case today. Greeks made no such distinctions. Plutarch and Lucian also speak of the existence of homoeroticism among Greek women of the time. Artistic representations of both male and female genitalia were prevalent; they were not, as is often the case today, a medium for titillation or an occasion for disgust, but were depicted with reverence. Greeks viewed their bodies as a whole, aesthetically diffuse as to beauty and sexuality. Their literature does not mention sadomasochism, and they appear not to have recognized as "perverseness" such practices as bestiality. Greek erotic life was generally uninhibited and free of many of the proscriptions of the later Western world. Themes of incest and homosexuality are represented in Greek mythology, for example in connection with the god Zeus, who is shown as having multiple partners and as bisexual. Representing an incestuous theme, Aphrodite was married to one half-brother while enamored of another; when the pair were discovered, they were a source of amusement for the other gods. It is noteworthy that while Greeks made sport of their gods' sexual antics, in a religious sense the same gods were treated with reverence. The duality of sexuality was reflected in the self-indulgent pleasures of the centaurs, associated with degradation and ultimately death, as contrasted to the playful, harmless satyrs. Ancient Greek literature treated the male sex organ as an object of worship, as part of religious life. Unlike the later Christian world, the world of the ancient Greeks did not separate physical from nonphysical love, the body from the spirit. The major prohibitive theme of that time was the admonition against unbridled appetites of all sorts, including sexual passions.

Greek drama is replete with erotic themes. Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus illustrates the dangers of incestuous love between parent and child. Reflective of the restraints placed on Greek women, comedies often had as their theme conflict between the sexes, notably in Lysistrata, in which the women withhold sex until their men agree to stop fighting. A satyr finds sex pleasurable but never achieves a feeling of complete sexual satisfaction. Although orgasm occurs most of the time, he still remains unsatisfied; complete physical and psychological gratification is never achieved. This compels him to continually seek another partner in the hope of finding gratification.

Sex and Religion in Ancient Greece

priestess of Delphi by Collier

Greek pilgrims are said to have visited a temple in Corinth dedicated to Aphrodite and cavorted with prostitute-priestesses there. Strabo wrote in 2 B.C.: "The temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it employed more than a thousand hetairas, whom both men and women had given to the goddess. Many people visited the town on account of them, and thus these hetairas contributed to the riches of the town: for the ship captains frivolously spent their money there, hence the saying: 'The voyage to Corinth is not for every man'. (The story goes of a hetaira being reproached by a woman for not loving her job and not touching wool, and answering her: 'However you may behold me, yet in this short time I have already taken down three pieces'.)"

The Greek creation story emphasizes the creation of gods not the creation of the Earth and has a lot of sex in it. The Greeks believed that love and sex existed at the beginning of creation along with the Earth, the heavens, and the Underworld . Chaos, apparently the first Greek celestial being, was a goddess who beget "Gaia, the broad-breasted" and "Eros, the fairest of the deathless gods." Chaos also gave birth to Erebos and black Night. These two offspring mated and gave birth to Ether and Day. They in turn gave birth to the Titans.

The Titans existed before the gods. They were the sons of the heaven and earth. Cronus , the father of Zeus was one of the Titans. He castrated his father, Uranus, and out his blood emerged the Furies, the Giants and the Nymphs from the Ash Trees. Aphrodite arose from the discarded genitals. The god's lovemaking positions were also a little weird. Tartarus, the goddess of the Underworld , made love with Typhoeus while he was one her shoulders with his hundred snake heads "licking black tongues darting forth." [Source: "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin,μ]

Sex and Literature in Ancient Greece

Ancient Greek literature is filled with sex, violence and scandal. Some of the most famous works by Aristophanes — including “The Birds” , “Lysistrata” and especially “Women at the Thesmoporia” “are filled with obscenities and sexual innuendos. The reasons why some of the works are relatively clean today — and more boring than the otherwise might be — is that many of the translations were done by Victorian era Britons. Greek dramas often featured liberal use actors of with giant phalluses and references to homosexuality. In “ Clouds” Aristophanes wrote: "How to be modest, sitting so as not to expose his crotch, smoothing out the sand when he arose so that the impress of his buttocks would not be visible, and how to be strong...The emphasis was on beauty...A beautiful boy is a good boy. Education is bound up with male love, an idea that is part of the pro-Spartan ideology of Athens...A youth who is inspired by his love of an older male will attempt to emulate him, the heart of educational experience. The older male in his desire of the beauty of the youth will do whatever he can improve it."

In Aristophanes's “ The Birds” , one older man says to another with disgust: "Well, this is a fine state of affairs, you demanded desperado! You meet my son just as he comes out of the gymnasium, all rise from the bath, and don't kiss him, you don't say a word to him, you don't hug him, you don't feel his balls! And you're supposed to be a friend of ours!"

Love in Ancient Greece

Courtship scene Some scholars claim that the idea of love began with the Greeks and the notion of romantic love began with chivalry in the Middle Ages. The ancient Greek poet Nimnerus wrote: "What is life, what is joy without golden Aphrodite?/ May I die when these things no longer move me?/ hidden love affairs, sweet nothings and bed."

According to one myth, Zeus originally created three sexes: men, women and hermaphrodites. The hermaphrodites had two heads, two set of arms and two sets of genitals. Alarmed by their power, he separated each one in half: some became lesbians, some became male homosexuals and some became heterosexuals. Each felt incomplete and spent his or her life trying to track his or her other half down.

Arisphanes expressed similar ideas. In an attempt define love he wrote: "Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of man, and he is always looking for his other half...And when one of them meets his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or of another sort, the pair are lost in amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even a moment...yet they could not explain what they desire in one another" other than "this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of an ancient need."

Adolescent Sex in Ancient Greece

According to “Growing Up Sexually: “ As mentioned by Plato, there was a discourse on sexual abuse of children in classical Athens, and acts of an erotic nature were considered hubris, which was to cover for the apparent absence of a statutory rape provision. Specifically, their were a range of laws pertaining to circumstances which could lead to the corruption of boys, and the law of hubris “may have made prosecution at least a theoretical possibility for any consummated act of intercourse with minors”. A genuine age of consent, although perhaps a meaningful argument, is not known. [Source: “Growing Up Sexually, Volume” I by D. F. Janssen, World Reference Atlas, 2004]

Booth, sketching the dangers of Greek symposia, where “eating, drinking and sexual indulgence constitute an intimate and unholy trinity”, tried to establish the legal “drinking age” of boys. In Rome “assumption of the toga virilis was on the one hand recognized to bestow freedom to recline and on the other to render desirable some restraint and guidance”. This does not mean children were excluded from parties, but that “in proper imperial practice, before assumption of the toga virilis, princes did not recline but sat, and they did not participate fully in the convivium”.

In ancient Greece, the boy was loved from pubescence, at age 14, to the beard, appearing “at least four years later in life than it does in a modern population”, or somewhere around 21. The only precaution taken was to depilate boys’ anuses, stated Martial and Suetonius. “At least in comedies and satyr plays, admittedly a raunchier environment then everyday Athens, boys were identified as sexual beings from an early age...Aristotle...observes that boys enjoy rubbing their penises before (though only shortly before) they are able to ejaculate... Awareness of boys’ interest in the subject leads Xenophon to approve of the Persian reluctance to discuss sex in front of the very young lest their lack of discipline lead to exces.”.

Plato argued for sexual segregation at age 6 and valued heterosexual self-control. There seems to have been a law that referred to the age of 25 as the minimum of sexual responsibility, but there is no record of its use. Whoring was the only method of obtaining sexual intimacy, says Golden (1990), who is rather optimistic about the positive elements of this “institution”. At least, Athenian pederasty brought the meirakion “into the orbit of a wider adult male world than his father’s.” It may also be argued that pederasty functioned to support the family and the continued primacy of masculine values and ethics, where traditional views of warriorhood were degenerating.

“Plutarch reports that erotic ties between older and younger women were common. In Alcman, Parthenion 1.73, the girls mention visiting Aenesimbrota, who is probably a purveyor of love magic. She would provide drugs, spells, and magical devices to attract the object of desire. Hagnon of Tarsus, an Academic philosopher of the second century B.C., states that before marriage it was customary for Spartans to associate with virgin girls as with paidika (young boyfriends)”.

In Spartan Women (2002), S. B. Pomeroy writes: "As we have mentioned, the bare-breasted costume was worn only by girls who raced at the Heraea. Though some prepubescent Athenians raced nude at least once in their lives at the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, only Spartan girls regularly wore short dresses and exercised nude. Moreover, historical sources assign the earliest foundation of racing for girls anywhere in Greece to Lycurgus." [...] In Laws (833C), Plato prescribes nude racing only for prepubertal girls, and racing clothed for adolescents until marriage at eighteen to twenty years of age. Plato’s distinction may be reflected in the artistic portrayals of Spartan girl runners, though a modern viewer may misinterpret clues to the age of subjects in ancient art.[n106] Bronze mirrors and statuettes portraying girls completely nude seem to modeled on a prepubertal, slim-hipped girl. Those wearing the chiton show an adolescent with fully developed breasts. The older group may be dressed because they have already reached menarche and need to wear an undergarment to absorb menstrual blood.[n107]". Note 106. See further Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, Studies in Girls’ Transitions: Aspects of the Arkteia and Age Representation in Attic Iconogography (Athens, 1988).

Ancient Greek and Roman Methods for Help Getting an Erection

In an article on “Erectogenic Drugs in Greek Medicine” published in July 2019 in Pharmacy and History, University of Cincinnati doctoral student in classics Brent Arehart dug describes what he turned up in his search though ancient medical literature for remedies to help get an erection. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast, “A whole host of ancient writers, it seems, describe cures for impotence (alongside cures for venereal diseases). The second-century doctor Galen writes that “to make the penis erect” one should “anoint [it] with honey before sex” or “put arugula seed in honey and drink [it].” Galen isn’t alone; one of the ancient Greek magical papyri straightforwardly recommends a concoction of ground pepper and honey as a topical ointment for the underperforming member.[Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 13, 2019]

Many of the recipes in the ancient world utilize animal parts as remedies. Galen recommends drinking a medication made from the “the area around the kidneys of the skink (a kind of lizard)” but warns that while it can “produce erection …[it] seems able of doing the opposite, especially when imbibed with lettuce seed in water.” The late antique medical writer Oribasus recommends “stag penis.” Another author writes that the “stone found in the gizzard of the belly of an ostrich,” when worn as an amulet around the neck, has the ability to conjure “an erection for those who are already old and want to have lots of sex.” It also has the side effect of making “the wearer charming.” In what sounds like a prescription for a urinary tract infection, Galen notes the following recommendation, “whenever the bull urinates after sex, mix the soil and the mud made by the urine into a plaster and anoint it on the penis.”

Not every recipe involves animal dissection or following bulls around a paddock. The medical writer Aelius Promotus, who lived and worked in the second century A.D., provides an ingredient list in his Dynameron that can be found in well-stocked kitchens: “chopping up two ounces of arugula seed, one of pepper, and half an ounce of celery seed, take one spoonful with seasoned wine mixed with hot water on an empty stomach after a bath for three days.” If this all seems a bit elaborate, it might still be worth it; the author promises that “you will be amazed” by the results.

maenad and satyr

Aelius is an equal opportunist when it comes to aphrodisiacs and includes several recipes intended to make “the woman become weak from pleasure” or “howl.” Some of the usual ingredients — pepper and honey — appear along with more surprising elements like the berries of white ivy or a quantity of “larvae found in bathhouses.” For those experiencing an erection for four hours or more, there are also prescriptions to prevent erections. Aelius recommends that if you crush up mountain mint with wine and milk and “rub [it on] the member and it will not be made erect.”

It’s difficult to know why ancient people thought these substances are aphrodisiacs. Arehart told The Daily Beast that the texts themselves often don’t explain why a substance was thought to be stimulating and he hasn’t run across any fierce debates in the medical literature over how they work. His hunch was that many of these remedies had been passed either in texts or by word of mouth and that later doctors would then try to explain those traditions. There is, however, a pattern. Arehart said “sexual activity is often talked about as having a 'heating' effect on the body, so foods that are heating would make natural candidates for stimulation.” This can in part explain the presence of arugula and pepper in so many recipes: they’re spicy.

Erections aren’t just about getting (literally) hot. Arehart added, “When it comes to erectogenics, it seems that the pneumatic model (i.e. the idea that erection is caused by the penis being inflated by an airy substance) made flatulence-inducing foods good candidates. So, if you're like Galen and you believe that the arteries transport pneuma (in addition to blood) to the penis and that heat can dilate those arteries, thereby increasing the amount of pneuma in the penis, then heat + flatulence sounds like the perfect combo.” One might imagine that this is (or at least was) good news for men whose partners complain that they fart too much: flatulence is a sign of a man who can perform.

Sex Spells and Potions in Ancient Greece

John Opsopaus of hermetic.com wrote: “Most of the spells from the magical papyri here were discovered in Egypt the nineteenth century and brought together as part of the Anastasi Collection. It is quite likely that many of the papyri come from a single source, perhaps a tomb or temple library, and it is commonly supposed that they were collected by a Theban Magician. In any case, they are one of the best sources of Greco-Egyptian magic and religion.” One remedy goes: To be Able to Copulate a Lot: “Grind up fifty Tiny Pinecones with 2 ozs. of Sweet Wine and two Pepper Grains and drink it. [Papyri Graecae Magicae VII.184-5] To Get an Erection: When You Want Grind up a Pepper with some Honey and coat your Thing. [Papyri Graecae Magicae VII.186] [Source: John Opsopaus, Papyri Graecae Magicae hermetic.com |+|

Wine was considered to be the most basic love potion by the Greeks and had to be handled with as much care as any other spell. This was because the conjurer had to gauge the effectiveness of the serving sizes. The right amount of wine would lead to sexual arousal; too much would lead to impotence. Herbal aphrodisiacs and mood enhancers such as oleander, cyclamen, and mandrake were also used in combination with wine for enhancements. [Source Wikipedia]

The narcotics used in potions were designed to sedate men in progressive stages beginning with cheerfulness/ sexual arousal, progressing to the weakening of vitality, and finally ending with sleep. Potions were placed in one of two categories: irritants and those used to increase relaxation and affection. As with all narcotics, there was always a risk of severe harm or death being caused by accidental overdoses. The effects of the two potion categories were difficult to distinguish in small doses, but not in large amounts. Substantial doses of irritants caused cramping, pain, and insomnia while relaxants led to drowsiness and eventually a loss of consciousness.

Ancient Greek and Roman Remedies for Infertility

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: An ancient Greek medical papyrus prescribes that if you want to know if a woman will become pregnant, “You should make the woman urinate on this plant, above, again, at night. When morning comes, if you find the plant scorched, she will not conceive. If you find it green, she will conceive.” The logic here is that infertile women and barren plants are somehow synonymous and that the bodies of women can actually affect the agricultural world. For similar reasons, Pliny the Elder wrote in the first century C.E. that menstrual blood had the potential to turn new wine sour, ruin crops, kill the vegetation in your garden, kill bees, and dull steel. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, June 2, 2017]

While rooted in a certain set of alarming assumptions about the fluid in women’s bodies, the urine test is relatively innocuous. Other diagnostic tools, however, were a little more unpleasant. In On Sterile Women, the famous 4th-5th century B.C. doctor Hippocrates recommended giving a combination of butter (of a particular plant) and the milk of a woman who had given birth to a male child to a fasting woman. If the concoction makes her vomit, we’re told, she is able to get pregnant. Another test involves drinking anise water and seeing if she gets itchy around the navel. In almost all of the tests fertility is indicated by undesirable physical symptoms: itching, joint pain, dizziness, and vomiting, for example.

The most common test in the ancient world, however, involved garlic. Women were supposed to insert a head of peeled garlic into the vagina. If she tastes the garlic in her mouth the next day she was clearly capable of becoming pregnant. As Dr. Laurence Totelin has insightfully noted, the underlying logic here is that women have a tube running between their mouths and vaginas and that in healthy women this tube was not obstructed. She adds that garlic was often linked to sex in the world. Women used to eat it as a means of warding off sexual advances, and sacred laws from Attica instructed men to stay away from garlic, “pigs” (slang for the vulva), and women. The scientific theories justifying these tests actually varied, as Professor Laura Zucconi has argued, from culture to culture; nevertheless a number of ancient peoples from the Greeks to the Egyptians used the “garlic test” for fertility.

silphion This isn’t to say that there were no ancient cures for infertility, but they weren’t especially pleasant either. Pliny the Elder wrote that the urine of eunuchs could counteract the damaging effects of infertility spells. More often than not, however, ancient Greek women resorted to fumigating the vagina. As noted historian of medicine Helen King has written, in the fifth century B.C. women would sit “while a jar full of healing ingredients was heated up in a hole in the ground, with the top of the jar firmly sealed except for a reed that passed the fumes from the jar into the woman’s vagina.” The point of the procedure, she explains, was to induce the womb — which ancient Greeks believed could wander around the body — to return to its correct location. The contents of the jar included the old favorite garlic, but sometimes seal oil (seals were thought both to look like women and to be well endowed) or dead puppies stuffed with fragrant substances. Why puppies? Likely because they were born in litters and, thus, symbolized fertility.

Birth Control and Contraceptives in Ancient Greece

According to historians, demographic studies suggest the ancients attempted to limit family size. Greek historians wrote that urban families in the first and second centuries B.C. tried to have only one or two children. Between A.D. 1 and 500, it was estimated the population within the bounds of the Roman Empire declined from 32.8 million to 27.5 million (but there can be all sorts of reason for this excluding birth control).

Birth control methods in ancient Greece included avoiding deep penetration when menstruation was "ending and abating" (the time Greeks thought a woman was most fertile); sneezing and drinking something cold after having sex; and wiping the cervix with a lock of fine wool or smearing it with salves and oils made from aged olive oil, honey, cedar resin, white lead and balsam tree oil. Before intercourse women tried applying a perceived spermicidal oil made from juniper trees or blocking their cervix with a block of wood. Women also ate dates and pomegranates to avoid pregnancy (modern studies have shown that the fertility of rats decreases when they ingest these foods).

Women in Greece and the Mediterranean were told that scooped out pomegranates halves could be used as cervical caps and sea sponges rinsed in acidic lemon juice could serve as contraceptives. The Greek physician Soranus wrote in the 2nd century A.D. : "the woman ought, in the moment during coitus when the man ejaculates his sperm, to hold her breath, draw her body back a little so the semen cannot penetrate into the uteri, then immediately get up and sit down with bent knees, and this position provoke sneezes."

Law Code of Gortyn (450 B.C.) On Rape and Adultery

The Law Code of Gortyn (450 B.C.) is the most complete surviving Greek Law code. According to the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: “In Greek tradition, Crete was an early home of law. In the 19th Century, a law code from Gortyn on Crete was discovered, dealing fully with family relations and inheritance; less fully with tools, slightly with property outside of the household relations; slightly too, with contracts; but it contains no criminal law or procedure. This (still visible) inscription is the largest document of Greek law in existence (see above for its chance survival), but from other fragments we may infer that this inscription formed but a small fraction of a great code.” [Source:Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece, Fordham University]

“II. If one commit rape on a free man or woman, he shall pay 100 staters, and if on the son or daughter of an apetairos ten, and if a slave on a free man or woman, he shall pay double, and if a free man on a male or female serf five drachmas, and if a serf on a male or female serf, five staters. If one debauch a female house-slave by force he shall pay two staters, but if one already debauched, in the daytime, an obol, but if at night, two obols. If one tries to seduce a free woman, he shall pay ten staters, if a witness testify. . .

“III. If one be taken in adultery with a free woman in her father=s, brother=s, or husband=s house, he shall pay 100 staters, but if in another=s house, fifty; and with the wife of an apetairos, ten. But if a slave with a free woman, he shall pay double, but if a slave with a slave=s wife, five. . .

Sex Life of the Amazons

Joshua Rothman wrote in The New Yorker: The Greeks, of course, were fascinated by the Amazons’ sex lives. They came up with all sorts of lurid ideas—that they were single-breasted lesbians who killed their male children, or that they mated once a year with strangers to perpetuate an all-female society, or that an Amazon had to kill a man before she could lose her virginity. [Source: Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, October 17, 2014]

“ The idea was that the Amazons had, in some sense, renounced their femininity. The reality of Amazon family life was different. There seems to have been great diversity in approaches to child rearing: archaeologists have found childrens’ skeletons interred with lone men, lone women, and couples. Some groups may have practiced “fosterage”: the exchange of children to cement alliances. The best accounts of “Amazon sex,” meanwhile, suggests that it “was robust, promiscuous. It took place outdoors, outside of marriage, in the summer season, with any man an Amazon cared to mate with.” (Among some groups, “the sign for sex in progress was a quiver hung outside a woman’s wagon.”)

“You can get a sense of the roundedness of the Amazon life by looking at Amazon names. Mayor worked with a linguist and vase expert to examine some of the words on vases depicting Amazons. Previously, they had been considered “nonsense words,” but they turned out to be “suitable names for male and female Scythian warriors in their own languages, translated for the first time after more than twenty-five hundred years.” These ancient Circassian names include Pkpupes, “worthy of armor”; Kepes, “hot flanks/eager sex”; Barkida, “princess”; and Khasa, “one who heads a council.”“

Ancient Greek Sexbots?

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: The most talented craftsman in ancient thought was undoubtedly Hephaestus, the god of the forge. He helped craft Pandora (who is shown in ancient artwork as almost mechanically stilted), and had his own team of “living statues” of golden handmaidens. In the Iliad, when Thetis goes to visit Hephaestus in his workshop she observes the maidens who “moved quickly, bustling around their master like living women.” Hephaestus had endowed these women with “mind (our equivalent of thinking), wits, voice, and vigor” as well as the knowledge and skill sets of the immortal gods. Mayor remarks, “they are endowed with what AI specialists term ‘augmented intelligence’ based on ‘big data’ and ‘machine learning’.” They even served as a storehouse, you might say database, of divine knowledge.[Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, June 22, 2019]

Arguably the most disturbing case of an ancient “sexbot” involves Queen Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos of Crete. Pasiphae was the jealous sort and cast a spell over her husband so that if he tried to have sex with another woman he would ejaculate scorpions, snakes, and millipedes. Shockingly, that’s not the gross part of this story. Zeus, whose affinity for extramarital affairs is well-known, retaliated on Minos’ behalf by cursing Pasiphae with the desire to copulate with one of Minos’ bulls (an attractive bull, if it helps). Bulls, however, are not so interested in women. Pasiphae turned to the brilliant sculptor and craftsman Daedalus for assistance. Daedalus constructed a realistic wooden cow into which the queen could clamber and present herself to the bull on all fours. The result of Pasiphae’s encounters with the bull was the half-human half-bull child better known to us as the Minotaur.

Even in the ancient world, people doubted the truth of this story. Those who defended it responded that realistic imitations of other animals often provoked their biological counterparts to attempt to mount them. But as Mayor remarks, “Daedalus’s realistic, life-size sex toy presents a remarkable form of ancient technepornography.” The story was so popular that it appeared in frescoes and mosaics centuries later. It was even popular in medieval artwork, which focused on the supposed romance between the bull and his human lover.

Stories like this are not unique to the Greeks and Romans. Mayor relates a story about an artificial man created by the craftsman Yen Shih during the reign of King Mu of the Zhou dynasty of China (ca. 976-922 B.C.). The android, which dances, sings and imitates human behaviour, delights the king right up until the moment when the robot begins “to flirt with the concubines.”

Book “Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology” by Adrienne Mayor, the medical historian and classicist (2019]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024