Sex, Sexuality & Prostitution In Ancient Greece

[Tania Admin]

Last week I did a small write up/sourcing of/on information on Sex in Ancient Egypt. I'm not covering everything in these write ups. Just a pinch here and there to perk the curiosity of members. Some will delve further. Some will contribute to the threads. I will keep adding pinches of information here and there.

Any way this time I'm focusing on "Ancient Greece".

I hope you enjoy and please feel free to add any info you may have that is relevant to the topic (Please add pics if you can)

 

[Tania Admin]

Our earliest evidence for ancient Greek sexuality comes with the Minoans (approximately 3650 to 1400 BC). Women at this time were only partly dressed – the main items of clothing were short-sleeved robes that had layered, flounced skirts; these were open to the navel, leaving the breasts exposed. Women also wore a strapless fitted bodice, the first fitted garments known in history.

Women were typically depicted as having a tiny waist, full breasts, long hair and full hips: to our eyes and ears this is sexually charged and provocative, but to a Minoan probably not so. On the contrary, the voluptuous figure may have been a means by which women, and their artists, expressed their gender and status rather than male artists simply idealising female sexuality for their own delectation, satisfying a prurient male voyeurism. Women in Minoan Crete, it seems, were able to celebrate their femininity.

 

[Madmax1700]

Looks like the males are getting ready to grab the titties

 

[Tania Admin]

Pederasty in Greece probably originated with the Cretans. Cretan pederasty was an early form of paedophilia that involved the ritual kidnapping (harpagmos) of a boy from an elite background by an aristocratic adult male, with the consent of the boy’s father. This adult male was known as philetor, befriender; the boy was kleinos, glorious. The man took the boy out into the wilderness, where they spent two months hunting and feasting with friends learning life skills, respect and responsibility. It is generally assumed that the philetor would begin having sex with the boy soon after taking him out into the wilds.

If the boy was pleased with how this went he changed his status from kleinos to parastates, or comrade, signifying that he had metaphorically fought in battle alongside his philetor; he then went back to society and lived with him.

The philetor would shower the boy with expensive gifts, including an army uniform, an ox to be sacrificed to Zeus, and a drinking goblet – a symbol of spiritual accomplishment. At the same time, according to the geographer Strabo, the boy then had to choose between continuing with or putting an end to the relationship with his abductor, and whether to denounce the man if he had misbehaved in any way.

 

[Tania Admin]

Effeminacy and cross-dressing
Effeminacy in men was considered beyond the pale – para phusin or “outside nature”. It implied passivity and receptiveness, epithumein paschein – both weaknesses contrary to the proper sexual conduct of the Greek male who ought to be virile, dominant, penetrating and thrusting.

Cross-dressing had some surprising advocates. The heroic alpha-male Hercules, according to the Roman poet Ovid, indulged in a bout of cross-dressing with Omphale [queen of Lydia to whom Hercules was enslaved] Hercules put on Omphale’s clothes and Omphale dressed up in typically Herculean lion skin and wealded his club, which was symbolic of manhood and power. Surprisingly, perhaps, “lion-hearted” Achilles too was not averse to a spot of dressing up in women’s clothes, if it saved him from the call-up for the Trojan war.

 

[Tania Admin]

In Athens, marriage was viewed as a tool for ensuring a legal heir. This was especially true for the period of Pericles since, according to the laws of the famous statesman, only those whose mother and father were both from Athens could be citizens of the polis. As a result, a wife's only job was to ensure the continuity of the lineage.

Women of the Athens aristocracy married young, at thirteen to fifteen years old, and were respected if they remained quiet and unnoticed.

Wives lived secluded from the world in the gunaikeion, the women’s quarters. They did not eat with their husbands or sleep together. And since, due to their upbringing, they were completely uncultured, conversations between spouses were also very rare. In a man's life, the wife usually wasn't the only woman with whom he interacted sexually. Women sometimes had to share their homes with their husband's mistresses, because they had no say in what went on in the andron, the men's quarters in the house.




The ancient Greeks believed that women had far greater sexual appetites than men, and thus found it very difficult to control their instincts. This is how they explained the fact that despite living hermetically cut off from the outside world, they often committed adultery. And husbands did not easily tolerate being cheated on. The laws of Athens allowed the cuckolded man to kill his wife's lover without fear of punishment. The unfaithful wife could not participate in religious ceremonies, could not improve her appearance, and was even prohibited from going to church.

The husband could at any time divorce his wife, and had the possibility of offering the woman to another man without her consent. Women in this respect were at a disadvantage compared to men, as they could only initiate divorce through a mediating relative, on the basis of mistreatment, and the children always stayed under the father's custody.



It is known lesbianism and queer relations happened during ancient Greece, yet their documentation or their acknowledgment during this time is extremely limited. Ancient Greece was a patriarchal society that neglected women, as a result, women’s lives were not always documented realistically. Consequently, Lesbianism in ancient Greek society was misunderstood and largely unaccounted for. This is evident through the social focus on male sexuality. Second, by the invisibility of female sexuality. Along with the heterosexualizing of lesbian relationships.

 

[Tania Admin]

Prostitution

"Pornai" is the Ancient Greek word for "prostitute" (porne, in the singular). It may also be translated as a “buyable woman.” From the Greek word pornai, we get the English word pornography.



Ancient Greek society was fairly open to the practice of the world’s oldest profession. Prostitution was legal in Athens, for example, as long as the workers were slaves, freedwomen.



Pornai were generally the ordinary sex workers, from those who worked in brothels to streetwalkers who advertised their services out in the open. How open? In one innovative marketing strategy, some pornai wore special shoes that imprinted a message in soft ground saying "follow me."

Male prostitutes were called pornoi. These sex workers were typically clean-shaven. Though they did sleep with women, they primarily serviced older men.



Sex work had its own social hierarchy in Greek society. At the top were hetaerai, which means “female companion.” These were beautiful, often educated and artistic women who were essentially high-class courtesans. Greek literature has numerous references to famous hetaerai who cast their spells.

One reason for the prevalence of sex workers — aside from the existence of slavery, which meant women could be forced into prostitution — was that Greek men married comparatively late in life, often in their 30s. This created a demand, as younger men sought sexual experience before marriage. Another factor was that adultery with a married Greek woman was considered a high crime. Therefore, it was far safer to hire a pornai or a heaerai than to sleep with a married woman.



Source

• Gagarin, Michael. "The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law." Cambridge Companions to the Ancient World, Cambridge University Press, 12 September 2005.