by León, Vicki
I’ve also glimpsed the casual brutality of those long-ago times—the darkly punitive aspects of enslaved societies, and how sharply they contrasted with the desperate lengths to which the privileged sometimes went to stave off sexual boredom. To feel truly alive.
To help you see, feel, and grasp what I’ve found, I’ve drawn from a huge well of often contradictory pieces of evidence, written and pictorial, highbrow and lowbrow, from philosophical musings to lewd graffiti, from love charms to personal letters, from secondhand gossip to respected archaeological sources.
Since earliest times, humans have admired the fecund female and worshipped her miraculous ability to bring new life.
Countless people, places, events, and topics in this book intertwine in interesting ways, so you’ll find them cross-referenced within entries and also in the index.
As the Greeks would urge: drink deeply!
Let’s get this drunken revel on the road— I’m getting goosebumps!
Section I
The Birds, the Bees, & the Body Parts
Aphrodisiacs:
Love solutions from Aphrodite
When it came to intimacy readiness, Greek and Roman lovers were perennially inventive. They set store by a wide spectrum of aphrodisiacs, some still in hopeful use today, including raw oysters, the fleshy symbol of the goddess Aphrodite (Venus among the Romans). Aphrodite emerged from the foamy crest of ocean waves, which the Greeks saw as a type of marine semen. Some adventurous thinkers also believed that women discharged semen—but naturally the male variety was the only starter that counted.
These pioneers on the frontiers of sexual virility wandered far beyond oysters, however. Pomegranate juice from Aphrodite’s favorite tree, mixed with wine, scored high with ancient Egyptians and other males in the Middle East. So did lettuce. Although toxic, mandrake root was an evergreen. So was opium as a wine additive.
Many ardent souls preferred lotions applied directly to the male organ—one provocative but now-mysterious favorite was called “the deadly carrot.” Some approaches, however, such as the honey-pepper mix, the tissue-irritating nettle oil, and the cantharides beetle (Spanish fly), gave painful new meaning to the expression “All fired up and ready to go.”
An everyday erotic helper was olive oil, with or without additives such as coriander. It was invariably slathered on before lovemaking. Greek wives kept an earthenware container of it by the bed, since they were expected to personally anoint their husbands’ members.
As an aphrodisiac, the pomegranate wine cooler had an enthusiastic following around the ancient world.
The medicine cabinet of the average Roman male held an array of herbal plants and potions, an aromatic ointment made from spikenard being very popular. Other aids to Venus were added to wine, a social lubricant that provided a one-two punch: among them, gentian and a red-leafed root in the orchid family called satyrion, named for the randy prowess of the mythical satyrs. Roman emperor Tiberius, on the other hand, swore by another exotic tuber called skirret.
Some aphrodisiacs (including the roots of mandrake and satyrion) were thought powerful enough to work by being handheld, although that might have presented its own problems in the boudoir. Other potency objects, from red coral to wormwood, could simply be placed under the bed to be efficacious.
The “like attracts like” theory of sympathetic magic played a big part. Men routinely wore amulets resembling male and female genitalia. Beyond the items to be worn, ingested, held, or rubbed on, women and men alike had steadfast belief in the power of love potions and binding spells. Such spells got extra vigor by using nail clippings, hair, or excretions of one sort or another from the beloved, the object of desire, or the one who’d done the dumping.
Given the staggering variety of nostrums, modern readers may long to know: Did any of these measures actually put steel into the male organ, and/ or make the ladies more inclined?
Like our verbally aroused websites and spam e-mails today, there were testimonials and stories aplenty; then as now, evidence was more anecdotal than scientific. In imperial Roman times, however, at least one court trial did revolve around apparent aphrodisiac success.
The defendant? Apuleius of Madauros, today remembered chiefly as the author of The Golden Ass. A glib orator, Apuleius was quite a successful social climber from a more modest family background than his girlfriend, Pudentilla, a wealthy widow. In A.D. 158 he was sued by her irate family for seducing her into marriage. How did he do it? According to his own defense speech, which has survived the millennia, he merely fed her a splendid dinner of oysters, sea urchins, cuttlefish, and lobster. An aphrodisiac blue-plate special, loaded with zinc—maybe Apuleius was onto something.
Anti-Aphrodisiacs:
Reverse Viagra or face-saver?
Roman and Greek males of yore thought of themselves as raging bulls of desire, whose drive at times might be overwhelming. Their wives, lovers, concubines, and household slaves, male and female, no doubt agreed, but for different reasons. Fortunately, men had already discovered the solution for the too-potent Latin libido: loading up on anti-aphrodisiacs, the reverse Viagra of ancient times.
What were these Cupid controllers that could dampen physical urges? Consuming cress, purslane, cannabis seeds, nasturtium flowers, or the ashes of the chaste tree would do the trick. So would that horrific, erection-withering substance, fresh lettuce. In order to maintain sexual vigor, Greek and Roman male diners were careful to combine lettuce with aphrodisiacally active arugula to neutralize it. Or just avoid lettuce like the plague. (On the other hand, lettuce was considered highly lascivious among the Egyptians, as you’ll learn in section II of this book.)
Mouse dung, applied as a liniment, was a favorite anti-aphrodisiac. So was rue boiled with rose oil and aloes. Drinking wine in which a mullet fish had drowned and sipping male urine in which a lizard had expired both had their loyal adherents.
Nevertheless, taming truly terrific potency required strong measures, like nymphaea, an herb guaranteed to “relax” the phallus for a few days. One writer even boasted that it would “take away desire and even sex dreams for forty days!”
Consumers and healers alike put powerful faith in certain animal parts, including those of the hippopotamus, the exotic wonder drug of the age. Hippo parts were believed to have multiple curative powers. For snakebite, victims simply choked down a coin-sized piece of hippo testicle in water. If troubled by mange, they burned hippo hide until reduced to ash, then applied it. For the hippo’s vital role in temporarily inhibiting sexual desire, users were instructed to take the hide from the left side of a hippo’s forehead, then attach it firmly to the groin. The woman’s groin, that is. (After studying the matter, I’m convinced that the struggle to attach the device, much less wearing it, would make both partners give up sex—perhaps forever.)
That recipe, among many others, comes from Pliny the Elder’s multivolume book Natural History. He goes on to say: “A most powerful medicament is obtained by reducing to ashes the nails of a lynx, together with the hide … these ashes, taken in drink, have the effect of checking abominable desires in men … and if they are sprinkled upon women, all libidinous thoughts will be restrained.”
We long to know more than Pliny and other writers offhandedly tell us about hippos’ foreheads, ashes of lynx, lizards drowned in male urine, and the blood from the ticks taken from a wild black bull. Where did one obtain these rare and exotic substances? Didn’t they smell to high heaven? Was stench the active ingredient? How on earth did they strap these things on? Ancient recipes tantalize. Being free of details, they leave us to imagine the startling lengths to which Greeks and Romans tried to manipulate their sex lives.
We’ll never know why, but a hippo’s forehead was considered just the thing to rein in those hyperactive sex drives in males.
Equally ingenious was the face-saving marketing involved. As their libidos waxed and waned, men told each other that anti-aphrodisiacs were essential to control their otherwise over
powering sexual drives. Long-ago women, always on the lookout for ways to control conception and flatter at the same time, wisely kept mum.
Spontaneous Generation:
Birds, bees, wind in the trees
When it came to reproductive matters in the natural world, most Greeks had myopia. Granted, it’s easy to miss the mating antics of insects and worms, and watery species from eels to shellfish. Instead of supposing that their methods of reproduction took place far from prying human eyes, natural scientists of that time preferred to believe that certain species had the knack for spontaneous generation. No parents needed.
Aristotle, for instance, announced that caterpillars reproduced from dew, grubs came from dung or fig trees, gnats from timber, and worms from snow or putrefying sap. Furthermore, he taught that bugs emerged from dried sweat, flies from vinegar slime, and certain winged insects from fire. He wasn’t alone, either.
It was widely believed that the common cicada sprang from the spittle of cuckoo birds—and that bees never mated, instead buzzing to life from putrefying matter. While the wild bee population quietly went about reproducing itself, honey-gatherers and beekeepers in every corner of the Greek world wasted a lot of time slaughtering oxen, leaving them to rot, and anxiously awaiting a new batch of bees to form in the stinking carcasses.
Aristotle was far from being a theoretical intellectual. Unlike Plato, he enjoyed empirical field research; he even spent his honeymoon grubbing around the tidepools on the island of Lesbos. (This may say more about his marriage than his vocation.) He took copious notes on his work, insisting later that eels grew spontaneously from mud. He also claimed that mussels, oysters, hermit crabs, and the murex (a nearshore mollusk valued for its purple dye) grew out of the slimy gunk that formed on the bottoms of ships.
Even when observing mammals and larger creatures, the Greeks utterly failed to spot any X-rated action, giving rise to widespread beliefs that mice reproduced by licking salt—or, in a pinch, by licking themselves. Fantastical theories abounded. As Pliny the encyclopedist confidently wrote, “We have it from many authorities that a snake may be born from the spinal marrow of a human being.”
The generative powers of the wind were blamed for the conception of some animals. Breezes, especially the wayward one called “the fecundating spirit of the world,” could impregnate mares, sheep, and tigers. Fowl too could produce what were called “wind eggs.”
When Christianity really got rolling in the second and third centuries A.D., church leaders often used the widespread belief in spontaneous generation and wind impregnation to defend the virgin birth of Christ. Church father Augustine helpfully pointed out that Noah didn’t have to stock the ark with two of every species, since insects and other creatures could do their own generating.
Although Greeks and Romans adored honey and kept bees, they also subscribed to the mad belief that new bees sprang from the rotting corpses of livestock.
Hymen:
A god, a song, a membrane
Known in Latin as hymen vaginae, throughout history this elastic little membrane over the vaginal opening has caused a world of trouble for women. It’s a pretty standard part of reproductive systems, one that human females share with elephants, manatees, whales, horses, and chimps. But don’t get too proud—the hymen is also standard equipment in slugs and several other humble species.
Some human females are born without hymens; some tear the membrane in childhood—and in still other cases, the darn thing entirely covers the opening, which usually requires surgery in order for a girl to menstruate without pain.
For these reasons and more, ten out of ten doctors today will tell you that it is impossible to confirm virginity by hymen examination. Nothwithstanding, various cultures around the globe have made—and continue to make—life hell for their women by insisting that you cannot have the former without the latter.
How did the hymen get its name? Oddly enough, Hymen (or Hymenaeus) was a minor male deity, the god of marriage ceremonies. In ancient Greece, members of the wedding party would call his name aloud, to make sure that Hymen attended; it meant rotten luck for brides and grooms if he didn’t show. In his Greek tragedies, playwright Euripides called Hymen “the god of hot desire!” which makes him sound more like a male stripper.
The deity Hymen was sometimes thought to be a mortal youth who looked very feminine; by other accounts, he was the son of the god Apollo. Hymen was also pictured as a pretty child with wings, usually carrying a torch in his hand to escort the bride. In Greco-Roman art, his image is easily mistaken for one of the Erotes, the winged love godlings who were part of Aphrodite’s entourage, discussed elsewhere in this book.
As in today’s world, weddings were big business in ancient times. A great many Greek poets, from Hesiod and Alcman to the great Sappho, earned fat commissions by composing beautiful melodies and verses to Hymen the marriage god. They were called hymenaios. Sappho and company also cleaned up by writing poetic lyrics that were sung outside the wedding chamber itself, called epithalamia.
At Roman weddings, on the other hand, guests belted out obscene lyrics to the tunes that were traditionally called fescennines.
Dancing through the streets with torches lit, the members of a typical Greek wedding procession followed the carriage of the bride and groom, singing the hymenaios. Male and female members of the wedding party sang alternating verses to each other, filled with happy, flirtatious, often bawdy words, many of them double entendres about the frightening size of the groom and the purity of the bride. Each verse ended in the words “O Hymenaeus Hymen, O Hymen Hymenaeus.”
Once the newlywed couple entered the flower-adorned nuptial chamber, with the best man guarding the door, the wedding party stood outside and all of the young women sang the epithalamia. Accompanied by flutes and lyre, they warbled verse after verse. Why such noisy, lengthy entertainment outside the chamber? According to an ancient commentary on the wedding poetry of Theocritus, “The epithalamia is sung, in order that the cries of the young bride, while she is offered violence by her husband, may not be heard, but may be drowned in the song of the girls.”
Curiously enough, among Romans, maidenheads were sometimes broken beforehand for a religious reason, the belief in divine impregnation. According to author Barbara Walker’s Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, “Roman brides routinely deflowered themselves on the wooden or stone phalluses of Hermes, Priapus, Tutunus, or some other ‘anointed’ god before lying with their bridegrooms, so that their firstborn children would be god-begotten.”
In earliest Roman times, a life-size phallus of Tutunus, the ithyphallic god of fertility, was present at the ceremony itself. Two long-ago authors noted that brides were obliged to sit on it to promote their fertility while chasing away evil.
Since time immemorial, brides-to-be have sought help with hymeneal restoration in those cultures where to be lacking meant an unpleasant death. Long-ago Greek brides who’d already lost their virginity often stuffed small sponges soaked in blood in the appropriate aperture. Another traditional solution was the deft use of leeches in the hours prior to the wedding-night consummation, a method used with some success since ancient times and into the modern era, by groups as diverse as medieval Italians and nineteenth-century brothel workers in London. Hymenoplasty surgery to repair maidenheads routinely takes place in many parts of the world today, including in Muslim communities. In Japan, the procedure is poetically called “virginity rebirth.”
Hymen, that ancient deity, would no doubt get a chuckle out of all that premarital skullduggery.
Clitoris:
From a verb to a deformity
Back in the B.C. era, the Greek medical community smugly “discovered” that a certain nubby little organ possessed by women was the feminine equivalent of the penis, or so they thought. They called it clitoris, from the Greek word meaning “to shut.” Their other name for it was nymphi, meaning “bride” or “lovely young woman.” (In our time, the plural nymphae still refers
to the labia minora, although the term is usually employed only by physicians.)
Since long-ago masculine ideas about sex and satisfaction could be boiled down to the simple equation: “males—active; females—passive,” a feminine organ that looked and acted a bit like a would-be phallus, in miniature, was repugnant to the average Greek male, who wanted no part of feminine sexual aggression.
This was especially true when it came to size. Any clitoris bigger than petite was thought to be excess baggage. What better course of action than to get rid of it in cosmetic surgery fashion? Is this starting to sound like the epidemic of female circumcision and genital mutilation in today’s world? It should.
Grotesque as it sounds, medical advice in the first century B.C. and the first few A.D. centuries, even from the likes of leading practitioner Soranos, author of Gynaikeia, and his colleagues, was: cut it off. Here is a verbatim quote from a primary source entitled “Concerning an immensely great clitoris.” (This isn’t praise, trust me.) “An uncouth size is present in certain clitorises and brings women into disorder by the deformity of the private parts. As most people say, these same women, affected by the lust (or erection) typical of men, take on a similar desire, and they approach sexual intercourse (with men) only under duress. If it comes to that [i.e., an operation], the women is to be placed lying on her back and with thighs closed, lest the viscera of the feminine cavity become distended. Then the excess part is to be held in place with a small forceps and cut back with a scalpel in proportion to its unnatural size.”