by León, Vicki
The writer cautions against whacking too much of it off, since “it produces an excessively harmful effect on the patient by the copious discharge of the cutting back.” As in bleeding to death, I suspect.
Paulus of Aegina, a later Greek writer, agrees but also claims that such women are eager for sex. As he puts it, “An immensely great clitoris occurs in some women; the presenting problem is shameful impropriety. According to what some people report, some even have erections similar to men on account of the [bodily] part and are eager for sexual intercourse.”
As Rome’s political schemer Fulvia found out, it wasn’t easy being a hell-raiser. She gained such a reputation for belligerence that soldiers wrote naughty words about her clitoris on their slingstones.
The Romans felt equally daunted by an aggressive, too-large clitoris, called landica in Latin. On the stones and lead projectiles they made for warfare, soldiers and slingers often wrote obscenities and vile messages aimed at the enemy. Archaeologists have found at least one lead projectile on which is scrawled Fulviae landicam peto, “I’m aimed at the clitoris of Fulvia.”
Fulvia was a real person, a detested political spitfire who jumped in and led an army into civil war because her husband at the time, Mark Antony, was busy committing bigamy with Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Hey, perhaps Fulvia had her own lead projectiles with obscene suggestions about Cleopatra on them. You’ll read more about Mark, Cleo, and fascinating Fulvia elsewhere in this book.
Circumcision:
Foreskin meddling
When it came to genital modification, males in the ancient world suffered more extensively than females. Whenever the Egyptians went to war and captured POWs, they weeded out the uncircumcised men and snipped off their genitals. The circumcised prisoners did not fare much better, I regret to say; they kept their jewels but lost their hands!
Archaeologists have found mummies with indications of circumcision, and estimate that the practice had been going on in Egypt since the twenty-third century B.C. In their culture, circumcision took place at puberty. Although the Egyptians had sharp knives of copper, and medications to stop the bleeding (made from honey, cuttlebone, and sycamore), the operation clearly stung. A well-preserved wall relief from an Egyptian tomb shows two teens getting circumcised; it includes dialogue between those operating, which says: “Hold him, do not let him faint!”
In contrast to the ancient Egyptians, who made a V-shaped cut and left the foreskin to dangle on either side, the Jews removed the entire prepuce. The Old Testament contains some terrifying tales of circumcision. King David, instead of giving his new father-in-law the bride-price in gold, or a nice box of cigars, was forced to fork over one hundred foreskins taken from their traditional enemies, those foreskin-flaunting Philistines.
What scholars (and everyday Bible readers) call the Old Testament’s most baffling verse is Exodus 4: 25-26. In it, Zipporah, the wife of Moses, uses a flint and circumcises their son Gershom herself, then declares, “You’re a bridegroom of blood to me.”
Some long-ago cultures circumcised male newborns; others, such as the Egyptians, inflicted it on their teenagers.
Although the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and other groups practiced circumcision, some neighboring tribes did not. As told in Genesis, it so happened the prince of the Shechemites sneakily had illicit sex with Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. What made it so heinous in Jewish eyes was the fact that the prince sported a foreskin. The two families consulted; because the prince loved Dinah, his father suggested that the two tribes intermarry—to which the sons of Jacob agreed, if all the Shechemite males first got circumcised. The prince and his people duly went for it. On the third day, however, when all Shechemite males were still clutching their crotches in agony, the Israelites massacred them.
One of the key reasons for the Jewish uprising called the revolt of the Maccabees was due to the banning of traditional Jewish practices by Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV. He outlawed circumcision with the death penalty.
During Greco-Roman times, male Jews sometimes drew unwelcome attention in the public baths and gymnasia because men used the facilities primarily in the nude. To be able to participate or possibly just blend in with uncircumcised males, some Jews actually had prepuce reconstruction surgery in Judaea.
The Greeks abhorred cutting but did meddle with male penises in other ways. At gym workouts and in competitive sports, such as running, men took part in the nude but insisted on covering the glans or tip of the penis. To do so, they pulled the stretchy foreskin over the tip, concealing and then tying it with what they called a “dog leash” knot. At times, they used a thin leather lace to secure the knot.
Although it would seem a question of personal choice, male circumcision—its benefits and drawbacks, its place in Jewish and Islamic traditions, and current accusations about children’s rights and infant mutilation—is again making news around the world today.
Contraception:
Birth control, alpha to omega
Long-ago women tried a vast number of inconceivable approaches to contraception and birth control.
A great many of them were alarming, worthless, magical, and/or harmful strategies to prevent pregnancy. Among the plethora of bad choices? Drinking iron rust. Consuming mint, parsley, or asparagus juice. Extracting worms from a certain big spider, fixing them onto deerskin, then attaching them to a woman’s body.
There were two old favorites that would be known in family planning circles today as “closing the barn door after the cows get out.” The first instructed the user to rub male and/or female private parts with cedar oil or honey—after coitus. The second advised inserting a pepper-covered pessary (an early “tampon” made of lint or wool) once sexual intercourse had already been accomplished.
Back in the time of Hippocrates and his disciples, the fifth century B.C., doctors and healers from the Holy Land to Greece suspected that something from both male and female humans had to unite in order to cause conception. A disciple-written Hippocratic essay called “On the Nature of Women” says: “After coitus, if a woman ought not to conceive, she makes it a custom for the semen to fall outside when she wishes this.” This could have been coitus interruptus, using fingers to wipe out the vagina, or expelling the semen by deliberate sneezing or douching.
One of the humblest birth control methods may have been fairly effective. Women employed olive oil, usually as a pessary inserted into the vagina. The oil’s viscosity did a darned good job of decreasing sperm motility. Other effective methods included alum; gum resin from the acacia tree (its lactic acid is a good spermicide); vinegar (its acid kills sperm); honey (sticky as olive oil) on wool plugs or other objects to block the entrance to the vagina. A recipe found in the Kahun Papyrus, the world’s earliest known contraceptive advice, suggests a paste made of milk and crocodile dung. While high in the “ick” factor, the paste would have been absorbent and entrance-plugging as well.
Aristotle also recommended olive oil, albeit failing to keep toxic lead out of the picture. As he put it, “Anoint that part of the womb on which the seed falls with oil of cedar, ointment of lead, or frankincense mingled with olive oil.”
Ancient Egyptians and Jews followed a similar train of thought, using olive oil on a sponge as a vaginal insert—thousands of years before Dr. Marie Stopes lobbied for a more advanced version on behalf of England’s poor women. The oily sponge was an invaluable innovation, since it made insertion and removal much easier and more reliable. Some Jewish authorities also insisted that women use the sponge during pregnancy to prevent injury to the fetus or a second fertilization (which they thought possible).
There were hundreds of plants and herbs whose active ingredients were thought to be contraceptive in nature. Many of these substances would (theoretically) act as birth control agents in smaller doses, and as abortifacients in larger ones; thus, those who prescribed them—and those who took them— really had to know what they were doing.
What, if anything, was the most effective c
ontraceptive in Greco-Roman times? No contest: the remarkable plant called laser or silphion (in Latin, silphium), a relative of asafoetida or giant fennel. Depending on the amount and the time of month it was taken, silphium could serve as a reliable birth control agent or a menstrual cycle regulator. Most accounts agreed that it was a relatively harmless abortifacient if used correctly. Women would drink a tea made from its large leaves, or take it in wine containing a small amount of the plant’s sap. Silphium juice was also made into a pessary; possibly this was the method most frequently used to bring on a miscarriage.
Silphium was rare; the wild plant only grew within a restricted area on the plateau of the Greek city-state of Cyrene (present-day Libya) and resisted all attempts to domesticate it. After its discovery in the seventh century B.C., silphium became exceedingly popular, and not just for female reproductive use. Its sharp juice served as a key flavor enhancer in cooking. It was also touted as an antidote for poison and a panacea for everything from warts to leprosy.
Unlike the unlovely body parts of the hippo, the silphium plant gave results, being the closest thing to a reliable birth control agent.
By the middle of the first century A.D., silphium was worth its weight in silver denarii. In fact, the plant itself appeared on the beautiful coins of Cyrene. Importer-exporters made fortunes, filling the ever-growing demand. Around A.D. 55, however, disaster struck. Terrible weather occurred that year, as did overgrazing by local sheep in Cyrene. But the last straw was a dispute between the natives who harvested the wild silphium and the Cyrenaic city officials. When a meeting of the minds failed, the angry harvesters ripped out all the plants they could find.
A Roman importer managed to obtain a stalk of the last wild specimen. Hoping to score big financially, he delivered it in person to the current emperor—who happened to be Nero. After paying for it, Nero callously consumed the plant, down to the last bite. Why? Because, as Roman emperor, he could.
Pregnancy & Childbirth:
Tattoos, prayers, & birthing bricks
Pregnancy and childbirth in long-ago cultures were chancy situations, rites of passage that women devoutly prayed for and desperately feared at the same time.
Prenatal care, vitamin intake, baby showers, and other pastimes? Not bloody likely. Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman women were more apt to wear protective amulets and spend time on their knees, praying to an array of goddesses who concerned themselves with pregnancy and safe delivery. Egyptian mothers-to-be asked for help from Hathor, goddess of fertility, and from the hippo goddess Tawaret, who guarded newborns and women in labor. They also made offerings to Bes, a dwarf god who warded off evil spirits. As reported by the Smithsonian magazine, some researchers now believe that pregnant women in predynastic Egypt wore tattoos as protective amulets on their abdomens, thighs, and breasts. They cite certain tattoos that have been found solely on female mummies, which range from patterns of dots and diamond shapes to small images of the god Bes.
Pregnant Greek women were pretty much stuck with one goddess, called Eileithyia, for prenatal guidance and childbirth protection. Roman women, however, called on a number of specialized deities. To ask for the help of Candelifera or Lucina, expectant moms lit a candle. Carmentis had a childbirth festival to observe, and she was invoked in one of two ways as the baby came into the world: Postverta, meaning “feet first,” and Prorsa, meaning “head first.” Diana and Di Nixi were also major goddesses of childbirth.
Although children were longed for and childless couples often adopted, pregnancy was a high-risk gamble way back when.
Not to overlook the help of male gods, women also prayed to brother deities named Pilumnus and Picumnus who kept newborns from evil spirits and doubled as gods of happy matrimony. Mater Matuta, goddess of growth and childbirth, had famous temples in Rome that dated from Etruscan times. Her festival, the Matralia on June 11, involved mysterious rites and sacred cakes. Lastly, Juno, queen mother of the gods, presided over various aspects of fertility and offspring; Juno Opigena guarded women in labor, whereas Juno Sororia protected girls at puberty and Juno Caprotina was in charge of fertility in general.
To make labor easier, women also relied on sympathetic magic. They carefully untied any knots in their clothing and unbound their hair to remove any symbolic obstacle to safe delivery.
Despite heavenly help, high anxiety reigned, and understandably so. Working from human remains and from the tattered historical record, archaeologists and historians have guesstimated that in the pregnancies of long-ago Egyptians, one child in three births might have died as newborns. During Greco-Roman centuries, it’s estimated that 5 to 8 percent of newborns died at birth or within one month. The mortality among new mothers was grievously high as well, most of these deaths being due to germs and infection, it’s thought.
Methods to ease and speed labor ranged from the helpful (drinking lots of liquids) to the merely bizarre (putting a vulture’s feather under the mother’s feet, or placing a sloughed snakeskin on the mother’s thigh). More dubious aids included the ingestion of truly nauseating materials, such as fat from hyena loins.
On the plus side, women gave birth with the help of midwives, among female friends and relatives, and in a warm and supportive environment— usually at home, since hospitals and birthing centers as we know them did not exist. Among the Greeks and Romans, a low birthing chair or stool with a crescent-shaped hole in it was the main “equipment.” The Birds,
While in labor, Egyptian women preferred squatting or kneeling on birthing bricks, which left just enough room for a deft-handed attendant to catch the baby. In 2001, a southern archaeological dig in Abydos turned up an actual birthing brick. It was covered with still-colorful paintings of the new mom, her attendants, and her newborn son. It may have been used by a princess named Renseneb some 3,700 years ago.
During labor, she and her helpers might have chanted certain incantations to speed a safe delivery. One such chant began, “Come down, placenta, come down!” and continued with elaborate pleas to the goddess Hathor and to Horus, the falcon-headed sky god.
Childbirth was such a huge risk that midwives always kept certain tools at hand in case labor proved difficult—or impossible. This included a long, slender saw, used in extremis to cut a baby to bits to extract it from the womb.
Wombs:
Hysterical wanderers
Gals two thousand years ago were plagued by a variety of female disorders, not the least of which was that vagabond organ, the womb. This impertinent piece of tissue, according to most Greek and Roman medical professionals, behaved more like a garden mole than a proper organ. If a woman weren’t careful, her womb was apt to burrow into her chest, causing feelings of suf-22 focation and breathlessness. When womb wanderlust hit, sometimes the gadabout would head south. When that happened, female patients complained of nervous tension, hot spells, and cryingjags.
This syndrome began back in the misty past, long before Hippocrates showed up. Healers of that day called this condition “hysteria,” from the Greek word hysteron or womb. Then, during a eureka! moment, Hippocrates and his followers figured out the cause: if a woman was careless enough to let her womb dry out, it would soon take to the open road, looking for a moister organ to attach to.
After devoting much thought and discussion to the topic, the medicos arrived at a general consensus: that wombs could only be made to return to their proper sites through fear. Some practitioners tried straightforward magic to quell the hysterical wanderers. Curse tablets written on lead or papyrus became a popular prescription. A typical one contained execrations such as, “Womb, I invoke you, stay in your place! I adjure you by Iao, and by Saboa and by Adona, not to hold onto the side but stay in your place.” Tablets and amulets inscribed with this and other scolding messages have been found from Roman Britain to Roman Egypt.
More serious treatments for hysteria were action-oriented. Doctors believed that the nature of the uterus was to run away from bad smells. Thus medicos would surround th
e afflicted woman with a variety of stenches, from burned wool to squashed bedbugs. If that didn’t terrify the womb into submission and back into position, the patient was subjected to loud noises. The doctor might accompany his yells with a symphony on metal plates. Blowing vinegar through the patient’s nose was another of the milder therapies.
A dislocated womb called for even sterner measures. One recommended treatment began with a garlic and ewe’s milk dinner, followed by a fumigation of the womb with fennel, absinthe, and a good purge, and finishing up with vaginal suppositories of opium poppies, almond oil, and rose oil.
Hysteria was a stubborn ailment; over the centuries, a significant number of chronic cases proved to be hardcore. Finally, however, there was a true medical breakthrough of sorts. This remedy, deployed only when all other options had been explored, was a type of physical therapy that involved external (and sometimes internal) massage of the pelvis. Euphemisms aside, what that actually meant was doctor-enabled masturbation!
Female patients did seem to get relief, doctors noted approvingly. Some of them even appeared to pass out during therapy. The only dilemma? Massage therapy was but a temporary cure. The problem kept returning, as did the patients. Not that a lot of long-ago Greek and Roman healers complained, mind you.