by León, Vicki
The getaway required some serious ritual cleansing beforehand. Attendees had to remain chaste for up to a month (depending on locale), which was probably the biggest break they got all year from sex on demand from husbands. According to Pliny and other writers, before the festival, fertile women dosed themselves with a drink made from agnos, the chaste tree, actually a small shrub with sweet-smelling lilac flowers. The agnos had contraceptive potency, a fact now confirmed by modern chemists. It’s likely that most women kept a stash of the stuff at home. Moreover, the chaste tree also acted as an abortifacient in the right dosage. (You can learn more about ancient abortion and contraception methods elsewhere in this book.)
The chastity aspect of this festival, by the way, dated back to earliest Greek times, when information of this sort was transmitted by women, among women—long before medical writings on the subject existed.
Because the Thesmophoria rites were “mysteries,” meaning ceremonies and rituals that the initiates swore to keep secret, very little written evidence exists about the annual event, but certain facts are known.
The night before the official agenda began, the participants elected older women to preside over the festival. Business concluded, they loosened up with wine during a laughter-filled evening of foul language and vile insults. (Besides being cathartic, such language was apotropaic and kept malign spirits away. It also commemorated part of the Demeter myth, where she was cheered from her sorrow by the rough jesting of her friend Iambe.)
The first day started with a pilgrimage, a climb up to the sacred open space of the Thesmophorion, which sat on the outskirts of Athens near the hill of the Pynx. The women, who must have numbered in the thousands, set up leafy huts and slept two to a shelter.
On day two, the celebrants took off their festive garlands and mourned Demeter’s loss. Everyone fasted, and no fires were lit. At some of the Thesmophoria sites, only pomegranate seeds, the attribute of Persephone, were eaten—but not those that had fallen on the ground, which were considered food for the dead. At places other than Athens, the gals consumed a little nosh consisting of sesame cakes.
Day three, called “Fair Offspring,” echoed the goddess’s search for her daughter Persephone with a torchlight ceremony. At this point the women sacrificed a pig to Demeter.
Another curious ritual involved recycling and a fertility rite. Months before the Thesmophoria, certain items were thrown into a pit called the megaron, there to rot into ritual compost. Among the items? Pine cones, sacrificed piglets, and special baked goods in the shape of male genitalia. During the festival, a couple of daring females called “the bailers” had to retrieve the now-finished compost. Their task was made more challenging because the pit was deliberately filled with snakes! After the Thesmophoria, the pungent compost would be placed on a public altar for local farmers to mix with their grain seed. In this fashion, the Greeks gave whole new meaning to the phrase “organically grown.”
Athenian men did their level best to “shield” their wives, sisters, and female children from the outside world and to keep them from participating in public life. They were quite successful at it. Thus the best part of the Thesmophoria must have been the camaraderie, the shared laughter and grief, and the chance to exchange information, share stories, and renew friendships during those memorable, star-studded nights.
Section VI
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
Sexual Preference:
A rainbow of choices
Since words like homosexual, heterosexual, and transgender didn’t even exist long ago, the idea of defining sexual preferences as life choices or as unnatural practices would have sounded nonsensical in Greece or Rome.
There clearly was a prodigious amount of sexual activity, from male-to-young-male flings to durable erotic relationships between adult males—the latter sometimes frowned upon. Men relished these choices and many more besides. The thing was, they didn’t have to choose either-or. They could sample it all, or nearly so.
Love and sexual attraction weren’t either-or choices among the Greeks of old; many enjoyed heterosexual relationships as well as same-sex bonds.
In centuries more puritanical than the present one, classical historians and researchers tended to view the bewildering array of Greek and Roman polysexuality as outrageous, orgiastic, even abusive. Since the twentieth century, however, specialists in the field, particularly in light of evolving ideas, began to see the sexual paradigm of those long-ago cultures as active versus passive.
And that boiled down to: Who got to penetrate? And who was penetrated? Today that idea has also been rejected as too rigid.
Therefore, regarding the Greeks and Romans of old, we’re back to square one with Socrates the philosopher, who simply said, “I only know what I don’t know.” (At least we’re in good company.)
One of America’s much-read weekly columnists, Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope fame, wrote a column in 2006 that nails this issue. As he puts it: “Truth is, we don’t really get what was up with the ancient Greeks. Even now there’s a lot we don’t know and probably won’t ever know … The real handicap, though, is that little of what we think we know about sexuality now prepares us to understand what the Greeks thought about it then. Today we tend to regard sexual orientation as a binary proposition—most people are attracted to either men or women; relatively few are consistently attracted to both. What’s more, we think of sexual identity as innate and more or less immutable. It may take awhile … to figure out if you’re gay or straight, but once you do, you stay that way for life. None of this could confidently be said of the Greeks.”
To make matters more complex, the traditions of male-to-male intimacy and the status of such couples varied greatly from Greece to Rome, and even more so within the Greek world itself. For example, male couples in the city-state of Athens were invariably free citizens, typically an adult paired with a teenager outside his immediate family. This was not viewed as pedophilia but pederasty, a bonding relationship that could have both non-sexual and erotic aspects. When the teen reached full manhood, the relationship ended; later he in turn might become the mentor (erastes) of an eromenos, a loved one twelve to seventeen. Long-term male-to-male relationships were discouraged but occurred just the same, as you’ll see in the entry on bisexual playwrights Sophocles and Euripides.
Other Greek city-states followed different traditions for male-to-male relationships. On Crete, for instance, where the earliest evidence about pederasty has been found, a coming-of-age abduction took place, after which a lover and his youth spent several months hunting and feasting together.
On the Greek mainland, the city of Thebes and the region of Boeotia were famed for the frank acceptance of male couples in civilian and military life, which you can read about further in this book’s entry on the Sacred Band.
Although the literary and archaeological evidence is uneven and sometimes contradictory, pederasty in its various forms was clearly embedded in Greek population centers from Ionia to Sicily, and from Corinth to Macedonia. Elsewhere in this book, you’ll also encounter the glorious yet tragic love story of history’s most famous Macedonian: Alexander the Great and his lifelong friend and lover, Hephaestion.
In sharp contrast to the Greeks, when a Roman of the knightly or patrician class got intimate with a boy or man, that person was either a slave, a male prostitute, a foreigner, or someone of lower social status—such as a dancer, actor, or gladiator. In imperial Roman times, elite males strove mightily to outdo one another in terms of power, influence, and level of conspicuous consumption. One way to flaunt it was by adoring (and sexually using) a puer delicatus, an exquisite boy, chosen for his good looks and grace, at times taken from the ranks of that person’s household slaves.
What precisely did a Roman do with his delicate boy? Or a Greek with his teenage eromenos lover? One option was a nonpenetrative but satisfying technique also employed by couples of both genders today. Called intercrural or interfemoral coitus, the Greeks refe
rred to it as “doing it between the thighs.” It appears on Athenian Greek vases and on other objects as well. The stance shows an older male with a teenager, sometimes facing each other while standing, and at others, from behind, lying down. Another technique, today called frottage or genital-to-genital sex, involved sexual rubbing, usually face-to-face. Beyond these, of course, existed other options, from anal to oral—which are discussed elsewhere in this book.
Today, a number of worthy books on the subject of ancient sexual practices and mores vis-à-vis our own shed more light on what the Greeks and Romans really did, and what they really meant by their terminology.
These titles (representing a spectrum of views) are especially helpful: Looking at Lovemaking, by John R. Clarke; Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature, by Marguerite Johnson and Terry Ryan; The Reign of the Phallus, by Eva Keuls; Love Between Women, by Bernadette Brooten; Pompeii: The Living City, by Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence; Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece, by William A. Percy; and Courtesans and Fishcakes plus The Greeks and Greek Love, by James Davidson.
K. J. Dover’s updated edition of Greek Homosexuality also contains rich visual evidence about the techniques and positions used within male-male and male-female contexts. That old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words” certainly holds true with regard to Greco-Roman art. Studying the erotic and romantic depictions on drinking vessels, cups, mirrors, and other artifacts, including items as minute as seal rings, is revelatory. As John Clarke, author of Looking at Lovemaking, notes, “The artistry remains are far more democratic and catholic than the texts that have come down to us.” And more honest, too, since artists of long ago felt freer to portray the authentic sensuality and tenderness of couples, as well as their complex repertoire of sexual positions; furthermore, they did so with male-to-male subjects, male-female ones, and female couples.
Clarke also points out their popularity. A wide variety of consumers commissioned or bought items with erotic themes. The objects ranged from modest lamps and accessories within the reach of almost anyone to luxury items like the Warren Cup, its exquisitely detailed scenes created in silver by a superb artisan. Since their cultures had a frank appreciation of human physicality, they were much more accepting of nudity and sexual imagery.
Put another way: Greeks and Romans, whatever their orientation or gender, liked to look at sexual portrayals—as well as take part in them.
And oh yes, what about female sexuality? Because male minds (no matter which gender, or both, aroused them) often focused on the pitcher versus catcher side of sex, they found it supremely difficult to believe that women, who conveniently enough were designed in a way that invited penetration, longed for anything other than a good poke. And pokes they got, since heterosexual intercourse (for fun or for procreation) occurred with very great frequency. So did sodomy or anal sex, which from the female point of view had contraceptive value in long-ago times.
Lastly, Greek and Roman males had a big blind spot when it came to females. Since they tended to view women as inferior versions of men, they also believed that women were empty vessels that required filling periodically—in one way only. And by males only. Could women experience erotic fulfillment with their own gender? Impossible; just look at that female plumbing.
In the next entry, you’ll read more about female eroticism and the women who proved the men wrong: the gals who chose to be tribades, one of the earlier terms (none of them very cordial) for lesbian.
Tribades:
Friction between women? Not always a bad idea
Even before Sappho and her poetic disciples gave the term lesbian a whole new meaning beyond “person from the island of Lesbos,” there were gals who felt erotically attracted to other women. Although Sappho lived and loved in the sixth century B.C., “lesbian” did not become common parlance until much later, when Christian writer Clement of Alexandria first used it in print in the second century A.D.
In ancient times, female lovers tended to be called tribades (singular tribas) from the Greek verb “to rub.” As noted earlier regarding Greek and Roman males, we need to remember that erotic attachments in those times were not an either-or proposition. A woman like Sappho might prefer her own sex as love objects but might also have heterosexual relationships, including marriage, some of them loving as well.
In the second century A.D. an author-orator named Maximus of Tyre argued that Sappho and her fans and followers on Lesbos bonded philosophically and spiritually rather than sexually. As he put it, “What else could one call the love of the Lesbian woman than the Socratic art of love? For they seem to have practiced love after their own fashion, she the love of women, he the love of men.”
Although Sappho’s home island of Lesbos eventually gave its name to the term lesbian, during the poet’s own era women attracted to other women were commonly known as tribades.
Nevertheless, most Greek guys found it easier to believe in mythical beasts than in the love life of lesbians. A substantial number of male writers scoffed in print at the whole notion; they simply could not credit that anything romantically worthwhile (much less sexually satisfying) could occur between females.
In later Roman times, only a handful of authors mentioned tribades in passing: the elder and young Senecas, Lucian, and Martial, in an epigram or two. They too expressed anger at the presumption of such women, finding the idea of female intimacy threatening, disgusting, illegal, or all of the above. Christian writer Tertullian later called them fricatrices—an even more disapproving variant of rub-a-dub-dub.
About the only clear-eyed male to comment on female proclivities lived much earlier than Tertullian. In the fifth century B.C., comic playwright Aristophanes parodied Plato and his fantasy about humankind’s original three genders. Aristophanes asserted that female lovers of women existed, and he called them by various names, including hetairistriai. Since any word with that many vowels is going to be a loser, the term did not catch on, although Aristophanes did.
The most curious part about male views of long-ago lesbianism? As they did with all matters sexual, men defined it as sexual penetration. Since, however, both parties were female, men assumed the deed was done using a dildo or an abnormally large clitoris! In other words, if female lovers existed at all, they must be capable of penetration. Because anything else was not sex.
The Roman and Greek poets who specialized in sexual invective and X-rated epigrams, such as Juvenal and Martial, got into a real froth just contemplating the notion of women “usurping” the male role. They too insisted that one of the partners in tribadic sex must play the part of the active male, either by using a dildo, her enlarged clitoris, or another appropriately shaped instrument. (Suffering Sappho, where’d I put that cucumber?)
Although Greek and Roman men had practiced or knew about intercrural, nonpenetrative sex, they likewise scoffed at the idea of women finding delight in this manner. The whole spectrum of nonpenetrative lovemaking between women was lost on them. Nonetheless, art historians and archaeologists have found a growing amount of pictorial proof. Depictions of lesbian lovemaking adorned numerous household objects, from mural art to mirrors, from jewelry boxes to bowls.
Contemporary writers on ancient sexual mores such as Bernadette Brooten, author of Love between Women, point out that “the concept of female homoeroticism as unnatural runs like a thread, especially through the Greek sources, both Christian and non-Christian. [The sources] implicitly contrast unnatural sex between women with the natural roles: men ‘do’ or ‘act,’ while women ‘suffer’ or are ‘passive.’”
So what did women in love actually do back then, and how did they lead their lives? We cannot know for certain, but what we can glean from scraps of text, passing literary remarks, letters, and graffiti, along with the richer stew offered by art and artifacts that survive from sources as diverse as walls in Ostia and Pompeii, mosaics on Sicily, and the rubbish heaps of Greco-Roman Egypt, it’s likely that lesbian couples two thousand years ago
did the same things that female lovers do now, from kissing to scissoring, from full body contact to oral pleasuring.
Given the intense and often vicious masculine reactions to women taking the “male” role in long-ago lovemaking, however, it seems fairly certain that most long-ago tribades and lesbians—like unicorns—took care to remain invisible.
One impudent exception? Female pornographers. Believe it or not, talented gals who possessed a way with dirty words and a gift for salacious illustration produced a number of X-rated publications in ancient times—only scraps remain, but it’s clear that the whole joyous spectrum of lovemaking was represented in these forerunners to The Joy of Sex. (For amusing details, see the entry on pornographers, male and female, elsewhere in this book.)
Dildos:
Eco-friendly—& sometimes edible!
As the story goes, two women went shopping at a farmer’s market. Spotting a display of firm, tasty-looking cucumbers, they stopped. The sign said, “Three for a dollar!” After some discussion, with a wink one gal said to the other, “Well, I suppose we could always eat one of them.”
Although cucumbers, plastics, and K-Y Jelly weren’t readily available long ago, imaginative Greeks, male and female, got alongjust fine in the bedroom department with the help of olive oil, wheat, and fine leather.
Being intensely phallocentric, Greek men confidently assumed that when lacking male partners, women used dildos or other phallic objects—because sex was mostly about penetration. Comic plays such as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata got many of their laughs through dildo jokes. Countless drinking cups also portrayed slaves and hookers putting leather phalluses to good use.