A Cabinet Of Greek Curiosities

by J. C. McKeown

  Where women are treated badly, as in Sparta, almost half of that society is deprived of happiness (Aristotle Rhetoric 1361a; a perhaps surprisingly enlightened remark).

  Socrates: Is there anyone to whom you entrust more important matters than to your wife?

  Critobulus: No one.

  Socrates: Is there anyone with whom you have fewer conversations than with your wife?

  Critobulus: Not many people, if any.

  (Xenophon Household Management 3.12)

  The woman called “mother” is not the parent of a child; she’s just the one who fosters the newly sown embryo. The parent is the one who mounts her, and she merely preserves the young offshoot, as a stranger would (Aeschylus Eumenides 658ff.).

  We see the moon shining bright when it is far from the sun, but when it is near to the sun, it disappears and is hidden. A virtuous woman, on the other hand, should be most visible when she is with her husband, but stay hidden at home when she is not with him (Plutarch Marriage Advice 139c).

  A woman ought not to make friends of her own. She should be content to share acquaintance with her husband’s friends (Plutarch Marriage Advice 140d).

  Theophrastus records that the Ephors fined King Agesilaus for marrying a small woman. “She will provide us,” they said, “not with kings, but with kinglets” (Plutarch Life of Agesilaus 2).

  When he married a small woman, a Spartan said, “One should choose the smallest of evil things” (Plutarch On Brotherly Love 482a).

  In Sparta all the girls and all the young men who were unmarried used to be locked in together in a dark room, and whichever girl each young man grabbed hold of, that was the girl he married, without a dowry. Lysander [the Spartan general who brought the Peloponnesian War to an end] was fined for abandoning the girl he got this way and scheming to marry another girl who was far prettier (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 555c).

  Why are male creatures generally larger than females? Is it because they are warmer, and therefore more prone to growth? Or because they are complete, whereas women are incomplete? Or because males mature slowly, females quickly? (Ps.-Aristotle Problems 891b).

  Seeing a woman being taught to write, Diogenes the Cynic said, “What a sword is being sharpened!”

  Seeing a woman giving advice to another woman, Diogenes said, “An asp is being given poison by a viper.”

  (Papyrus Bouriant 1 folio 6, from a book of exercises to be copied by schoolboys; a version of the second statement is found in Ps.-Menander Sayings).

  Theophrastus says that it seems essential to teach women to read and write, enough to be useful in managing household affairs. A more advanced level of education makes them lazy, talkative, and meddlesome (Stobaeus Anthology 2.31.31).

  St. Jerome expresses clear opinions in favor of celibacy at Against Jovinian 1.47, drawing on About Marriage, a “golden book” attributed to Theophrastus. For example:

  A wise man should not marry, above all because it gets in the way of the study of philosophy. It is not possible to devote oneself to one’s books and to a wife.

  Married ladies need expensive clothes, gold, jewelry, maids, furniture of all kinds, litters, and gilded carriages.

  Then there are the endless complaints all night long:

  “So and so is better dressed when she goes out in public.”

  “Why were you looking at the woman next door?”

  “What were you talking about with my maid?”

  “What did you bring me from the market?”

  We can’t choose a wife; we have to accept the one that we happen to get. If she is bad-tempered, or stupid, or ugly, or arrogant, or malodorous—whatever faults she has, we find out about them after the wedding. Horses, donkeys, dogs, the lowliest of slaves, clothing, pots, wooden chairs, cups, and earthenware jugs—we try out all such things as part of the buying process. A wife is the only thing not put on display, in case she should seem unsatisfactory before the wedding.

  Thargelia of Miletus, who was a very beautiful and wise woman, was married fourteen times (Hippias frg. 4).

  Crocodile dung is good for giving women’s faces a bright and shining complexion…. Some dealers deceitfully sell the droppings of starlings fed on rice as a cheap imitation (Dioscorides Medical Material 2.80).

  A wife should endure whatever befalls her husband, whether through misfortune or mistake, if he is ignorant, or sick, or drunk, or has dealings with other women. This sort of lapse is permissible for men, but never for women, who are punished for such behavior. It is the law, and a wife should respect it without complaining. A wife should also tolerate her husband’s anger, his meanness with money, his grumbling about life, his jealousy, his accusations, and any other natural defects he may have. This passage is attributed to Plato’s mother, Perictyone, at Stobaeus Anthology 4.28, but it is definitely spurious; it may have been written in the 4th or 3rd century B.C., and there is a very high probability that, like all but the tiniest fraction of Greek literature, it was written by a man.

  It may be that many people think it inappropriate for a woman to engage in philosophy, or ride a horse, or make a speech in public…. A woman should not leave the house either at dawn or at dusk. She should go out, accompanied by one or, at most, two maidservants, when the market is full of people, and when she has something specific to see or something specific to buy for the household (Phintys, daughter of Callicratidas, On the Proper Behavior of Women [ca. 400 B.C.], quoted at Stobaeus Anthology 4.23).

  Phidias sculpted Aphrodite with her foot on a tortoise, signifying to women that they should stay at home and keep silent. A woman should talk either to her husband or through her husband, and she should not be offended if, like a piper, she makes a more impressive sound by means of a tongue that is not her own (Plutarch Marriage Advice 142d).

  Beauty contests for women were held regularly in some cities. Listing several such events, as well as one for men at Elis, Athenaeus comments, “Theophrastus says somewhere that there are contests for women in modesty and household management, just as there are among the barbarians” (Wise Men at Dinner 610a). It would be interesting to know how a modesty contest was judged.

  At On Invention 1.51, Cicero reports a conversation between Aspasia and Xenophon’s wife (after which she asked Xenophon equivalent questions and elicited the same reactions):

  “Tell me, please—if your neighbor had better gold jewelry than you do, would you prefer to have hers or your own?”

  “Hers,” she said.

  “Suppose she had more expensive dresses and other such feminine finery than you have; would you prefer your own or hers?”

  “Hers, of course,” she replied.

  “All right, then, suppose she had a better husband than you have; would you prefer your own husband or hers?”

  At this point, the woman blushed.

  In the tense times before the decisive Greek victory at Plataea in 479 B.C., Lycidas, a member of the Athenian Council, proposed that the assembly should give a hearing to an ambassador sent by the Persians. (He made this proposal either because he had been bribed or because he really thought it was a good idea.) His fellow councilors and those outside the meeting place stoned him to death…. When the Athenian women learned what was happening, they went to Lycidas’s house and stoned his wife and children as well (Herodotus Histories 9.5).

  There is a story that the Amazons dislocate the joints of their own male offspring when they are still very young, either at the knees or at the hips. The purpose is said to be to make them lame, so that they will not plot against the women. They exploit them as craftsmen, in sedentary jobs such as shoemaking and brass working. I do not know if this is actually true (Hippocrates On the Joints 53).

  The Graeae, “the Old Women,” were three sisters who shared a single eye, a single ear, and a single tooth. Perseus forced them to help him in his attack on Medusa by intercepting the eye as it was being handed from one of the sisters to another. Pythagoras suggested that the myth was inspired by the remarkable read
iness with which women lend each other articles of clothing or jewelry without a witness to the transaction and without recourse to legal proceedings to get them back (Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Way of Life 55).

  Fishing with poison is quick and easy, but it makes the fish inedible and worthless. Likewise, when women use love-potions and magic spells on their husbands, gaining control of them through pleasure, they find themselves living with dull-witted and brainless shells of men. Circe derived no benefit from the men she turned into pigs and donkeys with her drugs, whereas she was passionately in love with Odysseus, who lived with her in full possession of his senses (Plutarch Marriage Advice 139a).

  Circe tries to give a potion to Odysseus.

  When Hecuba says of Achilles, “I wish I could take hold of his liver and eat it,” the expression might seem unacceptably exaggerated, if we did not already know about her sufferings. In fact this is an appropriate thing for an old woman to say when her child has not simply been killed, but also maltreated after death and left unburied (Scholion to Homer Iliad 24.212, after Achilles kills Hecuba’s son Hector in a duel).

  STEPMOTHERS

  Bees derive honey from thyme, the most bitter and arid of plants. Likewise, sensible people often draw benefit and profit from the most awkward situations. We really should try to do this, like the man who threw a stone at his dog, but missed it and hit his stepmother; “Not so bad!” he said. For we can change Fortune when it does not suit us (Plutarch On the Tranquility of the Mind 467c).

  Do not marry again when I am dead, I beg you, for a stepmother is hostile to the former children, no more gentle than a viper (Euripides Alcestis 309).

  When Aesop was asked why wild plants grow quickly, whereas those that people sow or plant grow slowly, he replied, “Because the earth is mother to wild plants, but stepmother to the others” (Gnomologium Vaticanum 125).

  You know how everyone thinks that stepmothers, however good they may be in other respects, hate their stepchildren. This is considered to be a mania shared by all women (Lucian The Disowned Son 31).

  He does not use the word “stepmother,” since that has negative connotations. Instead he says “one’s father’s wife” (Theodoretus Interpretation of the Fourteen Letters of St. Paul 82.261 [on First Corinthians 5.1]).

  A dream involving one’s stepmother is not good, whether she is alive or dead

  (Artemidorus Interpretation of Dreams 3.26).

  IV

  SEX

  People derive as much pleasure from scratching themselves as they do from having sex

  (Democritus frg. 127).

  What man could derive more pleasure from sleeping with the most beautiful woman than from staying awake to study what Xenophon has written about Panthea, or Aristobulus about Timoclea, or Theopompus about Thebe? (Plutarch A Pleasant Life Is Impossible on Epicurean Principles 1093c). Xenophon tells the uplifting tale of the noble Panthea at The Education of Cyrus 6.1; the other accounts are lost.

  Tiresias once saw two snakes mating. He wounded one of them and was changed into a woman. Apollo prophesied that, if he saw two snakes mating again and wounded one of them, he would be turned back into a man. Tiresias watched for an opportunity, did what the god said, and was turned into a man again. Zeus had an argument with Hera, maintaining that women derive more pleasure from sex than men do, whereas Hera claimed the opposite. They agreed to ask Tiresias, since he had experience of both sexes. He said that men get 10 percent of the pleasure, women 90 percent. This angered Hera, who stabbed him in the eyes, making him blind, but Zeus gave him the gift of prophecy and a life span of seven generations (Dicaearchus of Messana frg. 37).

  Throwing apples was a ploy in seduction, since the apple is sacred to Aphrodite (Scholion to Aristophanes Clouds 997).

  An incantation to be recited three times over an apple:

  I shall throw apples [at …]. I shall give this charm, always appropriate and edible for mortals and immortal gods. Whatever woman I give this apple to, whatever woman I throw it at and hit with it, may she go crazy with love for me, forgetting all about everything else, whether she takes it in her hand and eats it … or lays it in her lap. May she not stop loving me. Queen Aphrodite, born on Cyprus, make this charm work perfectly.

  (Supplementum Magicum Graecum 72.1)

  Those who are not decadent or immoral should regard sexual intercourse as justified only if it takes place within marriage and for the procreation of children, as the law ordains. Sexual intercourse in pursuit of pleasure alone is unjustified and illegal, even within marriage (Musonius Rufus Discourse 12).

  To deprive a woman of sleep: take a living bat and draw in myrrh on its right wing the figure indicated below [a not particularly mysterious figure sitting on a high couch], and on its left wing the seven names of the god and also the words “May so-and-so, the daughter of so-and-so, not sleep until she agrees to sleep with me,” and then release it (Greek Magical Papyri 12.376).

  To have an erection whenever you wish: mix up crushed pepper in honey and smear your thing (Greek Magical Papyri 7.185). There is a hole (caused by a worm) in the middle of the last word in the papyrus, which actually reads π[…]μα. πράγμα (pragma, “thing,” used here as a euphemism) is a modern conjecture to repair the damage. Other scholars prefer πέλμα (pelma, “sole of the foot”). I do not know whether any practical experiments have been done to solve this textual problem.

  The Indian had a quite amazing plant. It was not for eating. A man who rubs his penis with it allegedly gets an erection powerful enough for him to have intercourse with as many women as he wants. Some men said that by this means they had managed twelve times, but the Indian himself, who was a big, strong fellow, said he had once managed seventy times, though his sperm came in mere drops and was eventually bloody. He also claimed that women become unusually eager for intercourse when they use this drug. If this is true, it is extremely powerful (Theophrastus Enquiry into Plants 9.18). Theophrastus does not actually identify the plant.

  Grind the ashes left after burning a deer’s tail and then make a paste of the powder by adding wine. Smear this paste on the testicles and penis of an animal being put to stud, and you will stimulate its desire to mate. Smearing olive oil on its genitals counteracts the stimulus. The same procedure works for humans as well (Farm Work 19.5).

  On a lapis lazuli, engrave an ostrich with a fish in its mouth. Put under the stone an orchid seed and a sliver of the gizzard in the ostrich’s stomach. Close the amulet and wear it to ensure a completely sound digestion. It also causes an erection and fosters interest in sex. It is especially effective in causing an erection for men who are already old and for those who want to have frequent sexual intercourse. It also makes the wearer seductive (Cyranides 1.18).

  The testicles of a weasel can both ensure and prevent conception. If the right testicle, reduced to ashes and mixed in a paste with myrrh, is inserted into a woman’s vagina on a small ball of wool before intercourse, she will conceive immediately. But if the left testicle is wrapped in mule-skin and attached [we are not told how] to the woman, it prevents conception. The following words have to be written on the mule-skin: “ioa, oia, rauio, ou, oicoochx” [these groups of letters are meaningless]. If you are skeptical, try it on a bird that is laying eggs; it will not lay any eggs at all while the testicle is attached to it (Cyranides 2.7).

  A fibula is a little ring that tragic and comic actors have inserted into their penis, to prevent them from having sexual intercourse, for fear that they might lose their voice (Scholion to Juvenal Satires 6.379).

  A terra-cotta model of a sandal with the word AKOΛOYΘ[E]I (AKOLOUTH[E]I, “follow [me]”) picked out in the nails on the sole. Presumably a prostitute might wear such sandals.

  PROSTITUTES

  Moirichus wanted Phryne to sleep with him, but when she demanded a high price, he complained, “But didn’t you sleep with some foreigner recently for far less?” She replied, “Just you wait then until I actually want to fuck you, and I’ll acc
ept far less” (Machon Anecdotes 18.450).

  Many women even have figures in erotic postures engraved on the soles of their sandals so that they can leave an impression of their obscene thoughts on the ground as they walk along (St. Clement of Alexandria Paedagogus 2.11.116).

  The tears of a politician and the tears of a prostitute are equally sincere (Ps.-Menander Sayings 584).

  The prostitute Metiche had the nickname “Waterclock” because she would have sex until all the water had run out of the jar (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 567c).

  In his treatise Prostitutes at Athens, Apollodorus says that Phanostrate’s nickname was “Doorlouse,” because she used to stand at the door delousing herself (Suda s.v. Phanostrate).

  The following are more names or noms de guerre adopted by prostitutes:

  Aedonion

  Little Nightingale

  Aix

  Goat

  Boidion

  Little Cow

  Chelidion

  Little Swallow

  Cochlis

  Snail

  Conopion

  Mosquito

  Corone