PHILOSOPHICAL AND MEDICAL MODELS 181
who by their personal beauty show that they have a natural disposition toward
excellence. Zeno says this in his Republic, Chrysippus in the first book of his
work On Ways of Living, and Apollodorus in his Ethics. They say that erōs
is an application of the mind toward establishing an affectionate relationship
with another because of that person’s manifest beauty, and that it is not to do
with sexual relations, but with affection. At least, they point to the fact that
Thrasonides,228 even though he had the woman he loved in his power, kept
away from her because she hated him. Therefore they say that erōs is affection
(just as Chrysippus says in his book On Erōs), that it is not sent by the gods,
and that youthful beauty is the blossoming of excellence.
Of the three ways of living, the contemplative, the practical, and the rational,
they say that we ought to choose the third, because a rational creature has
been designed by nature for both contemplation and achievement. They say
that when a wise man has good reason to do so, he will put an end to his own
life, for the sake of his country or his friends, or if he suffers unbearable pain,
mutilation, or incurable sickness. They also expressed the view that among wise
men wives should be held in common with a free interchange of partners, as
Zeno says in his Republic and Chrysippus in his work On the Republic. Under
these conditions we will feel an equal paternal affection for all the children, and
adultery caused by jealousy will be eliminated.
[On Epicurus, founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy, and his followers]
10.1.118 Even under torture the wise man is happy. Only the wise man will feel
gratitude towards friends, present and absent alike, and show it by word and
deed. To be sure, however, if he is under torture, he will moan and cry out. The
wise man will have a sexual relationship with no woman who is forbidden to
him by law, as Diogenes says in his summary of Epicurus’ ethical doctrines. He
will not punish his servants, but will have compassion towards them and will at
times make allowances for those who take their work seriously. The Epicureans
do not think a wise man should fall in love, nor should he pay any attention to
burial rites. They say that erōs is not sent by the gods, as Diogenes229 states in
his twelfth book. A wise man will not be a fine speaker. And they say that sexual
activity is never of benefit, and that we should be content if it does no harm.
6.17 Origen Against Celsus 4.48. 248 CE.
In this attack on paganism, Origen
mentions a teaching of the early Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (mid-third
century BCE). No other such depictions of Zeus and Hera are attested, and
we do not know whether the picture Chrysippus discussed was what he
purported it to be.
But why should I recount the strange stories told by the Greeks about their
gods, which are in themselves shameful, even when interpreted allegorically?
182 GREEK AND ROMAN SEXUALITIES: A SOURCEBOOK
Take for example the passage where Chrysippus of Soli, who is deemed to have
ornamented the Stoic school with many wise writings, interprets a painting
in Samos230 showing Hera performing an unmentionable act on Zeus. This
venerable philosopher says in his writings that Matter receives the spermatic
principles of God, and holds them within herself for the purpose of creating
order in the universe. For in the Samian painting, Hera is Matter and Zeus
is God. It is because of these and countless other similar myths, that we are
unwilling, even in name only, to call the God of all things Zeus, or the sun
Apollo, or the moon Artemis.
Further Reading
For the influence of traditional culture on medical thought, see Carson 1990.
For the Hippocratics’ views on female bodies, see Dean-Jones 1994, and
Flemming and Hanson (eds) 1998. On the wandering womb, see Faraone
2011. For the disagreements between Aristotle and Galen, see Connell
2000; for Soranus, see Hanson and Green 1994. For Galen and the ‘one sex’
model, see Laqueur 1990. For Musonius Rufus and Stoic sexual ethics, see
Nussbaum 2002 and Gaca 2003, pp. 59–116. On Lucretius’ view of erotic
love, see Brown 1987 and Nussbaum 1994, pp. 140–91. For the impact of
medical thought about sexuality and the body in late antiquity, see Rousselle
1993. For Philo of Alexandria, see Gaca 2003, pp. 190–217.
ANXIETY, SUSPICION AND BLAME 103
considered a long and loosely draped garment appropriate for women only,
in order to prevent others seeing the arms and legs. But Roman men at first
dressed in the toga alone, without a tunic; later they had short, close-fitting
tunics ending below the shoulders, which the Greeks call ‘sleeveless’. Publius
Africanus, the son of Paulus,121 a man endowed with every useful skill and every
virtue, dressed in this older fashion. Among the many objections he had to the
effeminate Sulpicius Gallus, he considered it particularly disgraceful that Gallus
wore tunics long enough to cover his hands. These were Scipio’s words: ‘The
kind of perfumed man who primps every day in front of a mirror, who shaves
his eyebrows, who walks around with plucked beard and thighs, who when he
was a youth reclined at parties with a lover, wearing a long-sleeved tunic, who
craved not only wine but also men, who would doubt that he has done the same
things that perverts do?’
3.20 Curse tablet. Suppl. Mag. I.38. Second century CE.
The purpose of the
magical invocation on this lead tablet from Egypt is to ‘bind’ a woman and
prevent her from having sex with anyone other than the man who purchased
the spell.
I bind you, Theodoutis daughter of Eus, to the tail of the snake and the mouth
of the crocodile and the horns of the ram and the venom of the asp and the
whiskers of the cat and the male member of the god so that you cannot ever have
intercourse with another man, so that you can neither be fucked nor buggered
nor give oral sex, nor can you do anything for pleasure with another person
if not me alone, Ammonion son of Hermitaris. For I alone am Lampsourē
othikalak aiphnōsabaō stēseōn uellaphonta sankistē chphyris.122 Fulfill this
binding love spell – Isis123 used this one – so that Theodoutis daughter of Eus
may no longer have experience of another man’s companionship other than me
alone, Ammonion. Let her be enslaved, driven mad, and fly through the air in
search of Ammonion son of Hermitaris, and let her bring thigh to thigh and
sex to sex for intercourse always for as long as she lives. These are the figures:
[crude drawings of a god, a snake, a crocodile, a cat (?), human figures, and
magical signs].
3.21 Tertullian On the Apparel of Women 1.1.1–3, 2.2.4–6. Early third century
CE. Tertullian converted to Christianity as an adult and produced many works,
including a group of books setting forth his views on Christian habits and morality.
1.1.1–3
‘In pain and worry you bear children, woman; you turn to your husband and
he is lord over you.’124 Do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence on
104 GREEK AND ROMAN SEXUALITIES: A SOURCEBOOK
this sex of yours lives on in this age; the guilt must live on as well. You are
the Devil’s door; you are the unveiler of that tree;125 you are the first to desert
divine law; you are the one who persuaded him, whom the Devil was unable
to reach; you destroyed the man, God’s image, with ease. Because of what
you deserved – death – the Son of God had to die, and you think to adorn
yourself in something grander than your tunic of animal skin? Come now, if the
Milesians had shorn their sheep at the beginning of the world, and the Chinese
had spun silk, and the Tyrians dyed cloth, and the Phrygians done embroidery,
and the Babylonians tapestry, and pearls had gleamed and precious stones
glimmered; if gold had already emerged from the ground along with greed, if
the mirror had been allowed to tell such lies as it does now, then I believe that
Eve would have coveted these things, even though she was thrust from Paradise
and already dead.
2.2.4–6
But why are we dangerous to others? Why do we cause others to feel desire? If
God, in amplifying the law, does not distinguish the desire from the deed when
punishing fornication, I do not know whether he would spare from punishment
the one who caused another’s perdition. For as soon as a man desires your
beauty and admits thoughts of what he desires into his mind, he perishes;
and you have become the sword by which he perishes, so that even if you are
blameless, you shall not escape odium. It is just as when a robbery takes place
on someone’s estate: the owner is not responsible for the crime, yet the area
nevertheless gains a bad reputation, and the owner himself is tainted by its
infamy. Shall we paint ourselves, if it means that others perish? Then what of
‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’? What of ‘Care not for your own
welfare, but for your neighbour’s’? No pronouncement of the Holy Spirit can be
pertinent to the immediate context alone, and each is to be applied and carried
out in every circumstance in which it is useful. Therefore, since both we and
others are affected by the zealous pursuit of physical charms, know now that
you must not only reject the stagecraft of beauty that is artificially and labori-
ously achieved, you must even blot out your natural good looks by concealment
and lack of care, since these are equally grievous to the eyes of those who
behold you. For even though physical charm is not to be censured, since it is a
bodily happiness, another example of the divine molder’s art, and as it were, a
good garment of the soul, nevertheless it is to be feared because of the violence
and wrongs done by men who pursue it. Even Abraham, the father of the faith,
was in great fear because of his own wife’s beauty, and earned reproach when
he purchased his safety by falsely calling Sarah his sister.126
SEXUALITY AND THE GODS 45
for Dionysus, what they do would be most shameful,’ says Heraclitus, ‘and
Hades is the same as Dionysus, the god for whom they go mad and celebrate
the Lenaea.’39
1.17 Augustine City of God 6.9. Fifth century CE.Writing after the sack of
Rome by the Visigoths, Augustine was concerned to justify the Roman
empire’s adoption of Christianity and its rejection of traditional paganism.
Here he ridicules the ‘functional gods’ of archaic Roman religion, drawing
largely on a lost account by Varro (first century BCE).
As to the roles of the divine powers, defined with such stinginess and exactness,
on account of which they say that each one ought to be supplicated according
to its own special domain, we have already had much to say, though we have
not told the whole story. Are they not more fitted to the ridiculous clowning of
a mime show than to divine majesty? If anyone gave a baby two nurses, one to
provide nothing but solid food, and one to provide nothing but drink, as these
people employ two goddesses, Educa and Potina,40 would he not seem to be a
fool, enacting something like a comic show in his own house? They think that
Liber41 gets his name from the word for liberation, because through his care
males are ‘liberated’ when their semen is released. Libera (who they think is
the same as Venus) does the same thing for women, for they ascribe to her the
release of the woman’s seed, and for these reasons male body parts are placed
in the temple of Liber, and female parts in the temple of Libera. In addition to
this there are the women devoted to Liber, and wine drunk in order to incite
lust. This is how the Bacchanalia used to be celebrated, in the grip of complete
insanity. On this subject Varro himself admits that such things would not have
been done at the Bacchanalia had their minds not been disturbed. Later on,
these behaviours displeased the Senate, which was saner, and it commanded
that they cease. At least in this case, perhaps, they finally realised what effect
unclean spirits have on people’s minds, when they are mistaken for gods. These
things are not done in the theaters, for there in fact they are playacting, not
raving, although having gods who are delighted by such plays is very much like
madness.
But what sort of distinction is this he makes between the superstitious and
the religious person? He says that the superstitious person fears the gods,
whereas the religious one honours them like his parents and does not fear them
like enemies; also that the gods are all so good, that they will more readily spare
the guilty than harm the innocent. Yet he records that three gods are assigned
as guardians to a woman who has just given birth, in order to prevent the god
Silvanus42 from entering at night and molesting her, and that in order to indicate
that these guardians are present, three men make a circuit of the house at night
and first strike the threshold with an axe, then with a pestle, and thirdly, they
46 GREEK AND ROMAN SEXUALITIES: A SOURCEBOOK
sweep it with brushes, so that Silvanus will be prevented from entering by
means of these symbols of farming. For trees are not cut or pruned without
iron blades, and grain is not ground without a pestle, nor heaped up without
brushes. Now from these three things gods have been named: Intercidona from
the cut made by the hatchet, Pilumnus from the pestle, and Deverra from the
brushes, and these guardian gods protect the woman who has just given birth
against the power of the god Silvanus. Therefore the protection of the good
gods would not be effective against the malice of the harmful one, unless they
outnumbered him and fought against his roughness and uncivilised harshness,
as an inhabitant of the woods, with the opposing symbols of culture. Is this
then the harmlessness of the gods, and their harmonious nature? Are these the
health-bringing gods of the cities, more laughable than the ludicrous shows at
the theaters?
When the male and female are joined, the god Jugatinus presides; let us
accept this for now. But the new bride must be brought home, so the god
Domiducus is assigned. In order that the bride may live in the home, the god
Domitius is assigned, and in order for her to remain with her husband, they add
the goddess Manturna. What more is needed? Let human modesty be spared;
let the tale of lustful flesh and blood go forward in a way that preserves respect.
Why is the bedroom filled with a crowd of deities, when even the groomsmen
have departed? It is crowded not in order to encourage chastity as a result of
their presence, but in order that women, as the weaker sex, frightened by that
which is new and strange, may with the help of these gods more easily give
up their virginity. For those present include the goddess Virginiensis, the god
Father Subigus, the goddess Mother Prema, the goddess Pertunda, and Venus,
and Priapus. What is this? If a man doing this work must at all costs have assis-
tance from the gods, would not one goddess or one god be sufficient? Would
not Venus alone be sufficient, the goddess who they say is named from the fact
that without her power, no woman ceases to be a virgin? If people have any
shame at all, a thing that the gods lack, will the newlyweds not feel bashful,
he less eager and she more reluctant, at the idea that so many gods of both
sexes are present and assisting with the matter at hand? Indeed, the goddess
Virginiensis is there so that the virgin’s belt may be loosened, and Subigus is
there to put her beneath the husband, and the goddess Prema is there so that
once she is under him, she does not move, and submits to the embrace. What
does the goddess Pertunda do? Let her blush and go outdoors. Leave something
for the husband to do! It is disgraceful that anyone other than he himself should
perform the role from which she takes her name. But perhaps she is tolerated
because she is said to be a goddess rather than a god, for if a masculine god
called Pertundus were thought to exist, the husband would have to seek out
more protection against him for his wife’s chastity than the new mother does
against Silvanus. But why am I saying this, since Priapus43 is there too, he who
SEXUALITY AND THE GODS 47
is overly masculine, and upon whose incredibly huge and disgusting member
new brides were told to sit, according to a most respectable and pious custom
of Roman matrons?
1.18 Scholiast on Lucian Dialogues of the Courtesans 2.1, 7.4. Fifth to ninth
century CE, drawing upon earlier sources. Scholia are marginal explanatory
notes added to ancient manuscripts. The scholia on Lucian are one of the
most important sources for the rituals of Demeter.
2.1 The Thesmophoria is a Greek festival that includes mysteries, and the
same festival is also called the Scirophoria. According to the more mythic
explanation, it was held because when Cora was abducted by Pluto44 while
picking flowers, a certain swineherd Eubuleus was present at the spot, grazing
his pigs. They were swallowed up in Cora’s chasm, and therefore in honour
of Eubuleus, piglets are thrown into the ‘chasms of Demeter and Cora’. The
rotted remains of what was thrown into the chambers below are brought up by
women called Bailers, who have spent three days in ritual purity. They go down
into the interior spaces and when they have recovered the remains, they place
them on the altars. They believe that if someone takes some of this and sows
it with the seed grain, he will have a good crop. They say that there are also
snakes down in the chasms, which eat much of the material thrown in. For this
reason they make a rattling noise when the women are bailing, and whenever
they put back those models,45 so that the snakes, which they believe are the
guardians of the interior spaces, will withdraw. The same thing is also called
the Arrhetophoria,46 and it is conducted according to the same reasoning about
the genesis of the earth’s fruits, and the procreation of humans. At that festival
too they deposit sacred objects, which cannot be named, made of wheat-dough,
and these are copies of snakes and male members. And they take hold of pine
branches because this plant produces many offspring. These things as well as
piglets are thrown into the chambers (for so they call the interior spaces), as
I said. The piglets are used on account of their fecundity, as a symbol of the
genesis of the earth’s fruits and of humans, and are a thanksgiving offering to
Demeter, because in providing her fruits she civilised the human race. Thus the
reason formerly given for the festival is a mythological one, but the one set
forth here is physical. It is called the Thesmophoria because Demeter is given
the epithet Thesmophoros47 as a result of setting the laws or Thesmoi according
to which human beings must work to provide themselves with nourishment.
7.4 Haloa: a festival at Athens, including mysteries of Demeter, Cora and
Dionysus, held by the Athenians when the vines are cut and the wine that has
been laid down is tasted. At this time, they set out objects in the shape of male
private parts, and they explain them as tokens of the seed by which humans
