How, where and with whom: the politics of sex in ancient Greece

Ste. n w gr Tnet Al m on . pa Toso H =S See TT A N pere

How , Where and w ith Whom: The Politics of Sex in Ancient Greece A catchy title to pull in the punters and entice them aw ay from going pu nting proper was app ropriate for an MCR lectu re on a warm afternoon in May. This paper, in living u p to the prom ise of that title, d iscusses the politics of sex through an investigation of the sexual positions and activities of women, m en, slaves, foreigners and satyrs (half m en, half horse creatures) as d epicted on the pots and pans that surround ed the ancient Greeks. The qu estion for this paper is: how does the d isplay of the sexual act itself contribute tow ard s the making, breaking and maintaining of social, p olitical and gend er hierarchies in the societies w ithin which the images are visible? What d oes it mean to p ut, what w e today might consid er, ’private’ bu siness on public display? What ind eed are the politics of sex? Such an investigation is not itself new in Classical scholarship, yet a re-visit is merited for three reasons. First, tod ay’s society is still grappling w ith this very question: how to evaluate private sexual choices as a marker of pu blic character and status. In the latest sp ate between Sven Goran Eriksson and the press over his liaisons with an FA Club secretary, the argument was partly w hether Sven’s private affairs should have any bearing on his ability to perform his p ublic role as manager. Should your sex life have a bearing on your role and status in society? Second , d espite such d ebate over the role of sex in our society, images of sex from societies such as those in ancient Greece, are considered, not as being able to contribute to this d ebate, but, at best, as titillating erotica, sold in calendar form from Sparta to Sam os. Such packaging d esensitises us from und erstanding how these images worked within the society in w hich and for which they w ere created and stops them from bringing their full w eight to bear on our ’sex d ebate’ today. The ’position of the month’ d oesn’t really get us very far, except in highlighting our own voyeu ristic tend encies. Third, where these images have been consid ered in their original context, their role has often been characterised as maintaining strict social, political and gender bou ndaries w ithin ancient Greek societies. Boundaries, w hich have then often been used as moral support for the strict sexual mores of their investigators’ ow n eras. In this paper, I hope to add ress these issues by arguing that, if we do take some time to position (ourselves and ) these images properly, a much more d ynamic and u nbalanced picture of social d istinction emerges. The politics of

sexu al positioning - the how , w here and with whom of ancient Greece - is a much m ore complicated world than the tourist calendars cou ld suggest. Far from being m ere pornograp hy, these images not only illuminate how Greek societies regu lated themselves, but can also help us to und erstand the role and meaning of the "Sven sex" d ebate, w hich w e find ourselves in today. Before w e d elve into the su pposed kamasu tra of ancient Greece, let me first d efine w hat w e are going to look at: the art prod u ced in d emocratic Athens d uring the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. "Democratic" Athens was a place where only citizen m en could participate in the d emocratic business of the city: a long way from what w e u nd erstand as d emocracy today. Women, slaves and foreigners were exclud ed. Such a polarization betw een those who were "in" and those who w ere "out"; between the citizen male ’Self’ and the wom an, slave and foreigner ’Other’, can help u s to und erstand a fam ous statem ent of Athenian civic id entity: "I am not a slave, I am not a foreigner and I am not a woman". The logic was: if I am not part of the Other, I m ust be part of the Self. One such occasion that crystallised this d emarcation of Self and Other w as the Sym posium : an all male party, w here m en got together to d rink, play games, talk philosophy and politics and fornicate w ith each other and w ith prostitutes. Participation in the symposiu m confirmed your male citizen status and it was at these symposia that many of the images, which we w ill be d iscussing, w ere displayed . What were these images d isplayed on? Potters and painters in Athens churned out clay vessels of d ifferent shapes and sizes all w ith specific usescarrying water, wine, d rinking, cooling etc. and on which they painted scenes. The content of these scenes varied enormou sly from myth to daily life to sex to fantasy to horror and to d eath. The images of sex d epicted on these pots portrayed d ifferent types of peop le (nam ely, m en, women, slaves and foreigners) having sex in d ifferent ways in d ifferent places. As such, the male citizen w ho u sed these pots and looked at these images learnt about how the Self and Other had sex. By seeing what the Other d id , the citizen learnt w hat he should not be doing (if he wanted to be part of the male citizen Self). In short, these images seem to have confirmed for the view er w hat was ’correct’ sexual activity for the male citizen. So what d id the Other d o? Wom en were politically inferior to m en in Ancient Athens, but also held great power as they were key to the continuation of the citizen race. Yet that role w as continuously threatened by a wom an’s su pposed natural promiscuity and high sex drive. This w as itself d ue to, according to m edical w ritings, their bodies being d ominated by their sexual and reprod uctive organs as w ell as their lack, according to p hilosophers such as Plato, of a control mechanism in their brains.

The images displayed on the pots at the sym posium went a long w ay to both constru cting and confirming these stereotypes of the female Other to those attend ing. A w oman’s ability to run am uck w as show n by the m ythical stories of the Am azons, w ho killed their husband s and cut off one of their breasts to fight against, typically, Greek citizen m en. Not only Amazons were shown as fighters, but ’normal’ w omen w ho had subverted the natural ord er to such a d egree that they fought with large erect p enises. Images of women engaged in sexual activities w ere also d isplayed for the male view er, which confirmed the notion of a w om an’s unquenchable sexual appetite. Women w ere portrayed as avid masturbators (unlike the citizen male for whom masturbation was a faute d e m ieux reserved for slaves). Women ’liked’ using multiple sex toys, and one w as even show n u sing an upsid e-dow n amphora - the vessel used for storing w ine for the sym posium to pleasure herself (Figure 2). Figure 2 - Wom an misusing an amphora. Source: ARV 238,5 This image d emonstrated not only a woman’s sexual appetite, but also the d eviant nature of both the appetite and the woman, since such activity su bverts the ’correct’ use of the am phora as a vessel for pouring wine at the citizen male symposium. How cou ld w omen ever be citizen m en, w hen they d id n’t even know how to use an amphora p roperly... Ind eed so subversive was the female sexual appetite that w om en were thought to enjoy (and w ere show n as enjoying) relations w ith other wom en and even with animals. By d epicting w omen engaging in these types of sexual behaviour, these images not only justified the social and political inferiority of w omen but also outlined to the citizen male what he should n’t be doing if he wanted to maintain his own su perior position. Slaves w ere d epicted engaging in masturbation like w om en. Moreover slaves were often d ep icted as having large p halluses. Contrary to today’s obsession with size, the Athenian citizen male d id not consid er a large penis as an advantage, since it closely connected its owner w ith the animal kingd om,

particularly the donkey, which was a su bservient anim al. The large penis was a sign of low er class statu s rather than mascu line prow ess and w e only need look at the plethora of ancient Greek male nud e statues with small unobtrusive penises to confirm this. Ind eed athletes and young men used to tie up their penises (a p rocess called infibulation) to minimalise their appearance. Images on Greek p ots also portrayed foreigners as having different sexual tend encies to the Athenian citizen male. Foreigners w ere thou ght of as principally effeminate. This id entified them w ith females, and so male foreigners w ere often shown in the less dom inant receiving position when having sex with Greek men (Figure 3). When having sex w ith each other, they were portrayed as having sex in such an acrobatic way so as to put both partners in an effem inate position (Figure 4) Figure 3 - A Greek man approaches a Persian man who is bent over. The image ru ns round tw o sid es of the same vessel Source: Keuls 1985 Fiv.261 Figure 4 - Scythian men’s acrobatic sex acts Source: Sutton 2000 Fig. 7.4 Images of the Other having sex help ed to construct a pattern of how not to have sex if you were a citizen male. At the sam e time, some images on pots showed citizen men engaging in sexual relations d em onstrating how they should have sex. In their relations with women, these images clearly d emarcate two categories of relationship - one w ith hetaerai (the prostitu tes of the symposium) and one with wives. Interestingly, im ages of the citizen male actually having sex with his wife w ere very rare ind eed ! Wives w ere portrayed sitting insid e the house waiting for the d runken husband to return, or ap proaching the bed room with oil flasks, or, in mythical stories, being raped by their husband s, bu t actual marital sex betw een citizen man and his wife w as almost absent.

Such an absence rings loud er w hen w e p lace it in relation to the plethora of images that show d etailed sexual encounters betw een men and hetaerai. Men were shown in the act of p enetration, alw ays in a dom inant position, and often w ith a money-bag present in the image to characterise the natu re of the act (Figure 5). Multiple orgy scenes w ere also represented w ith men occasionally shown beating the hetaerai, both as part of the sexual act and , it seem s, as p unishm ent for poor performance. Figure 5 - man and hethera with m oney p urse Source: ARV 923,29 Citizen m en are also portrayed having relationships with other citizen men. Here a complex line had to be negotiated since in having sex between men, one at least had to be in a receiving position, thus imitating a foreigner or a wom an. At the sam e time, actually being penetrated (in any position, d ominant or not) w as also tantam ount to id entifying yourself w ith a w oman. A form of sex was thus often em ployed (in the images on pots at least), which allowed both males to dominate and w hich avoid ed penetration. This was called ’intercrural sex’, w here men faced each other and placed the other’s penis between their thighs (Figu re 6). In their relations with other men and with citizen boys, it seems, sed uction and pursuit w as fine, yielding to that sed uction in a conventional way was not. Figure 6 - two men face one another for intercrural sex in the centre of the im age. Source: ABV 297,16.

In this w ay, images on pots used at the sym posium probably mirrored events going on in front of them. It w ould be wrong to d eny that there w asn’t an element of titillating erotica abou t them. They m ay even have acted as spurs to action. How ever by re-presenting such behaviou r in art, these images also helped to confirm and structure how the Athenians saw particular acts and with whom they associated them . This in tu rn marked the boundaries between the male citizen Self and the woman, slave and foreigner Other. How you have sex and with whom (or w hat) mad e exp licit social, political, ethnic and gender d ifferences. That expression of Athenian civic id entity "I am not a slave, I am not a foreigner and I am not a w om an" might well also have run: "I d o not masturbate, I am not penetrated , I am always d ominant". How ever, strict bound aries and sex have never been easy bed fellow s. Into this clear-cut p ictu re of sexual behaviour and social bound aries must now be introd uced the creature called the satyr. A creature half horse-half man, standing on tw o horse legs w ith an enormous perm anent erection, the satyr was incred ibly popu lar in images on pots throughout the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., particularly on pots d esigned for the symposiu m. The satyr frolicked arou nd d rinking w ine, acting drunk and d ancing w ith Dionysos - the God of wine and the symposiu m ju st as the male citizens did. Yet satyrs have often been thought to sum up everything the citizen male did not w ant to be since they had all the bad (sexual) traits of w omen, slaves and foreigners. Satyrs buggered each other and gave each other oral sex (Figure 7). They exposed them selves and masturbated turned full frontal tow ard s the viewer. Names, such as Terpekelos (m eaning ’shaft pleasurer’), w ere painted above them, chosen sp ecifically to highlight their ’shameful’ activity. They showed off the size of their penises by hanging things off it and balancing wine cups on it (Figu re 8). They d ressed up to look like foreigners and used their penises as w eapons. A satyr was even portrayed in a 69 position with a d eer. Moreover, to solidify his connection with the Other, one satyr was portrayed as having sex w ith an amphora, su bverting its ’prop er’ use just as we saw a woman d oing (although at least, in ord er to penetrate the am phora, he had to u se it the ’right’ way round !) Figure 7 - Satyrs as the other Source: Berlin 1964.4

Figure 8 - Satyr balances a wine cup on his p enis Source: Berard 1989 Fig 171 Satyrs have often been thought to m erely reinforce the bou ndaries w e have alread y seen. In being half horse, half man, the satyr natu rally goes too far and thus helps the watching citizens guard against breaking those sexual social and gend er barriers. Or d oes he? Instead of guarding those boundaries, d oes the satyr actually show how easily they are confused ? Does the satyr, in being sexually Ÿber-zealous, womanise the m an within him and show how easy it is to become part of the Other? Such an interpretation has been bolstered by the more recent stud y of images on pots, particularly those created between 520-470BC, w hich have long been d isregard ed by scholars intent on p reserving w hat they thought was the strict sexu al cod e of ancient Greece, w hich in turn w as being used to su pport the strict m oral cod e of their own times. In this p eriod of turbulence surrou nd ing the Persian wars, there w ere images on pots of citizen men allowing themselves to be p enetrated in a nond ominant position like wom en. There were images of men masturbating like slaves. Men w ere even show n to invite buggery by offering their anuses to the viewer(s) of the pot and seen to have sex with animals, ju st like w omen and satyrs. Ind eed men were possibly even more Other than satyrs, as they w ere shown to vom it and d efecate at sym posia, something satyrs never d id . Citizen m an, as those images of the half horse half man satyr and these occasional im ages of men behaving bad ly su ggest, w as not so far away from all the categories of Other as w e have been led to believe. Together, these images have subverted the very clear d istinctions other images seem ed to have p ut in place. At the same time, and continu ing dow n to the end of the fifth century BC, satyrs started to look, in images on pots, increasingly like the citizen man. The su pposed antithesis of citizen man increasingly became indistingu ishable from him. They dressed like old citizens, chatting up the hand som e young men (Figure 9). In these images, the satyr's bod y, once so distingu ishable from that of a man, humanised to such a p oint that the two were synonymous. Satyrs even started to imitate the m ythical heroes of Athens, like Perseu s and Heracles.

Figure 9 - Satyr on left chatting u p a youth Source: Berard 1989 Fig 192 How ever, satyrs did not only imitate citizen m an, bu t all the categories of Other as well. They imitated slaves and low class workmen: tread ing grapes, cooking, caring for donkeys and scu lpting. Satyrs echoed the activities of foreigners and w om en echoed satyrs by d ressing up to im itate them. The satyr mad e the citizen viewer double take about the d ifferences betw een him and every other section of society by copying each of them (w ith regard to their sexual antics); by taking over their roles or imitating them in everyday activities and by letting themselves be imitated . The satyr was everyone from slave to woman to foreigner to citizen man. H e linked them all throu gh his character and thus tore d own the boundaries that those initial images, even those of the satyr him self, set up (and w hich generations of scholars have been happ y to accept). If the satyr could be all of these categories, then how much real d ifference was there between them? The satyr thus challenged the citizen view er to think abou t how he d efined himself and w hether the Self and Other bound ary really existed at all. One d rinking cup d emonstrated this inter-changeability very well. On one sid e, a satyr’s face looked directly at the view er (Figure 10). The foot of the cup had been replaced by a set of male genitalia. When the user d rank from the cu p, he d rank from the satyr. Moreover when he lifted the cu p by the handles to drink, a satyr face on the other sid e of the vessel covered his. The d rinker presented ’his’ satyr face, and pointed ’his’ genitalia at the other members of the sym posium . While he d rank, the citizen man literally became the satyr w ith all that such a transformation entails. Figure 10 - A d rinking cup w ith Satyr faces Soiurce: Oxford 1974 344

Images of sexual antics on pots in Ancient Athens thus both structure and su bvert a way of d efining citizens and non-citizens by their sexual practices. They seem to, instead of just structuring a firm line betw een Self and Other, make that line purposefully problematic and they leave that problem as a matter for the viewer. Each individ ual citizen is mad e to re-consid er w hat he thou ght he had und erstood about sex at the very tim e and place w here he may w ell be engaging in it, in front of others, at the symposium, attendance at w hich w as su pposed to confirm his citizen status. Ind eed the place w here the boundary between citizen man and non-citizen man is most likely to be reached - in the heady mid st of the w ild sym posium party à is the place w here these images (are themselves placed to) question w here that boundary actually lies. Through these images, bou ght and chosen by the symposiu m giver, the citizen symp osiast is forced to think abou t what exactly a citizen is and what exactly a citizen d oes. Moreover each individual reacted (and then acted ) within the sym posium grou p, in front of that group. Images of sex forced the viewer to think, (re-)act and thus to some extent d efine himself in front of his fellow citizens. In a similar way, members of the MCR as part of the aud ience group to this paper in May, d efined them selves to that group by their reactions to, and thoughts about, the images show n (althou gh read ers and college authorities will be glad to hear that this was as far as the similarity with the ancient symposiu m w ent!) The question of sex and society is not a new one. What these images throw up is the implausibility of sexual behaviou r, or behaviour in general, offering strict bound aries w hich are able to d emarcate a Self and an Other, an "Us" and a "Them ". Such a polarisation ignores the grey midd le ground and the satyr, in Athenian art, seems to have been used to make an issue of just such an area. The point of these images seems to me, not to com e to a conclusion about w here the bound ary lies, but to make the issue of the m id d le ground a source of constant d ebate and d iscussion, throu gh w hich society is able to evolve. Such discussion continues to this day in, at the very least, the form of Sven, the press and the MCR Grad uate Lecture series. M y thanks go to the M CR president for inviting me to speak in M ay and to M r D. M urphy in calling for this contribution to the College M agazine, as well as to you, the readers, for taking the time to peruse it.

Sources: ABV - Beazley, J.D. Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters 1956, Oxford ARV - Beazley, J.D. Attic Red -Figure Vase-Painters 1942, Oxford Brard - 1989 Brard , C. et al. A City of Images 1989, Princeton Keuls 1985 Keuls, E.C. The Reign of the Phallus: sexual politics in ancient Athens 1985, Cam brid ge Mass. Sutton 2000 Sutton, R.F. Jnr. "The Good , the Base and the Ugly: the d runken orgy in Attic vase painting and the Athenian self" in Not the Classical Id eal: Athens and the Construction of the Other Cohen, B. (Ed .) 2000, Boston p.10822