From the 6th to 4th centuries BC, Greek culture reached its most impressive achievements in literature, philosophy, politics, science, and the arts. The Greeks of this era generally avoided legal enforcement of moral or religious notions of “proper sexual conduct.” Classical Greek morality and law focused not on sexual sin, but on whether an individual’s conduct was harmful to others. To the ancient Greeks, Eros was a primordial force that permeated every facet of life.
The Greek gods freely indulged in sexual pleasure. In Greek mythology, Zeus transformed himself into a bull, a swan and even rain in order to seduce mortals. Aphrodite was the goddess of love and sexual delight. The sex wasyour aphrodisia“-” Aphrodite’s things. It is said that during Aphrodite’s feast, her priestesses had sex with strangers as a form of worship.
The Greeks approached the human form without thinking that nudity was inherently shameful. On the contrary, the phallus was a powerful symbol of fertility, a central theme of Greek religion. A pillar topped with the helmet of Hermes adorned with an erect penis stood at almost every gateway to Athens. Vases and terracottas depicted explicit scenes of vaginal and anal intercourse, masturbation and fellatio.
Additionally, the Greeks had no concept of “obscenity,” a legal concept that would not appear in Western culture for another 2,000 years. Greek comedy, for example, was often quite bawdy. Aristophanes, a 4th century BC playwright, depicted sexuality in all its forms. In “Knights,” he depicted masturbation, fellatio and anal sex between men. One character boldly talks about sucking “cocks in the Prytaneum”, while another brags about selling not only sausages, but sometimes his “ass” as well. Greek literature playfully described women masturbating, either by hand or using a device adapted for the purpose. The Greeks called such devices baubon Or olisbos.
In “The Two Friends or the Confidential Conversation” by Herondas, two young women enthusiastically discuss these olisboi. At the end of the conversation, the single woman hurries to acquire such a “treasure” for herself. In Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata,” the women mourn the loss of the special leather olisboi which had been made to perfection by the women of Miletus. Greek vases explicitly describe the use of olisboi in all possible ways, positions and combinations.
A distinctive feature of classical Greek sexual life was the practice of pæderastia. Adult men, whether married or single, often have sex with adolescent boys. (These relationships did not involve children, but post-pubescent adolescents, usually between the ages of 15 and 19. Sex with prepubescent boys was punished, sometimes quite harshly.) The Greek ideal of beauty was embodied in the more perfectly in male youth. Solon, a poet and legislator, wrote that he loved “a boy in the flower of youth, bewitched by his thighs and his sweet lips.” The mighty gods of Olympus, from Zeus on down, had such relationships, as did Aeschylus, Sophocles, Alcibiades, and Pindar.
Greek boys were not taught to think of themselves as heterosexual or homosexual, a distinction that did not exist for another 2,000 years. Instead, Greek culture recognized that same-sex and opposite-sex sexual desires could naturally coexist to varying degrees in the same individual, just as we might today think of the different desires that individuals might have to each other. engaging in certain sexual acts more than others. For the Greeks, homosexual relations were simply a sexual act. He did not define a type of person.
Greek pæderasty assumed relationships based on mutual affection. Plato observed that adults in these relationships did “all that lovers do” for those “they cherish.” They showered them with gifts, verses, attention and love. Among other things, it was a way for adult men to mentor and socialize their juniors, particularly within the aristocratic class. Xenophon attested that in such relationships the older man took “care to develop the character of his student, his ‘beloved,’ and to transmit all he knew to the boy.”
Many Greeks went beyond simply accepting this practice and described it as a particularly admirable form of human connection. Greek poetry and literature associated these relationships with love, integrity, honor, and courage, and many Greeks believed that these relationships embodied the only form of eroticism that produced pure, lasting and spiritual love. This was partly due to the prevailing view that women were inferior beings and inappropriate objects of nobler feelings. A man who truly wanted to love had to love another man.
Female homosexual relationships were less public than male homosexual behaviors. But images of sexual relations between women appear on Greek vases and terracottas, and, according to Plutarch, such relations were particularly common in Sparta. The poetry of Sappho, ancient Greece’s most brilliant poet, has generally been understood as a celebration of lesbian love. It is said that Greek literature owes to Sappho, born around 612 BC on the island of Lesbos, the “most memorable cries of love ever uttered by a human voice”.
In summary, the ancient Greeks generally viewed sexual pleasure as a natural and healthy part of life that enriched the human experience. Although they value moderation in all things and understand that a Eros could threaten social stability, they neither inherited nor developed the belief that morality or divine authority dictated the suppression of sexual desire. For the ancient Greeks, the concept of sexual sin simply did not exist.
