Human Sexuality in Ancient Greece - Essay Example

The ancient Greeks are notorious for their fixation on the male genitalia, making it the focal point of various types of art and pageantry History of Sex”, 2004). This has led many to believe that they were primarily a race of homosexuals, who only copulated with their wives when necessary for the purpose of procreation. To a certain extent, especially as it applies to the life of the wife, this is quite true. When the wives are thought of at all, it’s typically in the context of, “gee, I wonder why those women put up with their men out partying with their guy friends all the time?” Very little consideration is ever given to the concept of a sex life for the women of ancient Greece. “The male idea of female sexuality was that Greek men believed that women envied their penises” (“History of Sex”, 2004). Despite this rather skewed view of female sexuality, there is a wide body of information regarding the rather formalized viewpoints this society held regarding their women as they became sexual beings. Basically, these women were relegated to two very distinct general categories – they were either wives or they were prostitutes (Thompson, 2005). It was in the role of a prostitute that a woman had the greatest societal flexibility, but this did not mean they were able to live better lives than the wives, who were essentially ignored other than to have children (Thompson, 2005). In order to understand why the ancient Greeks responded to women the way they did, particularly in understanding their concept of heterosexual oral/anal sex, one needs to understand the social, economic and power structure of this society including the individual’s citizenship identity, social class, age and sexual orientation as well as the Greek’s viewpoints regarding the nature of the female gender. The most important characteristic in understanding the ancient Greeks’ view of oral/anal sex among heterosexuals remains in understanding their cultural view of the nature of a woman. According to the Greeks, women were wholly untrustworthy in the containment of their carnal desires based upon their fundamental characteristic of being wet. According to Anne Carson (1990), women are both physiologically and psychologically wet while “It is the consensus of Greek thought that the soundest condition for a human being is dryness” (Carson, 1990: 137). This single characteristic spoke volumes to the Greeks regarding the nature of women. To begin with, they could not reasonably contain themselves just as water or other fluids were not contained within themselves. Instead, they had to be contained by external forces, just as the water of a lake needed to be constrained by a valley or the fluid wine needed to be contained in a clay vessel. Because of their lack of self-control, it was necessary for the male guardians of these women to arrange for suitable matches for their respectable female relatives who had been guarded since birth against any kind of sexual defilement. This guardianship was necessary because, without the judicious governance of the male, the female “would incline to complete wantonness” (Carson, 1990: 140). Therefore, a distinct division was necessary between the role of the wife and the role of the woman who was not a wife (Thompson, 2005), which typically meant prostitute, slave or servant as there were few jobs a woman could hold within the Athenian society. Because women, through their wetness, were naturally wild, it was the responsibility of the husband to contain his wife physically within the home as well as mentally within the marriage bed to the business of producing children, the principle reason for marriage. This was done by making an equally sharp distinction between sex for work and sex for play, the first applying exclusively to the wife and the second applying nearly exclusively to the prostitute. The type of sex a woman could expect to have depended a great deal upon her social status, which was in turn dependent upon her ethnicity, and her age, which was primarily concerned with whether she was of childbearing years. Wives were considered essential for the continuation of the family line and were seen as little more than a necessary nuisance in the home. To ensure that all children born to the woman were indeed those of her husband, the wife was typically kept locked up inside the family home and was only permitted past her own threshold occasionally when accompanied by others (“History of Sex”, 2004). Little mention is made of oral sex associated with wives as sex with wives was considered work and it was important to keep the wife locked into her role in order to prevent her naturally unbounded sexual nature from raging out of control (Carson, 1990). In order to assert this male dominance in the home, it was considered completely acceptable for a man to rape his wife, including anal penetration, if he felt it was necessary (“History of Sex”, 2004). However, sexually deviant behaviors such as oral and anal sex were typically reserved for the prostitutes as sex with them was considered play and sexual play was seen as a corrupting influence to the female mind (Carson, 1990). “Apparently, many Greek hetaera disliked giving fellatio. It was a common practice to beat prostitutes if they refused to provide that particular service or refused to lower the price of that service. Anal rape and forcing a prostitute to give fellatio was also commonly practiced” (“History of Sex”, 2004). Prostitutes were distributed through a wide range of classes, from those working in brothels to those walking the streets to the ranks of the Heteara, a specialized caste of prostitute whose main function was not sex, but instead was friendly companionship and intellectual conversation (Thompson, 2005). In all cases, the woman, because of her changeable nature and her ability to bring shame and dishonor upon the household if she were to step outside her bounds, was considered as a highly dangerous entity to the man. In only very few cases did the woman have the ability to make her own decisions regarding her sexual life thanks to the rigid societal structure that was developed precisely as a means of outwardly controlling what was seen as a woman’s inward inability to maintain her own control over her sexual appetites. “Marriage is the means, in the Greek view, whereby man can control the wild eros of women and so impose civilized order on the chaos of nature” (Carson, 1990: 143). A woman destined for marriage spent her childhood playing with other girls in her father’s house. The marriage was arranged for her, sometimes at a very young age, and she would not set eyes on her husband, often someone much older than her, until the wedding day. On her wedding day, following a lengthy series of purification rituals and the putting aside of childhood, the bride would be taken to her husband’s house and was expected to live out her life within its walls, bearing children and supervising the efficient operation of the home (Thompson, 2005). The Greek fear of the power of woman was so strong that the distinction between sex as play and sex as work was ingrained in the marriage bed as a means of reducing the ability of the wife to unduly influence her husband by blinding him to his responsibilities, “for women who ‘gain mastery of their husbands by means of sexual pleasure’ render them degenerate fools” (Carson, 1990: 150). Prostitutes likewise had very little option in their life path as many of these women were sold to the brothels as infants and had little to no chance of breaking the boundary between prostitute and wife, although they were able to move about within the various classes of prostitutes, sometimes even gaining specific power of their own (Thompson, 2005). The highest orders of these women were hetaera that had gained sufficient wealth to own their own home and entertain as they pleased or the courtesans who occupied a societal position quite similar to the position of the nineteenth and twentieth century mistress (Thompson, 2005). Understanding how deeply ingrained the Greek concept of the female nature as something uncontrolled and dangerous ran through the ancient society, it is possible to comprehend how such sexual practices as anal and oral sex were seen in terms more of control than of pleasure. That men undoubtedly insisted upon these practices as a form of pleasure is evidenced in the fact that these behaviors were practiced more often with the prostitutes than with the wives (“History of Sex”, 2004). Although these sexual practices provided the man with complete control over all of the woman’s natural boundaries, it was also considered a form of impurity to expect a wife to perform these types of functions for pleasure and was only used if she had stepped outside of her natural role and must be forcibly placed back in it (Carson, 1990). Whether the woman enjoyed these attentions was not typically considered, and the ancient female viewpoint on these matters is difficult at best to decipher. The role of a necessity didn’t hold out much hope for the enjoyment of the wife of her marriage bed, and was indeed considered to be moving outside of her bounds if she wished to ‘play’ with her husband in a sexual way. “A man’s normal desire for female companionship and sex was something to be satisfied outside of marriage. A woman’s desire of male companionship was never given much thought” (Thompson, 2005). References Carson, Anne. (1990). “Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt and Desire.” Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. “History of Sex.” (2004). Sex Education Links. Big Eye. October 9, 2006 from < http://www.bigeye.com/sexeducation/ancientgreece.html> Thompson, James C. (November 2005). “Women in Athens.” Women in the Ancient World. October 9, 2006 < http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/women%20in%20ancient%20athens.htm> Read More