by León, Vicki
Long-ago men and women often put their loving feelings onto paper, sometimes with the help of scribes. Many touching examples are extant.
From the same period, an excerpt from a letter written by a man of humble station, a Greek living in Egypt, to his wife or possibly his lover— but not necessarily his sister. “Serenus to Isadora, his sister and lady, very many greetings. Before all else I pray for your health, and every day and evening I make supplication on your behalf before Thoeris [a hippo goddess] who loves you. I would have you know that ever since you left me I have been in mourning, weeping by night and lamenting by day. Since I bathed with you Phaophi 12 I have not bathed or anointed myself until Hathur 12. You have sent me letters that could move a stone, so much have your words stirred me.”
Socrates of Athens:
Witty & sexy to the very last
Thanks to the adoring, high-minded verbiage of Socrates’ philosophical disciples Plato and Xenophon, you might not have thought their famed teacher belonged on the “sexiest men of 450 B.C.” list. Homely, chubby Socrates nevertheless attracted the ardent attentions of various men and women in the fifth century B.C. For starters, this son of a midwife and a stonemason was married twice, it appears, although no one is sure of the order. Or was it simultaneous? Several biographers assert that Socrates had both wives at the same time, making him history’s earliest philosophical bigamist. Possibly it was allowed by special decree due to the scarcity of Athenians at that time. After a plague, perhaps? We just don’t know.
Myrto, daughter of Aristides the Just, was the “good wife,” about whom almost nothing was written—except the ghastly news to locals that she came to the marriage naked. Naked, that is, of a dowry. Most Greeks would have run the other way, but Socrates did not and the couple had two sons together.
Socrates’ other wife, Xanthippe, made up for the pallid reputation of Myrto by being the saltiest-tongued woman in Athens. Her legendary irascibility led to some of Socrates’ best sound-bite stories. For example, when a student asked how he dealt with his wife’s shrewish temper, he responded, “When men who are fond of spirited horses master those beasts, they then find the rest easy to cope with. So too I in the society of Xanthippe learn to adapt myself to the rest of the world.”
The student in question was another of Socrates’ erotic connections. Brilliant, beautiful, troubled, and irresistible to both men and women, Alkibiades tried without success to seduce Socrates. The philosopher was equally taken with Alkibiades but sublimated his desires by teaching his would-be lover about a higher, noncarnal form of love.
This philosopher, called by the Pythian oracle at Delphi “the wisest of men,” attracted the best and brightest in Athenian society. Among his disciples, admirers, and groupies were aristocratic writers and thinkers such as Aristippus. But Socrates welcomed good minds wherever he found them; Aeschines the sausage-maker’s son was one. Phaedo was another. Born to a noble family, Phaedo was taken as a slave when his city of Elis fell to enemy forces. Sold to a brothel of male prostitutes in Athens, he managed to become part of the philosophical circle. At Socrates’ urging, a couple of his wealthy pupils ransomed Phaedo. From then on, he studied at Socrates’ feet as a free man. It’s possible that these two were intimate.
When not trading quips or embraces (or daydreaming about canoodling with his philosophical cadre), Socrates philosophized and flirted outrageously with any number of uppity women, including Pericles’ lover Aspasia, the classy free-thinker from Miletus, and with other intellectual women who sought knowledge.
His willingness to treat men and women of dubious reputation as warmly as he did their aristocratic counterparts won Socrates mixed blessings: applause from a few, condemnation from many, and vast amounts of jealousy from men he’d criticized—including orators, poets, and politicians.
It was a trio of such men, stung by Socratic jibes and deeply offended by the philosopher’s lifestyle and moral teachings as a social critic, who brought the indictment against Socrates in 399 B.C. Their charges? Impiety and corrupting youth. Ironic indeed, considering the relatively abstemious behavior of Socrates, and the lack of it in his accusers.
Anytus, Lycon, and Meletus got their death wish. About seventy years old, still sassy and spirited, Socrates went to prison and drank his hemlock brew among friends. Although in his last hours he exhibited his deepest love for his close male friends and disciples, he invited his wife Xanthippe to visit him on his deathbed. Once he felt the paralysis of the poison begin to move up his body, he sent his wife, now weeping, back home.
Then he told his friend Crito to pay a last debt for him—a rooster to Asclepius, the god of healing. Many have sought to interpret his last request. Some believe he sent this thank-you to the healing deity because death is the “cure” that frees the soul from the body. Others feel that the token for Asclepius meant that his death would help “cure” the political malaise of Athens. But there is another possibility.
Socrates had enough chutzpah for one last riposte. When he said to Crito, “We owe a rooster to Asclepius—don’t forget to take care of it for me, will you?” his gallows humor was not lost on his companions. One fairly common reaction of a dying man is to get an erection. And everybody, not just the ancient Greeks, knows the everyday synonym for a male rooster.
High-spirited and bawdy to the last, philosopher Socrates left his sorrowing followers with a piquant one-liner as he downed his hemlock cocktail.
Sophocles & Euripides:
Brazenly bisexual playwrights
What a pair: both of them top tragedians, toasted as successes by fifth century Athenians, roasted by Aristophanes in his comic plays, and married twice. Furthermore, both of them lived their long lives as bisexuals, although that word would not have been recognized, much less used, in those days.
In her book Bisexuality in the Ancient World, Eva Canterella mentions, among others, these two extraordinary achievers, Euripides and Sophocles. They not only enjoyed youthful love affairs with males as teenagers but when mature, also became family men while pursuing sexual adventures with other men. As she puts it, “Faced with such evidence, how can one avoid thinking that adult Greek males enjoyed almost untrammeled freedom, being allowed to devote time to pederastic relationships which were far more than the occasional variation?”
This open-air theater in Athens was one of many in which audiences thrilled to the tragic dramas of major-league playwrights, such as Euripides and Sophocles.
Older than Euripides by two decades, Sophocles came from a wealthy family that lived outside Athens. At twenty-nine he had his first triumph, taking first prize in the Dionysia theater competition. He beat Aeschylus, the man who’d reigned as king of the tragic playwrights for years.
Sophocles became famous for adding a third actor to plays and for his character development. His one-liners became bywords. Among them: “Time eases all things”; “The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves” (both from Oedipus Rex); and, from his play Antigone, “Don’t kill the messenger!”
Talented and lucky, Sophocles went on to win eighteen times at the Dionysia festivals and six times at the Lenaia annual competitions. Aristotle admired him enormously, citing his Oedipus the King as the highest achievement in tragedy. Invitations to visit as honored playwright came from foreign rulers, but Sophocles was a hometown boy. He turned all of them down.
Like other civic-minded Athenians, Sophocles took a very active role in his city’s life; as a teen, he was chosen to lead the choral chant, celebrating the Athenian victory over the Persians. He served a term as one of the city’s treasurers, and also as strategos or general, working with his friend Pericles.
At dinner parties, Sophocles was known for flirting, stealing kisses from the best-looking boys, and much besides. His buddy Pericles once gave him a hard time for admiring a handsome lad instead of keeping his mind on military strategy.
The best story that’s come down to us about his love life involved a male assistant of Sophocle
s who got intimate with Nico, an older gal whose beauteous buttocks were much admired. Kidding around, the assistant asked Nico to lend him her buttocks. Her reply: “Sure, honey—go ahead and take from me what you give to Sophocles.”
The great man, despite his workload and his many erotic distractions, took care of two successive families. He was first wed to Nicostrate, with whom he had a son who grew up to become a tragic poet. With his second wife, Theoris, he had another son, Ariston. A bright, merry, well-liked fellow, Sophocles lived to be ninety-two; it was not until late in life that he lost his sexual vigor. He reportedly confided to Plato, “I’m glad to be free of that raging, savage beast.”
Euripides was more somber, a reclusive chap born on Salamis Island who spent much of his life in Athens. As a youngster, his dad received an oracle prediction that Euripides would win crowns of victory. He promptly put his son into training as a pro athlete. The prediction proved true—but the victory crowns would be for five theatrical productions, among them Medea and The Bacchae.
His talents extended to painting as well, and he pioneered many innovations in the theater. His writing, by turns ironically comic and profoundly tragic, depicted ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. He shocked Athenian audiences with his empathetic portrayals of women and other victims of society. Unfortunately, the real tragedy is that over 80 percent of his plays have been lost.
He described both of his marriages, to Melite and Choerine, as “disastrous,” although he and the latter wife did collaborate to produce three sons. He had a happier long-term relationship with another tragic poet, a much younger man named Agathon whose own work wobbled from flowery to improbable. Accompanied by Agathon, in later years Euripides went to the Macedonian court of Archelaus, where he would spend his last years, dying in his mid-seventies. Macedonia is thought to be where he wrote The Bacchae, his psychological study into the primitive side of Greek religion.
Mandrakes:
Grow your own little mannikin!
According to the Old Testament, women were generally enchanted with an erotic powerhouse of a plant that magically “cured” infertility. In Genesis 30:14-17, two sisters married to the same guy fight over the shrub— Rachel wants it because she has yet to get pregnant; Leah, because she longs for more kids than the four she has. They strike a deal—and (very) eventually, both have dates with the stork. That fabled baby-maker flora may have been the mandrake. (The biblical Song of Songs also waxes poetic about the sweet-smelling apple of love.)
Give its long-standing aphrodisiac and medicinal reputation, the mandrake was seen as a symbol of love for the Egyptians, too, who made a wine laced with it. The Greeks later recognized mandrake as the favorite food of the sex-crazed satyrs.
Over the millennia, however, it’s likely that Mandragora officinarum caused more havoc and heartache than happy news. A member of the nightshade family, mandrake is closely related to henbane, datura, and the deadly nightshade—all of them packed with high-potency alkaloids like scopolamine, atropine, and hyoscyamine. In the proper dosage, it can be an effective anesthetic, invaluable in surgery; the scopolamine from mandrake was used into modern times, before the advent of ether. Taken for its hallucinogenic effects, mandrake in the correct dosage may produce a dreamy, out-of-body experience—or delirium and coma.
Long thought to be an erotic aid, the mandrake root could kill. Its humanoid shape led alchemists to fantasize that with supernatural help, a “little man” could spring to life from the root.
Over time, mandrake took on an even more magical aura. It had a malevolent spirit, along the lines of The Little Shop of Horrors, and the ancients believed that once awakened, mandrake’s shrill scream could kill. Thus, in the first century A.D., Roman Jewish writer Josephus advised would-be harvesters to dig a furrow around the root until its lower part was exposed, tie a dog to it, then quickly move away from the plant. The dog would try to follow the human, pulling up the root in the process—and the pooch (instead of the human harvester) would perish. At that point, the mandrake root could be handled without risk.
The root itself often had a human shape—which led to more fantastical beliefs and warnings. Around the third century A.D., a Greek alchemist named Zosimus combined some early beliefs about reproduction with the mandrake legends. The first natural scientists in ancient Greece to ponder human reproduction had suggested that, just as the bodies of hens held miniature eggs, perhaps inside the bodies of humans there might be a preformed individual called a homunculus—a “little man.”
The notion of a “little man” (whether inside a human being or not) was admittedly beguiling. So Zosimus and other alchemists began to elaborate this concept further. According to them, in order to possess a little man of one’s own, seekers first had to find a mandrake plant. This was not an easy task, since by now it was reputed to grow only with the help of the semen ejaculated in his final spasms by a man being hanged! That laborious mission accomplished, the seekers then had to locate a black dog, train it to dig for roots, keep their distance until the hideous shrieks of the plant had died away, etcetera.
Once dug up, the small mannikin figure of the mandrake root needed to be washed, then fed with items such as honey, milk, and blood. If all went well, the root would develop into a homunculus. Furthermore, the homunculus would act to protect its human owner, leprechaun fashion.
A little mannikin to love, and direct. It was, and is, a winning idea, much repeated in mystical writings from medieval witches’ manuals to the Kabbalah. Mandrake plants are still around, their large strappy leaves and small “love apple” fruits as poisonous as ever. Need I add, do not try this at home?
Filthy Gestures, Images, Language:
What obscene really did mean
Most of the ancient cultures around the Mediterranean strongly believed that filthy words, naughty gestures, and what we might consider inappropriate or obscene images, such as erect phalluses, were necessary and effective to chase away bad luck, ill omens, ghosts, vampires, malign spirits, and the terrifying evil eye.
Despite their brio for life and their outgoing ways, long-ago Romans and Greeks had numerous fears, many of them starkly real: wars, wounds, rabid dogs, crop failures, plagues, piracy, and the obscenely high mortality rates of mothers and babies in childbirth.
Therefore, much of what we see today at archaeological sites, as museum artifacts, and in ancient art must be looked at through the prism of its period’s own value system. Objects, words, and gestures that had apotro-paic powers to ward off bad luck and evil eyes were valued. And they were produced in glorious quantities. The existing art alone, from paintings, murals, and mosaics to bronzes, marble sculptures, and protective amulets, fills museum displays and overflows into storerooms worldwide.
The Egyptian had similar beliefs, especially in times of great vulnerability. One of the objects they routinely produced to protect mothers and new infants was a throwing stick made of hippo ivory and carved with the images of Bes and Taweret, the deities associated with childbirth.
Women’s jewelry and belts often included the decorative knot of Hercules on them, another apotropaic symbol. Greek and Roman brides wore the knot of Hercules on their marriage day, and their new husbands got to untie it on the wedding night. In both cultures, dirty jokes, scatological songs, and humorous sexual language were also protective parts of the wedding celebrations.
During childhood, Roman girls and boys did not go anywhere without their bullas, round or half-moon-shaped pendants of gold or leather worn for protection against spells or malignant glances. The young were thought to be particularly vulnerable to such things; babies, for example, from birth wore amulets and used teething rings of pink coral, carved in the shape of a phallus.
Moreover, if children (or brides, for that matter) were complimented, the remarks would be quickly dismissed and a protective gesture made, sometimes involving spit. In daily life, and throughout their waking hours, men and women routinely used obscene words while making wa
rding-off gestures. Typical gestures included the mano fico (the “fig hand,” imitating the female genitals), the corna or horns, and that still-perennial favorite, the digitus impudicus—the middle finger.
A large number of annual festivals in Italy, Greece, and elsewhere reinforced these homely personal methods of protection against malice, evil eye, and bad luck. One such festival celebrated the fertility god Liber, who boasted an important cult following in Rome. During his March festival, protective phallus displays were everywhere—stationed at crossroads, lugged around in carts throughout the countryside, and in the city itself. In Many-Splendored some parts of Italy, Liber got a month-long observance, during which artificial phalluses big and small were publicly paraded and obscenities ritually uttered. Each March also, the festival of Anna Perenna, the goddess who personified the year, took place. While sacrifices were made to her, naughty songs were traditionally sung with gusto by young girls.
The quantity, variety, ubiquity, and geographic reach of such apotropaic festivals, with open sexuality in the form of phallic display and lots of sexual jokes and obscenities, apparently did much to soothe ancient fears about such dangers.
Like that of some of the biggest businesses in the United States today, the Greco-Roman philosophy was: You can never have too much insurance. For additional protection from the evil eye and other ills, phallic symbols were painted on walls, posted over business doorways, erected at street corners, embedded in roadways, posted at doors, planted in gardens, worn as jewelry, and carried as amulets. These long-ago measures still have potency among some Mediterranean populations. If you spend any time in Greece or Turkey, you might learn that schoolgirls still pin tiny blue evil-eye deflectors to their bras, and the corner pharmacy sells similar charms next to the cold remedies.
