The Joy of Sexus

by León, Vicki

  Greeks myths often raise more questions than they answer. (Maybe that is their purpose.) But what I personally wonder is: Why didn’t Teiresias ask to be female again, if they truly do get the lion’s share of sexual pleasure?

  We’ll never know. Teiresias, however, gained such popularity in ancient times that he ended up with his own series, as a recurring character in Greek tragedies by Euripides and Sophocles, and in Homer’s Odyssey as well. He hasn’t done badly in modern times, either, being cast in everything from Dante’s Inferno to one of Frank Herbert’s Dune novels.

  Straight from the Source:

  Love gone wrong

  Some of the remedies used by the ancients for a broken heart are still in use: alcoholic oblivion, I’ll-show-’em sexual flings, drugs, overwork, overeating, oversleeping, and that only reliable strategy, the passage of time.

  But our predecessors in love, those long-ago men and women, also had other ways of dealing with heartbreak, many of them involving a ritual or sorcery of some sort. There were no shrinks or pills for the lovelorn then, but a rich network of superstitions, myths, and magical thinking permeated daily life. Tapping into that cathartic, sometimes dark world might bring a love object back into one’s life—or would make him or her sorry. If love had turned to hate, such a ritual could even harm or kill the once-adored individual.

  For the most common malevolent ritual, the sorcery-seeker wrote his or her curse on a thin sheet of soft lead (or on bronze, for the spare-no-expense crowd). Called the defixio, the curse was folded or tightly rolled up, then hidden in tombs, or down wells, or affixed to trees. Another ritual required the participant to stick needles into wax or clay figures—a spell still seen today in voodoo circles.

  There were also distinctions, not always clear to us today, between eros spells that induced passion and philia magic that induced affection. People also commissioned gemstones and rings with Aphrodite and Eros images; hidden on them were magic words and binding spells.

  This excerpt comes from an elaborate erotic spell made by a woman named Sophia, who wanted to attract another woman named Gorgonia. Her oval tablet, written on both sides, contains sixty-six lines of text.

  Fundament of the gloomy darkness, jagged-tooth dog, covered with coiling snakes, turning three heads, traveler in the recesses of the underworld, spirit-driver, with the Erinyes [the Furies] savage with their stinging whips, holy serpents, maenads, frightful maidens, come to my wroth incantations. Before I persuade by force this one and you, render him immediately a fire-breathing demon. Listen and do everything quickly, in no way opposing me in the performance of this action, for you are the governors of the earth. [Three lines of magical gibberish follow.] By means of the corpse-daemon inflame the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore. Constrain Gorgonia to cast herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia; and you, become a bath-room. Burn, set on fire, inflame her soul, heart, liver, spirit with love for Sophia.

  Here is a Greek spell written on papyrus in late antiquity, in which a man named Apalo wished to attract a woman named Karosa for sex. The mention of love torture is typical.

  Aye, lord demon, attract, inflame, destroy, burn, cause her to swoon from love as she is being burnt, inflamed. Goad the tortured soul, the heart of Karosa, whom Thelo bore, until she leaps forth and comes to Apalo, whom Theonilla bore, out of passion and love, in this very hour, quickly, quickly … do not allow Karosa, whom Thelo bore, to think of her [own] husband, her child, drink, food, but let her come melting for passion and love and intercourse, especially yearning for the intercourse of Apalo, whom Theonilla bore, in this very hour, quickly, quickly.

  Another curse tablet found in the Etruscan territory of Italy offers a graphic example of love turned to hatred:

  Spirits of the netherworld, I consecrate and hand over to you, if you have any power, Ticene of Carisius. Whatever she does, may it all turn out wrong. Spirits of the netherworld, I consecrate to you her limbs, her complexion, her figure, her head, her hair, her shadow, her brain, her forehead, her breath, her liver, her shoulders, her heart, her lungs, her intestines, her fingers, her hands, her navel, her thighs, her calves, her soles, her toes. Spirits of the netherworld, if I see her wasting away, I swear that I will be delighted to offer a sacrifice to you every year.

  In both Mesopotamia and Greece, men and women cast binding spells using special rings, not so much for love affairs as to win admiration and affection from superiors, such as kings and masters. In addition, both the Assyrians and the Greeks favored special stones, precious and semi-precious, that promised a similar effect, replacing anger with friendship. An example of these binding spells: “Over a copper ring chant the spell three times. You place it on your finger, and when you enter the presence of the prince, he will welcome you.” “A little ring for success and charm and victory … when you have it with you, you will always get whatever you ask from anybody. Besides, it calms the angers of kings and masters. Wearing it, whatever you may say to anyone, you will be believed, and you will be pleasing to everybody.”

  Ovid the Love Poet:

  Life in the Fasti lane

  In the year 2 B.C. a heavy-breathing love poet named Publius Ovidius Naso had just survived a political squeaker with Rome’s ruler for the past quarter century, Octavian Augustus. An unfortunate coincidence involving Ovid’s sexy new book on the art of love and the adultery scandal of the emperor’s only daughter Julia. The slut had promptly been banished by her father to a rocky islet off Naples.

  Neither Ovid nor his book had met her fate. So far.

  Lucky that you weren’t on her reading list or her kiss-and-tell list, he told himself. Stick to your wife and your girlfriends, all of them thankfully unrelated to the imperial family.

  This was Ovid’s third literary attempt. His five-volume book Amores had won raves back in 15 B.C. but fulsome praise didn’t pay the bills. If his just-published Art of Love and its erotic companion Remedies for Love didn’t hit big, he’d be forced to grovel at the knee of his stingy father for a bigger allowance.

  Focus, Ovid told himself. Focus on winning the right kind of attention from Octavian, that lecherous old hypocrite with his constant calls for morality and family values. Try to win his approval for a high-minded commission of some sort.

  After years of fawning and lobbying, the poet’s efforts paid off. The emperor commissioned him to write a marvelous new work. Apparently Octavian craved a long poem in verse about the Roman calendar, its zodiac signs, and its time-hallowed holidays.

  Ovid loved women and knew how they liked to be aroused. In his poetry and his life, he honored females with foreplay.

  Ovid was still cranking away on his unfinished epic Metamorphoses but it would have to wait. His poetic career was back on track. Just think: the emperor as literary patron!

  Seven months later, Ovid had written five thousand lines of verse but completed just six months of his twelve-month calendar book. The topic fascinated him: the zodiac signs that determined the fate of humans; the nefasti days when business activity and assemblies were not permitted: the dies feraie, when holidays and festivals were held; the fasti, the days on which the courts and stores were open for business; and the unlucky days of the calendar. His book would be a celebration; a mix of myth and history, legend and sacred rite, the past linked to the present.

  Right in the middle of this period of intense creativity and Ovid’s third marriage, this time to a woman he really cared about, the unluckiest day of his life occurred. A professional accuser went to Emperor Octavian Augustus, and straightaway the poet was arrested for treason against the emperor.

  He knew he’d been framed; despite his protestations, the fifty-year-old Ovid was convicted. On a chilly December day in the year A.D. 8, he was banished to the forlorn little outpost of Tomis (now in Romania) on the shores of the Black Sea.

  Since Ovid’s earlier work, sexy and outrageous as it was, had been in print for a
number of years, his denunciation at this late date seemed misplaced. Puzzled fellow poets and friends, along with girlfriends and wives both past and present, were in anguish over the decision.

  That same year, however, Emperor Augustus also exiled his granddaughter, also named Julia, indicting her for adultery as he’d done to her mother. And banishing her to another of Italy’s miserably small islands off the mainland.

  Was there a connection, at least in the emperor’s mind, between the actions of the two Julias and the writings of Ovid the poet? In his letters from exile, Ovid complained and hinted as much but never revealed any details. Despite his talent, he never saw his beloved Rome or his cherished wife again, dying in Tomis at about sixty years of age.

  Historians have chewed on this mystery from centuries. Today it’s thought that the lurid sex scandals of the imperial daughter and the granddaughter were cover-ups for conspiracies and aborted coups against the emperor. In both cases, key men involved in them were executed or exiled.

  If these were attempts to overthrow, Ovid’s crime was probably one of omission. The crowd he hung out with included politically ambitious aristocrats. If he’d overheard rumblings of a plot, and done nothing about it, Roman law would label that treason.

  Poor Ovid never completed Fasti, his calendar book. But the half-finished manuscript survived, more precious now than Ovid ever dreamed, the sole existing work about the wonderfully elaborate ways in which the Romans kept track of their lucky and unlucky days.

  Sappho’s Bane:

  Remembering odious Rosycheeks

  If the spirits of 2,600-year-old Greek poets could wring their hands, I’m betting that the ghost of famed Sappho of Lesbos would still be doing just that. Why? Three words: her sister-in-law Rosycheeks. She was the sexy fly in the ointment of Sappho’s happiness.

  It all began with Sappho’s brother Charaxus. In the sixth century B.C., their home island of Lesbos was very prosperous, thanks to close trading ties with Egypt and one of its major port cities, Naucratis. Among other cash crops, Lesbos produced sweet dark wine—a big seller throughout Greece and neighboring lands.

  Equally affluent was Sappho’s snooty, possibly aristocratic family. She had three brothers, but her favorite was Charaxus.

  Sappho was slightly dismayed when her brother became a wine merchant, a traveling salesman for the superb vintages of Lesbos, instead of something classier. But dismay turned to horror when on a wine-peddling junket to Naucratis, Charaxus fell insanely in love with a women who peddled a cheekier sort of merchandise.

  When Charaxus met Rosycheeks, she’d already achieved top-tier courtesan status. Born in the wilds of Thrace in northern Greece, then sold into slavery, rumor had it that she’d worked in the household where Aesop the fable-teller was a fellow slave. Ill-suited to household drudgery, Rosycheeks finally got noticed by her owner, who put her to work, propositioning for pay in Naucratis.

  Lionized and world famous even in her own day and age, Sappho the love poet had everything. Or did she? Enter the outrageous sister-in-law.

  By now Sappho herself was recognized as a top-tier poet and lyricist. She’d even won accolades from Solon, the prominent leader of Athens at that time. When his nephew happened to sing one of Sappho’s songs, Solon asked him to teach him the tune. When the nephew asked, “What for?” Solon responded, “So I can learn it and die.”

  In 598 B.C., Sappho, along with her family, was exiled to Sicily for political reasons unknown to us. When the political climate changed, she returned to Lesbos and renewed her devotion to poetry, music, and dance. Other female poets joined her. Some came from Asia Minor, Egypt, the other Greek islands. Some became part of Sappho’s circle of intimate friends. Rivals started poetry groups, trying to compete with her. Life was good.

  But Sappho found she couldn’t gloat to the fullest because of that dratted brother of hers and his sleazy affair. It was beginning to interfere seriously with her creativity. She had to drag herself to pick up the lyre and kick out the verses for her latest commission, another gorgeous hymenaios, or marriage song.

  Then came another blow. It was dreadful enough that her brother kept this mistress—now his latest stunt was to pay an absurd sum to free Rosycheeks! The next cruel development almost killed her. “Married? You married that trollop, the one whose body anyone can buy?” she screamed at Charaxus.

  “Hey, sis—I adore this woman. And I didn’t want to time-share,” he responded.

  On fire with loathing, Sappho sought therapy in the only way she knew how. She sat down to write. The golden words flew from her stylus onto papyrus. Impassioned words, in her distinctive Aeolian style, pure poetry and anguish.

  Because her creative life spanned some forty years, Sappho must have produced a huge body of poetic work. Most of the time she wrote about her feelings, her erotic friendships with her own gender, her hits and misses in love, and her sensual enjoyment of life. When she and her brother parted ways, Sappho in her sorrow and anger unknowingly gave immortality to the woman he loved and she despised. Only a few precious shreds of her work survive today; ironically, among them are the wonderful, partially restored poems about Rosycheeks and brother Charaxus.

  Hypsicratea:

  Amazon turned historian? A love story

  Ringing the Black Sea like a charm-studded bracelet, two dozen thriving cities once stood, founded by Greek colonists beginning in the seventh century B.C. On the northeast shore was Phanagoria. Once a coastal metropolis, its shorelines had moved over the centuries. The city’s structures had suffered terrible damage during a massive fire in 63 B.C.; thus archaeologists had found little of note on land.

  During underwater excavations at Phanagoria in 2010, however, a Russian archaeological team headed by Vladimir Kuznetsov found what he called a remarkable grave marker. Who did it memorialize? Hypsicratea, history’s most overlooked Amazon. (More on her and the Amazons in entries elsewhere in this book.)

  King Mithradates VI of Pontus liked to be depicted in the heroic rebel mode on his coinage. But the real hero might have been a heroine, his warrior companion and last lover, Hypsicratea.

  Her fond lover preferred to call her by the masculine form of her name as a compliment to her strength, endurance, and courage. In fact, the inscription on the marble headstone reads: “Hypsikrates, wife of Mithradates VI.” (The king, whose name means “sent by Mithra the sun god,” was also called Mithrid ates by the Romans.)

  The man who called himself her husband, King Mithradates VI of Pontus, was Rome’s most bitter and long-lived enemy, fighting three successive wars against them. The story of his last wife and lover Hysicratea was once thought to be a somewhat fanciful tale of “outlaw love,” embroidered on by that old romantic Boccaccio, an Italian writer of the fourteenth century A.D.

  Although she was barely mentioned by ancient writers Plutarch, Strabo, and Appian, the brief details they offered about Hypsicratea have been found to be largely true. In addition, this woman did much more than she’s been given credit for, deeds meticulously documented in The Poison King, the 2010 biography by esteemed historical researcher and author Adrienne Mayor.

  In 69 B.C., along with thousands of others, Hypsicratea was recruited by the king to join his nomadic forces. She belonged to one of the fierce tribes whose women fought and lived on horseback just as the men did. They roamed the steppes and thought nothing of navigating the Caucausus, those nearly impassable white-toothed mountains that link the Black Sea and the Caspian.

  Hypsicratea was selected as one of the king’s grooms, but her warrior skills soon brought her to Mithradates’ personal attention. (A virile man who maintained a harem while marrying a series of wives, Mithradates connected to her physically as well.) A fit, well-muscled woman with long flowing hair, she was in her mid-thirties when she met the king. Although close to sixty-five, he remained a vigorous, cunning warlord who’d already trounced Roman generals various times.

  Hypsicratea and Mithradates had six years together, during whi
ch she fought by his side, on horseback and on foot, in battle sites from Pontus to Armenia. She was there when he gave a humiliating defeat to Roman general Lucullus. With her deep knowledge of the treacherous vertical terrain and the guerrilla tactics she’d learned during a lifetime of nomad raids, she had his back, time after time. It wasn’t easy. Mithradates not only fought the Romans and a great many others, he also battled his five sons and some of his daughters, most of whom wanted him dead.

  By 64 B.C. the now-ailing king recognized that his military endgame was near, although his “Hypsicrates” refused to concede such a thing. Nevertheless, Mithradates gave her a vial of poison to swallow in case she was captured, just as he did for his top officers. Mithradates himself could not commit suicide by ingesting poison, since he’d taken low doses of a variety of toxins, including arsenic, throughout his lifetime.

  The Roman army, now led by General Pompey, closed in on Mithradates, Hypsicratea, and their army at Phanagoria, helped by the king’s treacherous fifth son.

  After her mate’s death, Hypsicratea disappeared. Even though that marble monument is inscribed with her name, it’s possible her remains were never buried under it. Author Adrienne Mayor has suggested a plausible alternative: given the masculine name she was routinely and publicly called by King Mithradates, this vibrant, still-young fighter might have survived by passing as a male.

  Mayor points to a series of intriguing coincidences: in his books, author and geographer Strabo, who hailed from Pontus on the Black Sea himself, mentions one of his valued sources as a certain Hypsicrates—after the supposed death of Hypsicratea.