The ancient Romans and Greeks had a highly liberated attitude toward sex—one that is surprising, even by today’s standards. They had gods devoted to it, festivals to partake in it, and local economies that surrounded it. Sex was not something to be ashamed of or hidden from public view. Rather, it was something to rejoice in.

10Phallic Bricks Of Pompeii

We all know the legend surrounding Pompeii. The original City of Sin’s people basked in a perpetual heat of promiscuity—promiscuity said to have inspired the gods’ rage with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Since excavation of its near-perfectly preserved remains began in the 18th century, archaeologists have discovered a great deal regarding Pompeii’s sexual identity.

Pompeii’s economy thrived on more than 40 brothels, the most famous of which was named “Lupanare Grande,” translated today as “pleasure house.” The rooms in these brothels were often cramped and dim, with a small straw mattress positioned beneath a piece of pornographic artwork hung on the wall. Despite their appearances, it would be misleading to classify these brothels as the seedy underbelly of Pompeii’s economy. Rather, they existed on a highly public and unashamed platform, alongside the forum and communal bath houses, both of which were important sites of a larger (public) sex system.

Visit the ruins of Pompeii today, and you will no doubt see the “phallic bricks” of Pompeii pointing the way to the nearest pleasure house with an erect phallus engraved into its stone. And if those weren’t clear enough markers, erect phalluses were often positioned above the doors of brothels and private residences as tidings of good luck.

9Voyeurism

“You may look, but don’t touch,” was somewhat of a guiding theme across Ancient Roman and Greek artwork, as indicated by the many pieces of art uncovered today displaying such provocations. One could discover this for themselves at The Gabinetto Segreto in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

This “Secret Cabinet” houses a collection of erotic artwork from Ancient Rome. One such wall painting from, unsurprisingly, Pompeii, displays this voyeurism with a man and a woman having intercourse in front of their attendant, who is visible in the background.

In Ancient Greece, there exists a body of art dedicated to Maenads, the feverous female followers of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, ritual madness, religious euphoria, and theatre. Artwork surrounding these women were highly explicit, and the sexual acts represented by the artwork displayed the figures as objects to be observed. This idea of voyeurism in erotic art was twofold, where a voyeur existed within the artwork, as was the case in one hydria painting Sleeping Maenad and Satyrs, as well as external to the artwork, where the onlooker (or “innocent bystander”) also became a voyeur.

8The Wife-Sharing Economy

The Etruscan civilization was assimilated into the Roman Republic during the fourth century BC. However, their customs remained largely intact.

The Etruscan women were known for their liberated attitude toward intercourse and nudity. They kept their bodies in fit condition and often walked around in the nude, enjoying the pleasure of all men who came by. “Marriage” was a loose construct. It was common for children to have no clue who their father was, and for women not to ask.

Frescoes painted on the Tombs of The Bulls, The Bigas, and The Floggings, in Tarquinia, display these kinds of erotic scenes.

7Fruitful Contest Of The Sexes

Kenneth Reckford, an expert of the Classics, analyzed Aristophanes’s work in a series of essays entitled Aristophanes’s Old-and-New Comedy. One essay, “Aischrologia,” addresses the season ritual of Thesmophoria in Ancient Greece. Only married Athenian women participated in this ritual, which aimed to promote fertility. In preparation, women would abstain from intercourse and oftentimes bathe as an act of purification. During this three-day affair, women would perform various acts of “fertility magic.” In addition, they would share lewd jokes and tales of their indecencies, and play with toys replicating both the male and female genitals.

This ritual, coupled with the Eleusinian Haloa festival, gave women the opportunity to release pent-up sexual frustration through liberal use of sex symbols, pornographic sweets, raucous activities, and free-range slut-shaming—for lack of a better phrase. During Haloa, according to Reckford, Greek women could “say the most ugly and shameful things to one another,” shooting insults at each other regarding sexuality and vulgarity, while proclaiming their own indiscretions.

6Fun At The Carnival

According to Mikhail Bakhtin, a scholar of literary theory and philosophy, the Carnival of ancient literature was a free-for-all, where people would throw class division, respect, and sensitivity out the window. There was no “saying no,” and certainly no saying “too much.” Carnival was pure id. Suspend reality and imagine a scene of extravagance, with banquets of food and wine, laughter, and sex. At Carnival, everyone was equal, and even degrading remarks inspired a regenerative energy—though, that may be in part due to the number of drugs and intoxicants they used to strip inhibitions.

Arthur Edward Waite in his book A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry says, “The Festivals were orgies of wine and sex: there was every kind of drunkenness and every aberration of sex, the one leading up to the other. Over all reigned the Phallus.”

These Carnival rituals date back to as early as the fifth century BC and were held during the spring equinox. It should come as no surprise that these festivals, called The Dionysian Mysteries, were dedicated to Dionysus, the Greek god of all your earthly desires and the enabler of all your poor decision-making. This carnival inspired the Roman equivalent, Bacchanalia.

Most of the initiation process for men and women are known thanks to a collection of frescoes preserved in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. And, in all fairness, it is a bit reminiscent of what one might expect in Greek life initiation today. The murals a declaration of initiation at the feet of the priestess followed by a descent into the underworld (katabasis), before returning anew. Aristophanes, in his play The Frogs, assumes the origin of this ritual with descent of Dionysis into Hades.

5Before Viagra, There Was Priapus

The Greeks had a very firm relationship with the phallus—more an obsession, really. In particular was Priapus, the Greek god equivalent to Dionysus, known for his extremely long and permanently erect penis. If you think you recognize the term, it’s because Priapus inspired the medical term priapism.

And even if Priapus didn’t play too well with the other gods, he was revered on Earth. The Priapeia contains a collection of 95 poems dedicated to the sexually driven vulgarity of Priapus.

With this gift of dirty pictures
from the tract of Elephantis
Lalage asks if the horny
deity could help her do it
just like in the illustrations

The law which (as they say) Priapus coined
for boys appear immediately subjoined
“Come pluck my garden’s contents without blame
if in your garden I can do the same.”

4They Threw Some Serious Shade

Hipponax of Ephesus was a highly controversial iambic poet, even for ancient Greece. Where he excelled were his insults, which were raunchy and lewd and often satirical of the high (dignified) language of his targets.

In fact, as the story goes, he was so skillful at insults, they drove one victim to suicide. Hipponax was apparently after the daughter of Bupalus, but Hipponax’s deformed looks ultimately led to his rejection. In jest, Bupalus made a statue of Hipponax so ugly that Hipponax retaliated with accusations of Bupalus having an incestuous relationship with his mother:

“Bupalus, the mother-f—r with Arete, fooling with these words the Erythraeans preparing to draw back his damnable foreskin”

Other notable shade interpreted in Hipponax’s work includes the dissection of Bupalus’s name, Bou-phallus, meaning quite literally “ox phallus,” and the ever-charming “interprandial pooper,” meaning a person who must get up during the middle of a meal to defecate.

3Using Sex For World Peace

Aristophanes, considered one of the most famous comic playwrights of ancient Greece, was known for his poignant commentary of the social and political landscapes of Athens during the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC. In one such play, Lysistrata, Aristophanes parodies warfare with a battle of the sexes.

The women use the men’s desires against them, forcing abstinence to compel peace between the Athenians and the Spartans. Women thus use their sexuality to put things in perspective for men, and to ultimately remind them of the “transcendental significance” of sex. According to the women, the men had forgotten this amidst their stubbornness over more trivial matters, like war.

In the end, Peace appears to the men as a young, naked woman to remind the men of their sexual desires to “plow a few furrows” and “work a few loads of fertilizer in.” The men, in turn, realize the importance of sex to their society enough that they put war behind them.

2“Ars Amatoria”

A short cry from Karma Sutra was the work of one Ancient Roman poet, Ovid (43 BC–AD 17). His work provided instruction for sexual proclivities, with titles including “Amores” (Love), “Medicamina Faciei” (Remedies for Love) “Remedia Amoris,” and most infamously, “Ars Amatoria” (the Art of Love). While his work may sound wholesome, Ars Amatoria became a guidebook for lovers and adulterers alike.

In many ways, he created The Game, which confuses both men and women to this day. He advises men to let their women miss them—but not too much, while advising women to make their men jealous at times, to ensure they do not grow lax nor lazy. In the bedroom, Ovid details what form women should take, to not only maximize pleasure for themselves, but also to make it most pleasurable to the man’s gaze. In one sense, he moved away from the notion of women as possession—as they were equal players in the game of love—while on the other hand, reinforcing manipulative tactics to keep one’s lover constantly on their toes.

Though his language never broke into vulgarity, it was quite explicit in its detail, and in a matter of poor timing, resulted in his exile by Augustus, who was still coping with the news of his daughter’s copulations.

1Martial

As with other emotional impulses, shock lies in the space between expectations and reality. Marcus Valerius Martialis, or Martial, was a Roman poet from first century, who was made famous by his 12 books of epigrams. To this day, Martial’s epigrams are shocking due to their obscene, and oftentimes graphic, language. If nothing else, their vulgarity sheds light on the type of work published at the time.

Epigrams 79 and 80 of Book III convey vulgarity in a distinct structure. In these epigrams, insults are initially targeted at the subjects’ character and are then redirected by insulting subjects’ sexual “short-cummings.” In Epigram 79, Martial begins by declaring:

“Sertorius finishes nothing, and starts everything. When he fornicates, I don’t suppose he completes.”

Martial’s sharp words pivot this insult more pointedly at Sertorius’s sexual incapability. Likewise, Epigram 80 introduces its subject with a more general observation followed by a hyper-sexualized observation.

“You talk of nobody, Apicius, speak ill of nobody, yet rumor says you have an evil tongue.”

While the former could pose as a general remark to Apicius’s soft-spoken character, the latter angles the reader to the true central insult: Apicius’s skill at oral sex. Here, “evil” is more likely a term for “wild,” suggesting that Apicius’s tongue causes his sexual partner to lose control and that he is skillful at giving head. The explicit quality of this language indicates the level of tolerance Ancient society had at the time regarding sex.

Emma Marie is a student, photographer, traveler, and certified freediver.

Films like 300 and Troy depict awesome Greek warriors slashing their enemies in battle, but did you know Leonidas and Achillies had a freaky side? Sexuality was everywhere in the ancient world, from pornography on pottery to sex with satyrs. The Greek view on sex is much different from our own today, with many seemingly bizarre practices from our modern perspective. Greek openness on sex, homosexuality, and relationships created a much different culture than our own; here are 10 weird, or weird to us, sexual things the ancient greeks did:

10 Sex Myths We All Believe

10 Very, Very Weird Methods of Contraception

Today, scientific advancement has made birth control methods more effective and safe than ever. In ancient Greece, couples sought to limit family size through bizarre beliefs and pseudoscience. One popular method was having the female partner sneeze and drink something cold after having sex, I am not sure how this was supposed to work but rest assured this is not an effective method of contraception. Another method involved a woman attempting to block her cervix with a block of wood, this one doesn’t sound very pleasurable. One surprisingly effective method the Greeks used was consuming large amounts of dates and pomegranates before and after sex. Modern studies have actually shown that dates and pomegranates do in fact decrease fertility, but I recommend consulting your physician on some more modern and less nonsensical forms of protection.

In case you would prefer to use an ancient Greek method of contraception, here are some recommended instructions from the physician Soranus: “hold her breath, draw her body back a little so the semen cannot penetrate into the uteri, then immediately get up and sit down with bent knees, and this position provoke sneezes”.

9 Public Masturbation was a Meme

In the modern world, the general consensus is that masturbation is best left to the privacy of your own home. In Ancient Greece, public masturbation was used by the infamous philosopher Diogones to fight the power. Diogones, the founder of cynicism, lived in a barrel and was called a dog by many of his critics. When someone finally scolded him for his habit of public relief, Diogones responded: “If only it were so easy to soothe hunger by rubbing an empty belly”.

In Aristophones’ famous comedy Lysistrata about women withholding sex from men in order to stop war, the Spartans are roasted for their enthusiastic engagement in self pleasure. It is fitting that the appeal of a Spartan herald with a large erection begins the peace talks. We can only wonder if the events in Lysistrata worsened the Spartan’s dependence.

8 Kissing Women was Considered Weird

With some of the strange items on this list, one may wonder why the seemingly normal practice of kissing was considered weird, at least under certain circumstances. Kissing as a form of greeting was normal, even when greeting those who you had just met. Many men would greet their peers with a kiss on the hand, the cheek, the lips prior to important business meetings. We can only imagine modern politicians swapping the traditional handshake with stealing a quick kiss on the lips.

Kissing your wife however, a common practice today, could be considered a sign of weakness for a man. The famous Athenian general Pericles was criticized for frequently kissing his wife on the lips in public. This is primarily because a kiss signified equality between two parties, and women in most Greek city-states were not equal to men. This also gave the impression that Pericles could be taken under the control of his wife, likely rooted in the sexist trope in Greek literature of the evil seductress.

7 State Sponsored Prostitution

It may be difficult to imagine presidential candidates debating rates in state run prostitution rings, but in ancient Greece, prostitution was legal and was in some cases run by the state. Athenian lawmaker Solon regulated prices in state sponsored brothels. These brothels had both female and male sex workers, the latter primarily servicing older male clients. These establishments would apparently offer many cheap rates compared to those prostitutes on the streets, who cleverly would wear sandals which would leave an imprint reading “follow me” on the ground. High class citizens did have some options at the public brothel however. These patrons could sign a contract with a mistress, workers who were skilled in pleasing men both physically and with their superior wit. Solon would fittingly use the tax revenue Athens gained from these public brothels to build a temple to Aphroditie, the goddess of love and pleasure.

6 Pederasty Was Normal

An unfortunate reality of Spartan culture was that older men often took advantage of young boys during their military training. The prevalence and acceptance of these relationships are debated, but many young boys were taken advantage of by their training mentors. At the age of seven, Spartan boys were taken from their homes and put into state sponsored military training in the Agoge. This included rigorous military training and the boys developing skills for their lifelong profession as warriors. In many cases, these boys first sexual partners were their male peers in the Agoge. Same sex partners were normal and encouraged in Greek society, and seen as a sign of male comrodary. Accounts differ on the acceptance of male mentors engaging in relationships with students. Some state that it was considered acceptable if the relationship was not only built on physical pleasure, while others state that once a boy reached puberty all relationships were acceptable. The true prevalence and normalcy or these relationships will likely be lost in history.

5 Drawing Penises Literally Everywhere

Today this form of art is generally reserved for the men’s bathroom. Most people are aware of the prevalence of nudity in Greek statues, and the pride Greeks had in their art. One Athenian statesman was even executed for allegedly chopping off Hermes’ member on an important statue. Greeks would even slap a random phallus on the pillar of a bust. But statues were not the only medium of expression Greeks would use to show wangs to the world. Skilled artists would depict fallacies everywhere from public art works to wine glasses. Drunk Greeks probably found these images hilarious when drinking from such Kylixs during the famous symposium or wine drinking parties. One vase even depicted a woman tending to a crop field of phallaces. No matter how strange the Greeks were, no one can deny their sense of humor.

4 Religion and Sex

Greek polytheism was primarily built around practitioners paying homage to various gods through sacrifice and other methods of veneration. Aphrodite, the god of procreation and pleasure, was often appealed to for matters in the bedroom. The origin story of Aphrodite itself is strange. In Greek Myth, she rose from foam that was made in the ocean after Uranus’ genitalia fell into it, her name meaning foam-arisen. Aphroditie’s sexuality and beauty is a primary subject in Greek mythology, committing adultery with many men. She is well known for her role in the Judgement of Paris and starting the Trojan war, showing her volatile personality and vanity.

One particularly strange episode involving Aphrodite in mythology happened when a man named Glaucus insulted her. She responded by feeding his horses magic water, causing them to turn on him during a chariot race. Glaucus was crushed to death, and his horses proceeded to eat him. Nice.

3 Adultery was Far Worse than Rape

With Greek sexual openness in mind, the strictness around unfaithfulness in marriage may seem strange. In fact, seducing another man’s wife was considered worse than rape. The reason for this is due to the belief that a woman was the “property” of a man. This meant that committing adultery was a form of stealing. Sexual assault was also considered immoral, but if the woman was unmarried it was not considered as serious a crime. Sexual assault is common in Greek mythology with many gods deceiving women and impregnating them. According to the historian Herodatus, adultery needed avenging by the man, while assault did not, resulting in greater severity placed on it. A man who caught another man with his wife was able to inflict any punishment on him. This ranged from public humiliation to murder.

2 Wild Drinking Parties

The Greeks loved their wine. The symposium was an important part of Greek culture. Between 14 and 27 men reclined on pillowed couches in an inner room, and served as a forum for intellectual discussions. Many famous works of literature depict these complex philosophical discussions at the symposium, including Pato’s Symposium. In reality, the symposium could become far less civil than its depiction in literature. Drunken madness could ensue, with large amounts of alcohol, drinking games, and drinking songs. Musicians and other performers were often hired for the symposium, who could end up performing sexual favors for guests. Although women generally were not allowed at the symposium, high scale prostitutes were sometimes hired for guests.

1 Making Your Wife More Masculine to Appear Attractive

As previously mentioned, Spartan boys frequently had their first relationships with other boys in the Agoge. Therefore, it is only natural that a Spartan man should force his new bride to shave her head and appear more masculine before having sex with her to appear more like those previous partners… wait what? Yes you heard that correctly, Spartan women would wear mens clothing and have their heads on their wedding days in order for their husbands to transition from same-sex to heterosexual relationships. The transformation for a woman to resemble a man was often undertaken by a bridesmaid or servant, a far cry from the modern wedding day makeover.

Men would then be forced to sneak into their wives homes in order to consummate the marriage. This was thought to increase the sexual desire between husband and wife. The bride would be laid in bed with a man’s cloak and sandals in the dark. Her new spouse would then sneak into her room during the night and capture her. With the other items on this list, kidnapping your wife dressed in male drag out of her parents house really doesn’t sound too bad.

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