PBP: S - Sex in Ancient Greece

A brief overview.

Aphrodite and Eros were key deities of love and sexual delight, both gifting mortals and gods alike with desire as well as cursing them with burning passion. The ancient myths are filled with tales of nymphs and mortals being ravished by the gods and more beastly creatures such as Satyrs. (The subject of rape is a larger topic that I might address at some point.)

Sex and sexuality in Ancient Greece were more liberal than today in some ways and more strict in others. A male citizen could partake of a multitude of sexual acts, with both males and females, though female citizens were more restricted.

Women were the guardians of citizenship. An Athenian citizen had to make sure all his wife's children were his. To keep her away from temptation, she was locked away in the women's quarter and accompanied by a male when she went outside. If she were caught with another man in flagrante delicto, the man could be killed or brought to court. When the woman married she was a piece of property transferred from her father (or other male guardian) to her husband. In Sparta, the need for Spartan citizens was strong, but women were encouraged to bear children to a citizen who would sire well if her own husband proved inadequate. There she wasn't so much her spouse's property as the state's -- as were her children and her husband.


Prostitutes were despised then as they are today, although for slightly different reasons. They might have been looked upon as victims (of pimps), but they were also greedy and deceitful. Even if they were honest financially, they used makeup and other artifices to make themselves more attractive.

Sex between wife and husband was just one of many choices available -- at least to the male. There were slaves of both sexes, concubines, and hetairai, all of whom were available, if only for a fee. Men could also try to entice a young man just past puberty. These relationships were the ones celebrated on vases and in much of Athenian literature.

In Plato's Symposium (a treatise on Athenian eroticism) Aristophanes offers a colorful explanation for why all these sexual options existed. In the beginning there were three types of double-headed humans, varying according to sex: male/male, female/female, and male/female. Zeus, angered at the humans, punished them by splitting them in half. From then on, each half has forever sought out his other half.

Homosexuality was also more common, especially in Sparta where homosexual relationships were even encouraged to help form comradeship between soldiers. Pederasty was also practises, where a more middle aged man cultivated a relationship with a teenage boy in order to teach him the ways of men, usually philosophy, sex and war.

PBP: R - Reincarnation

The idea of which didn't originate in Ancient Greece but the topic was brought into a better light by some of its most famous philosophers. The earliest Greek who mused on the topic of 'metempsychosis' was Pherecydes, the purported teacher of Pythagoras.

The idea of reincarnation is explored in the Orphic tradition which appeared around 6th century BC in which the mythic figure of Orpheus claims that the soul is divine and unfairly tethered to the prison of the body. After death, the soul and the body are separated but not for long, and it is once again joined with mortal flesh. The soul must live several lives in other to become enlightened and truly divine until it can exist free of the body.

Plato was another famous philosopher who believed this to be true, using one of his works, The Republic, to retell this idea in the guise of an experience/myth. Er, the son of Armenius returned from the dead after twelve days and retells what he saw of the death realm. He tells that he went to the place of judgement and saw other souls there choosing another body, another reincarnation for their soul in order to return to the world of the living, both human and animal. Orpheus, Thamyra and Antalanta were supposedly some of the souls amongst these. They chose there next form and then drank from the river Lethe (oblivion, forgetfulness) and shot away to be reborn.

Plato also believed that the number of souls was finite, so that new ones were not created, every one transmigrated from one body to the next.