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| 7 2 Pornography, Life, and the Gods in the Greek and Roman Eras The noted journalist and author David Loth begins his discussion of pornography in the ancient world by saying, “For as long as man has had literature he has had pornography but most of the time he didn’t know it. Among the ancients sex was unashamedly joyous, in reading as in practice.”1 Although the passage applies to even older civilizations, Loth is also addressing the Greek and Roman worlds. The point might be made instead by saying that, though there was a recognition that the material was pornographic, there was none of the shame or disapproval that is the hallmark of obscenity . Pornographic images celebrated sex, and therefore they were not hidden away. As art historian Peter Webb puts it, in concluding his section on the classical world, “The Classical world celebrated the joys of love-making as a vital, guilt-free, and often sacred activity, and to this end they devoted much of their finest literature, painting, sculpture, and decorative art.”2 What was it about the classical cultures that led to this wide acceptance of sex and sexual depictions? Although we may now have come again to a fairly widespread acceptance, there was an extended period, after the end of the classical era, in which there was lesser acceptance. That is not to say that pornography disappeared, but public art became less sexual, and sex and pornography came to be accompanied by a shame that was not present for the Greeks and Romans. To see the basis for the change, I first look to art, sex, and religion in Greece and Rome. The Greek Arts The sculpture and pottery of classical Greece often conveyed a pornographic theme. Vases and other forms of pottery were decorated with sexual scenes. Given the continued existence of over thirty thousand Attic vases and the likelihood that most did not survive, it seems no exaggeration to suggest that 8 | Pornography, Life, and the Gods in the Greek and Roman Eras the output was, as Robert Sutton puts it, “comparable in relative scale to contemporary mass-market media.”3 Interestingly, most of the output of sexually explicit pottery seems originally to have been exported to the Etruscans.4 Nonetheless, the home population also fully accepted sexual scenes and were themselves consumers of the products. The major difference between these pieces and modern “adult material” is more technological than thematic. Although the classical pieces lack the animation of a film, their subject matter is the same and is as varied. Pieces of pottery still in existence serve as examples. A cup found in the Louvre is said by Peter Webb to depict “a wild orgy with various types of intercourse depicted in vivid detail.”5 An accompanying photo justifies the description, with scenes of females in congress with two male partners. Even accepting the claim of Kenneth Dover that vase painters who showed two or more couples having intercourse in the same scene may have been engaging in some form of pictorial convention,6 the sexual activity among the individual pairs, or more accurately threesomes, is explicit. Dover provides other descriptions and photos of vases, cups, and bowls depicting characters with exaggerated erect phalluses and cavorting in rites honoring the god Dionysus. The role these pieces of pottery played is of interest. Clearly, they may have been part of Dionysian rites. No less would be expected of a phallic cult and a concern for fertility. In addition to these cultic rites, it has been suggested by Harvey Alan Shapiro that the pottery was intended for “all-male symposia,” a lofty title for the stag parties that they seem to have been.7 Webb also notes that pottery was the most common gift given in Greece and suggests that many of these gifts would have been given by men to hetaerae, the courtesans of the era.8 A natural theme for such a gift would focus on sexual intercourse. On the other hand, it has been claimed by UK barrister, author, and parliamentarian H. Montgomery Hyde that similar representations of various forms of sexual intercourse were found “even . . . on the bottoms of children’s drinking bowls and plates, so that they could have something amusing to look at when they were having their meals.”9 Further, the Danish scholar Poul Gerhard provides photos of two Attic cups from the period 490–480 BCE as evidence for the claim that ordinary domestic articles...

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