Philip Howard: The Classical Association meeting hears how Ancient Greeks had their own obsessions with size
MODERN Western society is obsessed by body image. We worry about the interrelated questions of size (of various body parts) and what (not) to wear. The Ancient Greeks’ answer to the above question was: “Call that a bum? Nothing like big enough.” Big bottoms indicated fertility.
The Classical Association meeting at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne yesterday examined our fetishes for stick-insect female bodies, and found them unclassical. Anyone who was seen any Greek art knows that Greek nude male statues tend to be very modestly endowed: there is a preference for discreet, sometimes exaggeratedly small, genitalia. Few of them measure up to the eight-fingered Milesian dildos fondly imagined by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.
Emma Stafford, of Leeds University, argued that small penis size was equated with ideals of youth, self-control and citizenship. It was linked with the conventions of the ideal homosexual relationship, in which the younger partner was expected to play an entirely passive part. Uncivilised brutes had large membra. These were incarnated especially in the creature of the Satyr.
Dr Stafford argued that the eight-finger phallus (she infers that the measurement is of girth rather than length) also had positive connotations, of fertility and apotropaic (turning aside evil) power. That was why huge phalluses were attached to herms (busts of Hermes) or carried disembodied in processions. Over-size penises can be found attached to perfectly respectable, upper-class citizens in particular contexts in Attic vase-painting. The conventional ideal was forgotten in comic or erotic contexts. And a predilection for large penises was attributed to women (going with the broader comic perception of women as having insatiable appetites).
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The Classical Association meeting at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne yesterday examined our fetishes for stick-insect female bodies, and found them unclassical. Anyone who was seen any Greek art knows that Greek nude male statues tend to be very modestly endowed: there is a preference for discreet, sometimes exaggeratedly small, genitalia. Few of them measure up to the eight-fingered Milesian dildos fondly imagined by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.
Emma Stafford, of Leeds University, argued that small penis size was equated with ideals of youth, self-control and citizenship. It was linked with the conventions of the ideal homosexual relationship, in which the younger partner was expected to play an entirely passive part. Uncivilised brutes had large membra. These were incarnated especially in the creature of the Satyr.
Dr Stafford argued that the eight-finger phallus (she infers that the measurement is of girth rather than length) also had positive connotations, of fertility and apotropaic (turning aside evil) power. That was why huge phalluses were attached to herms (busts of Hermes) or carried disembodied in processions. Over-size penises can be found attached to perfectly respectable, upper-class citizens in particular contexts in Attic vase-painting. The conventional ideal was forgotten in comic or erotic contexts. And a predilection for large penises was attributed to women (going with the broader comic perception of women as having insatiable appetites).