“Lydia is as wide as the ass of a bronze rider’s horse,
Or a fast hoop that sounds its clattering bronze,
Or a wheel crossed untouched by an acrobat,
Or an old shoe wet with muddy water,
Or as the wide nets that wait for wandering birds,
Or the awnings which close Pompey’s theater to the South Wind,
Or as arm-jewelry slipped off a diseased male-hooker,
Or a mattress separated from its Leuconian stuffing,
Or the old trousers of a British pauper,
Or the foul throat of a Revennian Pelican.
I am reputed to have fucked her in a salty fishpond.
I am not sure: I think I fucked the fishpond.”
Lydia tam laxa est equitis quam culus aeni,
quam celer arguto qui sonat aere trochus,
quam rota transmisso totiens inpacta petauro,
quam vetus a crassa calceus udus aqua,
quam quae rara vagos expectant retia turdos,
quam Pompeiano vela negata Noto,
quam quae de pthisico lapsa est armilla cinaedo,
culcita Leuconico quam viduata suo,
quam veteres bracae Brittonis pauperis, et quam
urpe Ravennatis guttur onocrotali.
Hanc in piscina dicor futuisse marina.
Nescio; piscinam me futuisse puto.
Greek Anthology 5.127 (Attributed to Marcus Argentarius)
“I was really in love with the maiden Alkippê and once
I persuaded her I took her secretly to bed.
Our chests were pounding over anyone entering—
That someone might see the secrets of excessive desire.
The bed’s chatter didn’t get by her mother— she looked in
And suddenly said: “Daughter, Hermes is shared” “
A weird salutation of body parts that takes a surprising racist turn
Greek Anthology, 5.132 (Attributed to Philodemus)
“Hello foot and calves, and oh—I should be dying here—thighs
Oh buttocks, Oh pussy, hey ass—
Oh shoulders, Oh breasts, what the slender neck,
The hands, oh—seriously I am losing my mind—eyes,
Oh bedeviled-craft of movement, Oh luxurious
Lickings, oh—come on, kill me now—the sounds from her mouth.
Even if she is Oscan and her name is Phlora and she doesn’t know Sappho,
Well, even Perseus loved Indian Andromeda.”
“Creep, who looks upon Latin words with sad eyes,
Read by Augustus Caesar these six dirty lines:*
‘Because Antony fucks Glaphyra, Fulvia has assigned
This penality as mine: I need to fuck Fulvia too.
I should fuck Fulvia? What if Manius would beg
That I sodomize him? Would I? Probably not, if I were wise.
“But fuck, or let us fight” she says. But what—is my life
dearer than my dick?** Let the war-trumpets sound.’
Augustus, you endorse these charming little books for me
Since you know how to speak with such Roman honesty.”
Caesaris Augusti lascivos, livide, versus
sex lege, qui tristis verba Latina legis:
‘quod futuit Glaphyran Antonius, hanc mihi poenam
Fulvia constituit, se quoque uti futuam.
Fulviam ego ut futuam? quid si me Manius oret
pedicem? faciam? non puto, si sapiam.
“aut futue; aut pugnemus” ait. quid quod mihi vita
carior est ipsa mentula? signa canant!’
absolvis lepidos nimirum, Auguste, libellos,
qui scis Romana simplicitate loqui.
*There is doubt whether or not Augustus composed these lines. If he did, then, as the speculation goes, someone published them in a collection of Principis Epigrammata.
**I reversed the Latin sense of vita (in the ablative) and mentula (nominative) for what feels to me like a more natural expression in English.
While we are on (a) topic, here are some useful principal parts in Latin and Greek.
“Lydia is as wide as the ass of a bronze rider’s horse,
Or a fast hoop that sounds its clattering bronze,
Or a wheel crossed untouched by an acrobat,
Or an old shoe wet with muddy water,
Or as the wide nets that wait for wandering birds,
Or the awnings which close Pompey’s theater to the South Wind,
Or as arm-jewelry slipped off a diseased male-hooker,
Or a mattress separated from its Leuconian stuffing,
Or the old trousers of a British pauper,
Or the foul throat of a Revennian Pelican.
I am reputed to have fucked her in a salty fishpond.
I am not sure: I think I fucked the fishpond.”
Lydia tam laxa est equitis quam culus aeni,
quam celer arguto qui sonat aere trochus,
quam rota transmisso totiens inpacta petauro,
quam vetus a crassa calceus udus aqua,
quam quae rara vagos expectant retia turdos,
quam Pompeiano vela negata Noto,
quam quae de pthisico lapsa est armilla cinaedo,
culcita Leuconico quam viduata suo,
quam veteres bracae Brittonis pauperis, et quam
urpe Ravennatis guttur onocrotali.
Hanc in piscina dicor futuisse marina.
Nescio; piscinam me futuisse puto.
“The Seasons and the Graces have poured sweet oil on you,
Butt. And you do not allow even old men to nap.
Tell me, whose sweetheart are you and which boy
Do you decorate? The Butt said “Menecrates’ “
πυγή: Beekes writes that this “has no convincing etymology” (Chantraine: “Pas d’étymologie assurée…”)
πυγμή: Cf. Latin pugnare, pugna. *pug-[Beekes is uncertain]. Chantraine presents the interseting suggestion from Van Brock that in the ancient background of πύξ might lurk the combination of πᾶς (“all”) and the numeral πέντε (“five”) to signal “fist”.
Greek Anthology 5.127 (Attributed to Marcus Argentarius)
“I was really in love with the maiden Alkippê and once
I persuaded her I took her secretly to bed.
Our chests were pounding over anyone entering—
That someone might see the secrets of excessive desire.
The bed’s chatter didn’t get by her mother— she looked in
And suddenly said: “Daughter, Hermes is shared” “
A weird salutation of body parts that takes a surprising racist turn
Greek Anthology, 5.132 (Attributed to Philodemus)
“Hello foot and calves, and oh—I should be dying here—thighs
Oh buttocks, Oh pussy, hey ass—
Oh shoulders, Oh breasts, what the slender neck,
The hands, oh—seriously I am losing my mind—eyes,
Oh bedeviled-craft of movement, Oh luxurious
Lickings, oh—come on, kill me now—the sounds from her mouth.
Even if she is Oscan and her name is Phlora and she doesn’t know Sappho,
Well, even Perseus loved Indian Andromeda.”
Last year a tweet from the always entertaining Greek History Podcast (.@greekhistorypod)directed me to learn some new words: “To have an erection whenever you wish, mix up crushed pepper in honey and smear on your thing” —Greek Magical Papyri, 7.185. Also, I don’t advise trying the following formulas. This post has been ‘enhanced’ from the original. Here we go…
The full passage also has a prescription for sexual performance
Magical Papyri, 7.185
“To be able to fuck a lot: mix fifty [pine nuts] with two measures of honey and seeds of pepper and drink it. To have an erection whenever you want: mix pepper with honey and rub it on your thing.”
Complications: this might just be a metaphor. στροβίλια can be phallic; κόκκος can mean “testicles” or female genitals. Also, seeds are, well, seminal. So there is some associative magic going on here.
2. I was a little unsure about στροβίλια, but I checked Galen (De Simp. Medic. 12.55.7) and it seems to be a pine nut (Κώνου ὁ καρπὸς, ὃν δὴ καὶ κόκαλον ὀνομάζουσι καὶ στρόβιλον). I am happy for a botanist’s help.
3. τὸ πρᾶ̣γ̣μ̣α: There is a variant attributed to Democritus τὸ π[έλ]μα, which looks like we could treat as a diminutive of τὸ πέος (“penis”) if we wanted to. So, you know, “spread pepper and honey on your little prick”. In Modern Greek, “thing” can still mean genitals.
4. Pepper and honey are prescribed by Aelian for persuading livestock to breed. In Dioscorides, pepper is suggested as a birth control method and as a a way of stimulating the libido:
Aelian, Nature of the Animals 9.48
“Guardians who want the reproduction of their animals to increase when it is time to mate take handfuls of salt and sodium carbonate and rub them on the genitals of female sheep, and goats and horses. From these [animals] get more eager for sex. Others rub them down with pepper and honey; and others with sodium carbonate and nettle-seed. Some even rub them down with myrrh. From this kind of stimulation the females lose control and go crazy for the males.”
“Both kinds of pepper commonly have the following effects:, digestive, uretic, absorbent [antidiarrheal], pro-perspirant and a purgative for things which overshadow girls. It also treats those who drink it and rub it on for periodic shakes and helps those bitten by wild beasts and also compels [out?] fetuses. It seems to make someone not pregnant when applied after sex.
It helps with coughs and aids with all kinds of ailments in the chest cavity, when it is taken in lozenges and suspensions, and it helps with sore throats when rubbed in with honey. It also treats constricted bowels when drunk with young laurel leaves. When it is crushed with stavesacre, it helps to produces phlegm, which is both painless and healthy to do. It stimulates your libido and helps as well in a soup mixed over heat. When it is prepared with pitch it helps neck swelling, and it darkens white spots with washing. Like lentils, pepper jumps in a pan right on the coals when it is roasting.”
Some Explanations for Erections, Courtesy of ‘Aristotle’. thanks to Ryan Blank (@drawingablank87) for Reminding me of these.
Aristotle, Problems 879a-b
20 “Sexual excitement is also due to an exiting of breath. If its rush finds some exit while arousal is ongoing then it does not make the semen ejaculate. But instead, it cools. Then, it ruins the rigidity of the penis.”
4.23 “Why does rigidity and increase happen to the penis? Is it for two reasons? First, is it because that weight develops on the bottom of the testicles, raising it—for the testicles are like a fulcrum? And is it because the veins become full of breath [pneuma]? Or does the mass become bigger because of an increase in moisture or some change in position or from the development of moisture itself? Extremely large things are raised less when the wight of the fulcrum is far away.”
According to J. Henderson (The Maculate Muse 1991: 112) this verb is the vulgar way to talk about erections:
Athenaeus, Deipn. 1.32 [=BNJ8135b]
“Phularkhos says that Sandrokottos, the king of the Indians, sent along with other gifts to Seleukos some drugs with erectile powers, the kind of which, when they are applied beneath feet of those who are going to have sex, give the the urge like birds, while some people lose their ability [for sex].”
“Phularkhos writes in the eighth book of his Histories that near the Arabian Gulf there is a spring of water from which if anyone ever anoints their feet what transpires miraculously is that their penis becomes enormously erect. For some it never contracts completely, while others are put back in shape with great suffering and medical attention.”
Plato the Comic Poet, fr. 43 [=Athenaeus 9. 367c-d]
[1] A woman who is asleep is boring
[2] I am learning this.
[1] But there are, uh, side-dishes when she is awake
And these alone are much more useful for pleasure than anything else
[2] What are fucking’s sidedishes, may I ask you?
“That was all I said. Then I lifted the girl
And laid her down in the blossoming flowers.
I covered her with a soft cloak
And placed my arms around her neck.
As she froze in fear like a fawn,
I lightly held her breasts in my hands
Where her skin exposed the newness of her youth.
And once I felt her fine body all around,
I shot off my white force, messing up her fair hair.
There is some debate about what exactly is going on in the sexual act at the end: is this extra-vaginal ejaculation (with the ξανθῆς…τριχός denoting pubic hair) or is this actually describing the poem’s narrator ejaculating on her hair? See the article mentioned above for a brief discussion.
Here’s another lyric fragment that discusses ejaculation. Note the different verbal vocabulary (ἐσβ[ά]λην instead of ἀφῆκα–both verbs can be used with weapons…):
Alcaeus, fr. 117. 27-8
“Whatever someone gives to a prostitute he might as well spill into the waves of the dark sea”
[More literally: “never shoot off your thoughts….”]
The descriptive language for ejaculation seems to be deficient in our evidence of Greek. Despite the two examples from Lyric I cite above, Henderson (Maculate Muse, 50) writes:
Both of the roots discussed above show up elsewhere in Greek usage. Hippocrates of Cos uses ἵημι compounds for female ejaculation (Generation 4: μεθίει δὲ καὶ ἡ γυνὴ ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος and again πρόσθεν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀφίει) whereas there is a reflex of ball- in Lucian’s phrase “ejaculations of semen” (καταβολὰς σπερμάτων, Ps.-Luc. Amores 19). In Aristotle Generation of Animals 1 (718a) we find:
“Fish and serpents are in this group and they also ejaculate quickly. For, just as it is with people and all creatures of this kind, which have to hold their breath to release their seed, so too fish need to refrain from the sea-water.”
Greek Anthology 5.127 (Attributed to Marcus Argentarius)
I was really in love with the maiden Alkippê and once
I persuaded her I took her secretly to bed.
Our chests were pounding over anyone entering—
That someone might see the secrets of excessive desire.
The bed’s chatter didn’t get by her mother— she looked in
And suddenly said: “Daughter, Hermes is shared””
A weird salutation of body parts that takes a surprising racist turn
Greek Anthology, 5.132 (Attributed to Philodemus)
“Hello foot and calves, and oh—I should be dying here—thighs
Oh buttocks, Oh pussy, hey ass—
Oh shoulders, Oh breasts, what the slender neck,
The hands, oh—seriously I am losing my mind—eyes,
Oh bedeviled-craft of movement, Oh luxurious
Lickings, oh—come on, kill me now—the sounds from her mouth.
Even if she is Oscan and her name is Phlora and she doesn’t know Sappho,
Well, even Perseus loved Indian Andromeda.”
