Putting the O-mega in the “Big O”
Penetrating Questions About Orgasms in Classical Antiquity
(Just, like, all of the content warnings for this article.)
(Also NOT SAFE FOR NEGOTIUM)
Thanks for coming. (GET IT?!). Apologies for shooting my wad (of pun) so quickly, but I hope you’ll stick around because I haven’t even begun to reach the climax — of this article, that is. Which answers all your burning questions about orgasms in ancient Greece and Rome in a nifty question-and-answer format because I think it’s a really approachable style and not because I can’t find an argument to make about orgasms even though I said I would write an article about orgasms. Anyway, if this topic peaks — I mean piques, sorry — your interest, I do hope you finish. It! Finish it. This article, I mean. Not the metaphor for sexual climax, sorry. This is a very serious article.
Q: Why do humans even orgasm?
A: For our health (and to make the babies of course).
Ancient Greek and Roman medicine was all about “finding balance” in order to maintain health, often by increasing or decreasing the amounts of different substances in the human body. Chronic nosebleeds? Clearly this patient makes too much blood! Let’s remove some of it. Ejaculation? Clearly something the body does to keep clean and prevent a dangerous buildup of fluid. Also, babies.
Q: Just how important is ejaculation for health?
A: It’s vital: not only will men get sick if they don’t release their semen, but so will women (cf. Lesley Dean-Jones).
Female bodies possess an extra organ (the womb) that gets the flu or something if it isn’t regularly moistened by male sex goo and regular and copious menstruation. Just kidding! It’s not the flu — it’s more like 20 or 30 something different illnesses including “longing for the noose” and just generally “needing someone to bang the crazy out of her.”
Q: If ejaculation is so good for you, why do only men do it?
A: It’s not only men who ejaculate!
While some medical writers said that women provide nothing whatsoever to conception except for the “raw material” of human body production, many others were convinced that women also emitted semen during intercourse. Both this notion of female seed and the belief that women are not able to get pregnant unless they feel pleasure during sex (Sor. Gyn. 1.12.51–55 (1.37)) make female orgasm essential to the process of conception. It also leaves room for the victim-blaming inverse of these ideas: that the female body has “ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Interestingly, this ancient debate about the importance (or not) of female pleasure mirrors a modern divide among evolutionary biologists: one camp contends that the female orgasm serves no biological purpose but is instead a defunct relic of an earlier system where orgasm was necessary to induce ovulation. The other camp, relying on evidence that one article calls “weak to nonexistent,” claims that female orgasm plays a minor (but not mandatory) role in reproduction by guiding sperm to egg.
Q: What? How did women ejaculate semen?
A: From their internal penis of course!
Pseudo Aristotle (Hist. an. X.5, Tr. Peck) says that women have a tube inside them “just as men have the penis, but within the body” from which they eject their seed. I’m starting to think this was a phallocentric culture…
In all seriousness, when considered in light of what we now know about the role of ovaries in conception, this internal seed-emitting penis idea is at least more right than the competing idea that women do nothing but gestate a man’s seed. Uterus-havers do contribute genetic material via an egg that does eventually make its way, in embryonic form, out of the phallic-looking cervix.
(While we’re on the topic of which culture was more “enlightened,” Pseudo Aristotle notes that the uterus emits moisture “just as the mouth needs to spit,” while our culture invented the panty challenge. Point 1 ancient Greece.)
Q: Did women in antiquity even have orgasms, really?
A: Not this one:
Probably not this one either:
Maybe this one?:
Probably this one:
General consensus seems to be that the evidence for (a cultural belief in) Greek female orgasm is spotty. Here’s our best description of female sexual pleasure (Hippoc., Nat. puer. 4, Tr. Potter):
Now in women, I assert that as their vagina is rubbed and their uterus moved during intercourse, a kind of tickling sensation befalls these parts and gives rise to pleasure and warmth in the rest of their body … a woman feels pleasure, once intercourse begins, for the whole time until the man ejaculates in her; if the woman is eager for intercourse, she ejaculates before the man, and from then on she no longer feels as much pleasure, but if she is not eager, her pleasure ends with the man’s.
As classicist Erin McKenna Hanses argued in a recent SCS talk, we need to be careful to not retroject our own idea of how female orgasms work onto an ancient model. Our own modern conception of the orgasm is in fact more societally than scientifically informed. It is therefore likely that the Greek construct of female pleasure — and consequently, or possibly, Greek women themselves — imagined pleasure as a process lasting for the duration of intercourse, rather than a single moment of climax.
There is considerably more evidence for a Roman era construct of female orgasm that aligns more closely with ours. Most explicitly, Achilles Tatius speaks of how a woman can reach the “peak of love” (τῇ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἀκμῇ) whereupon she is “maddened with pleasure, opens her mouth wide as she kisses, and goes crazy” (II.37, Tr. Gaselee) and Ovid (Ars am. II.691f., Tr. Mozley) says that his ideal sexual encounter leaves his partner “in frenzy, with eyes that confess defeat,” languid, and refusing to be embraced.
Q: Does a penis or a clitoris make for the best orgasms?
A: Debatable!
While anyone who’s ever experienced both kidney stones and childbirth can affirm that the former is infinitely more painful than the latter, it’s harder to assess the comparative pleasures of penile and clitoral orgasms. For the Greeks and Romans, however, the prophet Tiresias settled this stimulating debate way back in the mythological past.
Tiresias, you see, had been transformed into a woman as punishment for hitting two canoodling snakes with a stick. After seven years of living as a woman and even having children (but not kidney stones) he hit the same snakes again and was transformed back into a man (because hitting copulating snakes is okay now I guess). Anyway, when notorious horndog Zeus said that women enjoy doing the deed more than men do, and perennial scorned wife Hera replied that, nay, the deeds are done more pleasurably by men, Tiresias settled the debate. Unfortunately for him, though, Hera struck him blind because she didn’t like his answer (not only did he rule in favor of Zeus, he confirmed that women feel ten times more pleasure than men).
Case closed until centuries later — and, like, IRL — a medical writer asserts the opposite (Hippoc. Nature of the Child 4): women’s pleasure lasts longer, he says, but men’s is more intense.
Q: Oh by the way, do you have any caveats or disclaimers?
A: Yes, and please read them rather than skipping to the next question.
There was a great deal of disagreement between different medical writers, and many hundreds of years, sometimes, between them. Wherever I paint “ancient medicine” with a broad brush know that the situation is way more complicated than it seems.
While much of Greco-Roman mythology and literature explores questions of gender, gender in antiquity was relentlessly constructed as binary. Hence all of the gender essentialism you may be noticing.
Every single one of these primary sources (with one notable exception) was written by men. Lots of them are literary and therefore subject more to literary convention than to “reality.” The rest were operating in medico-philosophical systems that better reflect cultural notions than biological realities. I mean, it’s either that or that snake thing really happened.
Q: Are orgasms sexist?
A: Everything is sexist and if you read Eidolon more often you would know that by now. You definitely can’t compliment anyone for anything anymore or even masturbate into a potted plant at work I’m so sorrynotsorry for ruining plantsturbation for you.
But yes, treating the female orgasm as the be-all-end-all (did you finish?) of sex is an androcentric way of classifying pleasure. On the other hand, neglecting the female orgasm is also rude, so…ΑΠΟΡΙΑ.
Having an orgasm may be value-neutral but the study of orgasms is often sexist. It’s easier to see this happening when we look across the chasm of time: I think we would all agree—for the love of Pete I hope we can agree—that the fact that some Greek and Roman writers were convinced that the uterus needed male semen in order to stay healthy says more about their ideas about gender than an objective biological reality. Or, to take someone closer to our time, who still exercises a great deal of cultural influence over our cognition: renowned feminist Sigmund Freud.
The very notion of vaginal orgasms (i.e. orgasming from vaginal stimulation alone) — the existence of which scientists are still to this day hotly debating — was just completely invented by Freud. Freud claimed that puberty triggered a switchover from clitoral to vaginal orgasms. And here we can see how culture can trump science: young girls may achieve orgasm via rubbing the clitoris but real women need dicks.
Indeed, the scientific search for this mystical vaginal orgasm is literally a phallocentric endeavor, centering on the place where a phallus is sheathed (Latin vagina = “sheath”); some (cf. Hanses, above) even argue that any scientific inquiry into female orgasm is androcentric, given that it maps a male experience onto a female body. The human body is equipped with sensation, sure, but the stories we tell ourselves about these feelings create a feedback loop, where we only notice — or shoot for — what we think is significant.
This androcentric notion that, for vagina havers, the pleasure of sex is felt only or mainly as an orgasmic explosion “at the end” makes it harder for people to think “outside the box,” as it were: the fact that you’re probably finding it hard to imagine the joy of sex ebbing and flowing, rather than peaking, for example, says more about our (cultural) narrative about sexual pleasure than any person’s biological possibilities.
Q: Did men care about women’s pleasure?
A: Yes, but that doesn’t mean she came.
In medical treatises, as we have seen, women were thought to enjoy the process of sex —not the grand finale—and to lose all pleasurable feeling once doused in male ejaculate (like throwing cold water into boiling, one author asserts). By contrast, women in ancient literature are sexually insatiable.
But we shouldn’t take this perpetual dissatisfaction as evidence for female orgasm; if anything, it indicates the opposite. What’s more, these sex-crazed women are depicted as being obsessed with vaginal penetration, not clitoral stimulation. For example, this woman is so rapacious (and capacious) that she needs an elephant to satisfy her, this one needs science to build her a bull-coitus machine, and this woman needs two dildos:
Women can’t even tolerate a dearth of penetration for love of country: when the women in Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata go on a sex strike to manipulate the men of Athens into ending the war they continually complain that they are super duper horny for peen and dildos. Female pleasure in literature is treated as a punchline or an anxiety or a mallet; looking for the lived experiences of women in these accounts is about as futile as looking for the same in a Chuck Palahniuk novel.
When it comes to “real” orgasms in antiquity, the fact that these male artists think pudenda require penetration, that they ignore the clitoris, and even the fact that they think women are insatiable means maybe they were doing it wrong. If you don’t get why that is you’re probably doing it wrong, too.
Q: Did women care about female pleasure?
A: Let’s ask our ONE FEMALE FRIEND (TM):
In contrast to a lot of these male-authored representations of female pleasure, Sappho (as Jack Winkler argues) at many points indicates that she knows her way around a clitoris.
Q: It’s true that Greek and Roman physicians treated hysteria with orgasms, right? I mean, there’s a book and a movie and a play about this practice so it must be true.
A: There is no evidence for this practice.
The popularity of this idea can be traced back to a 1999 book, The Technology of Orgasm by Rachel Maines, which theorized that the therapeutic masturbation of the Victorian Era had an ancient pedigree. In 2011 classicist Helen King published a masterful takedown of Maines’ theory, where she shows that Maines cherry-picked and distorted evidence by relying on translations of translations of excised texts, much like a game of telephone. King shows how, in the ancient texts Maines cites, 1) women weren’t necessarily suffering from hysteria, 2) the physician-authors of these texts weren’t necessarily the people treating these women, and 3) the treatments applied were unlikely to induce orgasm anyway, ranging as they do from rubbing the shins with salt and vinegar (ouch!) to this (King 2011, 214):
The patient is sitting in a bowl, with sea sponges around her, and the massage is the gentlest possible—rather than using one’s hands, which are said to risk bruising the patient, one should gently press the sponges against her body and move them back and forth.
Q: Is she faking it?
A: With you? Yes.
Lucretius says that a woman doesn’t “always” fake it every time, though, so keep telling yourself it’s never happened to you.
Q: Can you orgasm too much?
A: Yes, definitely. Too much ejaculation is not just bad for your health, it can corrupt your very soul. However too much build-up is also bad for you, so aim for the golden mean (and not a potted plant, please).
The philosophers loved to diss bodily pleasure. Plato, for example, thought that the human soul could be contaminated by the pleasures and pains of the body; when humans focus too much on pursuing all those things that feel good, like eating delicious food, having sex, and “just checking Facebook for a sec,” the soul becomes “nailed to the body” and can’t focus on doing what it does best (contemplating the music of the Heavens of course, as you do).
I said above that physicians thought “retention of semen” was dangerous, but I should also note that they thought too much ejaculation was bad too. In fact, medical writers tend to recommend abstinence more than ejaculatory release. An abundance of seed was considered an actual disease in antiquity, called “genital overflow” or gonorrhea. Treatment included the injunction that a woman suffering from this disease shouldn’t talk about sex or look at porn, but should instead induce vomiting and sleep on a hard bed.
Q: What is the best timing for orgasming during sex?
A: Same!
The Roman poet Ovid says (Tr. Mozley) that sex is best when both partners “feel what delights them equally.” He goes on to say that this is why he’s not interested in boys (who weren’t supposed to get aroused during sex, see below) and that he hates when a woman just lies there “thinking of her wool” or checking her phone.
From a medical standpoint, Pseudo Aristotle (HA X.636b, Tr. Peck) claims that conception only takes place when the man and woman both emit their seed at the same time; it is an impediment to conception, however, when the man “has completed quickly while she has hardly done so (for in most things women are slower).”
Q: Premature ejaculation?
A: Yes.
The god Hephaestus, as Apollodorus relates, once accidentally emitted onto Athena’s leg after bumbling a rape of her:
When he got near her with much ado,(for he was lame), he attempted to embrace her; but she, being a chaste virgin, would not submit to him, and he dropped his seed on the leg of the goddess (Ed. note: “to drop seed on” seems like way too casual of a description for this kind of sexual misconduct). In disgust, she wiped off the seed with wool and threw it on the ground; and as she fled and the seed fell on the ground, Erichthonius was produced.
Hephaestus: the Harvey Weinstein of the Greek gods. Imagine if every plant Harvey inseminated had become a demigod. There’s an Avengers-style franchise right there, I think.
Q: Nocturnal emissions?
A: Ewwwww. Also yes.
Horace, after falling asleep thinking about sex (he had been waiting up for a cheating girlfriend, Satires 1.5) defiles his PJs and belly after dreaming about “filthy images.” Lucretius too suggests that wet dreams occur when you fall asleep thinking about sex: lawyers dream about pleading their cases, generals fight battles, sailors sail, Lucretius writes poems, and pubescent boys “pour forth a great flood and stain their clothes” (Lucretius, DRN 4.1035f., Tr. Rouse/Smith).
Women get to have these too! Pseudo Aristotle (HA X.3 635a-b) is really interested in examining the state of the uterus after women have sex dreams. He thinks sex dreams are a good sign of fertility, and that women should wake up relaxed, moist, and satisfied. However, given how careful he is to say that the healthy woman dreams about “having intercourse with her husband” and not Narcissus or Chris Hemsworth suggests that Greek men were worried about their wives dream-cheating.
Q: Where should a man come if he wants to be polite?
A: In her hair or between his thighs.
You know how the Greeks are so great and we should emulate them in all ways without any regard to our own evolving morals, especially when it comes to issues like education and pederasty, right? So a big part of the pederastic relationship was a special way of doing sex called intercrural sex. Inter = “between” and crural = “thighs” and it was considered the polite non-creepy non-rapey way for older men to enjoy a bit of orgasm with their young tutees. The youth remains unaroused and unpenetrated and the man can attend to his ejaculatory needs. Much courteous. So polite.
So much for sex with boys; what if a dude really needs to orgasm with or in the vicinity of a girl but she’s a prude? Prior to 1974 people who look to the ancients for sex advice would have come up dry. Thankfully we now have the (re)discovered Cologne Epode by the poet Archilochus, where we learn that there are options besides P in the V. Here, Archilochus assures his girl:
I shall climb the wall and come to the gate.
You’ll not say no, Sweetheart, to this?
I shall come no farther than the garden grass.
So here the wall = her panties, maybe? Or mons pubis? The gate (the hole in the wall) is probably her V and the garden grass is her pubes. The poem ends with a sudden bang:
I let fly my white force
while grazing her yellow hair
And on that money shot, I’m out of things to say about orgasms and off to take a shower.
Sarah Scullin is Managing Editor of Eidolon. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.
