But whether these scenes reflect the real goings-on at these parties is another matter. The cups from which diners drank at these events are often painted with erotic scenes, ranging from lingering glances to full-blown orgies. Guests would flirt with each other, with slaves pouring the drinks, and there would be female prostitutes hired as “entertainers” for the evening. This was an opportunity for men and older youths to bond and was highly erotically charged. The symposium (an all-male drinking party) was one occasion when Greeks would let their hair down. Athens’s answer to Miss World was a male beauty contest, the Euandria, a contest of “manliness” where contestants were judged on their bodily strength and ability as well as their looks. In addition to gym-fit, smooth-skinned youths, Greeks also admired the physique of adult men – as the statues of athletes, gods and heroes in Defining Beauty show. Is there a connection to be made between this lack of interest in faces and the serene – some would say, blank – expressions we find on many classical statues? We have little idea what eye-shapes or lip-shapes were found attractive, for instance. © Tourism Board of Mali Losinjįor all that Charmides and other hotties – both male and female – are described as “beautiful” and “pretty-faced”, Greek authors rarely mention specific facial features. Bronze, Hellenistic or Roman replica after a bronze original from the second quarter or the end of the 4th century BC. According to Plato, everyone at the wrestling school gazes at Charmides “as if he were a statue” and Socrates himself “catches fire” when he sees inside the youth’s cloak.Īpoxyomenos. A boy’s sexual allure began to diminish the moment he started to grow facial and body hair and this short window of attractiveness perhaps explains the ecstatic reception that poster-boy youths like Charmides received. Just as young brides were sexy, it was as adolescents that males were found attractive by other men.
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Vase paintings often depict young women putting on clothes and jewellery ahead of their weddings or being led by the hand by their groom, with a winged Eros floating nearby. Interestingly, the bride becomes a figure of intense erotic interest in 5th-century BC Athens. In terms of art, what I find particularly touching are the tender portraits of wives on tombstones, where women are characteristically displayed as faithful, loving mothers. These arrangements might be expected to lead to unhappy marriages, but we do find examples of loving couples. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015 Roman copy of a Greek original, 2nd century AD. Marble statue of a naked Aphrodite crouching at her bath, also known as Lely’s Venus. In Athens, a girl generally got married at about 16 – typically to a man twice her age, often a paternal uncle or an associate of her father’s. A girl’s father traditionally saw it as his duty to find a suitable husband for his daughter and, importantly, would generally have played a role in finding a wife for his son as well. For same-sex relationships, the focus is typically on the courtship for prostitution, it’s on the sexual act for marriage, it’s on the moment when the groom leads his new wife home. These different sexual relationships are captured in classical vase painting in strikingly different ways.
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As for marital relations, men seldom married before the age of 30, and apart from the wedding night, it was common for married couples to sleep apart.
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Men also used female prostitutes regularly: sex could be brought cheaply in a city that was home to countless brothels, streetwalkers and female “entertainers”. Relationships between men of the same age were not at all common: rather, the standard same-sex relationship would involve an adolescent boy and an older man. But the private lives of men in classical Athens – the city we know most about – were very different from anything that a “bisexual” man might experience today. It was certainly the norm in ancient Greece for a man to find both sexes attractive.