Sex in Ancient Greece is the subject of LJ Trafford’s new book. She found that the Greeks were much stranger, and much smuttier, than we might think, and shares some of her research with us.
Back in 2020 I wrote a book called Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Rome, and tremendous fun it was too, as I delved into anti-castration legislation, heartbroken poets, dubious interior decor and phalluses, phalluses everywhere. Surprisingly the central theme that ran through that book was that ancient Rome was more conservative and more moral than we’ve been led to believe from popular culture.
Recently I was called upon again to write about sex and sexuality again but this time about ancient Greece. What would I discover? What I discovered was that the ancient Greeks were a great deal filthier than popular culture would have us believe. Which says a lot more about depictions of antiquity in popular culture than it does about those societies themselves. But onwards to the filth!
A Penis Parade
Ancient Athens was home to some very clever men: men like the philosophers Socrates and Plato, the orators Demosthenes and Pericles, the historian/soldier Xenophon, the playwright Sophocles and the celebrated sculptors Phidias, Myron and Praxiteles.
All of these titans of history, these giants of civilisation, would once a year take part in a procession that saw Athenians walking through their city’s streets waggling a model penis in the air whilst singing dirty songs and shouting out obscenities to passers-by,
It reads like the philosophy lads’ night out gone large but no, this parade, known as the phallophoria, was the opening to a very important festival in the Athenian calendar: the Great Dionysia.
The origin story of this penis parade takes place in a pre-democratic Athens when the populace greatly offended the god Dionysius by not treating his statue with sufficient reverence. This Dionysius did not like and he inflicted a dreadful punishment upon the men of Athens: an itchy disease of the penis.
Admittedly in the lexicon of deities’ taking vengeance on mankind this is somewhat of a footnote, a minor skirmish if you like, but it had the desired effect: Dionysius’ statue was suddenly the most popular one in the city.
But just in case their unending devotion was not enough, they invented a festival for Dionysius, complete with a willy-waving procession to demonstrate to the all-powerful god that they hadn’t forgotten what fate awaited them if their reverence ever wavered again.
Porn Cup
One of the things that ancient Greece has bequeathed us is pottery, lots of pottery, enough pottery to fill a cabinet or 12 in most of Europe’s top museums. One such item of Greek pottery is the kylix cup.
The kylix is an interesting vessel, because it’s not really a cup at all, it’s more of a shallow bowl with handles.
If you have ever tried to drink from a cereal bowl (and which of us hasn’t at some point in our life during a petty house dispute on whose turn it is to do the washing up) you’ll know that this inevitably results in a spillage of some sort. This was the exact point of what appears at first glance to be a chiton-staining design flaw: it was part of the entertainment at an ancient Greek symposium1 to see how well or not your guests had mastered the art of drinking drip free from the kylix.
To add an element of peril to this contest the Greeks took to painting at the bottom of a kylix cup ‘surprising’ images, the sort of image that might make you swallow your wine the wrong way when it slowly appears from the dregs of your last sip. By surprising, I mean pornographic and by pornographic, I mean properly pornographic in a way that taunts our modern obscenity laws.
To give you some idea of what I’m talking about, here is the British Museum, a regal, national institution forced into cataloguing one such example: “a naked hetaira (a high end prostitute) stands on the right and slowly eases herself backwards and downwards onto the man’s erect penis, one hand resting on his ribs, the other on his hip, steadying her progress”.
Wikimedia Commons, forced into a similar dilemma, completely underplays the glorious chaos of a scene painted on the exterior of a kylix cup as a “sexual orgy between 5 satyrs”.
We find depicted on kylix cups and other Greek crockery group sex, oral sex, anal sex, paedophilia, dildo-enjoying women and every sexual position you can think of, and some you haven’t. There are also satyrs going at it with nymphs, with wineskins, assorted animals and each other. It’s not for the easily-offended.
Vengeance via Verse
Back in the 7th century BC on the tiny island of Paros a poet named Archilochus was about to get well and truly dumped. The father of his fiancée, Neobule, had, on reflection, decided his daughter could do a lot better than a poet for her husband and called off their engagement.
It is fair to say Archilochus did not take this well: rather than taking the traditional route of weeping and moping about the place he went for full out revenge: in verse!
The resulting poem is drenched in bitterness.
Neobule I have forgotten, believe me, do.
Any man who wants her may have her.
Aiai! She’s past her day, ripening rotten.
The petals of her flower are all brown.
The grace that first she had is shot.2
And that’s just one verse out of 16 in total.
Archilochus’ revenge poem worked rather too well. It is said that his ex-fiancée Neobule, her father, and possibly some of her sisters all committed suicide after reading the poem. Which is quite something if true.
Archilochus’ pen had power beyond the dreams of every writer burning from the injustice of an Amazon one-star review.
Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece by LJ Trafford is published on 30 May, 2026.
Find out more about this book.
Notes:
1. A symposium in ancient Greece bears absolutely no resemblance to a symposium in the 21st century. One is a presentation on a serious topic, the other is all-out lads’ piss-up to rival the wildest Ibiza stag do, but with philosophy thrown into the mix.
2. Archilochus, P.Colon 7511
You may enjoy LJ’s other Historia contributions:
Sex in Ancient Rome
Gladiator sweat and leech hair dye; how to survive in Ancient Rome
How (not) to become a Roman Emperor
Her review of I, Claudius
Her short story, The Wedding
And our interview with her
Other relevant features include:
The real women who made the Greek myths by Emily Hauser
Shame and the Ancient Greek hero and Motives of a Bronze Age murderess by Susan C Wilson
The triumph of Greek myths and the destruction of a civilisation by Hilary Green
Merkins and masochists: a brief history of sex by Jemahl Evans
Images:
- Red-figured kylix showing Dionysos and satyrs, attrib Oedipus Painter, 470–460BC: Yale University Art Gallery (public domain)
- Kylix with Dionysiac scene, satyrs and maenads dancing, Brygos Painter, 490-480BC (edited): ArchaiOptix for Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Symposium scene, with reclining men and youths playing kottabos, a woman playing a double pipe and a naked youth moving among the tables with food; bell-krater, Athens, 425–375BC (edited): Egisto Sani for Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
- Red-figured cup decorated on the interior with an erotic scene, c480BC (trimmed): © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
- Bust, said to be of Archilochus, 2nd-century Roman copy of 4th-century BC Greek original (trimmed): shakko for Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
