The Ancient Greeks' Version of the Kama Sutra!
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Sex Manuals
Pamphile of Epidauros
Egyptian Woman of 1st century AD
Historian writing in Greek – first Greco/Roman female historian
Works (like Historical Commentaries, or biographies of prominent women) unfortunately lost
Also treatises on Sex
Doctae puellae = high end courtesans
-usually have “stage names”-often animals. possible the following were several women who used the same name.
Elephantis
1st Century BC Greek female poet & physician
Wrote a book on sexual positions.
Poem from the Priapeia (anonymous collection of erotic poetry):
“"Lalage dedicates a votive offering to the God of the erect penis, bringing shameless pictures from the books of Elephantis, and begs him to try and imitate with her the variety of intercourse of the figures in the illustrations.”
Suetonius Tiberius 43
“On retiring to Capri he devised “holey places” as a site for his secret orgies; there select teams of girls and male prostitutes, inventors of deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Its many bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with the books of Elephantis,90 in case any performer should need an illustration of a prescribed position.”
Martial 43
“You read me some all too well-turned verses about debauchees, Sabellus, such as neither Didymus’ girls 60 know of nor the voluptuous little books of Elephantis. Therein are novel erotic postures such as only a desperate fornicator would venture, what male prostitutes provide and keep quiet about, in what combinations five persons are linked, by what chain are held more than five, what can go on when the lamp is put out. You paid too high a price 61 for your poetic skill. 6”
Astyanassa – Helen’s handmaid. Stole her magic, Aphrodite braclet. Allegedly wrote the first erotic book/collection of positions
Philaenis
Undetermined time. Woman from Samos. OR pseudonym?
Philaenis = little love. Courtesan name
Reputation for deviance:
Martial:
“Lesbian Philaenis sodomizes boys and, more cruel than a husband’s lust, penetrates eleven girls per diem. She also plays with the harpastum high-girt, gets yellow with sand, and with effortless arm rotates weights that would tax an athlete. Muddy from the crumbly wrestling floor, she takes a beating 98 from the blows of an oiled trainer. She does not dine or lie down for dinner before she has vomited six pints of neat wine…”
Wrote a sort of parody of sex manuals
Surviving Fragments:
On Seductions: “Now, the seducer must come to the woman untidy and uncombed, so that he does not seem to the woman to be a man who takes much trouble...”
[On Flattery]: “...with the intention..., while he says that she... is equal to a goddess, that she who is ugly is as lovely as Aphrodite and that she who is older is as Rhea.”
Something about Kissing
Paxamus – identified 12 positions? in Dodecatechnon
“a writer on various subjects. Suidas (s. v.) mentions that he wrote a work called Βοιωτικά, in two books; also two books on the art of dyeing (βαφικά), two on husbandry, and a work entitled δωδεκάτεχνον, which Suidas explains (according to the emendation of Kuster, who gives ἔστι for the old reading ἔτι), to be an erotic work, περὶ αἰσχρῶν σχημάτων. Some fragments from the treatise on husbandry are preserved in the Geoponica. Paxamus also wrote a culinary work, entitled ὀφαρτυτικά, which, Suidas states, was arranged in alphabetical order.”
Others:
Martial 12.95
“Read, Istantius Rufus, the ultra-pathic little books of Mussetius, which vie with the little books of Sybaris pages tinged with prurient wit. But have your girl with you, lest you make lustful hands sing your wedding song and become a husband without a woman.”
Milesian Tales: (genre of short stories featuring love/sex/adventure)
-Hemitheon wrote Sybaritica (homoerotic novel)
-Lucian on: “The cinaedus Hemitheon of Sybaris who wrote for you such an elegant set of instructions on how to soften the skin, on waxing, on how to practise pederasty or have it practised on one... a thousand things betray this lie; the walk, the look, the sound of the voice, the bent neck, the white lead, putty and paint which you use, in conclusion as the proverb goes: “it’s easier to hide five elephants under your armpit than hide on cinaedus.”
Petronius’ Satyricon
Sexual torture, orgies, etc.