Greek Statues, Penises, and Pederasty

This post is entirely from a section in the article 6 Weird Fashions From History (With Weirder Explanations) and answers the question on everybody’s mind: why did Greek statues have such small penises?

I just thought you should know: things were a little different back then. See what I did there… the pun… *cricket, cricket*

All righty then, on with the article!

Tiny Penises on Greek Sculptures

Wikipedia

You probably know at least two things about Ancient Greece — it was the birthplace of Western culture, and if all those marble statues are to be believed, everyone had really tiny wangs. Given that most men habitually add around three inches to the real size of their packages in the relatively unlikely event that they’re asked, we have to wonder why a washboard-chested warrior civilization decided to portray all their manliest heroes with a chronic case of shrinkage. Was it just really cold back then? How well did they expect that sad little thing to please a woman?

teamliquid

“At least I have my children. The ones who didn’t die of typhoid.”

Actually, pleasing women was about the last priority that any self-respecting Greek hero would have had back then, if you catch our drift.

Experts have actually exhaustively studied the role of dongs in Greek society and written entire books on the subject. Cecil Adams over at StraightDope.com neatly summarizes it: “Long, thick penises were considered — at least in the highbrow view — grotesque, comic or both …”. So in art, big dongs appeared on non-human creatures and barbarians, and the perfect penis in those days, “… was small, thin and covered with a long, tapered foreskin.” Which is to say that the Greeks preferred their penises to look, uh … younger.

artistartypost16

“Putting a finger puppet on the end and doing a show” kind of young.

See, in Ancient Greek culture, one of the most common and socially acceptable relationships was between a man and a young boy. It was basically the exact society that fundamentalist Republicans imagine right before they shoot bolt upright, whimpering in a cold sweat. The ideal object of beauty and desire was not Jessica Alba in a hand bra but an athletic, clean-shaven male with the neat and unobtrusive genitalia of a boy just coming into puberty.

Wikipedia

In the interests of context and open-mindedness — ewwww.

So, rather than bragging about having a pork missile so huge that they could make a woman climax twice simultaneously, back then they would brag about having a dick so small that they could attract the wealthiest men in Greece by looking like a 12-year-old. We cannot stress enough how much of a different world this was.

As a result, as the ancient playwright Aristophanes put it, what was most sexy in Ancient Greece was “a gleaming chest, bright skin, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks and a little prick.”

elena-iulia

Actually, most people we know who look like this tend to be massive pricks.