So when did big dicks flip from items of grotesque humor and curiosity to idols of desire and admiration? Art historians and cultural critics have thrown around all kinds of speculation, from the Renaissance with its explicitly erotic engravings, like the early sixteenth century I Modi , to the modern era and the everything bigger, everything better ethos of our hardcore pornography .

There probably was no definitive flip because our conceptions of penis size have always been fluid and multi-faceted. As Joseph Slade , a historian of cultural depictions of sex and sexuality, pointed out, penises are often endowed in art and myth with a sense of power; they act as symbols of potency, fertility, and strength. When they’re a bit ridiculous, they often still retain that sense of admirable force. “Even in the Greek world,” added Ormand, “there are times and situations when a large member might have positive connotations.”

No culture, the experts I’ve spoken to said, seems to have been as directly enamored with small penises as the Ancient Greeks. (Counterexamples in Eastern, African, and Indigenous art that feature highly stylized or exaggerated visible genitalia can be found in works like Japanese Shunga prints, Kongo fertility statues, and Peruvian Moche pots, respectively.) Romans and other Western cultures just ran with Greek sculptural tropes, or downplayed dicks in tandem with Christian conservatism. The Romans, ardent followers of the Greeks in many ways, laughed at Priapus and chiseled little chubbies onto their statues in one breath, but in another exalted enormous erections as signs of manliness. David M. Friedman, in his cultural history of the penis A Mind of Its Own, noted that Roman generals at times promoted soldiers based on the size of their genitals. In private, some Romans apparently saw the sexual appeal of a prodigious penis: “There is some indication,” noted Ormand, “that there were male prostitutes in Rome who were prized for the size of their genitalia.”