Philaenis of Samos [a] was supposedly the author of a famous ancient sex manual. According to a surviving fragment of a treatise which claims to have been written by her, she was from Samos, and her father was called Ocymenes. However, many modern scholars consider "Philaenis" a fictional character whose persona may have been adopted by a variety of erotic writers. Two satirical Greek epigrams from the Palatine Anthology by the poets Aeschrion of Samos and Dioscorides purport to defend Philaenis's reputation by insisting that she did not write the treatise attributed to her. Aeschrion instead insists that the treatise was written by the Athenian sophist Polycrates. The reputed writings of Philaenis were well known throughout classical antiquity and scholars believe that they may have influenced Ovid's Ars Amatoria .
In later times, Philaenis was remembered for her reputation of licentiousness. A fictional character named Philaenis appears in the Epigrams of the Roman poet Martial as a masculine woman known for having sex with women. The Christian writers Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Clement of Alexandria deplore the writings attributed to Philaenis as depraved and immoral. The fourth-century AD Pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Erōtes references Philaenis using a strap-on dildo to have sex with women. It was through these later allusions that Philaenis was best known for most of modernity and she is referenced in works by the English authors Thomas Heywood and John Donne, who both characterized her as a sexual deviant. In 1972, three brief fragments of a treatise claiming to have been written by Philaenis were published, which had been previously discovered at Oxyrhynchus as part of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
Philaenis is the most frequently named of the ancient women who had an erotic treatise attributed to them and she is mentioned in a dozen ancient sources. [1] [2] According to one of the surviving fragments of the treatise from Oxyrhynchus, the work was written by "Philaenis the Samian, daughter of Ocymenes" [7] – though Athenaeus calls her "Leucadian". [8] Her mother's name is sometimes given as Gyllina. [4] Modern scholars generally believe that Philaenis is a fictional character who was used as a persona, possibly by several different erotic writers. [4] [9]
It is commonly assumed among modern scholars that the Philaenis persona was one of a courtesan. [10] [3] [4] According to Ian Michael Plant, the name Philaenis – a diminutive of "philaina", the feminine form of the Greek word "philos", meaning "love" [11] – seems to have been commonly used by prostitutes in ancient Greece. [4] Her association with Samos is also appropriate for a prostitute; [4] in antiquity, the island was famous for its expensive hetairai. [4] [6] D. W. Thomson Vessey states that Philaenis is a fictional character representing a "prototypical harlot". [12] Sandra Boehringer vehemently rejects the view of Philaenis as a courtesan, insisting that there is no evidence to support the argument that the name Philaenis was any kind of "courtesan's name" [9] or that anyone ever thought of Philaenis as a courtesan in antiquity, instead arguing that the ancients merely regarded her as sexually debauched. [9]
Two poems in the Palatine Anthology – one by Aeschrion of Samos, the other by the third-century BC poet Dioscorides – purport to deny that Philaenis wrote the work attributed to her. [4] [13] Aeschrion sets the epigram on Philaenis's tomb by the sea, but does not specify where the tomb is located. [14] In the epigram, Philaenis herself is portrayed as directly addressing a μάταιος ναύτης ("aimless sailor"), but the addressee is not explicitly identified as a ξένος ("foreigner"). [14] Sailors in antiquity were notorious for their bawdiness and womanizing, so Aeschrion may have intended for the addressee of the epigram to be an ironic one. [14] Aeschrion portrays Philaenis as vehemently insisting that she never wrote the book attributed to her. [13] Instead, she attributes the work to a man named Polycrates, [10] [15] [13] who is most likely the Athenian sophist by that name, though this is not certain. [16]
Dioscorides's poem likewise vehemently denies that Philaenis really wrote the treatise attributed to her, [5] but, unlike Aeschrion's, it does not attempt to suggest another individual as the author. [5] According to D. W. Thomson Vessey, it is possible that Dioscorides may have intended this defense as a tacit endorsement of Aeschrion's attribution of the treatise to Polycrates. [5] Also unlike Aeschrion, Dioscorides explicitly identifies Philaenis as a Samian. [5] Neither epigram attempts to dispute the existence of the treatise in question. [5] Tsantsanolou agrees with Aeschrion's attribution of the work to Polycrates, arguing that it is consistent with what is known of his style. [17] Boehringer argues that both Aeschrion and Dioscorides's epigrams are satirical and, far from defending Philaenis, they actually propagate her negative reputation, [9] noting that, while nothing is known about Aeschrion, over forty epigrams by Dioscorides have survived, many of which are overtly satirical. [9] She sees the construction of the epigrams, in which Philaenis is portrayed as describing at length what she supposedly is not rather than what she "really" is, as indicative of the poems' ironic intents. [9]
Fragments of a work claiming to have been written by Philaenis were discovered at Oxyrhynchus and published in 1972 as P. Oxy. 2891. Although the book was formerly believed to have been a monograph on sexual positions, [18] the discovered fragments suggest that the scope of the work was much broader; [18] according to Edgar Lobel, it appears to have been rather "a systematic exposition of ars amatoria". [18] The work does not seem to have been intended as a serious instruction manual, [4] but rather as a parody of the genre. [4]
The work is written in straightforward, everyday language [19] [4] and makes no attempt at literary artifice. [19] It is divided into well-organized sections, [19] each of which deals with a particular topic. [19] Though Philaenis, purportedly the author of the work, was from Samos, the surviving portion of the work contains very few Ionic forms. [8] [4] This may be a result of the fact that, by the fourth century, when the work was probably written, Koine was starting to become the prevalent dialect in formerly Ionic-speaking areas of Greece. [8] Alternatively, since "Philaenis" is likely to be a pseudonym for the true author, it is more probable that only a few Ionic forms were needed in order to lend superficial verisimilitude to the work. [17]
Three fragments of the manual from Oxyrhynchus attributed to Philaenis have survived. [3] [4] All of them are exceedingly brief [3] [20] and the handwriting on them is barely legible in some places; [20] in the second of the three fragments, only five letters can be securely identified. [21] The fragments come from the very beginning of a scroll of papyrus, which was divided into two parallel columns. [3] The first column begins with a preamble describing Philaenis's work: [3]
Philaenis the Samian, daughter of Ocymenes, composed this book for those who wish to live their life with knowledge gained scientifically, not unprofessionally. She toiled... [22]
The second and third fragments come from the beginning of the second column on the scroll: [3]
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.
On Kissing: ... [22]
Boehringer states that the discovery of these fragments only prove that a genre of sexual writings existed in antiquity [9] and emphasizes that this treatise does not prove that Philaenis herself was a real person or that there was ever an "original" sex manual written by her. [9]
The structure of the treatise attributed to Philaenis resembles that of the later poetic Ars Amatoria by the Roman poet Ovid [19] and it is generally thought that Ovid probably drew on it for inspiration. [23] To the ancient Romans, Philaenis and her writings symbolized the perceived profligacy of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. [24] Philaenis is mentioned in the Priapeia , a collection of Latin poems originally associated with cultic statues of the god Priapus and later collected during the first century AD. [9] In one of these poems, narrated in the first-person by Priapus himself, the god lists his misfortunates: [9]
There comes in addition to these things the sign of shamelessness, this obelisque erected by my lecherous limb. Right up to it, the puella – I almost said her name – is accustomed to come with the one who shags her (cum suo fututore), and, if she has not completed all the positions described by Philaenis (tot figuris, quas Philaenis enarrat), she leaves, still itching for it (pruriosa). [9]
According to Boehringer, this poem indicates that girls, or puellae in Latin, may have read some kind of writings or discourses attributed to Philaenis. [9] This passage also associates Philaenis with both knowledge of sex and sexual excessiveness. [9]
The Roman epigrammatist Martial, who wrote in the late first century AD, uses a fictional character named Philaenis in his satires, [15] [26] [25] who may have been partially based on the persona of Philaenis of Samos. [15] Martial's Philaenis is portrayed as figure of his own time, not as a person from the distant past. [26] She is described a stereotypical tribade, who sodomizes boys, has sex with women, engages in cunnilingus, and lifts weights. [15] [26] In epigram 7.67.1, Martial introduces Philaenis, declaring: [25] [27]
Martial's original Latin | English translation by Harriette Andreadis |
Pudicat pueros tribas Philaenis | That tribade Philaenis sodomizes boys, |
Epigram 7.70 mocks Philaenis for her inappropriate virility, protesting: [25] [27]
Martial's original Latin | English translation by Harriette Andreadis |
Ipsarum tribadum tribas, Philaeni, | You, Philaenis, tribade to tribades, |
Martial ironically describes Philaenis refusing to perform fellatio because it was "unmanly", but yet engaging in cunnilingus, an activity which Martial deems so utterly feminine that only the most demented person would consider it manly. [27] Martial emphasizes Philaenis's Greek character by peppering his epigrams against her with Greek phrases and loanwords, such as harpasto ("handball"), haphe ("yellow sand"), halteras ("jumping weights"), palaestra ("wrestling ring"), and colyphia ("meat dishes"). [28] His descriptions of Philaenis and other masculine women bear close similarities to the descriptions found in the writings of the poet Seneca the Younger, who lived about a generation before Martial, [26] and indicate that Martial was probably drawing inspiration either from Seneca himself or from the same tradition from which Seneca also drew his inspiration. [26]
In late antiquity, Philaenis became the object of scorn and disapproval from Christian Church Fathers. [9] In the second century AD, the Christian apologist Justin Martyr references the writings of Philaenis as works that provide people with shameful education. [9] The theologian Tatian mentions the works of Philaenis and Elephantis as examples of horrible creations. [9] Clement of Alexandria deplores those who display paintings inspired by the works of Philaenis as though they were portrayals of the Labors of Heracles. [9] [29] According to Vessey, Clement's equation of Philaenis's sex positions with the Labors of Heracles implies that he believed only a gymnast with "Herculean powers" could actually have sex in the positions described by her. [29]
The fourth-century AD Pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Erōtes cites Philaenis as an example of "tribadic licentiousness" [15] [29] and claims that she used a strap-on dildo for the sake of "androgynous loves". [15] [29] A scholium on the passage remarks that Philocrates, an Athenian comic playwright, had described Philaenis as a hetairistria and a tribas ("tribade"). [15] [29] This is the only known reference to a comic playwright by this name. [29]
Philaenis was vaguely remembered during the early modern period for her reputation as a wanton woman. [30] In his Gynaikeion, or Nine Books of Various History Concerning Women (1624), the English author Thomas Heywood describes Philaenis as a "strumpet of Leucadia" [25] and credits her with having invented kataklysis (douching). [25] Heywood omits reference to the lewd sexual activities Philaenis was accused of having performed because the Gynaikeion was written for a female audience and he believed such obscenities were inappropriate for women to read about. [30] Instead, he refers the reader to the writings of the Italian scholar Gyraldus for further information, knowing that few of his female readers would attempt to seek it out. [25] Gyraldus, in turn, refers the reader to Martial, whose writings were only available in Latin and, since Latin was normally only taught to men, that meant that only men would be able to read them. [30] John Donne's erotic epistle "Sapho to Philaenis" is written as a love letter, [31] in which the Lesbian lyric poet Sappho anachronistically professes her love to Philaenis, [31] spurning the affections of her male lover Phaon. [31]
Sappho was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the Ode to Aphrodite is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams formerly attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style.
Ibycus was an Ancient Greek lyric poet, a citizen of Rhegium in Magna Graecia, probably active at Samos during the reign of the tyrant Polycrates and numbered by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. He was mainly remembered in antiquity for pederastic verses, but he also composed lyrical narratives on mythological themes in the manner of Stesichorus. His work survives today only as quotations by ancient scholars or recorded on fragments of papyrus recovered from archaeological sites in Egypt, yet his extant verses include what are considered some of the finest examples of Greek poetry.
Polycrates, son of Aeaces, was the tyrant of Samos from the 540s BC to 522 BC. He had a reputation as both a fierce warrior and an enlightened tyrant.
Theano was a 6th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher. She has been called the wife or student of Pythagoras, although others see her as the wife of Brontinus. Her place of birth and the identity of her father is uncertain as well. Many Pythagorean writings were attributed to her in antiquity, including some letters and a few fragments from philosophical treatises, although these are all regarded as spurious by modern scholars.
Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and erotic poems. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of Nine Lyric Poets. Anacreon wrote all of his poetry in the ancient Ionic dialect. Like all early lyric poetry, it was composed to be sung or recited to the accompaniment of music, usually the lyre. Anacreon's poetry touched on universal themes of love, infatuation, disappointment, revelry, parties, festivals, and the observations of everyday people and life.
Praxilla, was a Greek lyric poet of the 5th century BC from Sicyon on the Gulf of Corinth. Five quotations attributed to Praxilla and three paraphrases from her poems survive. The surviving fragments attributed to her come from both religious choral lyric and drinking songs (skolia); the three paraphrases are all versions of myths. Various social contexts have been suggested for Praxilla based on this range of surviving works. These include that Praxilla was a hetaira (courtesan), or that she was a professional musician. Alternatively, the apparent implausibility of a respectable Greek woman writing drinking songs has been explained by suggesting that her poetry was in fact composed by two different authors, or that the drinking songs derive from a non-elite literary tradition rather than being authored by a single writer.
Archestratus was an ancient Greek poet of Gela or Syracuse, Magna Graecia, in Sicily, who wrote some time in the mid 4th century BCE, and was known as "the Daedalus of tasty dishes". His humorous didactic poem Hedypatheia, written in hexameters but known only from quotations, advises a gastronomic reader on where to find the best food in the Mediterranean world. The writer, who was styled in antiquity the Hesiod or Theognis of gluttons, parodies the pithy style of older gnomic poets; most of his attention is given to fish, although some fragments refer to appetizers, and there was also a section on wine. His poem had a certain notoriety among readers in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE: it was referred to by the comic poet Antiphanes, by Lynceus of Samos and by the philosophers Aristotle, Chrysippus and Clearchus of Soli. In nearly every case these references are disparaging, implying that Archestratus's poem—like the sex manual by Philaenis—was likely to corrupt its readers. This attitude is exemplified in the Deipnosophistae with citations of Chrysippus:
This utterly admirable Chrysippus, in On Goodness and Pleasure book V, talks of: Books like Philaenis's, and the Gastronomy of Archestratus, and stimulants to love and sexual intercourse, and then again slave girls practised in such movements and postures and specialising in the subject; and further on he says: studying all this and getting the books about it by Philaenis and Archestratus and the other writers of such stuff; and in book VII he says: one is therefore not to study Philaenis, or the Gastronomy of Archestratus, with the expectation of improving one's life! Clearly, in quoting this Archestratus so often, you people have filled our banquet with indecency. Is there anything calculated to corrupt that this fine poet has failed to say?
Erinna was an ancient Greek poet. She is best known for her long poem The Distaff, a 300-line hexameter lament for her childhood friend Baucis, who had died shortly after her marriage. A large fragment of this poem was discovered in 1928 at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Along with The Distaff, three epigrams ascribed to Erinna are known, preserved in the Greek Anthology. Biographical details about Erinna's life are uncertain. She is generally thought to have lived in the first half of the fourth century BC, though some ancient traditions have her as a contemporary of Sappho; Telos is generally considered to be her most likely birthplace, but Tenos, Teos, Rhodes, and Lesbos are all also mentioned by ancient sources as her home.
The Molossus, also known as the Molossian hound and Epirus mastiff, is an extinct dog breed from Ancient Greece.
Sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome are indicated by art, literature, and inscriptions, and to a lesser extent by archaeological remains such as erotic artifacts and architecture. It has sometimes been assumed that "unlimited sexual license" was characteristic of ancient Rome, but sexuality was not excluded as a concern of the mos maiorum, the traditional social norms that affected public, private, and military life. Pudor, "shame, modesty", was a regulating factor in behavior, as were legal strictures on certain sexual transgressions in both the Republican and Imperial periods. The censors—public officials who determined the social rank of individuals—had the power to remove citizens from the senatorial or equestrian order for sexual misconduct, and on occasion did so. The mid-20th-century sexuality theorist Michel Foucault regarded sex throughout the Greco-Roman world as governed by restraint and the art of managing sexual pleasure.
The Erōtes, also known as the Amores or Affairs of the Heart, is a dialogue written in the Roman Empire in Ancient Greek. It is an example of contest literature, comparing the love of women and the love of boys, and concluding that the latter is preferable over the former. The dialogue is traditionally attributed to the satirist Lucian and was transmitted as part of the corpus of his writings. Beginning in the early 20th century, some modern scholars have stated that the dialogue was probably not written by Lucian on account of its style, but others—including among those who do not vouch for its authenticity—have posited that the style resembles that of Lucian. As such, the work is normally cited under the name of Pseudo-Lucian, but acceptance of its authenticity has increased in the 2010s. The Erōtes is also famous for its vivid description of the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles.
Nossis was a Hellenistic poet from Epizephyrian Locris in Magna Graecia. Probably well-educated and from a noble family, Nossis was influenced by and claimed to rival Sappho. Eleven or twelve of her epigrams, mostly religious dedications and epitaphs, survive in the Greek Anthology, making her one of the best-preserved ancient Greek women poets, though her work does not seem to have entered the Greek literary canon. In the twentieth century, the imagist poet H. D. was influenced by Nossis, as was Renée Vivien in her French translation of the ancient Greek women poets.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.
Aeschrion was an iambic poet, and a native of Samos. He is mentioned by Athenaeus, who has preserved some choliambic verses of his, in which he defends the Samian Philaenis, claiming that the popular sex manual attributed to her was really written by Polycrates, an Athenian rhetorician and sophist. Some of his verses are also quoted by Tzetzes.
Moero or Myro was a woman poet of the Hellenistic period from the city of Byzantium. She was the wife of Andromachus Philologus and the mother – the Suda says daughter, but this is less likely – of the tragedian Homerus of Byzantium. Moero was probably active during the late fourth and early third centuries BC.
Pamphile or Pamphila of Epidaurus was a historian of Egyptian descent who lived in Greece during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero and wrote in Greek. She was the first known female Greco-Roman historian and, along with Ban Zhao, one of the first known female historians. She is best known for her lost Historical Commentaries, a collection of miscellaneous historical anecdotes in thirty-three books, which is frequently cited by the Roman writer Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights and by the Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. She is also described in the tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda, and by the Byzantine writer Photios. According to the Suda, she wrote a large number of epitomes of the works of other historians as well as treatises on disputes and sex. She may be the author of the anonymous surviving Greek treatise Tractatus de mulieribus claris in bello, which gives brief biographical accounts of the lives of famous women.
Polycrates was a sophist from Athens, who later retired to the island of Cyprus.
Metiochus and Parthenope is an ancient Greek novel that, in a translation by the eleventh-century poet ‘Unṣurī, also became the Persian romance epic Vāmiq u ‘Adhrā, and the basis for a wide range of stories about the 'lover and the virgin' in medieval and modern Islamicate cultures.
Sulpicia was an ancient Roman poet who was active during the reign of the emperor Domitian. She is mostly known through two poems of Martial; she is also mentioned by Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Fulgentius. A seventy-line hexameter poem and two lines of iambic trimeter attributed to her survive; the hexameters are now generally thought to have been a fourth- or fifth-century imitation of Sulpicia. Judging by the ancient references to her and the single surviving couplet of her poetry, Sulpicia wrote love poetry discussing her desire for her husband, and was known for her frank sexuality.
Ode to Polycrates is an ancient Greek poem written by Ibycus and dedicated to Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. It was composed some time in the middle of the 6th century BC and displays close similarities to the work of Stesichorus.