Open minded or twisted sexual behaviour ?

What comes to your mind when you close your eyes and try to render the ample concept of SEX in classical times? What characters and settings do appear in that first shower of images? Let me make the opening guess ... drunken warriors raising their filled cups and joyfully partying together? Or maybe the so called "lovers of wisdom" (philosophers) walking bare-footed and pairing with young mates? What about body-oiled athletes competing at open-aired facilities carefully glancing at each other?

It is highly probable that these three situations appear somewhere in your mental silhouettes. There's a universal belief that Greeks and Romans of ancient times had promiscuous and homosexual tendencies, and in fact there's no credulity in this assumption. Classical society praised each and every kind of homosexuality, covering them under manly and picturesque explanations, such as the one Plato gives us in his "Symposium":

"(..) All who are a section halved from the men pursue males; and all the while they are young (...) they love men and take delight in lying by their side and embracing them; these are the best of boys and youths because they are the most manly in nature. (...) Only men of this sort proceed to politics when they grow up. Once they love men they love boys and do not turn their thoughts to marriage and procreation naturally.(...) a man like this is a lover of men as a boy and a lover of boys as a man (...)".

Transposed to present times, we can argument that classical society was sexually "open minded". But if we keep on investigating and happen to come across certain ancient myths, we can infer that more than permissible to non-orthodox ways of sex, Greek and Roman societies were a little more twisted.

As we mentioned in the posting entitled "The Power of Allegories", myths tend to be actual mirrors of real events which happened in past times, only with a touch of hyperbolic and embellished fantasy. Classical mythology is filled of histories which involve different kinds of sex relations; sex could take an enormous variety of forms such as lesbianism, orgies, incests, rapes ... and even bestiality (sex between a man and an animal). Let me retell some of the most famous myths that come to my mind and let you draw your own conclusions about the absolute zoo behaviour of classical society on sex matters:

Patroculs and Achilles: men homosexuality

Behind Homer's Iliad, a story of romantic and sexual relationship between these 2 heroes become evident. Achilles is arrogant and cutting towards every living soul but to his Myrmidon mate, who he jealously defends. Homer tells us that Peleus' son dreams of being left alone with Patroclus to share victory, and that he laments his death in a tender ceremony, a decease that becomes the prime motivation of his return to battle, and the subsequent quest for revenge against Hector, Patroclus' life-taker.

Hyacinth, Zephyrus and Apollo: men homosexuality

Hyacinth was a young and beautiful Spartan prince courted by Apollo and Zephyrus, gods of the hunt and of the West Wind respectively. According to a myth, the two immortals competed for the boy's love, who finally chose Apollo as his mate, driving Zephyrus madly jealous. Once, Apollo was training with the assistance of Hyacinth the athlete contest known as "throwing the discus": the god threw the plate far away and the youngster would go running after it in order to get it back to the hands of his beloved. In one of this attempts, when the discus was airborne, Zephyrus order his winds to blow in a new and violent direction, causing the plate-shaped structure to change direction and hit exactly at Hyacinth's forehead. He immediately died.

The Amazons: lesbianism

Known to be descended from Ares, god of war, the Amazons developed a savage society were men were excluded. Haters of the male gender, they sought for them in order to kill their sons and raise their daughters as Amazons. With no men on sight, and a death-sentence to the one that related with any of them, imagine how they managed to fulfil their sexual instinct and desire.

Artemis and the Nymphs: lesbianism

Artemis, goddess of the hunt and chastity, was always surrounded by 60 beautiful nymphs, daughters of Oceanus and devoting followers of her. In myths where these female characters pop up, they always appear in the woods, bathing together totally naked, playing with water and touching each other with joyful and virginal softness. In this pure and celibate atmosphere, they are too close mates where everything seems to get confused.

Actaeon and Artemis: chastity

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Actaeon is a skilled deer-hunter which happens to lose his path in the woods and unwantingly appears in front of Artemis' beautiful naked body. Now he had to pay for having seen the goddess of sexual-purity uncovered. Artemis wrath turns him into a deer, who soon becomes torn apart by his personal hounds.

Aphrodite: polygamy and infidelity

Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, is also the queen of uncontrolled sexual desire. With the help of his son Cupid, she inflicts blind desire among men and woman, root cause of the polygamous behaviour in every society. Every male and female, except for the 2 goddesses of chastity (Artemis and Athena), are puppets of her disposals: you can't escape infidelity.

Jocasta and Oedipus: incest

In Oedipus King, one of  Euripides' most famous tragedies, Oedipus mistakenly kills his father and marries his own mother. After laying in bed, mother and son give birth to four children. Oedipus had formerly run from Corinth to escape his faith, but instead, he was unwillingly following his doomed path.

Pygmalion: inanimated fixation

Another tale in Ovid's Metamorphoses tells us of a sculptor called "Pygmalion" who fell in love with a woman-figured statue of ivory, the outcome of his own artistic hands.

Next come fragments of passages extracted of their strange relationship: "(...) It looked like a real maiden (...) flames of passion burst inside him (...) He kissed her and sexually touched her (...) feeling her parts and breasts with his hands (...) waiting for responses that never came. (...) He placed her on his bed (...)"

Apollo and Daphne: rape and stalking

As a consequence to a minor quarrel between Apollo and Cupid, in which the first laughed at Aphrodite's son for the funny quiver and arrows he carried, the winged god created the biggest of love rejections known to the day: Apollo was struck with the arrow of love-attraction, while Daphne respectively received the arrow of love-repulsion. The story goes on with endless attempts coming from Apollo in order to gain the love of the sea nymph, while the only thing she had in her mind was running away from her stalker. As days, weeks and months went on, the love endeavor turned into rape tryouts. Daphne could no longer stand this obsessive and cruel infatuation, so she asked her father, the river god, for help. Suddenly her lower limbs started to turn into roots, her arms into branches and her body into a trunk: she was becoming a laurel tree. Once the morph was finished, Apollo carefully unplanted the wood-plant and took it to his house. Now he could please his desire whenever he wanted.

Uranus´ genitals

According to the myth of creation found in Hesiod's "Theogony" Aphrodite, queen of love and sexual desire, was born from the genitals of Uranus, father of the mighty Titans.

Keep on reading "The beginning of all times" for a complete description of this tale.

The minotaur and Pasiphae: brutality

As a punish to his husband Minos (king of Crete), Poseidon caused Pasiphae to fall madly in love with a bull. With unbearable desire in her veins, the queen asked Daedalus, the famous architect and inventor, to make a wooden cow where she could fit inside. Pasipahe climbed into the inert cow and approached the bull, with whom she had sex. The offspring of their coupling was a monster half-man and half-bull called "the Minotaur", which only fed on human flesh.

Now what do you think about sex in classical times: shall we call it "open-minded" or twisted ?