Roberto Calasso - The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

For the Greeks, the unnameable aspect of eros was passivity during coitus. If the male beloved ( erómenos ) has to be so careful and to observe so many rules in order to distinguish his behavior beyond any shadow of a doubt from that of the male prostitute, who, “despite having a man’s body, sins a woman’s sins,” it is not simply because of the indignity attached to whoever accepts the woman’s part, thus debasing his own sexual status. Rather, it is the very pleasure of the woman, the pleasure of passivity, that is suspect and perhaps conceals a profound malignancy. This treacherous pleasure incites the Greek man to rage against the grossness inherent in the physiology and anatomy of these aesthetically inferior beings, obliged to parade “prominent, shapeless breasts, which they keep bound up like prisoners.” But he rages precisely because he senses that this grossness might conceal a mocking power that eludes male control. The Athenians were extremely evasive on this question, although they never tired of mentioning cases of male love for boys.

As for what women might get up to when alone and unobserved by masculine eyes, a reverent and ominous silence appears to reign. And when it comes to love between women, the writers sometimes daren’t even use the word. In fact it is pathetic to see how in certain passages on the subject, modern translators will translate that forbidden word as lesbianism , without even sensing any incongruousness. The word lesbianism meant nothing to the Greeks, whereas the verb lesbiázein meant “licking the sexual organs,” and the word tribádes , “the rubbers,” referred to women who had sex with other women, as though in the fury of their embrace they wanted to consume each other’s vulvas.

But it wasn’t so much love between women that scandalized the Greeks — to their credit they were not easily scandalized — as the suspicion, which had taken root in their minds, that women might have their own indecipherable erotic self-sufficiency, and that those rites and mysteries they celebrated, and in which they refused to let men participate, might be the proof of this. And, behind it all, their most serious suspicion had to do with pleasure in coitus. Only Tiresias had been able to glimpse the truth, and that was precisely why he was blinded.

One day Zeus and Hera were quarreling. They called Tiresias and asked him which of the two, man or woman, got the most pleasure from sex. Tiresias answered that if the pleasure were divided into ten parts, the woman enjoyed nine and the man only one. On hearing this, Hera got mad and blinded Tiresias. But why did Hera get mad? Couldn’t she glory in her own superiority, something that set her above even Zeus? No, because here Tiresias was trespassing on a secret, one of those secrets sages are called upon to safeguard rather than reveal. This sexual tittle-tattle continued to make the rounds, however. Centuries later it was still being bandied about, though, as always, with distortions: now they were saying that a woman’s pleasure was only twice that of the man. But it was enough: it confirmed an antique doubt, a fear at least as old as the ruttish daughters of the sun. Perhaps woman, that creature shut away in the gynaeceum, where “not a single particle of true eros penetrates,” knew a great deal more than her master, who was always cruising about gymnasiums and porticoes.

“Make up your minds who you think are better, those who love boys, or those who like women. I, in fact, who have enjoyed both kinds of passion, am like balanced scales with the two plates either side at exactly the same height.” So says Theomnestus. Since time immemorial the question as to which took the erotic prize, love with boys or with women, had been a real thorn in the flesh for the Greeks. Some even maintained that Orpheus was torn apart by women because he had been the first to declare the superiority of love with boys. Later on, even though the debate had been settled before it started in favor of the boys, the rule was that one wasn’t to say so too openly. Finally, in the late and loquacious years of the Pseudo-Lucian, we hear a cackle of voices — spiteful or mellifluous, uncertain or arrogant — still debating the issue. Licinus answers Theomnestus’s question in the best way possible: with a story. One day, walking beneath the porticoes of Rhodes, he met two old acquaintances: Caricles, a young man from Corinth, and the impetuous Callicratides, an Athenian. Caricles was wearing, as always, a little makeup. He thought it made him more attractive to women. And there was never any shortage of those around him. His house was full of dancers and singers. The only voices heard there were women’s voices, except, that is, for one old cook, past it now, and a few very young slave boys. Quite the opposite of Callicratides’ house. Callicratides did the rounds of the gymnasiums and surrounded himself exclusively with attractive and as yet hairless boys. When the first suspicion of a beard began to scratch their skin, he would move them on to administrative work and bring in others. The three friends decided to spend a few lazy days together taking turns discussing that old chestnut: who takes the erotic palm, boys or women?

For Callicratides, women were “an abyss,” like the great ravines in the rocks around Athens where criminals were thrown. Caricles, however, couldn’t respond to boys at all and thought incessantly about women. Having taken a boat to Cnidos, the three friends were eager to see the famous Aphrodite by Praxiteles. Even before they went into Aphrodite’s temple, they could feel a light breeze blowing from it. It was the aura. The courtyard of the sanctuary wasn’t paved with the usual austere slabs of gray stone but was full of plants and fruit trees. In the garden all around them they saw myrtles with their berries and other shrubs associated with the goddess. Plants typical of Dionysus were also in abundance, since “Aphrodite is even more delightful when she is with Dionysus, and their gifts are sweeter if mixed together.” Finally the three friends went into the temple. In the center they saw the Parian marble of Praxiteles’ Aphrodite, naked, a faint lift to the corners of her lips, a faint hint of arrogance. Caricles immediately began to rave over the stunning frontal view. One could suffer anything for a woman like that, and so saying he stretched up to kiss her. Callicratides watched in silence. There was a door behind the statue, and the three friends asked one of the temple guardians if she had the keys to it. It was then that Callicratides was stunned by the beauty of Aphrodite’s buttocks. He yelled his admiration, and Caricles’ eyes were wet with tears.

Then the three fell silent as they continued to contemplate that marble body. Behind a thigh they noticed a mark, like a stain on a tunic. Licinus assumed it was a defect in the marble and remarked on this as yet another reason for admiring Praxiteles: how clever of him to hide this blemish in one of the least visible parts of the statue. But the guardian who had opened the door and was standing beside the visitors told them that the real story behind the stain was rather different.

She explained that a young man from a prominent family had once been in the habit of visiting the temple and had fallen in love with the goddess. He would spend whole days parading his devotion. He got up at dawn to go to the sanctuary and went home only reluctantly after sundown. Standing before the statue, he would whisper on and on in some secret lover’s conversation, breaking off every now and then to consult the oracle by tossing a few Libyan gazelle bones. He was waiting anxiously for Aphrodite’s throw to come up. That was when every face of the bones bore a different number. One evening, when the guardians came to close the temple, the young man hid behind the door where the three visitors were now standing and spent “an unspeakable night” with the statue. The fruits of his lovemaking had stained the statue. That mark on the white marble demonstrated the indignity the image of the goddess had suffered. The young man was never seen again. Rumor had it that he drowned himself in the sea. When the guardian had finished, Caricles immediately exclaimed: “So, men love women even when they are made out of stone. Just imagine if she had been alive …” But Callicratides smiled and said that actually the story supported his side of the argument. For despite being alone a whole night with the statue, and completely free to do whatever he wanted, the young man had embraced the marble as if it were a boy and hadn’t wanted to take the woman from the front. The two antagonists began arguing again, and Licinus was hard put to persuade them to leave the temple and continue elsewhere. In the meantime the worshipers were beginning to arrive.