What women in ancient times really thought about sex

A new book tells the story of the ancient world from the perspective of women. Author Daisy Dunn examines what they had to say about their own sexuality – and in doing so contradicts misogynistic male stereotypes.

According to Semonides of Amorgos, a male poet active in Greece in the 7th century BCE, there are ten main types of women. There are women who are like pigs because they prefer eating to grooming; women who resemble foxes because they are particularly attentive; donkey women who are sexually promiscuous; dog women who are characterized by their disobedience. There are stormy sea women, greedy earth women, thieving weasel women, lazy horse women, unattractive monkey women, and – the only good kind – industrious bee women.

Of all the women described in this list, which is steeped in the misogyny of the time, the so-called sexually promiscuous “donkey women” are perhaps the most mysterious.

Historical accounts from ancient times often reveal the secluded nature of women’s lives. In Greece, women were usually veiled in public, and in Rome they had “guardians” (usually their father or husband) who monitored their movements and handling of property. Was the concept of the lustful woman purely a male fantasy? Or were women in ancient times more interested in sex than is generally believed?

As I learned while researching my new book, The Missing Thread—the first history of the ancient world written by women—we have to look closely to find out what women really thought about sex.

The vast majority of surviving sources were written by men who tended to exaggerate women’s sexual habits in one direction or another. Some went so far as to emphasize a woman’s virtue that it seemed almost sacred and inhuman. Others deliberately portrayed women as sexually insatiable in order to blacken their character. If we were to take these descriptions at face value, we would conclude that the women of antiquity were all either chaste or sex-obsessed. Fortunately, it is possible to look into the hearts of some classical women, which offers a much deeper insight into female sexuality.

If we look to the same period as the poet quoted above, we come across Sappho, who wrote poetry on the Greek island of Lesbos in the 7th century BCE. While observing a woman speaking to a man, Sappho documented the intense physical sensations she experienced – pounding heart, slurred speech, fire in the veins, temporary blindness, ringing in the ears, cold sweat, trembling, pallor – all of which are familiar to anyone who has ever given in to lust. In another poem, Sappho described garlanding a woman with flowers and wistfully remembering how she would “satisfy her desire” on a soft bed. These are the confessions of a woman who understands the unbridledness of falling in love.

Sappho’s poems are so fragmentary today that it can be difficult to read them accurately, but scholars have discovered in one of the papyri a reference to “dildos,” which in Greek are called Subscribe to. These were used in Greece in fertility rituals and for pleasure and are depicted as such on numerous vase paintings. Later, phallic objects also had a talisman-like quality in Rome. It would have made no sense for women to shy away from symbols that were believed to bring good luck.

Ancient women flinched so little at the sight of erotic objects that some were even buried with them. In the period before Rome rose to prominence, the highly skilled Etruscans dominated mainland Italy and filled it with scenes of a romantic nature. Numerous works of art and funerary statues depict men and women lying together. An incense burner depicting men and women touching each other’s genitals was buried with an Etruscan woman in the 8th century BC.

One only has to visit an ancient brothel such as those at Pompeii to see that sex was frequently displayed there. The walls of the gloomy, cell-like rooms where sex workers plied their trade are covered in graffiti, mostly written by male customers who liked to comment on the performances of the named women.

Historical accounts and speeches are full of descriptions of the hardships endured by these workers. Against Neaera, an indictment by the 4th century BC Athenian politician Apollodorus, provides a particularly chilling insight into the precariousness of these women’s lives. Only occasionally, however, do we hear of a woman who comes into contact with this world – and her words are surprising.

In the 3rd century BC, a poet named Nossis, who lived at the top of Italy, wrote highly of a work of art and the fact that it was financed by a sex worker. A magnificent statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of sex and love, according to Nossis, was erected in a temple with money collected by Polyarchis.

Polyarchis was not an anomaly. An earlier Hetaera (courtesan or high-status sex worker) named Doricha similarly used the money she had acquired to buy something for the public, in her case impressive spits for roasting oxen to be displayed at Delphi.

It wasn’t the sex that these women enjoyed, but the rare chance to be remembered after their death. The vast majority of women who knew them were destined to remain anonymous.

Male authors, despite any bias, can provide some of the most interesting insights into the subject of women and sex. In 411 BC, the comedian Aristophanes performed a play called Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens organize a sex strike to persuade their men to accept peace terms during the Peloponnesian War, a real-life conflict that lasted for three decades between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies.

Many of the women in the play are not happy about having to give up their pleasures. They are drawn into the donkey woman stereotype for comic purposes. However, there is a moment when the play takes a serious turn and Aristophanes offers a more compelling female perspective.

The title character Lysistrata, who organizes the strike, describes what women really feel like in wartime. Not only are they excluded from the assembly where the war is being discussed, but they are also repeatedly victims of grief. And while such a protracted conflict is hell for married women, it is even worse for unmarried women, who are denied the chance to marry.

While, as Lysistrata points out, men can return from war with grey hair and still marry, the same cannot be said for virgins, many of whom are deemed too old to marry and have children. These lines convey the difference between the male and female experience of war so accurately that one is tempted to believe they reflect what women of the time were actually saying.

Real fears of sex among women can also be found in Greek tragedy. Sophocles, the most famous playwright for King Oedipus, had a female character in his lost play Tereus describe what it is like to go from being a virgin to a wife. “And this, when a night has yoked us together,” says Procne, a mythical queen, “we must praise and think quite lovely.”

Among the upper classes, it was quite common for marriages to be arranged. A woman’s first sexual experiences could be as disorienting as Procne described them.

Women sometimes wrote such thoughts on papyrus. Theano, a Greek philosopher from the circle of Pythagoras (some say she was his wife), gives her friend Eurydice a timeless piece of advice in a letter attributed to her. A woman, she writes, should take off her modesty along with her clothes when she enters her husband’s bed. She can put them both back on again as soon as she gets up.

Theano’s letter has been the subject of extensive scrutiny and may not be authentic. Nevertheless, it accurately reflects what many women have said to each other in modern times, and his advice seems to have been followed by women in ancient times as well.

A certain Greek poetess named Elephantis was supposedly so keen on giving women sex advice that she wrote her own short books on the subject. Unfortunately, her work is no longer on display today, but is mentioned by both the Roman poet Martial and the Roman biographer and archivist Suetonius, who claimed that the Emperor Tiberius (notorious for his sexual appetite) owned copies of it.

Where other women are quoted in the writings of other men, they tend to express themselves explicitly in terms of love rather than sex, which distinguishes them from some of their male contemporaries, including Martial and Catullus.

Lesbia, Catullus’s pseudonymous lover, tells him: “What a lady says to her lover at the moment should be written in the wind and the running water.” The expression “pillow talk” springs to mind.

Sulpicia, one of the few Roman poets whose verses have survived, describes her misery at being in the countryside on her birthday, far from her lover Cerinthus – and then her relief at being able to be in Rome after all.

These women did not need to describe sex with their lover in great detail to reveal what they really thought about it. Men may dominate the sources, but women, Aphrodite knew full well, could be just as passionate when the curtain was closed.

The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World through the Women Who Shaped It by Daisy Dunn has just been published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK and will be published by Viking in the US on July 30.