As children readily recognize, vaginas and penises have different surface forms. But when we become thoroughly educated adults, we set aside childish ways of understanding. Now we think with poetry and rhetorical sophistication. The superficial differences between penises and vaginas now support stark gender inequality in genital figures.
While the penis plays a vital role in bringing persons together in intimate, loving unity, the penis is commonly figured as a weapon. The penis-sword metaphor is “common to virtually all cultures.”[1] In ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire, weapons evoked not social concern for vastly gender-disproportionate violence against men, but the sense of men’s penises:
the frequency of ad hoc metaphors both in Greek and Latin shows that the sexual symbolism of weapons was instantly recognisable in ancient society. [2]
Weapons are the basis for the most common metaphors for the penis in Latin from before the fourth century GC. Culturally elaborating on the penis-weapon metaphor, ancient Greek and Latin literature celebrated Spartan mothers insisting that their sons either be victorious or die in battle. Ancient Roman culture associated manliness with men displaying war wounds on their chests. Is it any wonder that shrewd men preferred to be pigs?
Disparagement of men’s penises went beyond associating them with weapons. Greek poetry from about 2700 years ago figured men’s penises as sightless eels:
Many a sightless eel have you taken in.
{ πολλὰς δὲ τυφλὰς ἐγχέλυας ἐδέξω }[3]
Ancient Greek and Latin literature also figured the penis as a snake or a lizard.[4] In Roman culture, low-status figures with enormous, grotesque penises were prevalent. Sophisticated Latin poetry known as Priapea criticized the prevalent cultural disparagement of men’s penises. That criticism wasn’t sufficient to overcome the penal forces evident across millennia in the reception of Apuleius’s Metamorphoses.[5]
While penises have been predominately figured as weapons, vaginas are typically figured non-violently. In ancient Greek and Latin, metaphors for the vagina typically are soft, furry animals, fertile fields, protective caves, and useful household items such as containers and hearths. Vaginas are also commonly figured as avenues of commerce: doors, paths, and ports. Strangulation, suffocation, and live burial (vivisepulture) are violent acts well-recognized throughout human history. Engulfment in a violent storm is similarly a well-understood situation. None of these has been commonly associated with the vagina.[6]
While disparaging penises, ancient Greek and Latin literature lavishly admired and praised vaginas. Rufinus, writing perhaps in the fourth century GC, composed an epigram praising the vaginas of three women:
Rhodope, Melite, and Rhodoclea competed to see
which of the three had the best pussy,
and chose me as judge. Like the much-admired goddesses
they stood, naked, dripping with nectar.
The treasure between Rhodope’s thighs
gleamed like a rose bush cleft by a gentle zephyr;
Rhodoclea’s was shaved smooth like glass,
its wet surface like a temple statue newly carved.
But wisely, knowing the fate of Paris for his judgment,
quickly I awarded the crown to all three immortals.
{ Ἤρισαν ἀλλήλαις Ῥοδόπη Μελίτη Ῥοδόκλεια,
τῶν τρισσῶν τίς ἔχει κρείσσονα μηριόνην,
καί με κριτὴν εἵλοντο· καὶ ὡς θεαὶ αἱ περίβλεπτοι
ἔστησαν γυμναί, νέκταρι λειβόμεναι.
καὶ Ῥοδόπης μὲν ἔλαμπε μέσος μηρῶν πολύτιμος
οἷα ῥοδὼν πολιῷ σχιζόμενος ζεφύρῳ·
τῆς δὲ Ῥοδοκλείης ὑάλῳ ἴσος ὑγρομέτωπος
οἷα καὶ ἐν νηῷ πρωτογλυφὲς ξόανον.
ἀλλὰ σαφῶς ἃ πέπονθε Πάρις διὰ τὴν κρίσιν εἰδώς,
τὰς τρεῖς ἀθανάτας εὐθὺ συνεστεφάνουν. }[7]
Showing still-continuing repression of men’s appreciation of vaginas, the medieval compiler added the introductory description (lemma) “offensive and extremely vile {ἀναίσχυντον καὶ σαπρότατον}” to characterize this epigram.[8] The beauty of women’s vaginas, as men perceive that beauty, deserves to be taken more seriously.
A couplet describing Melite’s vagina undoubtedly existed in the original text. That couplet is missing from all surviving manuscript copies of Rufinus’s epigram. It was probably censored through the irrational social construction of offenses of misogyny under gyncentrism. Another of Rufinus’s epigrams indicates that he regarded Melite to be an extremely beautiful woman:
Where is Praxiteles now? Where are the hands of Polyclitus,
which endowed ancient works of art with life?
Who will mold Melite’s fragrant locks, or her fiery
eyes and the luster of her neck?
Where are the modelers, the carvers in stone? Such beauty,
like an image of the blessed gods, ought to have a temple.
{ Ποῦ νῦν Πραξιτέλης; ποῦ δ᾽ αἱ χέρες αἱ Πολυκλείτου
αἱ ταῖς πρόσθε τέχναις πνεῦμα χαριζόμεναι;
τίς πλοκάμους Μελίτης εὐώδεας ἢ πυρόεντα
ὄμματα καὶ δειρῆς φέγγος ἀποπλάσεται;
ποῦ πλάσται, ποῦ δ᾽ εἰσὶ λιθοξόοι; ἔπρεπε τοίῃ
μορφῇ νηὸν ἔχειν ὡς μακάρων ξοάνῳ. }[9]
Rufinus probably praised Melite’s vagina even more lavishly and more explicitly than he praised the vaginas of Rhodope and Rhodoclea. Because men’s judgments of beauty are relatively consistent, other men who managed to see Melite’s vagina probably would have praised it highly as well.
Despite continued suppression of men’s praise for women’s vaginas, additional examples of men praising the beauty of women’s vaginas have survived from ancient Greek literature. In another epigram, Rufinus praised an older woman. He admired her breasts, figured as perky apples, and her vagina, figured as a rose:
Time has not yet quenched your beauty, but many relics
of your prime survive; your charms have not aged,
nor has the beauty departed from your perky apples or rose.
Ah! how many men your once godlike beauty consumed in flame
{ Οὔπω σοι τὸ καλὸν χρόνος ἔσβεσεν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔτι πολλὰ
λείψανα τῆς προτέρης σῴζεται ἡλικίης,
καὶ χάριτες μίμνουσιν ἀγήραοι, οὐδὲ τὸ καλὸν
τῶν ἱλαρῶν μήλων ἢ ῥόδου ἐξέφυγεν.
ὢ πόσσους κατέφλεξε τὸ πρὶν θεοείκελον κάλλος }[10]
The final line of this epigram hasn’t survived. Perhaps in that line Rufinus described men dying to enter the woman’s bedewed, unfolding rose.
Attic comic poets, writing more than 2400 years ago, also praised women’s vaginas. Pherecrates, a comic poet who was a contemporary of Aristophanes in fifth-century BGC Athens, depicted a place of sensuous pleasure:
With shawls of finely-woven hair, girls, recently
grown into womanhood and with shaved roses,
were using funnels to fill cups of sweet-smelling
dark wine for anyone who wanted a drink.
{ κόραι δ᾿ ἐν ἀμπεχόναις τριχάπτοις, ἀρτίως
ἡβυλλιῶσαι καὶ τὰ ῥόδα κεκαρμέναι,
πλήρεις κύλικας οἴνου μέλανος ἀνθοσμίου
ἤντλουν διὰ χώνης τοῖσι βουλομένοις πιεῖν. }[11]
The phrases “shaved roses” refers to beautiful vaginas that have been depilated. Men also regarded as beautiful vaginas with hair. One of Aristophanes’s comedies displayed on stage a naked, young woman known for offering a sexually festive experience. One man said to another:
Just look at this cooker of hers!
— (response) My, she’s a fine thing!
{ τουτὶ δ᾿ ὁρᾶτε τοὐπτάνιον.
οἴμ᾿ ὡς καλόν. }[12]
The metaphor “cooker” refers to her vagina. The respondent noted that she had a “scorched” cooker. That figuratively indicates that she had black hair on her vagina.
Long ago, humane and understanding women didn’t condemn men for admiring women’s vaginas. Nossis, a Greek poet writing in the third century BGC, is one of the mostly highly regarded Greek epigrammists. She encouraged all to gaze upon beautiful women. She wrote:
Nothing is sweeter than love; all good things
come second, even honey I spat from my mouth.
Nossis says this, and whomever Cypris has not kissed
does not know what roses her flowers are.
{ Ἅδιον οὐδὲν ἔρωτος· ἃ δ᾽ ὄλβια, δεύτερα πάντα
ἐστίν· ἀπὸ στόματος δ᾽ ἔπτυσα καὶ τὸ μέλι.
τοῦτο λέγει Νοσσίς· τίνα δ᾽ ἁ Κύπρις οὐκ ἐφίλασεν,
οὐκ οἶδεν τήνας τἄνθεα, ποῖα ῥόδα. }[13]
Like other ancient poets, Nossis figured vaginas as delightful roses. That’s a beautiful figure.
Men surely have praised the beauty of women’s vaginas throughout history. Writing in Greek, the eminent third-century Christian theologian Hippolytus of Rome apparently described the vagina as “the delightful grove of greatly honored Aphrodite.” Writing in Latin, the great sixth-century African epigrammist Luxorius figured a woman’s vagina as a “pleasurable garden {hortus amoenus}” and associated it with roses:
A Venus made of shining-white marble
revealed the truth of herself through a breathless body.
She infused her own heat into the parts
and by the flowers on the statue she came alive.
The jest isn’t deceptive: “What blushes on the outside,
preserves the roses of the handmaiden’s vagina.”
{ Cypris candidulo reddita marmore
veram se exanimi corpore praebuit.
Infudit propriis membra caloribus,
per florem in statua viveret ut sua.
Nec mendax iocus est: “Quae violas foris,
servabit famulas inguinibus rosas.” }[14]
The thirteenth-century French Romance of the Rose figured at great length woman’s vagina as rose. Much medieval Latin literature described women’s beauty. Some even indicated the beauty between women’s legs.[15]
Appreciation and praise for the beauty of men’s genitals, like the beauty of men’s bodies generally, has been much less prevalent historically than that for women. This gender inequality is bound up with terrible penal oppression under structures of castration culture and gynocentrism. But the penis’s image problem is also personal for men. As a sensitive and expressive man explained:
If you are a male you would have at some time in your life been concerned about the size or appearance of your penis. The fear of being considered inadequate or different haunts most human beings but there is a particularly deep connection between men’s self-confidence and their genitals.
Men know this and so do women. Sadly, this knowledge has been used to humiliate, taunt, belittle, delegitimize and denigrate men since the time we first walked upright.
Women should step up and take responsibility for lavishly praising the beauty of the men with whom they seek to have or have had sexual relations. But is there any active role for men in addressing the social gender injustice of men’s disadvantaged genital image?
Study of great literature offers both women and men a vital, neglected imaginative resource for overcoming the penis’s image problem. The great medieval church official Poggio Bracciolini recorded a wife’s lament. Her husband had been absent for a long time as a result of the gender burden of work-related travel historically imposed disproportionately on men. This wife couldn’t summon the personal resources to write to her husband:
“In what way,” she said, “could I write, when my husband has taken away the pen, and left the inkwell empty?”
{ ‘Quomodo,’ inquit, ‘possum scribere, cum vir calamum detulerit secum, pugillare vacuum reliquerit?’ }[16]
The inkwell normally supplies ink for the pen. But as this medieval woman understood, lively conjugal relations depend on mutuality. Lacking stimulation from her loving husband, the wife’s inkwell dried up. Similarly, without a woman’s inkwell, a man’s pen cannot write with enduring significance. The inkwell and pen belong together. The inkwell is a figure for the vagina. The pen is a humane, non-violent, appreciative figure for the penis.
The pressing postmodern problem of figuring the penis non-violently and appreciatively can be solved. Like a luxurious, jeweled pen, but alive and more magnificent, the penis is.
* * * * *
Read more:
Notes:
[1] Shanzer (1983) p. 184.
[2] Adams (1982) p. 19. Weapon as a metaphor for penis is “the largest category of metaphors of our general type.” Id. That’s within Adams’s higher category of “sharp or pointed instruments.” With respect to that category, Adams states:
No objects are more readily likened to the penis than sharp instruments, and it is likely that metaphors from this semantic field abound in all languages.
Id. p. 14. Besides weapons, other items in this category are household objects (rake, poker); poles, stakes, rods, and similar objects; agricultural implements (plows); musical implements (picks); and nautical referents (ship prows, masts). Id. passim. Adams’s evidence, as well as my reading of Latin literature, indicates that weapons are overall the most prevalent basis of metaphors for the penis.
[3] Archilochus, fr. 189, Greek text from Gerber (1999) p. 204, trans. West (1993) p. 3.
[4] Adams (1982) p. 30. Disparaging his impotent penis, a man calls it “more sluggish than a snake {anguis lentior}.” Priapea 4 (83 Bücheler, from the Appendix Vergiliana, incipit “What is this strange occurrence {Quid hoc novi est}?”), v. 33, Latin text and English translation of Fairclough (1918) pp. 516-7. On the penis as lizard, Sistakou (2011) p. 199. Strato’s AP 12.207 describes Diocles’s penis as a lizard, but also states that Paris would have preferred it to the three beautiful, naked goddess competing in the Judgment of Paris. Sistakou follows Paton’s translation in interpreting Strato’s epigram to describe those goddess as “less fair” than Diocles’s penis. That’s reasonable, but not necessarily true. Sexual preferences, particularly preferences of sexual minorities, aren’t exclusively keyed to beauty.
[5] The most uplifting appreciation for a penis in ancient Greek and Latin literature is that of the sage and humane Greek girl in Maximianus, Elegies 5. She lamented a man’s impotent penis. Rufinus, in AP 5.47, delights in Thaleia’s sweet limbs, but he suffers impotence. While men are paid for sex relatively infrequently compared to women, men carry a burden of performance that can be crushing in failure. On sexual inequalities, see note [2] in my post about sexual lies.
[6] Adams (1982), Ch. 3, lists no weapon metaphor for the female genitalia. Neither does Henderson (1991) pp. 130-47 (surveying only Attic comedy). Henderson apparently carried out his study under the dominant gynocentric ideological belief that Athens was androcentric. Id. p. ix.
Surveying Latin literature from its beginnings to about the fourth century GC, Adams evaluated references to the mentula {penis} relative to the cunnus {vagina}:
The attitude to the cunnus was remarkably different. It posed no threat, and did not arouse the same indulgent admiration.
Adams (1982) p. 79. That evaluation is heavily weighted with gynocentric ideology. The cunnus threatens men through the power of its beauty to inspire men to attack violently other men. The phrase “indulgent admiration” evokes, with the term “indulgent,” men’s subordination to women under gynocentrism. But almost no Latin text from the fourth century GC or earlier figuratively colors the penis as other than violently threatening or disgusting. Cf. Richlin (1992) p. 26, which is deeply gender-biased against men. For some analysis, see note [6] in my post on Priapea.
The vagina dentata is a figure of the vagina that threatens mutilation to a penetrating penis. While the penis is commonly presented as aggressively threatening, the vagina dentata doesn’t independently attack flaccid penises. The vagina dentata is associated with castration culture. The phenomenon of women raping men remains largely ignored or excused away to this day.
Perhaps the most disparaging figure of the vagina in Latin literature from the fourth century or earlier is Ausonius, A Nuptial Cento {Cento Nuptialis} ll. 111-4. That description is married to an even more disparaging figuring of the penis. See especially Cento Nuptialis ll. 105-9.
[7] Rufinus, AP 5.36, Greek text and English trans. from Paton & Tueller (2014). I’ve lineated the English translations and made minor changes to the English to track the Greek more closely or to be more readable. In the second to last line of AP 5.36, Paton & Tueller translated σαφῶς as “clearly.” I’ve used “wisely,” which seems to me contextually a better translation. Subsequent epigrams from the Greek Anthology (AP) are likewise sourced.
Sistakou (2011), a brilliant article that in scholarly quality towers above typical classical scholarship, describes how Rufinus’s AP 5.36 parodies the epic story of the Judgment of Paris. To the question “how this type of parody challenges the ideological basis of the elevated genres of the past, first and foremost of epic poetry,” she answers “the emergence of a new eroticism, recorded in the imperial period epigram, as {like} the one put forward by Rufinus and Strato.” Id. pp. 208-9. Sistakou concludes:
It seems that this new erotic aesthetic filters out the tragic aspects of the Trojan myth, thus allowing comedy to take over. Or, to rephrase the famous saying, in the history of literature epic always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
Id. p. 209. I retain hope that the next epic repetition will be both instructive and entertaining.
[8] Constantine Cephalas is thought to have put together Book 5 of the Greek Anthology about 900 GC. Its most important manuscript is the Anthologia Palatina (AP), held mainly in the Palatine library in Heidelberg, Germany. That Anthologia Palatina manuscript was written about 940 GC. Paton & Tueller (2014), introduction.
[9] Rufinus, AP 5.15. The epigram’s lemma describes Melite as a courtesan. Rufinus also praised Melite in AP 5.94:
You have Hera’s eyes, Melite, Athena’s hands,
the Paphian’s breasts, Thetis’ ankles.
Fortunate is he who looks at you, thrice blessed he who hears your voice,
half divine he who kisses you, immortal he who sleeps with you.
{ Ὄμματ᾽ ἔχεις Ἥρης, Μελίτη, τὰς χεῖρας Ἀθήνης,
τοὺς μαζοὺς Παφίης, τὰ σφυρὰ τῆς Θέτιδος.
εὐδαίμων ὁ βλέπων σε, τρισόλβιος ὅστις ἀκούει,
ἡμίθεος δ᾽ ὁ φιλῶν, ἀθάνατος δ᾽ ὁ γαμῶν. }
Hera (Juno), Athena (Minerva), and the Paphian (Venus) were the three participants in the judgment of Paris. The lemma for this epigram is “On Melite; beauty {εἰς Μελίτην· ὡραῖον}.” The ancient Greek word ὡραῖος {beautiful} is close to ἔρως {passionate desire}. On that relationship, Konstan (2015).
[10] Rufinus, AP 5.62. On the interpretation of this epigram, including roses as figuring vaginas, White (2001) pp. 77-9. For additional references to the vagina figured as a rose in ancient Greek literature, Page (1978) p. 85. Rufinus also delighted in the appearance and feel of Doris’s vagina:
I took Doris, with her rosy buttocks, on my bed and spread
her legs, and amid her dewy flowers I felt immortal.
She bestrode my groin with her magnificent legs
and finished Aphrodite’s long course without swerving,
gazing at me with languorous eyes. Her crimson parts quivered
like leaves in the wind while she bounced astride me,
until the white strength spilled out of us both
and Doris lay splayed out with limbs all slack.
{ Δωρίδα τὴν ῥοδόπυγον ὑπὲρ λεχέων διατείνας
ἄνθεσιν ἐν χλοεροῖς ἀθάνατος γέγονα.
ἡ γὰρ ὑπερφυέεσσι μέσον διαβᾶσά με ποσσὶν
ἤνυσεν ἀκλινέως τὸν Κύπριδος δόλιχον,
ὄμμασι νωθρὰ βλέπουσα· τὰ δ᾽, ἠΰτε πνεύματι φύλλα,
ἀμφισαλευομένης ἔτρεμε πορφύρεα,
μέχρις ἀπεσπείσθη λευκὸν μένος ἀμφοτέροισιν,
καὶ Δωρὶς παρέτοις ἐξεχύθη μέλεσι. }
Rufinus, AP 5.55.
While Rufinus greatly appreciated beautiful vaginas, he was a man who was generally moderate in his preferences. He favored moderation in sexual behavior (AP 5.42) and also favored women not too slender and not too stout (AP 5.37). He still appreciated a woman’s beauty if she was older (AP 5.75, above) and had a bit of gray in her hair (AP 5.48). He also was inclusive and accepting. He had sex with boys as well as with women (AP 5.19, AP 5.28), and with slaves as well as with free persons (AP 5.18).
[11] Pherecrates, Miners {Μεταλλῆς}, fragment 112.38-32 in Storey (2011). The fragment has survived only in Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters 6.269b-c. I’ve taken the Greek text and English translation (adapted slightly) from Olson (2014). For other references to the ancient practice of vaginal depilation, Henderson (1991) pp. 131-2.
Pherecrates’s Miners describes a utopian afterlife apparently conceived in relation to the horrendous working conditions of miners in vast mines in Laurium in southwest Attica. Sells (2018). Most of the persons working in those brutal conditions almost surely were men.
[12] Aristophanes, Peace {Εἰρήνη} 891, Greek text and English trans. from Henderson (1998).
[13] Nossis, AP 5.170. White (1980) Ch. 2 (“The Rose of Aphrodite”) established the best reading of this epigram.
[14] Luxorius, Cypris candidulo, Anthologia Latina 351, Latin text from Riese & Shackleton Bailey (1982) pp. 275-6, my English translation. Here’s more related poetry from Luxorius.
[15] In a careful consideration of Rufinus’s AP 5.60, Höschele & Konstan (2005) interpret Εὐρώτας {Eurotas} as the name of a river and as characterizing a woman’s vagina as having “dankness, sliminess.” Höschele & Konstan seem to have followed the direction of deeply flawed gynocentric ideology that dominates classics:
The vagina was typically regarded by men in classical antiquity with a certain revulsion as clammy, malodorous, or swamplike. In Latin literature, as Amy Richlin states, ‘The female genitalia are almost exclusively described as disgusting—squashy and foul in texture and constitution …, salty and rank.’
Id. p. 624, citing Richlin (1992) p. 26. Richlin’s characterization of Latin literature is aggressively misandristic. It’s also grotesquely misleading, especially in relation to young women. Rufinus’s epigram AP 5.60 describes a silver-footed maiden with breasts like golden apples. In Rufinus’s allusion to her vagina, most men would interpret “dankness, sliminess” as “moist, well-lubricated.” Most men would find a vagina in that condition to be much more more sensuous and appealing than a dry, rough, and frigid vagina. Moreover, the river Eurotas at the time Rufinus wrote probably was associated with a wide, moist, and lush delta region. Ancient literature associated a delta with a woman’s pubic region. Henderson (1991) pp. 146 (word 184), 248 (n. 184).
Catullus uses the river Eurotas in a figure of a woman emitting sweet odors while gazing with desirous eyes upon a man she passionately loves:
When the virgin woman beheld him with eager eye,
that royal girl — her chaste little bed, emitting sweet odors,
still nursed her in her mother’s soft embrace,
like the smell of myrtles that surround Eurotas’ stream,
or the various shades of flowers borne by spring’s breeze —
no sooner had she lowered her desirous eyes from him
did she catch a flame in her whole body,
and blaze up completely from the depth of her marrow.
{ Hunc simul ac cupido conspexit lumine uirgo
Regia, quam suauis exspirans castus odores
Lectulus in molli complexu matris alebat,
Quales Eurotae progignunt flumina myrtos
Auraue distinctos educit uerna colores,
Non prius ex illo flagrantia declinauit
Lumina quam cuncto concepit corpore flammam
Funditus atque imis exarsit tota medullis. }
Catullus 64.86-93, English trans. adapted from that of Brendan Rau. The odor of myrtles that surround Eurotas’ stream suggests a female bodily response preceding desired sexual intercourse.
[16] Poggio Bracciolini, Facetiae 261, “Courtly reply of a woman who had an empty inkwell {Faceta responsio mulieris pugillare vacuum habentis},” Latin text from Poggio (1879) vol. 2, pp. 4-5, my English translation with help from that of id. Here’s the Latin text in machine-readable form.
The eleventh-century Arabic masterpiece Ḥikāyat Abī al-Qāsim {The Imitation Abū al-Qāsim} includes a similar figure of pen and inkwell.
[images] (1) Amazon woman and Greek man fighting in the Amazonomachy. Excerpt (image enhanced) from gilded frieze on a silver amphora from fourth-century Byzantium. Preserved as inventory n. 2180-1 in the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), image used in accordance with permission for “interactive forms used for the presentation of scholarly works.” In the twelfth century, Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis decisively addressed the problem of men-hating Amazons. (2) Man aggressively grabbing another man’s penis in a brawl. Excerpt from painting, attributed to Panaitios Painter, on a red-figure kylix made in Attica (Greece) about 480 GC. Preserved as inventory n. ГР-7038 in the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia). The Panaitios Painter was “foremost cup painter of his time, and in some ways the greatest Greek ceramic artist.” Richter (1936) v. 1, p. 61. Sexual violence against men is a serious social problem, yet attacks on men’s genitals are used for laughs in today’s major-media commercials. (3) Luxurious fountain pen. Excerpt from a CC0 public-domain image. In Arabic poetry, the comparative merits of the sword and the pen were a well-developed poetic topos. The question shouldn’t be whether the sword is mightier than the pen, but which is better for women and especially men.
References:
Adams, James Noel. 1982. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. London: Duckworth.
Fairclough, H. Rushton, revised by G. P. Goold. 1918. Virgil. Aeneid: Books 7-12. Appendix Vergiliana. Loeb Classical Library 64. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gerber, Douglas E., ed. & trans. 1999. Greek Iambic Poetry: from the seventh to the fifth centuries BC. Loeb Classical Library, vol. 259. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Henderson, Jeffrey. 1991. The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy. 2nd. Ed. (1st ed., 1975). New York: Oxford University Press.
Henderson, Jeffrey, ed. & trans. 1998. Aristophanes. Clouds. Wasps. Peace. Loeb Classical Library 488. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Höschele, Regina, and David Konstan. 2005. “Eurotas: Wide or Dank? A Note on Rufinus Ap 5.60=21 Page.” The Classical Quarterly. 55 (2): 623-627.
Konstan, David. 2015. Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.
Olson, Stuart Douglas, ed. and trans. 2014. The Learned Banqueters. Vol. 6. Loeb Classical Library 224. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Page, Denys L. 1978. The Epigrams of Rufinus. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Paton, W.R., trans. and Michael A. Tueller, revised. 2014. Greek Anthology. Books 1-5. Loeb Classical Library 67. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Poggio. 1879. Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini. The facetiae or jocose tales of Poggio, now first translated into English with the Latin text. Paris: Isidore Liseux (vol. 1, vol. 2).
Richlin, Amy. 1992. The Garden of Priapus: sexuality and aggression in Roman humor. New York: Oxford University Press.
Richter, Gisela Marie Augusta. 1936. Red-figured Athenian Vases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Riese, Alexander, and David R. Shackleton Bailey. 1982. Anthologia latina: sive poesis latinae supplementum. Pars. 1. Carmina in codicibus scripta. Fasc. 1. Libri Salmasiani aliorumque carmina. Stutgardiae: In aedibus Teubneri. Online prior edition Riese (1894).
Sells, Donald. 2018. “The Blessed Afterlife in Old Comedy: Pherecrates, fr. 113.” Paper presented at the 114th meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (Albuquerque, New Mexico), Apr. 11-14.
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