Disclaimer: This post obviously wants to be more cultural than it needs to be: I have to blame my years spent in university studying dead languages that ended up in a bartending job due to the need to pay the bills. I'm sorry: let me have this small satisfaction that still all that grammar and spelling was just a little useful! Please also excuse me for any inaccuracy: it's many years I left the history and ancient literature books behind....
The Greek culture was one of the most open-minded I can think of in history, and ages beyond us in terms of sex positivity: homosexuality, for example, was considered normal and accepted: think of the famous island of Lesbos, where the poetess Sappho wrote about her pure love for young attractive girls, or to the common practice of pederasty: I can explain it very simply as an arrangement where a "sugar daddy" from aristocracy took under his wing a male "sugar baby" to educate him. Do not misunderstand what I'm saying based on the modern terms I use to make the whole thing more lighthearted and fun: it wasn't an arrangement based on money, but on education, and teaching to the young how to behave in adult society.
Diogenes the Cynic attributes the invention of masturbation (anaphlan in ancient Greek) to the god Hermes: it was simply considered a healthy solution to relieve sexual tension when you could not have sex with a woman.
In poor words Pan, Hermes's son, was lusting after a nymph that didn't even want to hear about having sex with him: so his father taught him how to pleasure himself. Read more about this mythological story here: http://ezinearticles.com/?Platos-Secret&id=946525
It's with the Romans that the culture of castitas, "chastity" and pudicitia, "modesty", grows bigger, especially for what concerns the female world. The later Latin authors are full of nostalgia for the older Roman ethics and morality corrupted by more libertine habits imported from Greece.
It's popular knowledge that in what remains of the old Roman brothels were found explicit erotic paintings I would dare to call the ancestors of porn, and that prostitution was legal and generally accepted in the male society: still, Valeria Messalina, the famous empress who turned into a sex worker at night, is represented with very shaming words in literature: check out the Satire VI Against Women by Juvenal (the title says it all, I'm afraid).
I didn't find any particular mention about masturbation in the ancient Roman literature, apart from few satyrical verses: read more in this interesting Wikipedia page about the history of masturbation. Worth reading!
Still, I find fun to quote here a line of Cicero that gives you an idea of how the Latin slang word for clitoris, landica, was considered obscene. Here the old shy, nerdy Miss Doll from the uni stands up and reads, with perfect pronounce:
" Hanc culpam maiorem an il-lam dicam?" (Cicero, Letters to Friends 9-22)
"What guilt is worst, this or the other?"
To an ancient Latin speaker this would have sounded:
"What guilt is worst, this or clitoris?"
Hope you found this post interesting! Do you know about other ancient cultures' attitude towards sexuality and masturbation? Please let me know in the comments!
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