WHY ANCIENT GREEK SCULPTURES ARE NOT WELL-ENDOWED

Alexxa Gotthardt

The ancient Greeks famously fetishized the male body in sculptures that represent powerful, illustrious men as hulking figures with taut, rippling muscles. Sometimes these figures appear partially clothed in drapery or cloth; often, they are stark naked.

Poseidon (Zeus), 46 B.C.

National Archaeological Museum, Athens

To the contemporary eye, their bodies are ideal—except for one, ahem, seminal detail. “They have small to very small penises, compared to the average of humanity,” art historian Andrew Lear, a specialist in ancient Greek art and sexuality, says. “And they’re usually flaccid.”

Countless contemporary art lovers and historians have been struck by the modest nature of the phalluses that feature in classical sculptures of gods, emperors, and other elite men—from Zeus to celebrated athletes. The small members seem at odds with the massive bodies and mythically large personalities they accompany. But the ancient Greeks had their reasons for this aesthetic choice.

Rewind to the ancient Greek world of around 400 BC, and you’ll find that large, erect penises were not considered desirable, nor were they a sign of power or strength. In his play The Clouds (c. 419–423 BC), ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes summed up the ideal traits of his male peers as “a gleaming chest, bright skin, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks, and a little prick.”

Statue of a Kouros, 6th century B.C.

National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Historian Paul Chrystal has also conducted research into this ancient ideal. “The small penis was consonant with Greek ideals of male beauty,” he writes in his book In Bed with the Ancient Greeks (2016). “It was a badge of the highest culture and a paragon of civilization.”

In ancient Greek art, most of a great man’s features were represented as ample, firm, and shiny—so why weren’t these same aesthetic principles applied to the penis? As Lear and other historians suggest, part of the answer lies in how the phalluses of less admirable men were portrayed…………….

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