The Destructive Nature of Eros

So the topic of sex and gender and erotic sicknesses continues as I work through a semester's worth of explicit material. I hope you are enjoying this textual romp through the world of ancient sex and erotica. As always, Ancient Digger intends to share all facets of history, even though the topics may border on the obscene, according to many.

Eros is the son of Aphrodite who essentially meddles in the affairs of gods and mortals, causing bonds of love to form, often illicitly. In early Greek art, Eros is depicted as a adult male with sexual prowess, but becomes cupid, the blindfolded and childlike boy who flies around, shooting his arrows at unsuspecting individuals destined for love. Eros draws one thing to another by attraction or even gravity. Hesiod explained that Eros existed long before the goddess of love, Aphrodite. According to many philosophers, Eros was an awe-inspiring universal force.

Eros is the fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves later the limbs and overcomes the mind, and counsels of all gods and all men within them. Pre-Socratic philosophers believed Eros was a natural force responsible for creation. It wasn’t just good or bad, but destructive. Eros was vital because it operated as a social concept, yet it had moral implications. It was hard to control because in many cases, individuals would become slaves to it.



This destructive force was the root of the evil. However, while the destructive impulses are thus being satisfied, such satisfaction cannot stabilize their energy in the service of Eros. Their destructive force must drive them beyond this servitude and sublimation, for their aim is, not matter, not nature, not any object, but life itself¹ . Greek literature depicts the forces of eros as frightening, socially destructive and physically, emotionally and mentally debilitating. In this sense, the separation of the wife and children from the sexual activities of the slave-quarters, the brothels and the male drinking parties or symposia, ensured that the oikos and its most important members were protected from the potentially damaging forces of uninhibited sexual expression² .

The numerous examples of the destructive force of eros are not always mythological or legendary in orientation. Eros reaches into the minds of some of the most famous and notorious of emperors and also notable philosophers and writers, who sought to tell tales of legend, though the stories almost always embraced some truth. Eros could be accessed through the eyes, or “the gaze”, as 19th century scholars called it. The ancients could be seen as passive victims who allowed objects to intrude upon them. This could be artistic objects, theatrical events, or even natural elements.

The fact was that looking at things that were attractive and desirable was dangerous; therefore the act of looking could invoke emotion, arousal, lust, and desire. Eros was driven by men. Men would compel an object of desire to submit to them. In this aspect, eros is cured by reciprocity. If the object would not submit, spells would sometimes be utilized. These spells would be inflicted at night in isolation using agents that were not commonly acquirable. You had to put in the effort in order for the spells to take hold.

One spell was used to induce dreams of a desired object. The person, most likely a woman, would go through a suffering and longing process for the person they wanted. There was a certain degree of violence in this because control and victimization are inverted throughout the dream, and one cannot control their actions and impulses in their dreams. Using magic the man would get control. The same spell was not invoked on men because men tend to dream while they are awake-they daydream. Therefore a spell of desire would have to be altered somewhat if the woman was in control.

It is clear that eros drove women to madness, but men were just as vulnerable to the power of eros. A prime example would be Nero. Nero was free with his mind, money, and body. He had issues with boundaries and he was addicted to eros. This addiction ran much deeper than just for carnal pleasure, however. Nero was also addicted to the theater, where themes of the real world were often inverted to create an imaginary one. Nero lived his life in excess, violating customary expressions of pleasure to the point he forgoes imperial responsibilities. He embraces popularity and the love of the populace. The love of the people is where eros goes wrong. The people loved him so much that they created a monster and his general obsessions were driven by his libido and desire. Libido without restraint becomes worse. He is the very opposite of an epicurean, who typically partakes in simple pleasures, yet they also abstain from bodily desires such as sex and appetites verging on denial.

The Rape of Lucretia is another excellent example of eros gone wrong, as it pertains to the hyper sexuality of man. Lucretia, an object of desire put forth by her own husband, is the ultimate undertaking of any man looking to overcome the innocence of a pious woman. When the men arrived, they were all impressed by Lucretia's chaste honor, but it was Tarquinius who was “seized by the desire (hyper sexuality) to violate Lucretia's chastity, seduced both by her beauty and by her exemplary virtue”³ . He threatened her with death, raped her, and he left, having taken away her honor. Her beauty and virtue not only drove Tarquinius to desire her, but it created an innate violence in a powerful man, put into a position where he could control submission. It was no different than war, as men seek honor on the field, they seek the same type of acknowledgement in the bedroom.

The History of Appius and Virginia by Livy is another key example of a virtuous woman who tempts, unintentionally, man’s desire to the point of violence. Appius Claudius lusts after the daughter of a centurion, Virginia. Virginia was already promised to Lucius Icilius, a former tribune of the plebs, and when she rejected Claudius, he gave instructions to Marcus Claudius, one of his clients, that he should claim the young woman as his slave, and not submit to any demand which should be made, of her being left at liberty until the decision of the suit, thinking that the absence of the damsel's father afforded the fittest opportunity for the injury which be meditated⁴.

After Marcus Claudius had successfully abducted her, the decemviri, led by Appius Claudius himself, demanded he bring the case to court. Virginia’s father Verginius was recalled from the field to defend his daughter, and Icilius, after threats of violence, succeeded in having Virginia returned to her house while the court waited for her father to appear. When Verginius finally arrived, his supporters left the forum so not to cause further violence. Questioning whether her virtue would be preserved if he acted in haste, Verginius grabbed a knife and stabbed Virginia. Verginius and Icilius were arrested, and their followers returned to attack the lictors and destroy their fasces. This led to the overthrow of the decemviri and the re-establishment of the Roman Republic⁴ .

The very last place we would expect the humiliation of women to occur would be in the Symposium, but the presence of the hetaerai may have only fueled the natural hunger of man’s desire to dominate the opposite sex. Hetaerai were the only women who actively took part in the symposium where their opinion was welcomed and respected by men. They drank and partied, but the drinking usually took a completely different turn near the end of the evening. The Symposium is a social function for young men to integrate into their status group, and as part of this, the men engage in ritualized violence with the hetaerai as a rite of passage. Men would force them to have anal sex and beat them with a staff, rod or shoe. Hetaerai were essentially integrated into a ritual for the sake of man’s inability to restrain his primal urges.

Eros is instilled with a deep-seated tension that manifests itself in various guises, which, however, have a common structure based on the fact that eros is a striving for the reversal of eros, and that therefore the existence of eros is incompatible with its telos. The highest goal of eros is the destruction of eros, the transformation of the lovers into an existence that no longer needs eros. According to Diotomo’s speech at the Symposium, Eros is “a great spirit (daimon)” that is situated between mortals and gods, and oscillates between the two; it is by virtue of its origin an intermediate being, that nevertheless strives towards the better⁵.


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The Sickness of Eros
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References

1. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: a philosophical inquiry into fraud, (Abingdon: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1956), 86.
2. Terry Ryan, and Marguerite Johnson, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature, (New York: Routledge, 2005), 3-4.
3. "Tite-Live: Histoire Romaine," 1, Vol. 1, ed. Jean Bayet and Gaston Baillet (Paris: Societé d'Édition "les belles-lettres, 1995).
4. Livy. The History of Appius and Virginia, History of Rome. English Translation by Rev. Canon Roberts. New York. E. P. Dutton and Co, New York, 1912.
5. Benjamin Jowett, trans., Plato’s Symposium, (Penguin Books Limited, London, 1956).

Ancient Sex and Love Magic

The Kama Sutra and the Joy of Sex were not strictly ancient sex manuals, but actual instructions on pleasing one’s wife. Ancient sex is the only stand-alone genre in ancient literature. The writing of pornographic material evolves in the 4th or 5th century BC. Ancient sex manual writing comes at the same time as aristocratic writing. It is a cultural viewpoint that seeks to classify a certain type of knowledge. It makes a science of the human body by focusing on the human body to arouse you. It also helps to intellectualize the writing of smut and sexualized material and sets it in on equal footing to the sciences and mathematics. The authors talking about sex were doing so from the female’s point of view. In antiquity, women supposedly authored the books, but in actuality men using a woman’s name wrote them.



The mythical founder of the genre was Astyanassa, but it is said that the female Philaenis was even more popular than Astyanassa. The poet Aeschrion of Samos denied that Philaenis was really the author of this notorious work. Brief fragments of the manual, including the introductory words, have been rediscovered among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. It begins: “Philaenis of Samos, daughter of Ocymenes, wrote the following things for those wanting ... life”¹. When the books were produced they came with graphic illustrations. The texts don’t survive but the impact on society does. We see these sexual images at Pompeii where every type of sexual position with every type of gender is depicted.

Sex was a mythical religion and should not be discussed, but authors were beginning to classify and catalogue types of women and the types of sex you should engage with them. Lucritious was a 1st century poet and philosopher who would catalogue types of women (physiognomy). Avid defined women by certain attributes, and after that, with a specific sexual position. If old, you would have sex with her from the back, and if young, lay her on her back. Women were becoming symbols and they were stripped of their humanity. They were anatomical parts.

Another example of ancient sex was sacred prostitution. Sacred prostitutes were connected to temples and the temples of Aphrodite. Slaves were purchased on the open market and forced to work in the sex trade industry where profits went to the temple. Some women even engaged in ritualized prostitution for a short period of time before marriage. Prostitution was sanctioned by the elites, and in places like Athens; state officials enforced price controls on prostitution. This was often because the wealthy owned the brothels, but a madam ran them. You would spend time training for prostitution usually at a young age. Your career consumed your adult years and at age twenty-five you were considered old. At one time in your life you could buy your freedom. Contraception was used but it rarely worked. It led to higher pregnancy rates, and those children born to free men, were rarely acknowledged. The women often lived in the brothels with a madam, who was usually an ex-slave, who would often take care of the children. There were high rates of miscarriage and exposure to disease and pollution. Not surprising considering the work environment was often dark and unsanitary. Disease was rampant, and not just STDS.

Love Magic

Literary accounts of erotic love magic go back to Homer, however evidence for actual performance of spells, in the form of lead curse tablets aimed at rivals, does not appear until the fourth century BC. The increased popularity of magic under the Roman Empire is demonstrated in the papyri from Egypt, which contains handbooks of prescriptions and recipes into which the names of agent and victims were to be inserted. Literature, meanwhile associated them, as it had in the past, with the figure of the witch who employs her craft to exert sexual power over men. There were also servants of divine intervention in Egypt who worked with families to cast spells and charms. They were a source of sexual information, and to some, they were regarded as witches.

Traditional association between witchcraft and sexuality had become even more sinister and was now colored by the lure of the forbidden. At the same time, though much of what we loosely call "erotic love magic" can be seen to conform to Mediterranean common sense, the confrontation between actual erotic spells and the masculine literary fantasies about erotic witchcraft will illuminate some dark comers of personal anguish and interpersonal spite². There were dozens of different spells and curses including binding spells (agogai) to inflame someone with eros for the perpetrator, curses designed to separate couples, and philia spells to strengthen an existing relationship. Because astrology allowed individuals to profit from awareness of the future and sorcery enabled the weak to control the strong, those technologies were perceived as seditious; imperial decrees forbade consultations, expelled practitioners, and punished the guilty with exile or death³.

Winkler talks about the competition between families and how magic can give you a leg up. This was true in marriage, the acquisition of a lover, and social relations. Sex lives become a means of rivalry. Social standing and power in the community is at stake. Moreover social approval is equally significant. Magic tilts the scales in your favor and agogai were designed to lead a desired person to one's house and bed. It assured success of self and failure for others, therefore belief in magic allowed for blame to be shifted. Interestingly, papyri and archaeological evidence suggests it was men who evoked a third party, whether that were the dead, spirits, or the gods. This is a projection of male fantasy and the literature inverts the fantasy.

Spells revolve around eros. Some of the most common spells are those that improve one’s place in society. They ask for improvement in physical appearance. The person asks that both women and men find them charming. The spells are invoked because the person is essentially seeking arête. The secondary part asks for protection from death or embarrassment. Third, the competition must suffer. Spells are structured and ritualized. Spell XVII states, if you are the bearer of an inscribed wormwood root that you will be charming and befriended and admired by all who see you⁴. One spell was even used to induce dreams of a desired object. The person, most likely a woman, would go through a suffering (sickness of eros) and longing process for the person they wanted. There was a certain degree of violence in this because control and victimization are inverted throughout the dream, and one cannot control their actions and impulses in their dreams. Using love magic the man would get control. The same spell was not invoked on men because men tend to dream while they are awake-they daydream.

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Ovid's Art of Love 
Erotic Art and Roman Sexuality
Eroticism, Eros, and Sex in Pompeii
The Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra By Vatsyayana/ Dane, Lance (EDT)/ Dane, Lance
Art of Love: The Second Book of Kama Sutra

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Sources

1. Philip W Comfort and David P Barrett, The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts, (Wheaton: Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers Incorporated, 2001). 
2. Marilyn B. Skinner, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture, (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005). 
3.  Ibid, p 278. 
4. John J Winkler, “The Constraints of Desire: Erotic Magic Spells,” The Constraints of Desire, (New York: Routledge, 1990) 71-98.

Ovid's Art of Love

Ovid’s narrative often highlights the thrill of fear; as if it is an attractive quality to have, to inflict fear on the innocent. 




Ovid was the last of the great poets of the golden age. He belonged to a privilege group of Roman youths who liked to ridicule old Roman values. In keeping with the spirit of this group Ovid wrote a frivolous series of love poems known as the Amores, intended to entertain and shock. They ultimately achieved their goal. Another of Ovid's works was The Art of Love. This was essentially a takeoff on didactic poems. Whereas authors of earlier didactic poems had written guides to farming, hunting, or some such subject, Ovid's work was a handbook on the seduction of women.


Read the entire article: Ovid: Art of Love and Rape By Ancient Digger Via Knoji

Sophrosyne: The Simple Meaning of Moderation

Sophrosyne was the goddess of moderation, self-control, temperance, restraint, and discretion. She was one of the good spirits who escaped Pandora's box when the woman first lifted the lid and fled back to Olympus, abandoning mankind. Her Roman equivalents were Continentia and Sobrietas. Sophrosyne was one of the cardinal virtues, consisting in a harmonious state of rational control of one's desires. In Aristotle the temperate person is one who can abstain or indulge appetites to the right degree without a severe effort of will; the person who needs the effort of will is not temperate, and needs to be content.

We see several examples of sophrosyne in literature including the story of Cupid and Psyche. Aphrodite was furious about her son Cupid-Eros’ affair with (Psyche exclaims:] “But what am I to do, now that I'm becoming a laughing-stock? Where shall I go, how shall I curb in this scoundrel? Should I beg the assistance of my enemy Sobrietas (Sobriety, Temperance)? So often alienated from me through this fellow's loose living.”

Plato’s Symposium is another perfect example of sophrosyne, as Socrates talks about moderation of one’s actions and the honor in doing so. Socrates also asserts that the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher or, literally, a lover of wisdom. A lover of wisdom often accompanied better judgment and temperance for other’s ideas. Consequently, the symposium was a drinking party, but according to Aristophanes, “ we should, by all means, avoid hard drinking, for I was myself one of those who were yesterday drowned in drink” .

The epicureans also practiced sophrosyne, as they also abstain from bodily desires such as sex and appetites verging on denial. Epicurus argued that when eating one should not eat too heavily, for it could lead to disappointment later, such as the grim realization that one could not afford such delicacies in the future. Likewise, sex could lead to increased lust and dissatisfaction with the sexual partner.

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The Sickness of Eros

The sickness of eros is often described in the context of the seasons. The idea of polar opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, allow for a blend in temperance and harmony, they bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and do them no harm; whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons of the year, is very destructive and injurious, being the source of pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals and plants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses and disorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed astronomy. However, the sickness of eros can also be observed in many forms and in many sources of literature. We see this illness of love in Euripides’ Medea, Chloe and Daphnis, and also in the tyrannical rule of governors as well as their ill rebutted affairs and love of youths, described by Socrates as “a disease of the soul” in the Symposium by Plato.

Lingus' tale of Chloe and Daphnis is an attempt to portray a woman in her most un-desirous form. As a creature of lust and prone to the pathetic notions of admiring someone from a far she might not deserve. However, the ultimate theme or resolution to this romantic obstacle course is marriage, and the consummation of that union. The entire plot is wreaked with longing and love sickness, as Chloe admires and lusts for Daphnis. Yet, she is in the beginning of womanhood and she is not well versed in the sexual exploits of men. As the story unfolds, Daphnis sleeps with older women and gains worldly experience as opposed to Chloe who has the opportunity to experiment, but doesn’t. She must remain virginal until her wedding night, which is the stereotypical idea of women and the same for men. The intrigue and unbearable nature of the story explains the notion of eros. You will succumb to diseases of love if you don’t satisfy it, and in Chloe and Daphnis’s case, love is death unless consummated.

We also see the concept of eros as a sickness in Medea. If eros had not inspired Medea to fall in love with Jason, and be cast aside, her lust would have never drove her to act in such a violent way. She murdered her brother and essentially hacked him up into little pieces like a serial murderer; killed her children with Jason; murdered Jason’s new wife with a crown and robe laced with poison, which burned the skin off her body. After which, her father King Creon died holding her lifeless body. She later tried to trick her husband into poisoning his son Theseus. The idea here is that not only is eros destructive, but for some like Medea, it is a love illness. She never acts with moderation and never just accepts the fact the love can be fleeting. Her approach to her husband was not much different than a young girl with an innocent crush on an older man. They are often delirious with hope or resentment, and see no woman as a match to herself.

Plato’s Symposium is a drinking party held essentially to explain love using a sequence of speeches. The party is for Agathon to celebrate his prize for his first tragedy at the Lenaia in 416 B.C.. Each man must deliver an encomium (praise of a person or thing), a speech in praise of Eros. Love is the supreme god and only the young can enjoy it. Socrates in his speech asserts that the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher, or literally, a lover of wisdom. However he also speaks of the sickness of eros, which is hidden behind the lines of the speeches and conversation. Socrates experiences difficulty in explaining what the sickness of tyrannical eros is. He evidently does associate it with desire, but is that not the same as eros? Socrates declares that it is a human madness, a disease of the soul.

There are several manifestations and types of the sickness of tyrannical eros, but typically it is directed simultaneously at individual persons and would be a tyrant's polity. The diseased eros variously desires to use its beloveds not only as agents of sexual pleasure but also as slavish sources of wealth, position, and honor. The sick eros hopes to convert its polity into an instrument of world conquest that improves its domestic status; a guarantee of its illicit sexual and social interests; a tool that facilitates a tyrannical technician's conquest of nature; an engine that co-opts all mankind into its metaphysical revolt; a vast association organized to worship its metaphysical revolt; a vast association organized to worship the man who incarnates it; and the slavish power base that deifies the tyrant by making him ruler of the world . In all these forms, the diseased eros employs "moving logoi" that transfer the emotional effects of beauty from beautiful realities to itself in order to seduce the intended slaves, charming them into embracing the tyrant and the tyranny as beautiful.

Eryximachus explains that there two kinds of love in the human body. One love is healthy and the other is diseased. Their desires are unlike one another, and as Pausanias stated prior to this speech, to indulge good men is honorable, and bad men dishonorable, so too in the body the good and healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged . On the other hand, Phaedrus articulated that eros could be a public expression if the cities rules for love permitted lovers to openly walk about like average citizens. Aristophanes thought Phaedrus was wrong to believe that one could let eros go public and still retain a private good: there is no non-lover; eros is definitive of the human and, as essentially political, rules our any transpolitical life defined by a transpolitical good available to man as man. The city is a world of falsehood from which there is no ascent and man is not merely suffering from a sickness, he is a sickness and this sickness has no cure .

Socrates battles with himself throughout the Symposium about the cures that could possibly heal or cure the aristocratic forms of the sickness, and the Phaedrus depicts them working to defeat his attempt to heal the democratic prototype of the disease. However, we might be able to apply Socrates' therapies to our own would-be tyrants with better results, if we catch their illnesses in time. According to Aristophanes, the only cure to the illness of love, plutonic love, or however these men may define it, is through eros. This is because Eros is not the chief attribute of human beings or the most prominent symptom of our illness, but a god or a divine physician who is able to overcome our suffering and heal our affliction .

Therefore love, or the sickness of love, was not only about inhibited love or desire, but the way in which one acted upon their desires. Medea believed in violence and revenge, not only because her honor had been put at stake, but also because the love that she professed for Jason was so great, thus turning to obsession. Chloe and Daphnis was merely a case of unrequited love, and love unconsummated until marriage. In Plato’s Symposium, the speeches touch on plutonic love and the acceptance of eros between two men, as long as it was behind closed doors. Yet, an underlying theme existed in the Symposium, which allowed the speech givers to understand the sickness of love expressed between two men, which only eros could be the cure.

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Work's Cited

• Berg, Steven. Eros and the intoxications of enlightenment: on Plato's Symposium. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010.
• Rhodes, James M. Eros, Wisdom, and Silence: Plato's erotic dialogues. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.
• Jowett, Benjamin trans.Plato’s Symposium. Penguin Books Limited, London, 1956.