Sexuality and Lysistrata
 

I'm teaching men, women, sexuality this week in my Greek civ. class. I'm intrigued by the notion that women enjoy sex 9 times more than men (from the story of Teiresias found at Apollodorus 3.6.7), and to illustrate this, we read a couple of lines from Lysistrata.

Lysistrata swears her fellow women to an oath of abstinence, delineating in some detail how they will withstand the advances of their sexually frustrated husbands. My two favorite lines (230 and 231):

Οὐ πρὸς τὸν ὄροφον ἀνατενῶ τὼ Περσικά.
Οὐ στήσομαι λέαιν’ ἐπὶ τυροκνήστιδος.

"I will not raise [my?] "peaches" [Persika] to the roof."
"I will not make the lion stand on the cheese-grater."

It's too bad we don't have any red-figure ware to illustrate these suggestive positions. Sorry to sully the board with ancient sex-talk, but I keep making cheese-grater jokes to my wife (I'm obviously the lion ;) ) and thought you might like to engage in your own mildly provocative humor.