Wayward Wanderer

Greek Depiction of Male Sexual Interacton

Erotic fondling of the boy and frontal between-the-thighs intercourse by the man are the practices most frequently illustrated on ancient pottery.  Though it is probably simplistic to assume that the iconography is an unfailing guide to actual practices that iconography taken in conjunction with textual evidence allows us to draw certain conclusions. As T.K. Hubbard of the University of Texas points out, “fondling a boy’s organ was one of the most commonly represented courtship gestures on the vases. What can the point of this act have been, unless lovers in fact derived some pleasure from feeling and watching the boy’s developing organ wake up and respond to their manual stimulation?  Surely playing with a dead penis was not any more fun then than it is now.”