Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

EXHIBITIONISM 3. EXHIBITIONISM

If by exhibitionism is understood the ostentatious uncovering of the sexual organs before persons of the same or a different sex, it is easy to understand that this perversion was very rare in ancient Greece. At that time there was often sufficient opportunity to see men completely naked ; so that no one was conscious of sexual curiosity or of accompanying personal lustful feelings by partial uncovering. Contrary to the facts observed at the present day by physicians and jurists, in the older times of Greece it is female exhibitionism that is spoken of, if at all. The oldest example is Baubo, the wife of Dysaules at Eleusis, with whom Demeter and the little Ilacchus took shelter when she was seeking her daughter Persephone who had been carried off by Hades. To cheer the sorrowing mother, Baubo strips herself, which drives Iacchus to such an outburst of delight, that Demeter also against her will is obliged to laugh.

The intentional uncoverings in the dance of the Cordax (see pp. 165 f.) are also not without an exhibitionistic character.

Diodorus (i, 85) says of the Egyptian women: If after the death of the sacred Apis-bull a new one is discovered, only women may look at him for forty days ; but they do this “ while lifting their clothes up and showing their private parts to the god”.

Most of the images of Priapus and many of Hermaphrodites are intended to have a decidedly exhibitionistic effect (see p. 125).

All that we have mentioned would be only indirectly regarded as acts of exhibitionism by modern sexual science. ‘The only passage known to me, where exhibitionism proper is spoken of, is in Theophrastus, where it is said in the character of the Immodest man (Char., 11): “ Such a shameless fellow, when he meets women, is fond of lifting up his chiton, and showing himself to them.”

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