In Bed with the Ancient Greeks

by Paul Chrystal

From what the Ancient Greeks might have talked about in bed to women’s health and the intricacies of Greek marriage, Paul Chrystal shines a much-needed light on sex and sexuality in ancient Greece, one of the world’s most influential civilizations.This is a balanced, comprehensive and well-researched analysis of the many aspects of sexual desire and activity in the various Greek societies – from the Minoan civilisation, Athens and the other city states, to Sparta and Hellenistic Greece. It examines attitudes to, and the practice of, sex in Greek mythology, literature and real life; in love, marriage, and adultery; in religion and philosophy; in the visual arts; of sexual medicine and erotic magic; and the vocabulary of sex. A wealth of primary sources are called upon to provide evidence of the antics of the ancient Greeks

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Classics, Mythology, Greek Mythology, Historical

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Paul Chrystal attended the Universities of Hull and Southampton where he took degrees in Classics. For the next thirty-five years he worked in medical publishing, much of the time as an international sales director for one market or another while latterly creating medical educational programmes for the pharmaceutical industry. He worked for companies such as Churchill Livingstone, Wiley-Blackwell, CRC Press, Academic Press and Elsevier.

Reviews

[Eve]

Borrowed from the public library because this was the only book on Ancient Greece. I mean, there were SOME interesting things but like...what is the point in writing a history book if you're not going to do any kind of critical analysis... I mean, I don't know but it seems weird to be like 'Zeus created the patriarchy!' The presentation of information was just bad. Also when you talk about how in the modern age we can't possible imagine Ancient depictions of sexuality and then you PROJECT modern ideas about sexuality onto the Ancient world!!! WHY!!

Also, lol, I really shouldn't have been able to self check this out of the library, but I guess they don't think teenagers are looking in the history section for sexy content?

[Evie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essentially, just a list of times sex occurs as a topic in the surviving Greek corpus, with some very occasional rudimentary analysis and wild vacillation between whether its appropriate or not to project modern ideas about sexuality on to the ancient world. And considering that many of these examples were familiar to me from undergrad (each explored in much more detail than here), it really was exceptionally boring.

[JustinaJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5?

This books touches on so many interesting topics but poor editing drags it down. Even non-fiction books should try to create a narrative and offer some in-depth analysis rather than just spit out facts. Nevertheless, it's packed with facts, more or less disturbing, so it's worth a read.