Prolegomena to Pornography in Greek and Roman Antiquity

In general the ancients had a wholesome attitude toward sexual functions and the human body. To be sure, some Athenians raised half an eyebrow about Spartan youth of both sexes exercising together in the nude, and a few remaining old line Republican Romans felt that Ovid’s Ars amatoria might just as well have never been put on papyrus. While the Greeks recognized homosexuality as one way of life, there was a general disapproval of the coarse and mawkish poems of Straton of Sardis (fl. A.D. 125) on homosexual love, preserved in the Antologia palatina. The customary Greek attitudes are best expressed in the famous inscription at Delphi, “Nothing in excess.”