SIf the anatomical description of the clitoris only appeared in some French school textbooks in 2017, it is because this organ of female pleasure, although known by this name at least since 1559, has long been the subject of a true omerta.
Throughout history, elements concerning women’s sexual pleasure have often been erased, presented as dangerous or obscene. And Antiquity, in this regard, is no exception.
Today, contrary to these ancient negative representations, artists on the contrary exalt the clitoral power, which has become a symbol of feminine claim. Like, for example, sculptures, jewelry and other works by Sophia Wallace glorifying the cliteracy.
But the road has been long.
The clitoris and the poet
In the series Rome (2005-2007), the legionnaire Titus Pullo gives some advice to the centurion Lucius Vorenus, who wishes to please his wife, Niobé:
“Tell her she’s beautiful all the time, even when she’s not.
– Something else ? asks Vorenus.
– Yes, replies Pullo, when you make love with her, touch the button between her thighs, then she will open like a flower.
– How do you know that Niobe has this button?
– All women have one.
The parody scene The Art of Loving by the Latin poet Ovid, a masterpiece of erotic literature, conceived as a manual of seduction.
In the first part, the author delivers his recipes for men who intend to conquer a woman: small attentive gestures, kisses, tender words, compliments… The suitor must, by all means, seek to be pleasant to the woman and give her pleasure.
The poet does not speak of the clitoris in his work. Perhaps he alludes to it, however, when he writes:
Modesty prohibits a woman from provoking certain caresses, but it is pleasant for her to receive them when another takes the initiative.(The Art of Loving I, 705-706)
Nymph and clitoris: the vision of ancient doctors
If it is not explicitly mentioned by Ovid, the clitoris is, on the other hand, very present in Greek and Latin medical literature. Soranus of Ephesus, author at the beginning of the IIe century AD. of a treatise on gynecology (Gynaikeia), offers a description of the female genitalia. The clitoris is named there numbered or “nymph”, a word which designates a virgin girl or a young bride. This term is not insignificant: it translates a subjective representation of the clitoris, which should normally be veiled by the flesh which surrounds it, like the head of a young bride. “If we call this part the nymph, explains the author, it is because it hides under the lips like young girls under their veil. »
READ ALSOThe ancient minute – Ovid and candiesWord cleitoris is employed by Rufus of Ephesus, contemporary of Soranos, author of a treatise on anatomy (Name of body parts). Probably etymologically related to the verb clay (“I close”), the term also presupposes the idea of an invisible organ, prisoner of a closed space.
If this nymph is not sufficiently concealed but more or less protuberant, Soranos considers this to be an anomaly that surgery must correct. The doctor recommends cutting it with a scalpel, taking care, however, to avoid excessive bleeding.
This amputation was commonly practiced in Egypt, as the geographer Strabo writes (Geography XVII, 2, 5). The author does not name the clitoris, but speaks of a form of excision of girls, expressed by the verb spouse “remove by cutting”.
“Take that in the clitoris!” »
I’m not Latin, numbered is translated by countrya term found in the Latin adaptation of the treatise of Soranos by the physician Caelius Aurelianus, in the Ve century AD. J.-C. Etymologically, the word might evoke a small acorn (glans).
The word also appears on a lead sling bullet discovered in Perugia, central Italy, where, in 41-40 BC, it took place. J.-C., an important battle which opposed Fulvia, wife of Marc Antoine, to Octave, future emperor Auguste. During wars, it was customary to engrave the worst insults on the projectiles intended for the enemy.
On the ball of Perugia, we can read I am asking for FVLVIA LANDICA “I’m trying to reach Fulvia’s clitoris”; or more trivially: “Fulvia, take that in the clitoris!” Octave was trying to reach his enemy in what was most intimate to her.
A graffiti discovered in Pompeii goes in the same direction. It is written with an angry hand, a little like the inscriptions that can be read today on the walls of our public toilets. The author, obviously anonymous, insults a certain Eupla, whom he hates: Eupla laxa landicosa ; “Eupla is wide and has a big clitoris” (CIL IV, 10004). The image assumes a dilated vulva dominated by a monstrous clitoris, shaped like a dummy penis. An obscene vision for the author, as no doubt for many Romans.
Vulvar obscenity
A mosaic from the wealthy so-called House of Menander, also in Pompeii, offers us an iconographic transposition. It adorns the entrance to the caldarium, room reserved for hot baths. We see four strigils, bronze scrapers, arranged around a vial of oil suspended from straps. Objects usually used by the Greeks and Romans during their sporting activities.
The bather entering the room was perhaps not totally surprised by this image, although the arrangement of the objects may have seemed astonishing from the outset. It was probably only when he left that he fully grasped the artist’s intention. Indeed, seen in the opposite direction, the image evokes a vulva. Around the clitoris represented by the vial of oil, the scrapers take the form of the labia majora and labia minora.
In the upper part of the mosaic, a young African servant comes running, holding two phallic-shaped vases, while his imposing penis protrudes from his tight loincloth. Certainly a way of provoking the laughter of the spectator by the association between this triply virile representation and the image of an artificial femininity, made up of male sports instruments.
“The pig has a fearsome thorn”
Unlike the phallus, a real lucky charm with beneficial virtues according to the imagination of the time, the clitoris was perceived as a potential danger for men.
On the mosaic, the vial of oil, seen upside down, takes on the appearance of a pointed weapon, a kind of dagger. It thus joins the definition of the clitoris given by the Greek poet Nicarque, author of satirical epigrams, in the Iis century AD. J.-C. Criticizing a certain Démonax, follower of cunnilingus, he wrote: “The pig (Khoïros) has a fearsome thorn (if they strike) » (Greek anthology XI, 329).
The “pig” is a colloquial term for the vulva, while the “thorn” represents the clitoris, perceived as a small penis posing a threat to a man’s lips. Démonax, the vulva licker, is in great danger of hurting himself there and bloodying his mouth.
Conversely, the clitoris is supposed to lose all danger when the female sex is penetrated by a phallus, necessarily the winner of the confrontation and the only weapon to keep the dangerous thorn in check. Hence the unanimous condemnation in antiquity of the practice of cunnilingus.
The attribute of suspicious female dominance
In L’Odyssey (X, 389), Circe the sorceress possesses a small scepter named rhabdosancestor of witches’ magic wands.
The object does not represent Circe’s clitoris, but symbolizes the magician’s power. Circe seduces men; she lures them to her palace where she makes them lose their humanity, turning them into pigs. She submits them, symbolically, to the power of her “pig”, her vulva, of which they become servants.
Fortunately for the Greek phallocracy, Odysseus ends up defeating it and subduing it. He possesses her, using his phallus, and represses the holder of the wand, a symbol of harmfulness.
*Christian-Georges Schwentzel is professor of ancient history at the University of Lorraine. He published Ancient Debauches. How the Bible and the Ancients Invented Vice, published by Vendémiaire.
