The Reign of the Phallus

The Reign of the Phallus

Author: Eva C. Keuls

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1993-04-27

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 9780520079298

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At once daring and authoritative, this book offers a profusely illustrated history of sexual politics in ancient Athens, where the phallus dominated almost every aspect of public life. Complementing the text are 345 reproductions of Athenian vase paintings depicting the phallus.


A Mind of Its Own

A Mind of Its Own

Author: David M. Friedman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-09-04

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1439136084

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Whether enemy or ally, demon or god, the source of satisfaction or the root of all earthly troubles, the penis has forced humanity to wrestle with its enduring mysteries. Here, in an enlightening and entertaining cultural study, is a book that gives context to the central role of the penis in Western civilization. A man can hold his manhood in his hand, but who is really gripping whom? Is the penis the best in man -- or the beast? How is man supposed to use it? And when does that use become abuse? Of all the bodily organs, only the penis forces man to confront such contradictions: something insistent yet reluctant, a tool that creates but also destroys, a part of the body that often seems apart from the body. This is the conundrum that makes the penis both hero and villain in a drama that shapes every man -- and mankind along with it. In A Mind of Its Own, David M. Friedman shows that the penis is more than a body part. It is an idea, a conceptual but flesh-and-blood measuring stick of man's place in the world. That men have a penis is a scientific fact; how they think about it, feel about it, and use it is not. It is possible to identify the key moments in Western history when a new idea of the penis addressed the larger mystery of man's relationship with it and changed forever the way that organ was conceived of and put to use. A Mind of Its Own brilliantly distills this complex and largely unexamined story. Deified by the pagan cultures of the ancient world and demonized by the early Roman church, the organ was later secularized by pioneering anatomists such as Leonardo da Vinci. After being measured "scientifically" in an effort to subjugate some races while elevating others, the organ was psychoanalyzed by Sigmund Freud. As a result, the penis assumed a paradigmatic role in psychology -- whether the patient was equipped with the organ or envied those who were. Now, after being politicized by feminism and exploited in countless ways by pop culture, the penis has been medicalized. As no one has before him, Friedman shows how the arrival of erection industry products such as Viagra is more than a health or business story. It is the latest -- and perhaps final -- chapter in one of the longest sagas in human history: the story of man's relationship with his penis. A Mind of Its Own charts the vicissitudes of that relationship through its often amusing, occasionally alarming, and never boring course. With intellectual rigor and a healthy dose of wry humor, David M. Friedman serves up one of the most thought-provoking, significant, and readable cultural works in years.


Phallos

Phallos

Author: Samuel R. Delany

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2013-05-20

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0819573566

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Phallos is a 2004 novel by the acclaimed novelist and critic Samuel R. Delany. Taking the form of a gay pornographic novella, with the explicit sex omitted, Phallos is set during the reign of the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian, and circles around the historical account of the murder of the emperor's favorite, Antinous. The story moves from Syracuse to Egypt, from the Pillars of Hercules to Rome, from Athens to Byzantium, and back. Young Neoptolomus searches after the stolen phallus of the nameless god of Hermopolis, crafted of gold and encrusted with jewels, within which are reputedly the ancient secrets of science and society that will lead to power, knowledge, and wealth. Vivid and clever, the original novella has been expanded by nearly a third. Appended to the text are an afterword by Robert F. Reid-Pharr and three astute speculative essays by Steven Shaviro, Kenneth R. James, and Darieck Scott.


Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual

Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual

Author: Walter Burkert

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1982-11-08

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9780520047709

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"Tantalizingly rich . . . this is a splendid book."--Greece and Rome "Burken relegates his learned documentation to the notes and writes in a lively and fluent style. The book is recommended as a major contribution to the interpretation of ancient Greek myth and ritual. The breadth alone of Burkert's learning renders his book indispensable."--Classical Outlook "Impressive. . . founded on a striking knowledge of the complex evidence (literary, epigraphical, archaeological, comparative) for this extensive subject. Burkert offers a rare combination of exact scholarship with imagination and even humor. A brilliant book, in which . . .the reader can see at every point what is going on in the author's mind--and that is never uninteresting, and rarely unimportant."--Times Literary Supplement "Burkert's work is of such magnitude and depth that it may even contribute to that most difficult of tasks, defining myth, ritual, and religion. . [He] locates his work in the context of culture and the historv of ideas, and he is not hesitant to draw on sociology and biology. Consequently his work is of significance for philosophers, historians, and even theologians, as well as for classicists and historians of Greek culture. His hypotheses are courageous and his conclusions are bold; both establish standards for methodology as well as results. "--Religious Studies Review


SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

Author: Mary Beard

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2015-11-09

Total Pages: 743

ISBN-13: 1631491253

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New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Kirkus Reviews Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) A San Francisco Chronicle Holiday Gift Guide Selection A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A sweeping, "magisterial" history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists shows why Rome remains "relevant to people many centuries later" (Atlantic). In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.


Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle

Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle

Author: K. J. Dover

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780872202450

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In ancient Greece, as today, popular moral attitudes differed importantly from the theories of moral philosophers. While for the latter we have Plato and Aristotle, this insightful work explores the everyday moral conceptions to which orators appealed in court and political assemblies, and which were reflected in non-philosophical literature. Oratory and comedy provide the primary testimony, and reference is also made to Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and other sources. The selection of topics, the contrasts and comparisons with modern religious, social and legal principles, and accessibility to the non-specialist ensure the work's appeal to all readers with an interest in ancient Greek culture and social life.


Sexual Life In Ancient Greece

Sexual Life In Ancient Greece

Author: Hans Licht

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-28

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 1136182268

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First published in 2001. From Ancient Greece, modern Western civilisation has derived many of its artistic philosophical and pollical ideas. But, in certain areas of sexual tolerance and inventiveness, we still have much to learn from the land and age which produced the most flourishing and creative culture of the ancient world. Professor Hans Licht, in this erudite and fascinating book, discusses in full every aspect of the Ancient Greek's sexual life.


The Phallus

The Phallus

Author: Alain Daniélou

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1995-11-01

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1594777314

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Beginning with an overview of the symbolism of creative forces in general, The Phallus first examines the representation of male fertility in such forms as the menhirs or standing stones of prehistoric Europe; the Mahalinga and Svayambhu of India; and the ancient Greek Omphalos. The second part of the book surveys the presence of ithyphallic gods in archaic shamanistic religions (the Lord of the Animals), the Greek pantheon (Hermes, Priapus), and the Hindu deities (Ardhanarishvara, the androgyne). Danielou also explores the role of Shaivist and Dionysian initiatory rites in bringing men into communion with the creative forces of life. Illustrated throughout with photographs and line drawings of European and Indian art, The Phallus celebrates the expression of the masculine in the religious traditions of East and West. Phallic imagery, in one form or another, may be found in the artistic traditions of virtually every world culture since prehistoric times. Alain Danielou here unveils the religious impulse underlying art that at first glance seems to have no purpose beyond the erotic.


Phallus

Phallus

Author: Michael Hone

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-03-29

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9781544967257

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As hard as marble, upright like a spur, a sword, a dagger, the giver of infinite pleasure and unique procreator, a source of immense comfort at boyhood, perhaps even a boy's very first true happiness, free, disinterested and supremely loyal. In dark moments, who better to turn to for solace? Stress vanishes, the body is wracked by a wondrous sensation, and the visible proof of manhood, the lakes and rivers covering the still-shuddering abdomen, glisten amidst the sweat. It is a boy's first and only true mate, one the boy will share with glee, but even after an evening of wild debauch, it'll return home with the guy that brought him. Always. The fixation on the male member, the answer to the ''Whys'' of our obsession concerning it, and that throughout the ages, is the basis of this book. We'll examine it through historical figures, Alcibiades for the Greeks, Priapus for the Romans, François I for France, Casanova for Venice, Byron will guide us through English Romanticism and Howard Hughes will represent America. We'll learn how to lengthen it, to really lengthen it, and how to restore the foreskin of those mutilated in infancy. We'll discover the benefits of that purest of elixirs, semen. Male nudity throughout time will be developed--how boys displayed their assets in Greek gymnasiums and Roman baths, baths in which men generously endowed were applauded, to the Renaissance where boys were the most brazen in their public eroticism, followed by pre-Elizabethan codpieces, and today's jocks and briefs. Phallic worship begins at birth, when the child in ancient times was laid at the father's feet and the tiny blanket opened. At the sight of the scepter the father would gratefully raise the boy above his head, to the full approval of those attending, for the scepter was the incontestable emblem that the child would grow into an oak, tall, strong and virile, who would be the power over the household were he born in a village, over a domain were his parents noble, or over the world itself, as was the destiny of Cyrus, Alexander and Caesar. He had the potential of becoming the intellectual Nietzsche had been, an artist like da Vinci and Michelangelo, an historian as was Herodotus, a writer like Homer and Shakespeare, a mathematician, an explorer, the first man to step foot on Mars. The father would now live eternally--a man's single and only true promise of an afterlife--through the thighs of the son in his arms, a boy who will perpetuate his name and his place in the universe, until the universe no longer exists. It is this, the covenant of the boy and his scepter, in times barbarous and in times enlightened. It is this the immutable promise of the phallus. This book is written about men and is for men, especially omnisexual men.