Sex & Pleasure in the Ancient World
6/2/202645 min
Sex in the distant past is often thought about with all the fun taken out of it.
Pleasure must have been a part of the sex lives of women and men in the past, so what evidence do we have to back this up? What evidence of queer sex and attraction is there? And how did the Victorians try to cover up sex and pleasure in Ancient Greece and Rome?
Joining Kate today is the wonderful historian and author Jean Menzies, whose new book explores all of this and more.
*TW: sexual violence discussed at the start of the episode*
Edited by Hannah Feodorov. Producer by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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All music from Epidemic Sounds.
Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsKate Lister· Host0:00
Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history, like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods, or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe. Hello, my lovely Betwixt-ers. It's me, Kate Lister. How the hell are you doing? It is wonderful to see you around here once again, but before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you, and I will keep telling you, because the lawyers keep telling us that we have to, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adult things and adult humor, covering a range of subjects, and you should be an adult too. That's the fair dues warning, and let's get on with it. [upbeat music] Holy fuck, it is hot, isn't it? I mean, it is balls hot. No, no, no, we're not in the UK during one of our intermittent heat waves. We happen to be in Cyprus for a very special event. Luckily for you, you've just missed the gruesome precursor of the titan Cronus castrating his father, the sky god Uranus, followed by him chucking his remains, [laughs] into the ocean. But as you can see, the waters are stirring, and coming to shore is none other