Spaces for female sexual diversity

Floor 2, Room 36, Showcase 36.11. Copa del Pintor de Oltos

Female sexuality, like almost everything related to women in Greek culture, was subjected to men, and occupies a very limited place in the sources. The social norm established that the unmarried free female citizen should be chaste, the married woman should only have relations with her husband, and the female slave should put her body at the disposal of her masters. References to female homoeroticism, apart from the examples in myth and poetry that we will see later, are extremely rare, and generally derogatory. However, in some specific contexts, certain women were able to operate beyond these narrow margins.

This cup depicts two hetairai, i.e. courtesans or luxury prostitutes, participating in a banquet. Hetairai were usually women of foreign origin, and therefore somewhat less subject to rules and conventions than free women and female citizens. They were also highly educated in areas such as music and reading, could accompany men to the symposium in an erotic atmosphere, and some even chose their lovers and achieved great social prominence. Aspasia, for example, a teacher of rhetoric and companion of Pericles or Phrine, a model for Praxiteles' famous Aphrodite of Cnidus, was described by some authors as a hetaira.

Given this particular status, and their presence in the banquet space, images of hetairai can sometimes be one of the few windows onto female homoeroticism in iconography. In the case of this cup, several iconographic elements show us an intention of erotic representation. In addition to both women being naked, one of them places her foot on the crotch of the other, while offering her wine. Both gestures are used in other contexts to indicate erotic relations, so the eroticism of this image is clearly codified. The inscription accompanying the scene, "drink you too", also alludes to this eroticised space.

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