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Men with their boyfriends
Men shown giving gifts, enticing,
and making love to youths. In a humorous detail, the man
without a partner is masturbating.
Attic black-figure amphora by
the Painter of Berlin,
ca. 540 BCE, from Vulci,
Italy.
click image to enlarge
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A black-figure pelike painted with an erotic scene depicting three homosexual couples in various stages of courtship and an odd man out. The scene is likely to be at a palestra, since two of the lovers hold victor's garlands and everyone is naked. Nude athletics were the rule in Classical Greece and the men oiled their bodies with expensive olive oil to highlight their muscles and build. The boys were also nude, but being more modest they did not oil themselves below the waist, so as not to draw undue attention to their private parts and their legs. Likewise, when they rose they made sure to brush away the imprint their bottoms left in the sand.
One man tries to seduce a youth, who accepts the love gift and gazes directly into the eyes of his suitor, a sure sign of interest. Next to them, an aroused man makes love between the thighs with a youth who is equally aroused. Though boys were supposed to be disinterested, this painter did not believe it. Next to them is a man who seems unable to find a boyfriend. He relieves his need by pleasuring himself, a unusual sight (unless for comic relief), as masturbation (in Greek, anaphlan, or "up-firing") was rarely the subject of erotic art. The last couple shows a very sexually excited man (perhaps a comic exaggeration) trying hard to seduce his boyfriend, who seems to be in no hurry to have sex.
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