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Evidently audiences in the 60’s and 70’s had other ideas because in 1967 a ballet came to the stage which became an absolute sensation. It was called Astarte, after a naked semitic Goddess of fertility, sexuality, and war, who’d eventually be absorbed by the Greeks under the name Aphrodite.

Choreographed and directed by one Robert Joffrey it was considered groundbreaking in its staging and it remains the only ballet to ever grace the cover of Time magazine. A spread featuring it’s two lead dancers recreating poses from the ballet was also published in Playboy 5 years later. It ran for just short of a decade.

The images which follow were created by photographer Herb Migdoll. They are not documentary shots of an actual performance but rather interpretations of what took place on the stage. They are montages, built up layer by layer, with multiple color photographs way back in the mists of pre-photoshop design.

Have a look—

I’m particularly fond of that last one for some reason.

Looking at these as a group I can’t help but think of Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd, on mushrooms, at Cirque Du Soleil, or indeed of my own experiences in a similar vein. It’s easy to see from the photos why the late 60’s / early 70’s audiences flocked to it. After all, the Pink Floyd Laserium light shows didn’t really take off until 1974.

Oddly the other thing which these bring to mind for me are “the future.” Seems ridiculous, I know, but I have so many science-fictional images which were produced in this era burnt into my mind that’s it’s a kind of pavlovian response. In as much, though we scoff instantly today at anything which produces the faintest whiff of goofy utopian hippy psychedelia, I can actually imagine a revival of Astarte being quite successful a millennia from now.

By then all the hippies and their spawn and their emulators and their collective patchouli cloud will be long gone. Time will do it’s little trick of erasing all the negatives and complete failures and hippies will be viewed, on decaying film reels, in grey concrete cities, as some kind of wonderful. A new mind-obliterating nano-drug will hit the streets and blam! out will come the day-glo paisley leotards.

Actually, now that I think about it, today, with theater evidently completely out of ideas, with every shitty band having a show cobbled around its music and with scores of movies having a musical version staged, perhaps it won’t even take a millennia. Let’s just give the desperate producers time to run through broadway productions of House M.D. and 24 and To Catch A Predator and then we’ll see what’s what.

Anyhow, hope you enjoyed.

For more check out the following:
Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company.
A Rock Classic: Astarte Remembered.
Dance, Sex, and Gender.
Time magazine’s original piece: Rituals in Rock.

Lastly you can hear a few snippets of the “hard rock” music used in the production as played by the original band Crome Syrcus.

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When, as children, we first catch wind of the existence of astrological symbols we are at a point in our lives when anything which might help solidify our identities by differentiation is something deserving of our attention. Most of us, I would venture to guess, take hold of our symbol for some short interval as children, and wring whatever meaning we can out of it, drawing corollaries between ourselves and others who shared the same sign, taking heart in character traits supposedly attached, bolstering, through mythical means, our sense of ourselves. When later in our lives we reject astrology as fanciful and amusing hokum it hardly matters. Our signs are still there as the tiniest footnote at the bottom of our appraisals-of-self. We will always see in them the faintest reflection.

An analogy might be that of the lapsed Catholic, who was brought up going to church, but who on adulthood rejected religion outright. Catholicism was something born-into, something outside oneself, something not chosen but inherited. Even after a definitive choice is made to reject it, however, the symbol of a cross will always manage to successfully travel that guarded pathway to our interiors. Whatever judgement the brain passes that symbol will still hold sway with the eyes.

When I was in art school I was obliged, as all hopeful image-makers are, to re-examine the personal symbology of my life. Did any of the tired old symbols carry any weight or meaning? Could any of them be used, adapted, perverted? It dawned on me around that time that though I was fond of “The Balance” as a symbol ⊕, the equal-armed beam balance which is universally used seemed not quite right. This scale with its symmetry and elegance and precision could simply never be an accurate symbol for me, my mind, or the life that I lived. It was altogether too platonic.

A few years later while working, for a short time, as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art an alternative symbol presented itself. During a shift I was stationed in one of those wonderful, dimly-lit, and comparatively empty areas of the museum ⊕, beside some long glass cases containing Roman artifacts. There were small functional and decorative objects of all kinds inside —vessels and tools and little statues and amulets all jostling together like a the contents of Romulus’ hall closet.

Amongst all of this iron and bronze a single object seemed to demand further scrutiny. It was asymmetrical and brutal looking, with its dangling chains each terminating in a hook. I had no guess as to its function or purpose. Torture device? Weapon? Brutish tool of animal husbandry? Looking at its little placard I discovered it was called a “Roman Balance” or “Steelyard” and that it was in fact a scale. I marveled for a moment at the coincidence. Of all the objects to draw my eye and interest it had to be a scale. I knew immediately that I’d found an object I could get behind, an object which resonated with me somehow. I’d found a proper Libran symbol for myself.

A bit of background information:

The Roman balance (or statera as it was originally known) is so called because no instance has been found of its existence prior to the Roman era. A similar principle was used in ancient Egyptian balances, however, and independently created examples have been found in China. Some evidence seems to exist that this type of scale was actually in use among Greek craftsmen in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.E. before Hellenistic mathematicians like Archimedes ever formally demonstrated the theoretic basis for their workings. 

The Romans brought these scales to Britain around 55 B.C.E. and the English word ‘steelyard’ by which they are referred today is thought to be a mistranslation of the German ‘Stael-hof’ ⊕, which was itself the name of the base of the Hanseatic merchants of the Middle Ages, who used the Roman balance extensively in their businesses.











Functionally steelyards differ from the balance because they have unequal arms and employ a counterpoise, rather than a series of fixed-mass weights, which is shifted along the long arm in relation the the fulcrum. At the place where the counterpoise keeps the beam exactly horizontal, the weight of the object is indicated on an engraved scale on the long arm. ⊕

Though steelyards are less precise for weighing small objects like coins or jewels ⊕ they have the benefit of employing a single weight for a wide range of loads. They were particularly useful for weighing heavy objects like vehicles, sides of beef, and humans. Additionally they had the benefit of cheap manufacture and portability. In as much they were used as industrial scales straight through the eighteenth century and remain in use in markets all throughout Asia and and the Middle East today.

I happen to find them, with their precarious asymmetry, their hooks and chains and their myriad forms of sculpted counterweights quite compelling, and beautiful.

Visually, viscerally, the steelyard seems to embody some aspect of balance, or perhaps the personal quest for it, which the equal-arm balance does not. After having discovered it there at the Met I visited it often. It didn’t take me long to realize that this object had symbolic potential far beyond the whimsical introspection it might supply for the comparatively small group of us who were born under the sign of Libra.

What, after all, do the scales symbolize for the rest of humanity?

Justice.

Thinking of the equal-arm balance, alone, in silhouette, or held aloft by the left hand of Themis / Justitia / Lady Justice, notions undoubtedly come to mind. They are precise and unambiguously immediate, aspirational and inspirational, they are resplendent and exalted, they are incorruptible and pure. In other words they have no relation whatsoever to the realities of human justice as it is experienced and met out.

Now look at the steelyard. It is hard-looking and vaguely menacing, all hooks and chains and lengths of metal. It has a brutality to it somehow. You can imagine wielding it like a club or a flail and imagine the damage it might do were it wielded against you. Then there’s its asymmetry, which on first glance seems so counterintuitive to achieve any kind of balance. By design its sides are unequal, set against one another at cross-purposes. One side only holds the weight while the other only passes judgement, and a not quite precise judgement at that.

It’s a strange, hard, dangerous looking object, all angles and points set against a shifting bluntness, and one could imagine that were you to hand one to a child she’d be just as likely to smash in a skull as to balance anything whatsoever.

Though functionally the steelyard can achieve the same aims as our aspirational equal-arm scale, visually it suggests a complexity and precariousness and menace entirely more human, and I’d argue entirely more appropriate, symbolically, for our notions of crime and punishment, corporeal or otherwise. If a pound of flesh needs weighing this is the scale for the job.





Add to this to the forms which the steelyard’s counterweight took, and could take, and all sorts of explicit symbolic relationships emerge. In the past these “poises” as they are sometimes called were often fashioned in the shape of gods, men, women or animals. One could easily imagine a slab of beef on the hooks counterbalanced by golden McDonald’s arches for instance, or an emaciated corpse counterbalanced by an Iron Cross, a knife counterbalanced by a black glove, a smoldering retarded child counterbalanced by a weight in the shape of Texas, a boot stamping on a human face, forever, counterbalanced by a giant silver dollar, or… well… whatever delightful image strikes your fancy!

The steelyard can do it all.

Anyhow, since happening upon that Roman balance about 12 years ago I’ve adopted it in my mind. When I think Libra I think steelyard, and so, conversely when I think steelyard I think, in some small way, of myself.

When I see a statue or etching of Lady Justice my mind reflexively erases that flimsy equal-arm balance with its impossible precision and imaginary exaltation and replaces it with its hard, practical, rough and ready, asymmetrical cousin. ⊕

Symbols are what they are, obviously, and not much more, but shouldn’t good ones reflect in some way the truth of a thing? Shouldn’t they hold their weight as it were? For me the steelyard does the job admirably and, yes, before you ask, even Nonists need symbols they can believe in.

Hope you enjoyed.

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Cavellini was born into an Italian merchant family and ran a dry goods store, which in the post-war years following World War II he transformed into a thriving department store. In the late 40’s he began using profits from the family business to buy art. This is how his initial inroads into the art world began, as a collector and early (albeit decidedly amateur) proponent of Modernism. It wasn’t until about 1960, when he’d exhibited and sold much of his collection, that he began trying seriously to transition into becoming a creator of art rather than just a collector.

This was not, strictly speaking, his first foray into art-making however-

Quote: “At 15 he was dressing windows for the family shop and skillfully using brush and ink to letter price cards for the vitrines. This new-found graphic facility inspired some youthful experiments with sketching and caricature which continued during his army service and led to his being charged with lettering Mussolini’s slogans on corridor walls. A chance encounter with a local painter, Domenicao Mucci, resulted in some informal instruction in fundamentals. Right after the war Cavellini tried his hand at drawing landscapes, self-portraits and other figurative subjects. The wealth of art that he saw in the museums and ateliers of Paris during his 1947 trip persuaded him to abandon his paltry efforts, but about 12 years later he felt compelled to make art once again.” —Marcia E. Vetrocq, Art in America, 1993.

Now, just because you are compelled to create does not mean you are creating anything of particular interest to anyone else. I am of the opinion that if creating art fulfills you then the act of creation itself, its rush, its internal convolutions, its compelling emotional peaks and valleys, its ability to keep you engaged and distracted from self destruction, is reward enough. You may proclaim “I am an artist” in crowded rooms all you like, or you may work in a vacuum and never let on. Little matter, so long as you are actively fascinated and successfully avoiding the great emptiness at the center of it all, then positive outside valuations of your work are a luxury, comfy and gratifying but ultimately inessential. Cavellini did not seem to agree. For him, joining the canon was the only goal.





Public response to his work was tepid at best. He cycled quickly through styles and traditions seeking to find a voice which others might actually want to hear. He worked on abstractions, gestural pieces, collages, imagery of pop culture Icons, assemblage, etc, etc. Ultimately, the words which best describe his output to this point, however, are reproduction, homage, and appropriation. His work was “openly and blissfully derivative of the artists whose works he admired or collected.”

Quote: “Cavellini’s aggression toward the system of art, stoked by experiences of rejection both as a collector and as an artist, was expressed in acts of comically flagrant plagiarism accompanied by outrageous claims of authorship, in the seemingly endless reproduction and recycling of his own and others’ imagery, and in unabashed gestures of self-promotion.” —Marcia E. Vetrocq, Art in America, 1993.

He had 6 gallery shows between the years of 1962 and 1970 which by his yardstick were total failures, resulting in only two sales and total critical silence. It was this period of failure which inspired the conceptually self-referential “Autostoricizzazione” or “Self-Historification” which would occupy the rest of his artistic career, and find him trying desperately to “enter Olympus without asking anyone’s permission.”

Quote: “The biography of an artist is frequently written after his death, imperfectly and incompletely. Since I don’t want any such biography to be written about me, I’ve decided to write my own.” —G.A. Cavellini.

This autostoricizzazione put him at the center of a fictional art history in which he was a towering figure. He created a fake encyclopedia entry for himself ⊕, posters announcing centennial exhibitions of his work at museums around the world, and a series of postage stamps honoring him in the context of the great masters. He created frontispieces of fictional works like Dante’s Divine Cavellini, Leonardo’s Treatise on the Painting of Cavellini, and Nietzche’s Thus Spake Cavellini. He commissioned portraits of himself by better known artists which he used in his own work, he travelled with a “court photographer,” and created a seemingly endless amount of self-portraiture.





This was all the tip of the autostoricizzazione iceberg, for Cavellini had become more than anything a conceptual artist and the one concept he explored, over and over and over, was himself and his own towering position within the history of art.

Quote” Here in Italy, perhaps, there are still people who want to label me «the famous collector,» or to think of me as a rich provincial who amuses himself with sophomoric experiments in making art. «Self-Historification» may still be too far ahead of the times; people still aren’t ready to take it seriously since they find it paradoxical, anomalous and full of presumption. They act as though they considered me an artist «to be kept under observation» as though I were still waiting my turn finally to «make it». Perhaps my way of doing things is still unclassifiable, and even though I’m no longer a young artist, I’m simply never mentioned whenever the critics try to put together a show of the most significant developments in art in recent years- Either criticism has no eyes to see with or else it thinks of these free-wheeling operations of mine as belonging to a world of the future that’s still to be materialized. The critics don’t want to admit or to understand that I’m a new Duchamp.”

“For quite some time now, I’ve been receiving daily testimonials in the form of art works that give praise and pay homage both to «Self-Historification» as a phenomenon and to me as a person. Nothing like this has ever happened to an artist before. This material is all destined to go into a «Cavellini Museum,» and scholars will sooner or later be forced to study and consult it, since it’s an entirely unprecedenied phenomenon in all of art hisiory, and it’s not likely ever to happen again.”

“By now, an incredibly large number of facts and circumstances has grown up around my process of «Self-Historification» and I feel that I have every reason to be convinced that it’s destined to be a great deal more than just a meteor that flashes for only an instant through the skies; slowly but surely, «Self-Historification» is destined to become one of the most firmly fixed stars in all of art hisiory. (It) has already proved to be an indication for the construction of a new civilization and an entirely new way of thinking.” —G.A. Cavellini, from Autoritratti, 1981.

Cavallini went on “self-historifying” himself right up until his death in 1990, leaving behind a mountain of works and papers, all designed to help him storm the annals… so let me ask you, had you ever heard of him before now?

Personally I’m not particularly bowled-over by Cavellini’s works pictorially speaking, though some are compelling, nor am I much interested in conceptual art of this kind. I do find his quixotic quest interesting however.

It strikes me that though most of us may never have heard of Cavellini, he has had a modicum of success at attaining his goal of artistic immortality. I am, after all, writing about him right now and extending his post-humous reach. And though I purchased his book of self-portraits in the Strand’s bargain bin, it was there to be purchased.

To me Cavellini is a bit of a sad clown character because the lengths to which he took his joke seems slightly tragic. Rather than the sly wink and implied mystery which many self-aggrandizing artists employ to better effect, Cavellini seems to me more like a hammy vaudevillian.

The analogy which immediately comes to mind is that Loony Tunes cartoon, called Show Biz Bugs, in which Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are competing for an audience’s applause. Bugs does a simple dance and gets wild applause. Daffy meanwhile goes all out, dances with visible effort, slides toward the audience on his knees with arms outstretched in expectation… and is greeted with the sound of crickets. For me that dance is Cavellini’s career. 

And yet as I said, he is remembered to some degree. Why? I would have to contend that in much the same way world history remembers, to spite itself, particularly potent screw-ups and villains, so too does art history make allowances for others than its paragons. In Cavellini’s case I’d say he took a certain brand of conceptual buffoonery to previously unknown levels, and so must be remembered as one of its giants. It’s only fair.

The irony is that today, very similar kinds of buffoonery regularly spawn millionaire art celebrities who are whole heartedly embraced by the art intelligentsia. Indeed in many respects he is conceptually a forefather of postmodernism. So perhaps Cavellini was ahead of his time, just as he said he was, and merely had the misfortune of being born in an era when the art world still had something like accepted standards one was expected to measure up to.

In any case, it’s all subjective now isn’t it? He says “emperor of presumption,” I say sad clown, you say potato. We’re all right and Art just keeps on chugging along.

-

Most of the biographical information in this post was adapted from Marcia E. Vetrocq’s Art in America piece, Dispatches From the Jungle of Art. If you are interested in the artist I recommend reading it as it goes into much deeper detail.

The images were all scanned from Cavellini’s book Autoritratti.

You can see more of Cavellini’s work at The Cavellini Archive Foundation website.

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Linotype was a hot-metal typesetting process, remember, so each of these images had to be carved, made into a mold, and cast in lead for use. Which is simply to say there was some actual effort involved in making them available. Yes folks, in the storied past even clip-art had to walk 20 miles, uphill, in the snow, to get anywhere.

I realize, of course, that these images were almost certainly not “official” logos and that they were likely just pulled from the vast storehouse of imagery Linotype had at their disposal. But the very fact that, in an election year, they chose to offer symbols for 10 possible parties means that there was enough demand to warrant a supply. Linotype is still going strong after all so I think we can trust their business acumen.

In any case here is the page-

Nice of them to set up a sample ballot wasn’t it?

Interestingly as it turns out their example here was not to different from the ballot that citizens saw in the Presidential election of that year. There were, in fact, candidates from 7 different parties represented. Granted the 5 who were not Democrat or Republican only garnered 5.5% of the vote as a group… but still.

If I were to update their page for the present day (taking demand into consideration when formulating our supply of course!) it might as well look like like this-

That’s no fun is it?

Now in the interest of full disclosure for those of you who weren’t paying close attention the last time around, in 2004 there actually were at least 10 parties represented on the ballot.

“10 you say?!”

Yes, 10. Minus the obvious those parties were the Libertarian, Constitution, Green, Socialist, Peace and Freedom, Prohibition, Christian Freedom, Socialist Equality, Workers World, and the Personal Choice Party.

Sounds just positively bustling and vibrant doesn’t it?

It doesn’t look so vibrant unfortunately. I mean when was the last time you saw the logo for the Socialist Equality Party emblazoned on one of the 20 massive HD screens which are continuously swirling and pulsating behind Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room? In fact, now that I think of it, have you ever seen any of their logos anywhere? ⊕

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

This sounds like a job for Linotype! They can dig into their vast stores of imagery once more for the American electorate and bring forth handsome and heroic emblems which in one bold stroke typify all that the parties stand for… these emblems can pepper posters and banners and bumper stickers across the entire expanse of this great nation and the ideals for which… oh wait, that’s right, there is no demand. Sorry.

These parties already have logos obviously, ⊕ it’s just that so few people care that we’ll never see them. “Miscellaneous characters” indeed.

Setting aside the socio-political ramifications of this essentially two-party system, let’s just say that from a visual standpoint it would seem we the people are stuck with the same dull, uninspiring, dog donkey and pony elephant show.

Which brings me, finally, to the issue that I’m certain is gnawing at the young and idealistic designers reading this, who, like teary-eyed children listening to their parents discuss a dead puppy from the top of the stairs, are wondering about the those poor cast-aside logos from the 1920 Linotype catalog, which having once symbolized grand ideals now seem so hopelessly lost in the wilderness…

Let me just say this, you sweet and gentle kids- cry not!

Cry not for the Eagle or the 5 Pointed Star! Cry not for the Fountain or the Book or the Moose! Nay child; cry not for the Torch, the Scales, the Bell or the Strong Arm because in America… in America we graphics professionals see to it that no logo is left behind!

There. Feel better? Good. Now here’s some warm milk, off to sleep with you, daddy’s got a whole lot of whiskey he needs to swallow.

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How many pieces of spam do you think, sum total, have circled the globe offering reassurances to these questions? How many products exist specifically to straighten these limp question marks into emphatic exclamation points? Pumps and pills and pills and pills and the juice of crushed animal glands, co-mingled with the powder of twice-mashed horn and poultice of thrice-pummeled hoof; all named in brutishly short syllables, all presented amid lightening bolts and greased iron and battleships and biceps. You too can be hung like a field-animal and fuck like a Norse God during war time! Act Now.

It’s amusing isn’t it?

Today we seem to view the “giant cock” as an elemental force, forged in the core of the Earth with anvil and hammer. There is the mountain looming over the valley. There is the raging storm lashing out in anger above pitched seas. There is the lion taring into a herd of slavering, fear-mad prey. And then… there is the giant cock, eternally hard, standing at noble angle, in profile against the dawn light.  “Oooh say can you see...”

It’s amusing because from a cultural standpoint, “the disproportionately big dick” is not quite the icon we imagine it to be. It’s iconic certainly, no arguing that. Depictions of it have existed for about as long as iconography itself, but as to the questions of why and to what purpose? Origins and meanings? These are details largely, and in a certain sense willfully, forgotten.

At bottom every culture’s phallic symbolism involves fertility. That’s obvious. But I doubt weather at any point in prior history people have so readily confused the symbol with the object, or to put it another way– the phallus with the penis. That a man ought to actually want a cock as disproportionately gigantic as those utilized as symbols in the ancient world seems a peculiarly hilarious quirk of modernity.

The obsession with big dicks, which evidently drives the production and advertisement of all manner of apparatus and snake-oil and treatment (to say nothing of the related “substitutes” like sports cars, fire arms, yachts, preemptive wars, etc) is, strange as it sounds, less an inalienable facet of the male mind as a matter of popular taste. When approached from an historical standpoint the “giant cock” as we know it today seems little more than a men’s fashion accessory. The fashion accessory you might say.⊕

“Fashion accessory?” you exhaustedly gripe, pump-handle in hand, Yohimbe bark extract bubbling in stomach, pamphlet on Polymethyl methacrylate “girthening” surgery in the mailbox. Yes. Fashion. That’s the name for popular ideals of beauty which fluctuate over time.

Cocks were all over the place in the ancient world. In Ancient Greece and in Rome we can see the symbolic and the fashionable “ideal beauty” incarnations of the cock quite clearly because, unlike today, they did not so totally synchronize. The giant cock and the tiny cock co-existed. 

The giant cock was embodied by fertility gods, a great example being Priapus–

Quote: “This god is mainly known for his huge virile member, and the size of it is so enormous that it has been called ‘column’, ‘welve-inch pole’, ‘cypress’, ‘spear’, ‘pyramid’, and many other names of the same kind referring to the dimensions of his penis. And just as Zeus shows his thunderbolt, Poseidon his trident, Athena her spear… so Priapus cannot but proudly exhibit his penis, which best represents him, and without which he is weaponless. This is the reason why his privy parts are always shameless displayed in erection.” -Carlos Parada, Greek Mythology Link.

The idea, however, that this particular giant cock, and cocks of it’s ilk, were so readily displayed because they were in some way aspirational items, or meant to promote an eroticism of some kind, could not be further from the truth. 

In Rome Priapus statues were used as scarecrows, watching over vineyards and gardens, the symbolism of which had absolutely nothing to do with sexual pleasure. Aside from the common correlation in the ancient world between fertility of man and fertility of soil, these statues were meant to guard against theft, the message being– anyone who trespasses here will have their asses penetrated deeply and brutally and painfully.

The following Roman epigrams (collected in Priapeia by Smithers & Burton) illustrate this attitude in no uncertain terms:

“... If I do seize you ... you shall be so stretched that you will think your anus never had any wrinkles.”

“Why do you, watchman, hinder the thief from coming to me? Let him approach: he will return more ‘open’!”

“He who shall plunder with dishonest hand the little field committed to my charge, shall feel me to be no eunuch ...”

If a woman, man, or boy, thieve from me, she shall pay me with coynte, that with his mouth, this with arse.”

In short the giant cock of Priapus symbolized exactly what a real cock of such massive size would signal– pain, punishment, and serious threat for whosoever was made to reckon with it. You think it’s a good day at the office the first time a porn actress is faced with one of those crazily gargantuan tricks of genetics? Fumes of this outlook waft into modern times with “flipping the bird"⊕ a threatening “fuck you” with our longest finger, and in the painful term Priapism. As fascinated as we may be with size none of us want to be introduced to Priapus in the emergency room.











As for the Greeks, the giant cock, when not displayed in connection to fertility gods like Adonis and Pan was a grotesque item which fell mainly under the purview of comedy.

According to Aristotle Greek comedy, as a staged art form, actually sprung directly from the giant cock.

In the spring Greeks held Phallophoria festivals, or Phallic processions, in honor of Dionysos. During these festivals phalloi were carried through the streets, while people dressed as ithyphallic satyrs uttered crude jests and insults at one another, pranced with maenads, and sang the praises of Phales. These festivals were known as komos. The revelers themselves were referred to as komasts and their songs were termed komoedia. The huge leather phalluses (phaletarions) worn by revelers as well as their crude jests followed komoedia as it made its transition to the stage, becoming “comedy.”

Every modern comedian who shamelessly and repeatedly wields the dick joke is a perfect descendant of his comedic forefathers.

Aristotle defined the comedy of his age thusly: “Comedy is… an imitation of inferior people” It was lampoon and satire and ridicule and invective. The laughable in Greece was “a species of what is disgraceful.” Taking these attitudes into account what does it say about the giant penis itself, which was so deeply ingrained in the form?

To paraphrase Stephen Halliwell from his book The Sleep of Reason. Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece: Comedy was a genre in which the visible phallus was probably the almost invariable accouterment of male characters– a sign of comic masculinity whose presence marked a perpetual scope for indecency. The comic phallus, in all its various conditions, was itself a symbol of the institutionalized shamelessness of the genre (embodied by the “thick red-tipped dangling leather phallus, there to make the boys laugh") Its presence, attached to most if not all male characters in the genre, is a visible sign of comedy’s reduction of sexuality to a level of immodesty that is ludicrous rather than truly threatening.











So from a symbolic standpoint, the giant cock we fetishize and love so well today seems to have had three intertwined connotations in the cradle of western civilization: fertility, punishment, and ludicrousness. All sensibly direct. But what of the fashions of the time? While these massive cocks were being paraded through the streets, brandished like clubs, and bandied about en masse on stages, its weakling brother, the wee-wee, was simultaneously being immortalized in statuary and vases and mosaics.

Based on artistic evidence alone the “ideal beauty” of the age, in regards to the penis, would seem to be summed up quite succinctly in a singe hyphenated word: itsy-bitsy. Or perhaps more properly in the shorter: tiny.

Quote: “...the artistic evidence implies that over-large genitals were considered aesthetically unpleasing by the Greeks and Romans. ...the ideal type of male beauty epitomised in classical sculpture, Greek and Roman, normally depicts genitals of somewhat less than average size...certainly never more. Consequently, the exaggerated genitals of Priapus made him seem an ugly and grotesque figure. -Catherine Johns, Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome

Quote: “The Greek aesthetic prefers discreet genitals, small in size. Images on vases show this clearly. This is considered true elegance… Large genitals are not the attribute of the superman.” It is not the heros of Classical literature and art who are provided with giant cocks but rather men of decrepit old age, “monstrous creatures” like the Pygmies, slaves, and anyone whose “extraordinary sexual energy” brings them closer to animal than man. Heros, kings, and high-born were depicted with tiny penises, that was the ideal, and that was the fashion, and they liked it that way gash darn it!

Why this ought to be the case is arguable. Was it simply the natural “other side of the coin” to the prevailing notion of giant genitals as grotesque? Was it wrapped up in the aesthetic obsession with perfect proportion? Was it an artistic device employed to divert attention away from the genitals? Was it the side effect of a cultural preference for pederasty? Was it simply because artists’ models posed in chilly studios? Like the riddle of the tootsie-pop, the world may never know.

One matter of penis fashion we do do know for sure in regards to the Greeks and Romans, which is by no means unrelated, is their preference for a long prepuse or posthe or foreskin. 

On ideal male beauty Aristophanes conveniently puts these words in Socrates’ mouth for us:

If you follow my recommendations,
And keep them ever in mind,
You will always have a rippling chest, radiant skin,
Broad shoulders, a wee tongue,
A grand rump and a petite posthe.
-Aristophanes, from Clouds.

“Petite posthe?"

Quote: “Here, the allusion to the posthe clearly summons up an image of the entire penis, albeit one that conforms to the aesthetic ideal seen in artistic depictions of gods and heroes. The imprecise use of the word posthe serves the humorous context because, as others have shown, the Greeks valued the longer over the shorter prepuce in relation to the length of the entire penis, and the smaller over the larger penis as a whole. Even if one were to argue that the word posthe was being used precisely here, the rules of proportion, as deduced from art, would require that a petite posthe be part of a proportionally even more petite penis… if a circumcised penis goes with a hideous face and a long and tapered prepuce goes with a handsome face, it is the long and tapered prepuce that was admired.” -Frederick M. Hodges, The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and
Rome.

So… If the aesthetic ideal was a long foreskin ⊕ and the foreskin achieves its most impressive lengths in youth (frequently representing more than three-quarters of the length of the penis) then it follows that other related outward traits would be preferred by proximity, namely- eensy-weensy-teeny-weenyness.





Sounds crazy to we pipe-swinging, purple helmeted, bronzed gods of the future, but there it is. To those on whose genius we’ve built our civilizations, we, with our preoccupations on rock-hard massiveness, would likely be seen as brutish and grotesque. Proudly carrying our pharmaceutically enhanced, vacuum lengthened, surgically “girthened,” rods and staffs into sexual battle we’d probably be laughed out of well appointed bed chambers across the Mediterranean.

Waah-waah-waaaaaaah.

Epilogue

Though I do certainly find our modern obsession with size, and all its attendant pageantry, amusing, I’d feel dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that it’s entirely possible everything I’ve just written, though basically factual, adds up to a pile of horseshit. I admit it. The theories of scholars and historians and philosophers have the amazing ability to sound fantastic and make perfect sense but manage to simultaneously miss the mark completely. As a particularly astute Wikipedia contributor points out in the article on Priapus:

“Some scholars have suggested that in the ancient world, large penises were generally considered comical rather than attractive. However, this theory is not supported by all of the literary evidence available. For example in the Satyricon of Petronius, when the heroes arrive in Croton in Sicily, they come across a youth who is exposed and found to be very well endowed. As a result the townspeople (including women) hold him in reverence and literally trip over each other to touch his phallus for good luck. In this instance there does not seem to be any indication that the youth’s unnaturally large phallus is regarded with disgust - quite the contrary. It cannot therefore be decidedly concluded what the classical view of penis size may have been. In the case of art and sculpture it seems likely that an average or smaller size was desirable, but this does not exclude the possibility that the public, or the ‘man on the street’ held different views.”

Indeed. No matter what kind of cock artists were carving into their marble, and no matter what the learned chroniclers of history set down in their notebooks, it might be that the average joe still wanted to feel some satisfying weight in his loincloth. Or as Camille Paglia puts it in her learned way– “Most of the world has probably always esteemed a large penis.”

It’s worth noting finally that in comparison to the rest of our primate brothers we humans are well hung. Quote: “Compared to other primates, even larger primates such as the gorilla, the male human genitalia are remarkably large. The human penis is both longer and thicker than that of any other primate both in absolute terms and in relative size compared with the rest of the body.”

For this, surely, there is a reason totally unconnected to symbols and fashions?!

Hope you enjoyed. 

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