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The penis in history

The large penis has always been a factor in male masculinity. As far back as the Greeks, Priapus, the god of male genitalia, was always depicted by his large and oversized permanent erection. Apollo, the most beautiful of the gods, was supposed to have a large dick, making all the other gods envious and resentful.

Greek drama certainly featured the large penis. One only has to consider the comedies of Aristophanes. The men would strap on very large penises and cavort around the stage in a very lewd and crude manner. There was nothing subtle about the Greeks. Their appetite and lust for all that was crude was satisfied only by the actors’ actions. For them, the coarser the better.

The Romans adopted many Greek Gods. One in particular was Priapus, the god not only of farm animals but also male genitalia. In the House of Casa dei Vetti in Pompi he is depicted with an over-sized penis, which is permanently erect. (It can’t have done much for his heart.). Priapus is seen in much of Roman art, though one image stands out where his penis is being weighed for a bag of gold, giving rise to the expression ‘worth its weight in gold’.

‘Worth its weight in gold’

In Roman times, you only have to look at the Walls of Pompeii to realise how they revered the male genitalia. Mind you, the Romans were a perverted lot. During the reigns of Nero and Commodus, the use of the penis as a means of amusement to satisfy the Roman crowds in the arena was quite common. There was nothing more fun than to have a woman tied to a post in the middle of the arena to see how large a penis she could take. For real fun, they would have her raped by baboons, monkeys, and then, for a laugh, a donkey. As the girl screamed before she passed out, the audience would cheer. It would, of course, have traumatised the girl, but mercifully, at the end of the ordeal, they would cut her throat. So, the Romans did have a heart after all.

‘I’m sure Muffin the Mule was never asked to do this’

Spartacus, who led the slave uprising, was supposedly well-endowed, as was Alexander the Great, and it wasn’t just Rome that attracted Cleopatra to Anthony, but this of course is simply legend. The ancients liked to endow their heroes with such fanciful attributes as twenty-first century culture does with today’s pop and film stars; but most of it is idle gossip and very little more than speculation.

During the Middle Ages men would wear a codpiece to cover their ‘man of war’. Of course the sight of a larger and more bejewelled codpiece would inform a woman what sort of man she was dealing with, and he would find himself in the stocks for misrepresentation of merchandise if he didn’t live up to the product he supposedly had on show.

‘I’ve got a noble cock it crows at break of day.’ (Chaucer)

The eighteenth century was, I believe, the crudest period in European history. The exposure and flaunting of the penis were not uncommon. The fact that half of them were pox-ridden seemed to be of little concern to the ladies, whom these peacocks were trying to impress. They may have had powdered wigs and satin clothes, but their personal hygiene left much to be desired.

The reign of Victoria put a stop to all that crude vulgarity or did it? – not on your life; it simply drove it underground. The size of a man’s penis became the butt of many a music-hall joke. Smutty or suggestive songs have always been a popular source of amusement, such as Stanley Smith Master’s The Marrow Song.

‘Oh, what a beauty’

Oh, what a beauty,

I’ve never seen one as big as that before.

Oh, what a beauty,

It must be 6 foot long or even more.

It’s such a lovely colour,

So big and round and fat.

I never knew a marrow could grow as big as that.

Then of course, there was George Formby’s With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock. Although the song never rhymes “rock” with the obvious, it really doesn’t need an academic with a literature degree to explain the metaphorical significance of the small and sticky object in his pocket.