The politics of sexuality, by which we mean the various erotic activities involving women, free men, slaves, strangers or mythological characters, activities very vividly depicted on ceramics, is an old topic in classical studies. The main question of this subject matter is how physicality contributed to the establishment, stability or violation of social rules and hierarchies in the human network. To what degree and why were such affairs a public concern, affairs that today belong to the private area?

It is not enough to associate the highly explicit sexual imagery of the Greek and Roman world with some sort of predecessors to modern magazines. But yes, one would easily find calendars with erotic depictions for sale, from Sparta to Samos, but they fulfilled a well defined social purpose. Analyzed in their originary context, these images somehow ensured the strict observance of social and political boundaries, also serving as a basis for the age-specific morals.

Let us cast an eye upon the Athenian art in the fifth century BC democracy, democracy meaning the exclusion of women, slaves and strangers. Such a polarization between the ones that had access to public affairs and the outsiders reminds us of a famous phrase, a mark of Athenian identity: “I am not a slave, I am not a stranger, I am not a woman”. There functioned a logic of separation, a definition ex negativo that implied focusing on an expression of citizenship as clear as possible, so as to gain an identity. One occasion that marked in pretty brutal way this distinction between identity and alterity was the symposion, a ceremonial tradition dedicated exclusively to men, when they drank, played games and engaged in sexual intercourse with prostitutes or younger men. The symposion fortified the idea of citizenship, and iconography spoke volumes about it as well

Potters and painters fro