page_title: Philaenis
section_title: First-century Latin
hierarchical_section_title: Philaenis / Later allusions / First-century Latin
caption_attribution_description: Español: [Marco Valerio Marcial], [Epigrammata], Mediolani, Udalricus Scinzenzeler, 1490. Custodiado en el Archivo del Gobierno de Aragón.
context_page_description: Philaenis of Samos was supposedly the author of a famous ancient sex manual. According to a surviving fragment of a treatise which claims to have been written by her, she was from Samos, and her father was called Ocymenes. However, many modern scholars consider "Philaenis" a fictional character whose persona may have been adopted by a variety of erotic writers. Two satirical Greek epigrams from the Palatine Anthology by the poets Aeschrion of Samos and Dioscorides purport to defend Philaenis's reputation by insisting that she did not write the treatise attributed to her. Aeschrion instead insists that the treatise was written by the Athenian sophist Polycrates. The reputed writings of Philaenis were well known throughout classical antiquity and scholars believe that they may have influenced Ovid's Ars Amatoria.
  In later times, Philaenis was remembered for her reputation of licentiousness. A fictional character named Philaenis appears in the Epigrams of the Roman poet Martial as a masculine woman known for having sex with women. The Christian writers Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Clement of Alexandria deplore the writings attributed to Philaenis as depraved and immoral.
context_section_description: The structure of the treatise attributed to Philaenis resembles that of the later poetic Ars Amatoria by the Roman poet Ovid and it is generally thought that Ovid probably drew on it for inspiration. To the ancient Romans, Philaenis and her writings symbolized the perceived profligacy of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Philaenis is mentioned in the Priapeia, a collection of Latin poems originally associated with cultic statues of the god Priapus and later collected during the first century AD. In one of these poems, narrated in the first-person by Priapus himself, the god lists his misfortunates:
  There comes in addition to these things the sign of shamelessness, this obelisque erected by my lecherous limb. Right up to it, the puella – I almost said her name – is accustomed to come with the one who shags her (cum suo fututore), and, if she has not completed all the positions described by Philaenis (tot figuris, quas Philaenis enarrat), she leaves, still itching for it (pruriosa).
  According to Boehringer, this poem indicates that girls, or puellae in Latin, may have read some kind of writings or discourses attributed to Philaenis. This passage also associates Philaenis with both knowledge of sex and sexual excessiveness.
  The Roman epigrammatist Martial, who wrote in the late first century AD, uses a fictional character named Philaenis in his satires, who may have been partially based on the persona of Philaenis of Samos. Martial's Philaenis is portrayed as figure of his own time, not as a person from the distant past. She is described a stereotypical tribade, who sodomizes boys, has sex with women, engages in cunnilingus, and lifts weights. In epigram 7.67.1, Martial introduces Philaenis, declaring:
  Epigram 7.70 mocks Philaenis for her inappropriate virility, protesting:
  Martial ironically describes Philaenis refusing to perform fellatio because it was "unmanly", but yet engaging in cunnilingus, an activity which Martial deems so utterly feminine that only the most demented person would consider it manly. Martial emphasizes Philaenis's Greek character by peppering his epigrams against her with Greek phrases and loanwords, such as harpasto ("handball"), haphe ("yellow sand"), halteras ("jumping weights"), palaestra ("wrestling ring"), and colyphia ("meat dishes"). His descriptions of Philaenis and other masculine women bear close similarities to the descriptions found in the writings of the poet Seneca the Younger, who lived about a generation before Martial, and indicate that Martial was probably drawing inspiration either from Seneca himself or from the same tradition from which Seneca also drew his inspiration.
caption: 1490 Latin edition of Martial's Epigrams, which, prior to the discovery of P. Oxy. 2891, were one of the main sources of information about Philaenis[25]
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