Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece

Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece surveys the expectations surrounding bodies, marriage, desire and reproduction across Greek society. It examines the sharply different roles assigned to women and men, the organisation of households, ideals of beauty and masculinity, medical theories about sex and the ways religion and myth represented adultery, fertility and bodily transformation. Athens and Sparta provide contrasting examples rather than a single universal model.

The book also addresses prostitution, pederasty, same-sex relationships, sexual violence, slavery and the erotic imagery found on ordinary objects. L. J. Trafford distinguishes ancient categories of status, age and sexual role from modern identities while questioning familiar claims that Greek women were uniformly secluded or that every Athenian man followed the same practices. Literary testimony, law, medicine and material evidence are used to reconstruct a culture whose assumptions remain influential but cannot be treated as modern ones in costume.