Euphronios, c. 520-510 B.C.E.
"The Greeks obviously attached great importance to attainable ideals of physical beauty. Expressions of physical pride stand as one of the hallmarks of their literature and art. Judging by the way they depicted themselves in their figurative art, and taking into account the general use of the kynodesme and its accompanying ethos that exalted the well-proportioned, sleek, tapered, protective, beautifying, and propriety-preserving akroposthion, one may surmise that they would have agreed with a recent commentator in the British Journal of Urology who wrote: "One can never be too rich or too thin or have too much foreskin."
From "The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome" by Frederick M. Hodges, The Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 75, pp. 375-405, Fall 2001. You can read the entire article by clicking over to The Circumcision Reference Library. Seriously, go look. It's very edifying. You'll at least learn what kynodesme and akroposthion mean.
2 comments:
Another testament to the sophistication that befits a civilisation that inquired whether things were so by nature or by nurture all the time (they did!). Extremely elucidating article. Thank you!
It is an amazing document, isn't it? On many levels...
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