2023-08-25 11:05:00
The world-famous Laocoon marble group in the Pio Clementino Vatican Museum is always crowded with tourists. The sculpture, more than two meters high, created about 2000 years ago, depicts the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons. It is said that Laocoön advised the Trojans not to bring a Greek wooden horse into the city, warning his compatriots against the deceit of the Achaeans. At that time, Laocoön, who was sacrificing to Poseidon, and his sons were attacked by two snakes that sailed across the sea and strangled them. The Trojans took their death as a divine sign and nevertheless brought a horse into the city. Indeed, warriors hid in it, who then accelerated the fall of Troy.
Such is a fascinating story from the distant past, but one detail draws particular attention from viewers: Laocoön’s penis is extremely small, and not only on him. Statues of muscular men with tiny genitals are scattered throughout the museum. Why? Let’s figure it out.
Self control over lust
Why do you think the sculptors of antiquity so modestly equipped men? “Hmm, I’m a gynecologist by profession,” the Dutch tourist replies with a smile, “I’m not particularly interested in the lower parts of male bodies.” And then he adds: “Although, according to statistics, the penises of southern men are shorter than those of northern ones.”
However, this is clearly not the reason, says archaeologist and guide Chiara Jatti. “For the ancient Greeks and Romans, large genitals were considered ugly,” she explains. “Sculptors modeled small genitals only because they wanted to emphasize that this person is a rational intellectual in control of his instincts.”
An ancient masterpiece – the Laocoön groupPhoto: Frank Schneider/imageBROKER/IMAGO
Thus, we can conclude that ancient man had a high degree of self-control and self-control – in contrast to the barbarians and some gods, including Dionysus, the god of winemaking, pleasure and ecstasy. In his environment there were always anomalous satyrs – intermediate beings between a man and a goat. They arranged magnificent feasts and had fun with the forest nymphs.
“These gods and forest spirits were lustful, so their genitals were depicted as correspondingly large,” Jatti says. The son of the god of wine Dionysus and the goddess of love Aphrodite, Priapus had by far the largest penis. Aphrodite abandoned a child with an abnormally large phallus in the mountains. There shepherds found him, raised him and worshiped him as a bearer of fertility because of his impressively huge penis.
Michelangelo was inspired by antiquity
A small penis as an ideal of beauty originally appeared in ancient Greece. About 2400 years ago, the ancient Greek poet and comedian Aristophanes first formulated what the ideal male body should be like: “Shining chest, fair skin, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks and a small penis.”
Statue of David by Michelangelo in FlorencePhoto: Paolo Gallo/Zoonar/picture alliance
This idea was taken up by the Romans. And not only them: Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo and Raphael were in awe of the perfectly modeled masterpieces of antiquity and used them as a guide in their work. Michelangelo’s David sculpture, created between 1501 and 1504, which can be admired today in the Accademia Gallery in Florence, is equipped with a disproportionately small penis in relation to an athletic body. However, according to art historians, this does not detract from the beauty of his body.
Study: Piselli getting bigger
Currently, the idea of the male genital organs has changed. Miniature genitals are out of fashion for a long time, large penises are considered a symbol of masculinity and success. They’re even getting longer, according to a recent study from Stanford University in California: Male genitalia have grown by 24 percent in several regions of the world and across all age groups over the past 30 years. This is stated in a recently published study in the specialized journal World Journal of Men’s Health.
The small penis of the Trojan priest LaocoönPhoto: imagebroker/IMAGO
In ancient times, images of the current size of the male genitalia would have caused a real aesthetic shock. “Length is not really important, women have known this for a long time,” says a tourist from Israel, smiling in front of Laocoön’s group and photographing him as a keepsake. It is worth recalling that in Italy, penises are colloquially called “piselli”, which means “peas”. How can one not recall the Latin saying: Nomen est omen – the name speaks for itself.
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