
Why do old statues have such small penises? - okket
https://howtotalkaboutarthistory.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/why-do-all-old-statues-have-such-small-penises/
======
blowski
They don't - they're about average.

 __ __ __Following links are NSFW! __ __ __

*[https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-83057b24725b6e813a747a...](https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-83057b24725b6e813a747aae8f741087)

* [https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0f7e6c4cf3094a8d60b824...](https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0f7e6c4cf3094a8d60b824eec99910a0)

Taken from Quora answer - [https://www.quora.com/Why-do-ancient-Greek-
sculptures-and-st...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-ancient-Greek-sculptures-
and-statues-all-feature-small-penises)

~~~
pervycreeper
Key quote from the Quora link:

> (1) Long, thick penises were considered--at least in the highbrow view--
> grotesque, comic, or both and were usually found on fertility gods, half-
> animal critters such as satyrs, ugly old men, and barbarians. A circumcised
> penis was particularly gross. (2) The ideal penis was small, thin, and
> covered with a long, tapered foreskin.

This is in conflict with your idea that they are just 'average', rather than
idealized.

~~~
empressplay
No, the average penis size is pretty small... it's the idea of the larger
penis that's idealized in modern society

~~~
pervycreeper
Maybe so, but the two explanations are at odds in any case.

~~~
creshal
Not really? Considering deviations from the average grotesque/unaesthetic and
idealizing averages (see also, Norma sculpture) fits together rather well.

~~~
pervycreeper
They are distinct explanations, though. I suppose you can idealize what's
average, technically.

~~~
creshal
Is it that incomprehensible that something as subjective as aesthetics is too
complicated to be reduced to a single explanation?

> I suppose you can idealize what's average, technically.

Not just technically, it happened in a few well-documented cases, like the
Norma craze I mentioned:
[https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-
air-...](https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-
discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html)

------
jgrahamc
_Firstly, they’re flaccid. If you compare their size to most flaccid male
penises, they are actually not significantly smaller than real-life penises
tend to be._

So... they're not small. I guess most people haven't seen many average,
flaccid ones. If most of your exposure to penises is hardcore pornography and
Mapplethorpe that confusion is understandable.

~~~
Intermernet
My very good friend has the rare distinction of being a medical scrotum model.
This was a paid position (behind white curtains etc) of being an anatomical
model for the male scrotum for medical education purposes.

He read, and studied, many text books that described and illustrated the
average, flaccid penis in order to mentally handle this job without emotional
damage.

He was the first person to bring to my attention the argument over statue
penis size vs. perceived real penis size and I'm surprised to see that the
debate continues! He had many references to studies done in this field (it's
surprisingly popular!)

Despite the continuing debate, my friend has a unique set of skills on his CV.

~~~
yason
_He read, and studied, many text books that described and illustrated the
average, flaccid penis in order to mentally handle this job without emotional
damage._

What sort of emotional damage did he think would result from being a medical
scrotum model? What did the job entail actually? I would assume he would let
students see his penis or have it photographed for anatomy books, or something
similar? Or were the students allowed to touch it, or something?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Or were the students allowed to touch it, or something?

Well, at some point there will be a need for hands-on practice. I don't know
if the friend is providing that, but I hope somebody is.

I assume there's a certain amount of verbal discussion, also.

------
pavel_lishin
The author mentions that David looks afraid from the front, but doesn't
provide a photo, so I went looking:
[http://i.imgur.com/OVJdNac.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/OVJdNac.jpg)

He definitely doesn't look afraid from below. He always looked bored to me,
but looking him in the eyes, he definitely looks concerned.

~~~
dazmax
Wow, I can't believe we don't see that angle more often, it adds so much to
the statue.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I wonder how many other works of art are poorly displayed.

~~~
tawpKek
Interesting you mention the fact about it being poorly displayed. I would say
it is, but not because you don't often see this frontal view. As you may or
may not know, the sculpture was originally meant to be displayed on the roof
of the Duomo. Michaelangelo altered the proportions slightly so that it would
appear to be correct when viewed from an extreme low angle.

~~~
tmm
Is _that_ why his right hand seems extremely elongated? I've always wondered.
Viewed from a steep angle, I imagine it would look quite normal.

------
huffmsa
From a friend who studied "classics" as a degree, the Greeks thought massive
schlongs were comical and bestial, as well as stole focus from the musculature
and overall balance of the art.

Rome on the other hand considered itself a masculine nation, who's roads were
broad and straight, never turning for nature.

Not that the Greeks couldn't have fun, they used statues with erect penises as
road signs in Athens, famously knocked off by Alcibiades (in fact he was
framed by a rival ) the night before the invasion of Sicily.

The David is a statue of a 14 year old, in addition to the reasons given in
the article.

~~~
lingben
Also in classical times the 'seat of power' for men was not the penis but the
testicles.

Today we equate masculinity and virility with a large penis, but to the Greeks
and Romans a large penis had no such connotation.

When you think about it, it makes sense from a biochemical perspective.
Without the male testes a man can not produce testosterone which is the key
hormone that regulates growth, muscle mass, aggressiveness, competitiveness,
vitality, etc.

So it is understandable to think that a larger pair of testes would make you
'more' of a man and a smaller set, less.

Not sure when exactly this change occurred in Western culture but it would be
the more interesting question to try to answer.

------
chimprich
I have an alternative theory: the extremities of the statue are more delicate
and the most likely parts to get knocked off over time. The size of the penis
is probably proportional to the chance of it being knocked off, so we see
fewer surviving examples of more endowed statuary. This theory doesn't
necessarily compete with the one in the article; canny sculptors may have gone
for smaller dimensions to make their statues more robust as well as
aesthetics.

~~~
tdaltonc
> canny sculptors may have gone for smaller dimensions to make their statues
> more robust as well as aesthetics.

I think that's one step to far. It's a better (at least 'cleverer'?) argument
if you just leave it at "it's survivor bias."

------
justifier
semi offtopic because my anectdote is more about the compactness of the
genitals than their size:

i used to live in firenze and there is a statue of neptune(o) in the palazzo
vecchio

once i was walking past it with a friend and i told her it was one of my
favourite statues in the city

and she surprisingly responded, 'of course it is'

i asked why it was so obvious and she said, 'well, look at his balls'

"what about his balls?"

'that's an old man with the balls of a prepubescent boy'

now, you could make an argument about the models used or some social aspect of
the times or artist but i loved where she went from there

"interesting, go on"

'it's a clear fetishising of immortality, to think you can be old with such a
tight young body is the pure representation of a god, the immortal'

wisdom of experience, strength of youth

(o)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_Neptune,_Florence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_Neptune,_Florence)

------
pazqo
Not going to translate (this is Italian -and in particular Sicilian) and there
are two sculptors arguing with the local priest about the size of the dong.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WKAjQKTz3w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WKAjQKTz3w)

~~~
donretag
I speak Italian, and even I am grateful for the subtitles. I'm as far away
from Sicilian as possible.

Many of the great classic Italian movies are in (Southern) dialect, so I tend
to watch them with subtitles. Need to watch this movie.

------
drcross
I haven't seen this (my) theory mentioned but it's worth thinking about-
sculptors of fine art were keen to differentiate themselves from poor cheap
carvings that you can still get to this day in cheap markets in rural towns on
the european continent. Go through stalls in Spanish seaside towns and you'll
immediately find lewd phalic sculptures. They are made to shock the person
receiving the gift. Proper artists wanted to go in the other direction,
reducing the size of the genitalia so it's not a focus of the work.

------
leroy_masochist
Has anyone considered the possibility that the statues were in the pool? [0]

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldUZvxjKMGs#t=1m18s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldUZvxjKMGs#t=1m18s)

------
galfarragem
Women breasts are also small in old statues.

Maybe we can infer that sculptors didn't want erogenous zones to become too
relevant and overshadow the statue as a whole.

~~~
goldbrick
Part of the reason for this is that many of the models for Renaissance
artists' sculptures of women were actually men.

------
peter303
I suspect large dicks and boobs are a recent evolutionary development, but not
that recent. You just cant run down dinner or walk that efficiently with all
that junk flopping around. Many joggers probably have experimented once either
in a college bare run or in the wilderness and found it tough :-)

Lice genetics suggests clothing is at least 80K years old even though the
oldest needles are less than half that age. So people may have been
engineering "support" to decrease the disadvantages of size. Nearly all the
near naked jungle tribes seem to have support. I am suggesting size increased
long before 2000 years ago, but not the entire history of the human race.

------
tzs
Before searching the internet for the answer a couple years ago, my
speculation used to be that artists were afraid to make well endowed statues
because some wife or concubine of the emperor might make an unflattering
comparison, and it was never a good idea in those days to get an emperor
pissed off at you.

------
Raphmedia
Food for thoughts: When you fight naked or pantless against men with sharp
sticks, you don't want a long penis that is easy to hit.

~~~
lolc
If I'm fighting you with a sharp stick I will not aim at your penis. Don't
worry about that my friend!

Your crotch is the least interesting part to hit.

~~~
Raphmedia
Talhoffer's fencing manuals are full of groin stabs and I've seen it in a few
others.

[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/17516250/image...](http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/17516250/images/1326462501450.jpg)

~~~
lolc
I don't know the first thing about fencing. But that image doesn't look like a
stab to me. It doesn't look like it's aimed at the penis in particular either.
(But again I know nothing of the sport.) (Edit: I agree that if I had a sword,
the crotch could be considered for an attack, but I'd go for the hip joints
mostly.)

What I do know is that if I have a sharp stick, I will not aim it at your
penis. The main goal in a fight is to incapacitate. So an attack on the penis
even if successful would be rather wasted. Bleeding from the crotch doesn't
make you any less dangerous in the short term.

~~~
Raphmedia
You will die from bleeding from the groin. This also makes it so your opponent
cannot reproduce.

The pain alone from a hit to the groin is also enough to make somebody vomit
or straight out pass out. I'm not certain if that effect is the same with
cutting as it is with punches and kicks...

~~~
lolc
We're in a fight with sharp sticks and you're concerned with reproduction?!
You should review your romantic ideas about violence.

~~~
Raphmedia
I think the main point is the fact that your opponent bleed out, vomit and
pass out.

~~~
lolc
Yes they might do so after the fight. During the fight you don't really know
how they will react to it. In a lot of cases they will not notice the injury
and continue to fight you.

------
amelius
I was hoping that this was sort of reflecting the norm :S

------
amelius
Since the sculptors in those days were mostly men, a better question might be
why the female statues have such small breasts :)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Er, the breasts are about average?

------
burfog
Look, it's stone. It was carved with a hammer and chisel. There is no "undo"
and you don't even know if there might be a hidden defect in the stone until
it snaps. You can't glue a broken penis back on. If you break it, you keep it,
unless you can find a buyer for a stone penis and the corresponding
emasculated statue.

Some of these statues probably started off with huge penises. The stone broke,
and thus the statues got downsized. It's that or lug a new boulder back to the
workshop.

Statue buyers must have had a say as well, and vandalism is not a recent
invention. People have been snapping parts off of art since before recorded
history. If you were an ancient statue buyer, would you choose a design that
will easily suffer damage at the hands of a 12-year-old kid? No way. Short is
best. It's probably cheaper too.

------
alexandrerond
I've seen this question answered before and the explanation was that small
flaccid penises imply a proportionally large change when they become erect.
While an already large but flaccid penis would proportionally not change so
much.

Greeks considered the difference between the size of a flaccid vs erect penis
a sign of masculinity, and therefore tended to use small penises.

What's more glorious than knowing that the flaccid retracted penis of an
amazing athlete will grow 4x when required (which is plausible). A larger non
retracted penis wouldn't grow so much proportionally.

------
barking
Maybe the ones with big ones were vandalised?

~~~
chippy
but why would they be?

~~~
Fishman343
It was actually very common for statues from ancient Mediterranean
civilisations to have their genitalia knocked off by later, more conservative
peoples. There are many in museums today which have been defaced by order of
Pope Pius IX and other 16/17/18th century leaders.

~~~
Grishnakh
"Are you anti-Catholic?"

"No, I'm anti-vandalism."

------
nxzero
Guess this begs the question of how "big is better" in pop-culture.

Anyone know?

------
snake_plissken
They could have been cold. If you have a penis and scrotum, you know what
happens to them when you are cold. That picture of the statue of Laocoön
battling snakes with his sons in the article, they were probably battling the
snakes in some dank, cold cistern right above the gates to Hades.

------
wiz21
I'd venture another explanation. When I compare myself to those "normal"
statue, I don't feel inferior :-) The fat is that a statue is an idealization;
so being the same as the idealized stuff is a warm comforting feeling...

------
mmagin
Am I the only one who misread this as "statuses" and thought it was about the
Twitter 140 character limit?

------
junnan
There should be scientific studies telling us the average size of penises.

------
amake
The linked article's title is "Why do all old statues have such small
penises?". Why was the word "penises" censored on HN?

Edit: It's now been changed. It used to say "male genitalia" instead of
"penises".

~~~
Intermernet
Guessing that
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=okket](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=okket)
self-censored due to perceived American "sensibilities". Those of us who
aren't from the USA never really understand what causes insult or not. (no
joke, and no snark, it's absolutely true that this causes confusion to
Australians, and I assume it does to a whole bunch of people from other
nationalities!)

EDIT: Title has been changed. Good for whoever changed it!

~~~
chippy
Where America has a huge hardcore pornography industry, common nudity on major
motion pictures and award winning TV shows, nudists, hippy communes and sex
cults in the country, Burning Man and San Francisco, it also has a strong
protestant conservative prudishness. It's very confusing to a European.

~~~
valarauca1
The American sexual liberation movement started in the 1960's, and centered on
the west coast/San Francisco specifically.

Before that America was literally founded (in the north at least) by religious
conservatives who were too prudish for Europe. In fact the early US Quaker
movement banned sex all together.

~~~
huxley
You're probably thinking of the Shakers, compared to other non-conformist
sects, the Quakers had relatively few hangups about sex.

~~~
npsimons
That being said, I can attest to at least the Shaker melody (well known from
Copland's "Appalachian Spring") as a touchstone of American culture. It's
pretty good.

------
atomi
Who are all you people? What happened to HN?

~~~
benbenolson
What are you talking about?

~~~
atomi
You haven't noticed a serious decline in the quality of comments and posts?
This site used to be much more startup and programmer focused. Now we have
posts about the penis size of statues. :/

edit: What would you know about that? You joined less than a year ago.

~~~
tracker1
I don't think you are correct, there is a very broad variety of interesting
topics that come across HN daily... I find it interesting the stories around
hardware hacking in the 60-80's that come up at times... Others include
RF/Radio... There's also a touch of art and politics.

Just because _you_ may not find everything interesting doesn't mean a
significant portion of the members of this site won't. I started out doing art
work, I shifted to programming by chance because I had a talent for it, and it
paid well. I enjoy it, but it's never been my first choice of careers.

~~~
atomi
Yeah. I get it. But a lot of us are moving to lobste.rs. You can stay here and
enjoy your interesting HN posts. I'm done.

~~~
lotharbot
Your most recent page of comments includes this thread, a thread about illegal
immigration, and one about suicide rate. You've also commented about Earl Grey
tea and HBO in the past -- back in the years when HN was supposedly more about
technology. You've never submitted a story, tech or otherwise. Yet you've
suddenly become a startups-and-code purist?

FWIW I like lobste.rs -- but there aren't "a lot of us" moving; the front page
has one article with 60 comments, one with 28, one with 13, and the rest are
in the single digits. The highest upvote total is 37. (Which you may view as a
good thing, if you want a more focused / restricted site than HN.)

~~~
atomi
Some people, whom I have a great deal of respect for, have moved to lobste.rs
And I do view the more focused / restricted aspect as a good thing. You've
highlighted how some of my more recent posts on HN make it clear how far I've
strayed from code / startups. So I'm making an effort not to get sucked into
the frivolity. Thanks.

------
i_have_to_speak
Well done, HN. You upvoted it. Now let's see you discuss it.

~~~
drunken-serval
I found the article interesting but I don't know how much there is to discuss.
The article asks the question and answers it. In a neat little package. (Pun
intended... I couldn't stop myself.)

------
toypaj
it was cold when they were modelling

------
blackhaz
I think this is important in the penis enlargement era. Now I will sleep
better.

------
HillaryBriss
> _... his small penis allowed him to remain coolly logical_

This suggests an important new brogrammer interview question

------
AbuAssar
we need NSFW tag!

------
samirillian
Clearly David was just a grower, rather than a show-er. Also, he is in what
any athlete will recognize as "sports mode". Also, it looks bigger in person.
Nuff said

------
EToS
Is this a worthy HN topic?

~~~
slazaro
Enough people found it interesting, so yes.

~~~
optforfon
well... HN does kinda have a start-up/tech focus. It'd make sense to moderate
in a way that kept people "on topic". If you want general discussion there are
better places for that.

~~~
slazaro
Yes, but the guidelines explicitly say "anything that gratifies one's
intellectual curiosity". I'm okay with that, I'm here for both things, tech-
related or otherwise, as long as it's interesting.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
optforfon
Oh that explains it... I've been drifting to lobste.rs a lot more lately
anyway.. too bad I don't have an invite =(

------
neugier
What this thread needs is a reference to the bitcoin blocksize debate.

------
neurobuddha
Not a lot of insight in this article. Is it on the front page for the giggles?

------
saiya-jin
well obviously ladies didn't define aesthetic norms back in those days...

fiancee had the same question this weekend after visiting Louvre's antic
section - the stuff is just too small given proportions of statues. i am a
+-regular gym goer, so even if i don't want i see all the stuff in locker
rooms/shared showers, and albeit some of it is this small (and smaller), most
is bigger.

