Profs & Pints Nashville: Love and Lust in Ancient Greece

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Love and Lust in Ancient Greece,” with Chiara Sulprizio, senior lecturer in Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University and scholar of ancient gender and sexuality.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-lust-love-greece ]

The ancient Greeks revered the goddess of love, Aphrodite. They believed her erotic power to be the most powerful force in the universe, even surpassing the powers of Zeus, and they celebrated this force with a singular passion in their art, literature, and sex lives.

Join Chiara Sulprizio of Vanderbilt University for a thrilling exploration of how love and desire were imagined, discussed, and experienced by men and women in ancient Greece—at all levels of society, from the humblest slaves to the highest aristocrats.

We will consider the socialization of girls and boys, and how the institution of marriage, as well as the threat of adultery, shaped the course of ancient Greeks’ lives.

We will also examine the importance of the phallus in this patriarchal culture, and its defining role as a symbol of male dominance, fertility and fortune.

Dr. Sulprizio will discuss the practice of pederasty and why it was so prevalent a feature of elite Greek identity. She also will investigate the lives of ancient prostitutes and consider the mystery of women’s erotic experiences, explaining why they are so difficult to trace in the historical record.

Finally, we’ll consider the various ways that ancient ideas about love and eroticism remain alive in our culture today. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A Dionysian scene on an ancient Greek vase (Bavarian State Collections of Antiquities).