Born: Unknown, Greece
Died: Unknown
Country most active: Greece
Also known as: NA
This biography was originally published in the World History Encyclopedia and was written by Joshua J. Mark. It is shared in line with the Encyclopedia’s policies under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Philaenis of Samos (l. 4th century BCE) was a courtesan who became famous for writing a manual on lesbian sexual positions and the proper etiquette for courting a member of the same or opposite sex. Her work no longer survives but is cited by later authors. The term “lesbian” to denote a homosexual woman did not exist in ancient times and only originates later when people began to identify homosexual women with Sappho of the island of Lesbos because of her intimate female-oriented love poems (although, in fact, there is no other evidence that Sappho was homosexual).
In Philaenis’ time, a gay woman was known as a tribad (from the word “tribo” meaning “to rub, referring to women’s sexual activity with each other). Her work is said to have covered the best sexual positions, perfumes, cosmetics, means of inducing abortions, the art of kissing, and the art of seduction, including how to make successful passes.
Written in the style of The Histories of Herodotus – a kind of History of Sex – her book was very popular and widely read even though people seem to have publicly condemned it. Their disapproval had less to do with the subject matter than that a woman had written it. The writer Vicki Leon, author of Uppity Women in Ancient Times, writes:
Isn’t it always the case – the yearbook with your dorky picture survives for decades but the love-letters get thrown out! It was the same in ancient times: we have landfill amounts of dull material from dozens of male philosophers. But what about the works of steamy writer Philaenis? A bare nothing. And a real pity, too, because she gained notoriety for writing the first illustrated book on lesbian sexual matters – in verse no less. (185)