10 ms·

They don't - they're about average. Following links are NSFW! * https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-83057b24725b6e813a747aae8f741087 https://qph.is.quoracdn

• unlinker 11y ago
  Ah, that first picture really makes me feel good about myself.
  • Ressuder 11y ago
    Why? What advantage do you find that a large sized flaccid penise has?
    • hoopism 11y ago
      I'm sure it's opened a lot of doors for him...
      • deanstag 11y ago
        for a second i thought i was reading a reddit thread
        • hoopism 11y ago
          Sorry. I do appreciate the downvote though (whoever it was). Discerning readers want their penis statue discussion on point. I get it.
        • homogeneous 11y ago
          I despise this hackneyed and arrogant reddit chide. HN has excellent moderation, but it's not such a bastion of quality discourse that breaking forum etiquette merits shitting on another community via rhetorical comparison. This site is regularly host to some terribly low-quality discussions that really only differentiate themselves from reddit insomuch as they are lacking in humor. I'm glad that HN tends to moderate out the noise, but this HN trend to invoke reddit as an insult just seems pretentious.
          • deanstag 11y ago
            oh. i did not mean it as an insult. i really thought i was reading a reddit thread :(
• pervycreeper 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    No, the average penis size is pretty small... it's the idea of the larger penis that's idealized in modern society
    • pervycreeper 11y ago
      Maybe so, but the two explanations are at odds in any case.
      • creshal 11y ago
        Not really? Considering deviations from the average grotesque/unaesthetic and idealizing averages (see also, Norma sculpture) fits together rather well.
        • pervycreeper 11y ago
          They are distinct explanations, though. I suppose you can idealize what's average, technically.
          • creshal 11y ago
            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-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
• halviti 11y ago
  Actually they are meant to be depicted as small for a reason, or at least this is what I was taught by multiple university professors. The reason a depiction of a smaller penis was preferred is that it was a sign of fertility. Men with smaller penises were seen as genetically more likely to be able to impregnate a woman, and thus was a desired trait at the time. From the second response on your quora link: >The ancient Greeks believed that short penises allowed the man's seed to travel a lesser distance before entering the woman's body and impregnating her. A small penis was seen as being more virile. A long penis meant the seed had further to travel, and had less chance of impregnating a woman.
  • zkhalique 11y ago
    I heard from my professors that a smaller penis represented sophrosyne (latin temperantia) rather than great unconstrained passions, a desirable trait.
    • exelius 11y ago
      This is more in line with what I had read as well. A large penis was seen as "barbaric" or "brutish", while the average cosmopolitan man (who would be able to view such statues) desired to be in control of himself. This is all in line with the teachings of Aristotle; which pretty much defined the ideal man in the western world from about 600 BC until more modern philosophers started writing in the 15th and 16th century.
      • cLeEOGPw 11y ago
        Idealizing feminine males over males with higher testosterone levels and therefore larger penises and more manly in general. No wonder Rome fell to those "barbarians". Any civilization that lacks male competition and starts favoring non competitive males, will eventually be replaced by males from parallel society where male competition is fierce. This was recently proved by "super male" model at least for fruit flies, but same population dynamics, although not so simplistic and with more variables obviously, applies to humans.
• notahacker 11y ago
  What's above average in Greek statues is virtually every other aspect of the physique: if they're not intended to be teenagers their body dimensions usually have more in common with WWF wrestlers than the average person. Especially when you consider that the average ancient Greek man was about six inches shorter than the average Western male today.
  • maaku 11y ago
    They are in fact teenagers by the modern definitions. You were a full responsible adult shortly after puberty. Many of the greats did their best work before 20.
    • Aqwis 11y ago
      Who did their best work before 20? I looked up a bunch of Greek philosophers, and it doesn't seem to apply to any of them. Socrates was in the military during his early life, and Aristotle did his most famous work late in life.
      • jcranmer 11y ago
        One possibility is that GP is thinking that "life expectancy was 25, so 20 means you're an old geezer on the deathbed." Alternatively, it may also be a reference to the extreme youth of Alexander the Great, who became king of Macedon at age 20 and proceeded to put down a Greek rebellion and then conquer Thrace, Persia, Egypt, Bactria, cross the Hindu Kush, conquer bits of India (then unknown to the Greeks) and was only stopped from going further when his army said "it's been long enough, can we go home?" He died 3 years later, at age 32. Obviously, he is very much an outlier.
        • dredmorbius 11y ago
          Measures of life expectency are misleading in this regard. Much of low life expectency comes from very high infant mortality -- deaths to age 5 or 10. Once you've passed that threshold, your odds of survival increase markedly. Perhaps slightly lower than today's first-world standards, but hale-and-hearty at 15 doesn't mean you're going to fall over dead at 25. You also want to look at life expectency at any given age. And I distantly recall that the number of (I can't remember specifically which) Greeks or Romans surviving to age 80+ compared favourably to modern times.
• drb311 11y ago
  That's a relief.
• grimmdude 11y ago
  So glad I opened HN today