For better or worse, Fifty Shades of Grey brought mainstream America its first popular taste of BDSM culture.  But this vibrant sexual culture has roots that are much deeper than between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. In fact, even the ancients liked their whips, both for sexual and ritualistic purposes. Let’s kink it up and head back in time.

A Quick FYI

First, a disclaimer: whatever the ancients did or did not practice, it was likely not the same as BDSM as we think of it today.

Also, while there is far more to BDSM than just whips, it’s hard to find archaeological or literary evidence of things like verbal contracts or consensual sexual humiliation, so let’s stick to what we can prove and how that may or may not be tied to modern BDSM. We also can't definitively prove that ancient flagellation is tied into modern whipping, but the correlations are interesting.

The modern movement can harken back to antique roots. For one, the word dominatrix, although it attained its modern usage in 1967, is the feminine version of the Latin dominator, meaning “ruler” or “master.” As sociologist Danielle J. Lindemann notes in her book Dominatrix: Gender, Eroticism, and Control in the Dungeon, today's dominatrix “does have her precursors” in antiquity. There have been some efforts to trace the dominatrix directly back to Sumerian culture, though these associations haven't been proven. There are, however, many examples of women as sexually powerful (Aphrodite, anyone?) in mythology, although, unfortunately, not as many in history.

Cultic Kink?

Whipping was often employed as a punishment in the ancient world. But it was also used in ritualistic contexts, if not for personal pleasure, than for transcendent experiences. Why? Perhaps it served as a “technique of inducing altered states of consciousness or as a ritual of manhood” or, if blood is shed, “as a substitute for human sacrifice or self-castration or as a means to increase fertility.”

In his Civil Wars, Appian gives the latter explanation when describing why priests of the god Pan, a lusty god closely tied to pastoral fertility, whipped women in the streets during the Roman festival of Lupercalia. He noted men were “bearing a strap cut from the hide of the sacrificial goat, with which they slapped married women who placed themselves in the way. This was supposed to be a cure for barrenness.”

Numerous mystery cults, which involved mystical and personal experiences, often in the worship of a particular god, included self-flagellation in their rites. These secretive sects weren't always A-OK with the higher-ups. The rites of Cybele, a goddess from the East, completely overturned traditional Roman values. For one, her priests were eunuch slaves and freedmen, not upright Roman men. They practiced flagellation, as described in Catullus’s famous poem about Attis and Cybele. Talk about an act of subversion to those snooty Romans.

Some such cults were deemed “Eastern." Why?  Because of the origins and rites of deities like Cybele and Isis, their cults were called "Oriental." They seemed foreign to conservative Roman - and even Greek - values, in part because of their ecstatic rites. These were characterized by all types of extroverted behavior, like dancing, cross-dressing, drinking, and more. But even the Greeks enjoyed a good whipping rite in celebration of a goddess, Artemis Orthia.

However, Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, reasons that the barbaric rites at her temple mean that the cultic image of the goddess must have come from “the foreigners.” As he describes, whenever a prophecy was made at the temple, the priestesses would sacrifice a boy to the deity. But that turned into whipping as an “easier” means of providing devotion. He adds, “…And so in this way the altar is stained with human blood. By them stands the priestess, holding the wooden image [of the goddess].” But if the whipper goes easy on one of the boys because of his looks or rank, “then at once the priestess finds the image grow so heavy that she can hardly carry it. She lays the blame on the scourgers, and says that it is their fault that she is being weighed down.” This bloody rite was called diamastigosis. Perhaps, as previously mentioned, such gory practices, whether in relation to bulls or people, provided a form of psychologicalcommunal or individual catharsis.

Getting Sexy in a Tomb

So there may or may not have been sexual aspects to some rites involving self-flagellation, but was there any real sex involved? In the so-called Etruscan Tomb of the Whipping, which dates to the late sixth century B.C., figures dance about with Dionysian glee. Perhaps most interestingly for our purposes, two men are shown, with one about to flog a woman amidst this erotic revelry. In more depth, this painting is described as showing a “nude bearded man [who] canes [a] woman while he has ‘a tergo’ [from behind] intercourse with her while she fellates a nude youth.’” Next to that, a “nude youth holds a whip, [a] woman cowers, [and there is] a nude man with [a] whip.”

What does this mean? The tomb shows a variety of sexual activities all happening simultaneously. It probably doesn’t represent a real-life sexual encounter, if only for the sheer acrobatic factor of it. If such an orgy did occur, it may have taken place during mystery rites. If the context was religious, then flagellation could have taken place for any number of previously mentioned reasons, but that doesn’t remove the erotic factor present.

Similarly, in a fresco from the Pompeiian Villa of Mysteries, a nude woman is shown, about to be flogged. Scholars think that she is an initiate into the mysteries of Dionysus, and the flagellation is an entry ritual, or perhaps it shows rites from Dionysian festivals. Drink up!

Tit for Tat

Written between the second and fourth centuries A.D., the Kama Sutra includes several mentions of resistance as a turn-on. This Indian text, which famously describes many sex positions, among many other topics, contains lots of recommendations for how to make the bedroom fun. The author, Vatsyayana, comments, “Sexual intercourse can be compared to a quarrel, on account of the contrarieties of love and its tendency to dispute.” He specifies six places where one should strike one’s partner. In fact, there are four kinds of proper hitting in sex: “Striking with the back of the hand; striking with the fingers a little contracted; striking with the fist; striking with the open palm of the hand.”

Hitting one’s partner gives rise to eight different cries of pain, but a woman can give as good as she gets. Vatsyayana writes, “Blows with the fist should be given on the back of the woman, which she is sitting on the lap of the man, and she should give blows in return, abusing the man as if she were angry, and making the cooing and the weeping sounds.” He summarizes this exchange by saying, "Whatever things may be done by one of the lovers to the other, the same should be returned by the other, i.e., if  the woman kisses him, he should kiss her in return; if she strikes him, he should also strike her in return.” But a man should determine what each partner likes: “The great art is to ascertain what gives them the greatest pleasure, and what specialities they like best.”

Vatsyayana also mentions some tools men can use to strike their partners. There are “four ways of striking with instruments,” but he states they're “peculiar to the people of the southern countries.” In fact, Vatsyayana deems whipping with an external device, rather than one’s body, “painful, barbarous, and base, and quite unworthy of imitation.” He even cites instances of people accidentally killing their lovers by going too far with instruments during sex. For example, “Naradeva, whose hand was deformed, blinded a dancing girl by directing a piercing instrument in a wrong way.”

It’s not all about hitting, though, as he also mentions “prescriptions for reducing other persons to submission.” He doesn’t describe just what these prescriptions are, leaving the reader titillated for more.