Nakedness, both of boys and girls, was not an obscenity in ancient Greece. The statesman Lycurgus, for example, established exercises in Sparta in which boys and girls, in puris naturalibus, took part.
To the Greek philosopher Plato, too, nudity involved no indecency. He actually advocated, in The Laws, naked dances by boys and girls, for the purpose of mutual acquaintance.
Dioscorides
Pedanius Dioscorides, who flourished in the first century A.D., was born in Anazarbus. He became an army physician: but, in addition, he was deeply interested and versed in pharmacological subjects. With the purpose of compiling a kind of encyclopedic work in this field, Dioscorides traveled widely throughout Greece, Asia Minor, and the Mediterranean countries, collecting information, legends, and prescriptions.
Dioscorides is the author of a systematic Materia Medica, written with clarity and precision and with an informative rather than a stylistic purpose. His work includes plants and herbs, animals, minerals: all arranged in exact subdivisions, and emphasizing the medicinal and pharmacological virtues of all the items included. The text is arranged in five books, and covers some thousand drugs. An English translation, under the title of the Greek Herbal of Dioscorides, was produced by John Goodyer in 1655, and was edited by Robert T. Gunther and first printed by the Oxford University Press in 1934.
Apart from the fascination of the work in itself, Dioscorides lists a number of herbs and roots that are of amatory interest as philtres. Goodyer’s text, for the relevant items, follows:
Greek Cyclamen: It is sayd also that the root is taken amongst love-procuring medicines being beaten, and soe made into Trochiscks. Trochiscks are pastilles.
Brassica Rapa: Turnip: Also called Gongule. The Romans call it Rapum. The roote of it being sod is nourishing, yet very windie, and breeding moist and loose flesh, and provoking to Venerie.
(As an infusion) being dranck it is good against deadly medicines, and doth provoke to Venerie.