In Greek antiquity the romance and sentiment of love were mainly felt toward persons of the same sex, and were divorced from the more purely sexual feelings felt for persons of opposite sex. Theognis compared marriage to cattle-breeding. In love between men and women the latter were nearly always regarded as taking the more active part. In all Greek love-stories of early date the woman falls in love with the man, and never the reverse. Æschylus makes even a father assume that his daughters will misbehave if left to themselves. Euripides emphasized the importance of women; "The Euripidean woman who 'falls in love' thinks first of all: 'How can I seduce the man I love?"' (E. F. M. Benecke, Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry, 1896, pp. 34, 54.)
The most famous passage in Latin literature as to the question of whether men or women obtain greater pleasure from sexual intercourse is that in which Ovid narrates the legend of Tiresias (Metamorphoses, iii, 317-333). Tiresias, having been both a man and a woman, decided in favor of women. This passage was frequently quoted down to the eighteenth century.
In a passage quoted from a lost work of Galen by the Arabian biographer, Abu-l-Faraj, that great physician says of the Christians "that they practice celibacy, that even many of their women do so." So that in Galen's opinion it was more difficult for a woman than for a man to be continent.
The same view is widely prevalent among Arabic authors, and there is an Arabic saying that "The longing of the woman for the penis is greater than that of the man for the vulva."
In China, remarks Dr. Coltman, "when an old gentleman of my acquaintance was visiting me my little daughter, 5 years old, ran into the room, and, climbing upon my knee, kissed me. My visitor expressed his surprise, and remarked: 'We never kiss our daughters when they are so large; we may when they are very small, but not after they are 3 years old,' said he, 'because it is apt to excite in them bad emotions.'" (Coltman, The Chinese, 1900, p. 99.)
The early Christian Fathers clearly show that they regard women as more inclined to sexual enjoyment than men. That was, for instance, the opinion of Tertullian (De Virginibus Velandis, chapter x), and it is clearly implied in some of St. Jerome's epistles.
Notwithstanding the influence of Christianity, among the vigorous barbarian races of medieval Europe, the existence of sexual appetite in women was not considered to be, as it later became, a matter to be concealed or denied. Thus in 1068 the ecclesiastical historian, Ordericus Vitalis (himself half Norman and half English), narrates that the wives of the Norman knights who had accompanied William the Conqueror to England two years earlier sent over to their husbands to say that they were consumed by the fierce names of desire ("sæva libidinis face urebantur"), and that if their husbands failed to return very shortly they proposed to take other husbands. It is added that this threat brought a few husbands back to their wanton ladies ("lascivis dominabus suis").
During the medieval period in Europe, largely in consequence, no doubt, of the predominance of ascetic ideals set up by men who naturally regarded woman as the symbol of sex, the doctrine of the incontinence of woman became firmly fixed, and it is unnecessary and unprofitable to quote examples. It is sufficient to mention the very comprehensive statement of Jean de Meung (in the Roman de la Rose, 9903):—
"Toutes estes, serés, ou fûtes
De fait ou de volunté putes."
The satirical Jean de Meung was, however, a somewhat extreme and untypical representative of his age, and the fourteenth century Johannes de Sancto Amando (Jean de St. Amand) gives a somewhat more scientifically based opinion (quoted by Pagel, Neue litterarische Beiträge zur Mittelalterlichen Medicin, 1896, p. 30) that sexual desire is stronger in women than in men.