Dildos, for the four people on the internet that are somehow not yet aware of them, are sex toys intended for sexual penetration (of a male or female) during recreational bedroom activities. They are very often phallic in shape—which is to say explicitly penis-shaped—sometimes down to minute detail, but more often in a sort of general, abstract way.
A Google search about the history of dildos will turn up all sorts of slideshows and pop-culture articles on the internet crediting the invention of dildos all the way back to the Paleolithic era, like these:
Museum Of Prehistory Blaubeuren (Germany)
However, it is far more likely that these Paleolithic and Neolithic dildos were more sacred or religious items, like the Venus of Willendorf, or even similar to the more modern Hindu Shiva-lingam (side note: don’t go saying that the lingam is a phallus today though, it is no longer considered so and has a much more complicated meaning). Sure, it is more than likely that there were ancient or prehistoric dildos or sex toys, but I would argue that in order for something to explicitly be a dildo it has to have a more sexular secular association.
Therefore, in an interesting correspondence with the history of condoms, the first references to explicit sexual dildos dates to around 2300 years ago in third century BCE Asia Minor. Miletus, in what is now Balat, Turkey, was known as the production and distribution center of the olisbos (from the word meaning to slip or glide). These were made of wood or pressed leather and likely smeared with olive oil before use—olive oil being prized for its lubrication as well as edification properties back in the day.
A third-century-BC text by Herodas documents a conversation between two women, Metro and Coritto. Metro has come to borrow Coritto’s dildo, but she has already lent it to her friend Euboula, who then handed it on to their mutual friend Nossis—dildos got around, back in the day. Coritto says:
That woman wore me down; she begged me so much that I weakened and gave it to her, Metro, before I had even used it myself. After seizing it like a godsend, she gives it away! If I had a thousand, I would not have given her one, even if it was all worn out.
However, she goes on to explain, much in the way that a 19th century teenager might tell another where to get a Playboy, that she bought it from Kerdon, a trader who covers up his illicit olisbos trade by making shoes (perhaps this is the origin of the legend that big shoes mean big…):
But the things he makes, all of them, are worthy of Athena; you would believe that you could see her hand, instead of Kerdo’s. He came here with two, Metro! When I saw them, my eyes nearly popped out with desire. The men certainly have no rams like those… And that’s not all: their smoothness – a dream; and the stiches, of down, not of thread! Hunt as you might, you could not find another cobbler so kindly disposed towards women.
The olisbos is also mentioned in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, but to stop for a moment on Coritto’s comment that “The men certainly have no rams like those” belies one of the things that would follow dildoes from ancient to early modern and even modern times—male anxiety over dildos being used to replace them. This remains a near-constant anxiety until even to modern-day Texas, where it is still illegal to possess or promote the use of (six or more) dildos.
To dip even further east for a moment, there are suggestions that the first double-headed dildo for use between two women was developed in China in the 12th and 13th century, as the below was excavated—but I remain skeptical for reasons already explained above:
Double-headed marble phallic item on display at the China Sex Museum
Regardless, apart from the occasional reference to dildos in Roman and Greek literature, and the obviously untrue urban legend that Cleopatra invented the first vibrator by filling a hollow gourd with angry bees, and a variety of priapic saint legends (Such as Saint Fiacre, Guerlichon or Foutin) the dildo does not manage to crop up again in an innovative way until the Renaissance.
In fact, it was Renaissance Italy that would give us the word dildo—from the Latin dilatare, to open wide, or (more likely) from the Italian diletto, to delight. The first reference to the modern-day dildo originates in Pietro Aretino’s Dialogues, which is very often considered the first literary pornography and Aretino the “father” of pornography. The main character in this book explains that a man gave her a glass fruit shaped like a penis.
After this, the dildo avalanche is nearly unstoppable. In English, it is first introduced by Thomas Nashe in 1592 Merrie Ballad of Nash, His Dildo also known as Choice of Valentines. The narrator of this poem is a young man who courts a prostitute on valentine’s day and finds that he is, well, not up to the task, and after a number of attempts she gets frustrated and gives up and reaches for her little glass friend
Henceforth I will no more implore thine aid,
Or thee for ever of Cowardice shall upraid:
My little dildoe shall supply your kind,
A youth that is as light as leaves in wind:
He bendeth not, nor foldeth any deal,
But stands as stiff as he were made of steel;
(And plays at peacock twixt my legs right blithe
And doeth my tickling swage with many a sigh;)
And when I will, he doth refresh me well,
And never makes my tender belly swell.”
The next reference is within a couple years, with the lute song “Will you buy me a fine dog,” with the fine lyrics of:
Will you buy a fine dog, with a hole in his head?
With a dildo, dildo, dildo;
Muffs, cuffs, ribatos, and fine sisters’ thread,
With a dildo, dildo;
I stand not on points, pins, periwigs, combs, glasses,
Gloves, garters, girdles, busks, for the brisk lasses;
But I have other dainty tricks,
Sleek stones and potting sticks
It is likely Shakespeare was referencing this particular song or one like it in The Winter’s Tale where there is a call out to a “burden (refrain) of dildos.” And it’s not just Englishmen—the French obscene novel L’Escole des Filles ou la Philosophie des dames has the two young women discussing a wooden pump action dildo that allowed for milk or cream to be ejaculated from the tip at the appropriate moment—it would have looked like this:
Used ivory dildo with plunger in the back, likely 18thC French
By now, dildos are being made of wood, metal, glass, and stone. They are banned from many countries, but are still smuggled in by enterprising men and women, such as John Wilmot, the Earl or Rochester, who wrote perhaps the finest ode to dildos in any language, Signior Dildo.
Although dildos (and sex toys generally) would face prosecution and band from the 17th century on, they remained largely available and in use from the 18th century on. In the United States it took until the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision for the ban on sex toys to be fully lifted, and in England and most European countries there was never a full legal ban on the books like there was with other items like condoms or birth control. Today, dildos and sex toys are a $15 billion dollar market that is accessible from nearly any place, online or off.
