Following links are NSFW!
* https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-83057b24725b6e813a747a...
* https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0f7e6c4cf3094a8d60b824...
Taken from Quora answer - https://www.quora.com/Why-do-ancient-Greek-sculptures-and-st...
> (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.
> 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-...
Well, that's convenient. I wonder what women had to say about that ;)
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.
This reminds me of men who claim that normal size condoms are "too small". Again, total BS. It's quite easy to blow one up like a balloon without it bursting. A larger one will be more comfortable for someone large, but the regular one will stretch to fit.
Yeah, I never said it was ideal, just that it would fit. I did say that it wouldn't be as comfortable. Same as a woman with a guy who's "too large" for her. It'll fit. It may not be comfortable, it might hurt some even, but it will fit.
Especially when you consider that the average ancient Greek man was about six inches shorter than the average Western male today.
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.
I remember reading stories where he charged ahead of the rest of the army, scaled enemy walls, chased down royal bodyguards and so on. He was bloody crazy. A guy with his (lack of) brains should not have made it past 16, let alone get to 32.