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on top signifies control of the female; other positions denote excess
and warn of problems with friends or finances . The idea that semen
should be conserved, which is implicit in Artemidorus , becomes ex–
plicit in later philosophical theory, and ultimately in the notion that
husband as well as wife should practice intercourse only with one's
legal partner, and only for the purpose of bearing children. The
second-century A.D. physician, Galen, advised a patient to mastur–
bate in order to purify himself of desires; although earlier in the
fourth century B. C. , Diogenes, masturbating in his tub in the Athe–
nian agora, observed only that he wished the body could be so easily
relieved of hunger pains .
Unlike historians such as Peter Brown or Ramsay MacMullen ,
Foucault does not see in late pagan religion or philosophy an attempt
by individuals to gain some control for themselves over a world in–
creasingly dominated by forces beyond their capacity or understand–
ing. He seems interested in describing what happened , rather than
why. In the process, inevitably, he fails
to
explain why these
philosophical notions survived longer than their predecessors–
which they did chiefly because the Christian fathers, unlike pagan
priests and thinkers, had the power to enforce on their followers
what for the pagans had been a matter of choice .
Foucault argues that both pagans and Christians were tending
towards equality within marriage for men and women, and saw
marriage as an ideal combination of pleasure and utility . But Fou–
cault does not confront the question, how far these ideals (not to
mention practice) were from any modern notion of partnership. He
cites Plutarch's treatise "Advice on Marriage" as a prime example of
the new equality, but overlooks in his survey the fact that for all his
abstract principles, Plutarch advises the wife to do most of the ad–
justing: she must worship her husband's gods, become educated so
that he can talk with her; he advised her to say, "Dear husband, to
me you are a guide, philosopher and teacher in all that is beautiful
and divine." Late antique romances end with the marriage of the
hero and heroine after exciting and perilous separation and adven–
tures, but no reader (or writer) would have assumed that such
equality of activity would have continued after the marriage was
consummated .
Occasional remarks in Volumes Two and Three suggest that in
Volume Four, "Confessions of the Flesh," Foucault hoped to
describe more clearly where the Christian notion of marriage began
to diverge from the deep mutual respect advocated by pagan
