Real reason why Ancient Greek statues all have tiny penises

There's a strange reason why all of the Ancient Greek statues of men have small penises.

While there are plenty of sculptures of the male form that still survive through to modern day from that time period, one of the common aspects is that the blokes are all ripped like Olympic athletes, which may be unsurprising given the Greeks invented the Olympic game, and they've all got diminutive dingle-dongles.

While modern society may have a fixation on penile proportions and think that size is quite important, it seems that for the denizens of Ancient Greece, the expectations were quite different.

Historian Paul Chrystal explained the reason why most of the statue looks how we'd consider an idealised form today, apart from why the gentleman's sausage is more of a chipolata than a thick cut.

In his book, In Bed with the Ancient Greeks, he explained that Greek statues had small penises because they portrayed an ideal quality at the time.

Everyone can see your doodle, Mr Statue (Roberto Serra - Iguana Press/Getty Images)

The historian explained that for the Ancient Greeks, having a little willy 'was a badge of the highest culture and a paragon of civilization'.

"Big penises were vulgar and outside the cultural norm, something sported by the barbarians of the world," Chrystal wrote, so having a third leg meant you were the type of person who was less in control of themselves, rather than the highly civilized Greeks who spent their time making statues.

It turns out that having a sizeable schlong was portrayed in comedies of the time as a 'sign of stupidity', so anyone seeing the statue of someone with tiny genitals would know what a smarty-pants he was.

According to Artsy, art historian Andrew Lear suggested that the reason Ancient Greek statues of men were not well-endowed was because that 'represented self-control'.

Anyone can have muscles, but a truly civilized man would be a clever guy in control of his faculties, seemingly shown by his small penis.

Even the penis of Poseidon isn't particularly large (VALERIE GACHE/AFP via Getty Images)

Of course, the denizens of Ancient Greece weren't always as civilized as they liked to portray themselves.

They are the people who came up with the terrible method of torture and execution known as the Brazen Bull, though whether that was one guy letting the side down or a more damning indictment of them at large is up to interpretation.

The guy who invented it certainly found a willing taker for this giant statue of a bull that people could be stuffed into and cooked to death, their howls of pain transformed into animal noises by a series of pipes.

However, the inventor found someone so willing to use it that they ended up becoming the first victim of their creation though they weren't killed by it.

Instead, they were plucked out of the bull only half cooked and executed by being thrown off a hill.