No, Throwing Apples at People Was Not Considered a “Marriage Proposal” in Ancient Greece

Internet memes are a notoriously unreliable source of information about the historical past. It should therefore come as little surprise to most people that a popular meme in widespread circulation on the internet claiming that throwing apples at people was “considered a marriage proposal” in ancient Greece is largely inaccurate. It may come as a surprise, though, that this meme actually does have some remote grounding in factual reality and—as is often the case—the truth is far stranger and more fascinating than the fiction. While it is true that the ancient Greeks had no custom of proposing marriage by pelting someone with apples, throwing apples was really considered a ploy at seduction.

The Meme

The claim I have mentioned here comes in many variations. One version holds that, in ancient Greece, throwing an apple at someone was a request to marry them. An example of this version of the claim occurs in the following image from “Weird Facts dot org”:

Another version of the claim, which is closer to the historical reality, but still somewhat misleading, holds that throwing an apple at someone was considered a “declaration of love.” One example of this version of the claim occurs in this image from the website “Not Common Facts”:

Background about the association between Aphrodite and apples

I will discuss the truth behind the memes I have just shared about throwing apples in a moment, but, before I do so, I feel it is necessary to cover some basic background information about the broader association between apples and erotic attraction in ancient Greek religion, mythology, literature, and art.

The ancient Greeks considered apples sacred to their goddess Aphrodite, who presided over the domains of beauty, erotic desire, and sex, and many well-known Greek myths associate them with her. The most famous of these is the story of the Judgment of Paris.

The Iliad, a very early Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter that most likely developed out of oral tradition and became fixed in something resembling the form in which it is known today sometime around the second quarter of the seventh century BCE or thereabouts, very briefly alludes to this myth at one point (Il. 24.25–30), but does not bother to recount the tale under the assumption that its audience already knows it.

The oldest known complete retelling of the Judgement of Paris is known to have occurred in the Kypria, an early epic poem about the beginning of the Trojan War that developed out of oral tradition and became fixed in something resembling the form it was known in later antiquity sometime in the Greek Archaic Period (lasted c. 800 – c. 490 BCE).

Unfortunately, the Kypria has not survived to the present day complete. Its contents are known only through a handful of short fragments and a prose summary of the complete epic that is found in a work known as the Chrestomatheia, which was written sometime in late antiquity by an obscure grammarian named Proklos.

According to Proklos’s summary of the Kypria, Peleus and Thetis, the parents of the hero Achilleus (i.e., Achilles), invited all the deities to their wedding—except for Eris, the goddess of discord. Outraged at having been excluded, Eris barged in uninvited and threw a golden apple in the midst of all the goddesses with the Greek word καλλίστῃ (kallístēi), which means “For the Most Beautiful,” inscribed on it.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic black-figure kylix currently held in the Altes Museum in Berlin depicting Eris, the goddess of discord

The goddesses Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite immediately began arguing over the apple, with each one insisting that she was the “most beautiful” and that the apple therefore rightly belonged to her. They took the dispute to Zeus, the king of the deities. He, however, refused to judge which of them was the most beautiful because he knew that, no matter which of them he chose, he would incur the indignation of the others. He therefore appointed the Trojan prince Paris, who was living as a shepherd at the time, to judge instead.

Each of the three goddesses tried to bribe Paris into giving her the apple. Hera promised that, if he gave it to her, she would make him the king of all of Europe and Asia. Athena promised that, if he gave it to her, she would bring him great fame and glory in battle. Aphrodite, however, promised that, if he gave it to her, she would let him carry off the most beautiful woman on earth—Helene of Sparta, the wife of King Menelaos—to be his bride. Paris chose Aphrodite and awarded her the apple.

ABOVE: Greek mosaic from the city of Antioch, dating to around the third century CE or thereabouts, depicting the Judgement of Paris

Another Greek myth involving Aphrodite and apples is that of Atalanta and Hippomenes, which occurs in several different ancient sources. The Roman poet Ovid (lived 43 BCE – c. 17 CE), however, tells the best-known and the oldest complete version in his long narrative poem Metamorphoses, which he composed in the Latin language in around the year 8 CE or thereabouts.

According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses 10.560–707, Atalanta, the daughter of King Iasos of Arkadia, was determined to remain a virgin forever and never marry. Her father insisted that she needed to marry, so she told him that she would only marry the man who could outrun her in a footrace. Atalanta’s father agreed to this condition, thinking that surely one of the first men who tried would be able to outrun her.

Atalanta, however, had another stipulation: any man who tried to outrun her and lost would be beheaded. Iasos consented to this as well, believing that it would never come to such a measure, because Atalanta would be defeated in her first race. He recruited suitors from far and wide, all of them eager to marry his beautiful daughter. Atalanta, however, ran so swiftly that her suitors all lost and her father had them all beheaded.

The young man Hippomenes desired Atalanta greatly, so he prayed to Aphrodite herself for help. Aphrodite brought him some golden apples and instructed him to toss them on the ground as he ran. Hippomenes did as Aphrodite instructed and he was able to outrun Atalanta, who could not resist stopping to pick up all the golden apples off the ground. He therefore won her hand in marriage.

ABOVE: The Race between Hippomenes and Atalanta, painted in around 1680 by the French Baroque painter Nicolas Colombel

In addition to associating Aphrodite with apples in their myths, the ancient Greeks also frequently depicted her holding an apple in artistic representations. This iconographic association became especially prominent in sculptures during the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 30 BCE).

In fact, as I discuss in this post I wrote in September 2019, the Aphrodite of Melos (commonly known today as the Venus de Milo), one of the most famous surviving Hellenistic Greek sculptures of Aphrodite, originally portrayed her holding an apple in her left hand. The original French excavators of the statue found this hand clutching an apple alongside the statue itself. It is currently held in the Louvre Museum’s collection.

ABOVE: Hellenistic Greek bronze statuette of the goddess Aphrodite holding an apple, dating to the first half of the second century BCE

Tossing apples as a ploy at seduction

Out of this traditional association of apples with Aphrodite a custom arose of people throwing apples to people they wanted to have sex with as a ploy in order to seduce them.

The ancient Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) makes an early reference to this ploy in his comedy The Clouds. Although this play was first performed in 423 BCE at the City Dionysia in Athens, it was poorly received, so Aristophanes revised it at some point between c. 419 and c. 416 BCE for written circulation. Only Aristophanes’s revised version of the play has survived to the present.

At about three quarters into the play, the young man Pheidippides faces a choice whether to learn the art of rhetoric and become a sophist or live a difficult, honest life. This instigates a mock debate between personified caricatures of the two opposing lifestyles: “Unjust Argument” (a slippery, amoral sophist who argues in favor of his own path using clever, dishonest rhetorical tactics) and “Just Argument” (a stodgy conservative who argues in favor of an honest life in accordance with traditional norms and values).

In the course of this debate, “Just Argument” warns Pheidippides with the following advice (in lines 996–997):

“μηδ᾽ εἰς ὀρχηστρίδος εἰσᾴττειν, ἵνα μὴ πρὸς ταῦτα κεχηνὼς
μήλῳ βληθεὶς ὑπὸ πορνιδίου τῆς εὐκλείας ἀποθραυσθῇς:”

This means, in my own translation:

“And don’t run into the house of a dancer-woman; that way you won’t, while gaping at these things,
be thrown an apple by a little slut and ruin your good reputation.”

A scholion, or ancient scholarly commentary, on this line explains: “Throwing apples was a ploy at seduction, since the apple is sacred to Aphrodite.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a Roman marble bust of the Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes, dating to the first century CE, based on an earlier Greek original

A couple of ancient Greek poems preserved in the Greek Anthology further illustrate this practice of throwing apples as a seductive ploy. The first of these occurs in the Greek Anthology 5.79 and is attributed to “Plato,” but it is almost certainly not a genuine work by the famous Athenian philosopher of that name. Instead, it is most likely either a poem that a later author intentionally forged under Plato’s name or a poem written by a later poet who simply happened to have the same name as the famous philosopher.

In any case, regardless of its authorship, the poem is composed in the voice of a male speaker and is addressed to an unmarried virgin girl whom he erotically desires. The speaker describes himself as tossing an apple to the girl, then he declares his desire for her and begs her to have sex with him. The Greek text reads as follows:

“Τῷ μήλῳ βάλλω σε· σὺ δ᾽ εἰ μὲν ἑκοῦσα φιλεῖς με,
δεξαμένη τῆς σῆς παρθενίης μετάδος·
εἰ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽, ὃ μὴ γίγνοιτο, ὀκνεῖς, τοῦτ᾽ αὐτὸ λαβοῦσα
σκέψαι τὴν ὥρην ὡς ὀλιγοχρόνιος.”

This means, in my own translation:

“I throw an apple to you; if you love me willingly,
accept it and give me your virginity in exchange.
But, if (let it not be so) you shrink away, then take this thing itself
and contemplate the season of youth, which is so short-lived.”

The second apple poem is the work of the poet and Epicurean philosopher Philodemos of Gadara (lived c. 110 – c. 40 BCE). It occurs in the Greek Anthology 5.80, right after the poem I just quoted. Unlike the preceding poem, however, this poem purports (most likely fictitiously) to have originally been inscribed on an apple itself. It reads as follows in the original Greek:

“Μῆλον ἐγώ· πέμπει με φιλῶν σέ τις. ἀλλ᾽ ἐπίνευσον,
Ξανθίππη· κἀγὼ καὶ σὺ μαραινόμεθα.”

This means, in my own translation:

“I am an apple. Someone who loves you sends me. But nod your head to show your consent,
Xanthippe. Both I and you are rotting away.”

A ploy at seduction, not a form of marriage proposal

As is probably quite apparent at this point, throwing apples was never considered a “marriage proposal” in any sense, but rather a ploy at seduction, which is something entirely different. As I’m sure most of my readers realize, someone trying to seduce another person does not mean that they want to marry them or even that they really “love” them; it merely means that they want to have sex with them.

Furthermore, the very concept of a man proposing directly to a woman that she should marry him—whether by throwing apples at her or not—without talking to her father would have struck most ancient Greek people as very strange, if not a scandalous breach of social norms.

In most ancient Mediterranean societies, including ancient Greece, marriages were arranged primarily between the girl’s suitor and her male guardian, who was usually her father. In the Greek world, men typically married when they were in their late twenties or early-to-mid thirties, while girls typically married in their mid-to-late teenaged years. As a result, in most cases, the groom was significantly older than his prospective bride and, in some cases, he was more than twice her age.

The degree to which the girl herself was involved in the process of deciding who she would marry varied considerably depending on factors such as the locale, time period, and the inclination of her male guardian. In some cases, girls did have considerable agency in choosing which man they wanted to marry, but, unfortunately, in many cases, they probably had little or no say in the matter.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an Attic red-figure pyxis attributed to the Marlay Painter dating to between c. 440 and c. 430 BCE, depicting a wedding procession