As I was skimming ahead in my Greek reader, I came to a section with passages from the play “The Wasps”, there in the vocabulary list I found this word katapugwv(p = pi, g = gamma, w=omega, v=nu, with an accute accent over the u)
It’s defined in the book as gay, homsexual.
I know that kata is a prefix meaning down or below. so is this word derogatory? also what does pugwv mean?
καταπῡγ-ων, ονος, ?, ἡ, neut.
κατάπυγον Ar. V.687: (πυγή):—given to unnatural lust: generally, lecherous, lewd, Id.Ach.79,al., Luc.Tim.22, Alciphr.3.45, etc.; ὦ κατάπυγον Ar.Th. 200.–The oblique cases are sts. wrongly written -π?γωνος, cf. Hdn. Gr.2.725: irreg. Comp. -πυγωνέστε?ος (metri gr.) Ar.Lys.776.
in Att., the middle finger (used in an obscene gesture), Poll.2.184.
This is the LSJ entry. the word literally means something like “down through the buttocks.”
Hehe. Funny. We are rehearsing The Wasps in my university. I will be one (wasp) once it is ready!
Well, this is quite fascinating. I don’t understand why I keep reading that the classical world had no “conception” of gay…
… because when they engaged in what we consider homosexual acts they didn’t think that the acts were homosexual–just more sex. It is the conception of gay which it is at stake and not the fact of whether there were same sex relations (of which there were plenty).
Read Catullus (among others); men had sex with whomever was available to them, that he was the active/dominant partner was all that mattered to him. He wasn’t gay he was just having sex.
From your statement, I take it that this word “καταπῡγ-ων” can apply to the female buttocks as well…?
This is the party line, and has been for a while. I suspect the author of your Greek reader was thumbing their nose at Sir Kenneth Dover (Greek Homosexuality, 1979). James Davidson, author of Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, just came out with a hefty book disputing Dover and this widely-held idea that Greeks had no conception of homosexuality, The Greeks and Greek Love.
Wow! You beat me to it! I was going to weigh in with my understanding of the subject, which was largely gleaned from (or transformed by) Courtesans and Fishcakes. Now I’m going to have to look for Davidson’s new book. He doesn’t really rub your face in it, but it’s obvious from the dedication and one or two things he says in Courtesans that Davidson is himself gay, so it’s rather brave of him to explode the “party line” that’s persisted for so long. Thanks for the reference!
This reminds me of one time reading through a section in the Big Liddell (I think it was anyhow) on αυλος or one of it’s cognates. I was quite surprised to see that it was also a word that could refer to sexual preference. If a man “played the flute” it was a kind way of saying he was a homosexual…or something like that. I just remember chuckling and thinking “there’s nothing new under the sun”…jokes of “playing the skin flute” ran through my head at that point. All of this was even more funny, because it happened when I was studying for my Greek class at Bible College 
It’s almost comfort to me to know that we have Greek graffiti, from the same period when Solon was calmly setting off a revolution, of young greek men proclaiming their sexual prowess and commending individuals on their, ah, oral technique.
Also, don’t underestimate Aristophanes’ ability to turn innocuous words into something suggestive.