Greek and Roman Sexualities

This article presents ancient Roman texts dealing with the topic of same-sex weddings with the purpose of examining the reliability of these sources and contributing to the understanding of this element of the ancient tradition. In order to do so, this paper takes literary and historiographical sources and legal aspects into consideration, making use of research by Craig Williams, Bruce Frier, and Michael Fontaine. Apart from a Late Imperial constitutio, our most important sources are historiographical works on two emperors of scandalous reign, namely Nero and Elagabalus; Juvenal’s Satire 2; and two epigrams by Martial: 1, 24 and 12, 42. In the closing section of the paper, I suggest a new interpretation for the punchline of the latter poem.

Caracalla. A Military Biography is now available as a hardcover, Kindle and e-book an from the website of its publisher Pen & Sword Publishing and from most of the major booksellers.  It is not only the first published biography in English of this remarkable individual, but also the first that reassess the evidence from the point of view of military history.

Parker Holt N. - Love's body anatomized : the ancient erotic handbooks and the rhetoric of sexuality. Pornography and representation : 90-111. • On the sex manual genre as a technology of social control. With appendix : Texts relating to the writers of sexual handbooks.

In 346/5 BC, Aeschines prosecuted Timarchus, a well-known Athenian politician, under a procedure known as dokimasia rhētorōn. Timarchus was accused of illegally addressing the Assembly on account of his actions as a male prostitute and squanderer of his patrimony (Aeschin. 1.28-32, 154). In his accusation, Aeschines devoted much attention to the education and morals of Athenian citizens (Aeschin. 1.6-27) and Timarchus’ character and public career (Aeschin. 1.39-70, 106-115), conjuring the evidence of Homer and other poets to discuss homosexual love and the reliability of rumour (Aeschin. 1.125-40). As a result, doubts have been cast on Aeschines’ adherence to the legal issue at hand (Ford 1999; more cautiously Fisher 2001: 127-8), and it has even been suggested that the orator made up the procedure of dokimasia rhētorōn while actually prosecuting Timarchus under a graphē hetairēseōs (Lane Fox 1994: 149-51).

This paper puts these claims under scrutiny and argues that Aeschines’ rhetorical strategy in Against Timarchus was inextricably bound to the nature of the legal procedure. After reconstructing Aeschines’ plaint and the relevant legal allegations (Harris 2013), I shall provide a detailed analysis of his argument. Given the weakness of the legal charges against Timarchus, Aeschines abundantly relies on character evidence and pits the defendant against allegedly Solonian moral legislation. I will show that these evidence was relevant to the legal charges of prostitution and squandering of inheritance. Through a comparison with speeches dealing with other types of dokimasia (Lys. 16; 26; 31), moreover, I will show that Aeschines’ use of character evidence was engrained in the nature of the dokimasia rhētorōn and allowed the orator to prove that Timarchus was unfit for advising the dēmos on matters of public policy.

Prefazione.  I Neoplatonici: una lettura di genere tra storia e politica (M. De Leo)

Introduzione                       

Cap. I - Reticenze, fraintendimenti, forzature. La fondazione del discorso 
 
[Storia del testo. Rassegna critico-bibliografica; forzature e abbagli interpretativi; analisi di R. Cantarella, M. Gigante e S. Casi.  I nodi da sciogliere e gli obiettivi della ricerca. Il rimando alle 'Opere di Luciano voltate in italiano' inevitabile per la collocazione spazio-temporale e per i riferimenti tematici ed espressivi. Cantarella e Gigante vi legano la cronologia dell’opera indicando il 1858-59 (traduzione di Tucidide) e il 1854 (interpretazione di un passaggio epistolare)].

Cap. II - La traduzione delle Opere di Luciano

II. a – Cronologia e fonti
[Ricostruzione, attraverso l’epistolario, delle fasi della traduzione e dei testi adoperati. Impossibile appurare se nel 1854 Settembrini avesse già tradotto 'gli Amori', si dimostra comunque errata l’interpretazione di Gigante. La citazione di Tucidide segnalata da Cantarella non è valida perché già presente in un dialogo lucianeo; inoltre fino all'autunno del 1858 Sett. è occupato a scrivere il 'Discorso' introduttivo, per il quale utilizza come fonti E. Gibbon, C. Meiners e S. Centofanti.]
                       
II. b – L’amor dei garzoni nel 'Discorso intorno la vita e le opere di Luciano'   
[I cenni all’omosessualità frequenti nel corpus lucianeo inducono Sett. a interrogarsi, nel 'Discorso' che precede la traduzione, sull’omosessualità nel mondo antico: interpretata come ricerca del piacere, posta in relazione alla religione e alla filosofia, alla disponibilità degli schiavi e alla nudità nelle palestre. Ricerca dei riscontri testuali nella traduzione; figura ambivalente di Socrate; il rapporto con i ragazzi liberi. Il tentativo di una visione storicistica, sganciata dall’interpretazione religiosa, appare consapevole e singolare, soprattutto in rapporto al silenzio e/o al moralismo sette-ottocentesco, incluso quello degli antichisti e delle fonti consultate.]
                 
II. c – Le 5 opere oscene; gli Amori
[L’analisi di cinque testi che Sett. avrebbe voluto pubblicare a parte, evidenzia quali modelli di relazioni omosessuali avrà presenti il traduttore nel corso del suo lavoro. A livello del contenuto, al rapporto pederastico come modalità erotica libera e generalmente accettata, con la netta divisione dei ruoli fra l’amante (adulto-attivo) e l’amato (adolescente-passivo), si contrappone nel rapporto fra adulti la rappresentazione caricaturale dell’effeminatezza e lo scherno per il ruolo passivo. A livello espressivo, le parti oscene sono riferite sommariamente, con due eccezioni in cui gli atti vengono rappresentati. Analisi dei commenti del traduttore sulle cinque opere; sorprendente condanna degli 'Amori' pseudolucianei, in cui svolgono un ruolo non secondario l’aspetto estetico e la condanna della pederastia, che lascia sullo sfondo l’omosessualità fra adulti.]

II. d – La scelta purista  e il lessico osceno   
[A differenza di G. Gozzi, Sett. traduce Luciano integralmente, attuando rarissime e minimali forme di censura, due delle quali riguardano il rapporto coi fanciulli. Cenni sulle traduzioni novecentesche. A livello stilistico, Sett. sceglie di rendere l’atticismo di Luciano attraverso il lessico purista (allontanandosi dalla versione di G. Manzi) e l’innesto di echi della tradizione letteraria italiana anche per l’ambito osceno, che egli enfatizza rispetto all’originale. Rassegna dei termini legati ai personaggi omosessuali; ridotto l’impiego di 'pederasta', e sempre in funzione negativa, risemantizzazione del termine: il "fanciullaio".]
                           

Cap. III - La traduzione di Aristeo di Megara

III. a – Il racconto osceno sino a la metà 
[L’"Avvertenza del traduttore" evidenzia la contrapposizione fra l’arte antica e l’ipocrita arte moderna, si sofferma sugli amori maschili (tacendo di quelli eterosessuali) e suggerisce al lettore una chiave interpretativa. A differenza che in Luciano e in contrasto col moralismo del tempo, nulla viene lasciato all’immaginazione nei primi capitoli sui rapporti omo- ed etero-sessuali. Analisi del lessico osceno: analogia col 'Decameron' per lo sguardo ludico, ma anche per il linguaggio metaforico e per il procedimento che presiede alla creazione di nuove metafore; analisi di due prestiti decameroniani. Un lusus che fa ampio uso dell’ironia e dell’ammicco diretto e indiretto al lettore, e che tuttavia non autorizza una lettura in chiave anti-omosessuale.]
                                                                             
III. b – Una singolare fiaba di formazione 
[Il racconto scandito in tre blocchi che mostrano il percorso formativo dei protagonisti: dall’omosessualità all’eterosessualità alla bisessualità.
1-Riscrittura dell’amore platonico in chiave provocatoriamente sessuale; la relazione comincia quando di solito terminava, per l’amato, il rapporto pederastico; all’uguaglianza anagrafica si sovrappone la più innovativa reciprocità dei ruoli sessuali. Riprese testuali dal 'Fedro' e, soprattutto, dal 'Simposio', non mediate da Luciano. Il personaggio di Codro: esaltazione dell’amore omosessuale e misoginia; collegamento fra amore maschile e virtù guerriere.
2-La conoscenza della donna e il superamento della misoginia. Sperimentazione delle differenze fra diletto omo- ed etero-sessuale e riformulazione degli insegnamenti di Codro; ebbrezza e temperanza; la condivisione platonica della donna e la gelosia; in che senso Innide risana Doro dalla sua “malattia”.
3-Innamoramento-fidanzamento di Callicle e della fanciulla Psiche; episodio guerresco in difesa della patria: assente il rimando alla tirannide; mancanza di riferimenti storici e di motivazioni. Innamoramento-fidanzamento di Doro e Ioessa; forti differenze fra le figure delle due fanciulle; Psiche personaggio muto. Doppie, felici e feconde nozze; abbandono della condivisione della donna e ripresa degli antichi rapporti: approdo a una pacifica, “borghese” bisessualità.]             

III. c – Aristeo e Settembrini
[Dagli 'Amori' Sett. attinge (riformulandole) la visione misogina e la “lezione” dimostrativa di Codro, la rappresentazione dell’infanzia dei protagonisti, l’insofferenza all’ipocrisia, ma anche l’impianto generale che egli rende 'neo-platonico' sia attraverso gli stravolgimenti di cui al paragrafo precedente sia sostituendo al rapporto pederastico la relazione fra coetanei adulti. Se coi NPL Sett. ha inteso sopperire all’incapacità artistica degli 'Amori', egli riformula al tempo stesso lo statuto dei rapporti omosessuali trovato nel dialogo e in generale in Luciano. Ulteriore specificità: la conoscenza della donna attraverso la figura e il linguaggio di Innide, per i quali attinge ai 'Dialoghi delle cortigiane' e risponde criticamente a un passaggio degli 'Amori'. Due brani dalle 'Lezioni di letteratura italiana' forse riferiti ai NPL (e a Psiche). Un terzo brano cita 'Gli amori pastorali di Dafni e Cloe' da cui riprende l’impianto del romanzo di formazione, incrociandolo con le caratteristiche e le finalità delle 'fabulae milesiae'.
Nei NPL visione politica e religiosa (ma anche linguistica) congruenti con quelle dell’ultimo Sett.; così come i richiami testuali e lo sguardo ironico e provocatorio, che tuttavia non ripropone per la sua favola gli elementi parodici trovati in Luciano né il relativo lessico giudicante.] 
               
Appendice.  I Neoplatonici per Aristeo di Megara  [versione inedita]

Ringraziamenti

Bibliografia

Indice dei nomi
                                                    .......................................................

Domenico Conoscenti, Ph. D. in Italianistica all'Università di Palermo, si è occupato di autori e opere della tradizione trecentesca connessi al tema dell'omosessualità. Come testi non accademici ha pubblicato il romanzo 'La stanza dei lumini rossi' (Il Palindromo 2015) e la raccolta di racconti 'Quando mi apparve amore' (Mesogea 2016).

This research aimsto analyze the masculinity of the god Priapus and its relations with the romans’own views of the male phallus and sexual behavior. To accomplish it, we studied the Priapea, book dedicated to this god and composed of 86 poems written in Latin. We decided  to  create  an  interdisciplinary  study,  trying  to  understand  this  poetry  in  three different  forms:  as  related  to  religious  traditions  of  cult  and  of  relating  to  the  god,  as related to a roman tradition of laughter and religious celebration, and as related to a way of  performing  sex  and  masculinity  in  order  to  create  a  commemoratory  and  sacred environment. We shall argue that romans did not create a structured and monolithic wayof understanding sex or masculinityand not even one way of attributing meaning to the statues or the cult of Priapus. Romans, instead, would rather create different meanings to the god ashis functions would shift, in the daily life,between paternity, phallic aggression and shame of the exaggerated sexual behavior of the great-penis deity. Thus, we hope to point out the possibility of creating more diverse worlds and meanings for the male.

Parker, Holt N. - The myth of the heterosexual : anthropology and sexuality for classicists. Arethusa 2001 34 (3) : 313-362. • The system of sexual classification shared by the ancient Greeks and Romans divided acts and people on the axis of active versus passive. The anthropological concepts of « emic » and « etic » may help clarify our thinking. The terms « sex » and « gender » also deserve scrutiny.

In this book, Sarah Levin-Richardson offers the first authoritative examination of Pompeii's purpose-built brothel, the only verifiable brothel from Greco-Roman antiquity. Taking readers on a tour of all of the structure's evidence, including the rarely seen upper floor, she illuminates the subculture housed within its walls. Here, prostitutes could flout the norms of society and proclaim themselves sexual subjects and agents, while servile clients were allowed to act as 'real men'. Prostitutes and clients also exchanged gifts, greetings, jokes, taunts, and praise. Written in a clear, engaging style, and accompanied by an ample illustration program and translations of humorous and haunting graffiti, Levin-Richardson's book will become a new touchstone for those interested in the history of women, slavery, and prostitution in the classical world.

Este artigo visa debater alguns aspectos da religiosidade romana, enfatiza, sobretudo, que temas como estes não necessitam estar separados de outros assuntos da esfera humana, e que podem estar atrelados a elementos da vida cotidiana, tais como o sexo e o amor. Para tanto, evidencia-se a importância das pinturas parietais, como um interessante instrumento de análise histórica e reflexão a respeito da diversidade do passado romano.

A status quaestionis of the study of Greek sexual vocabulary is offered, proposing a global approach that includes texts in which few efforts have been made in that sense, such as astrological texts, whose importance for this semantic field is underlined and analyzed by several examples.

The study of Roman lamps has been undertaken in great length by both D.M. Bailey and Siegfried Loeschcke.  Bailey focuses on Roman lamps that are part of the British Museum’s collection, made both in Italy and the provinces that were part of the Roman Empire (Bailey 1980).  Loeschcke’s examination centers around lamps found at the site of Vindonissa, a Roman legionary camp, located in modern day Switzerland (Loeschcke 1919).  Loeschcke’s respected typology relies primarily on the form of the lamp’s nozzle, discus, and shoulder to provide a date range.  This formal typology is directed towards those in academia, who study Roman lamps and are acquainted with the variety of existing typologies.  Bailey’s organization of lamps is based on decorative scenes, and thus directed towards non-experts, who can easily distinguish different decorative elements from one another.  One surprisingly large category of decoration is erotic scenes.
      This paper examines the genre of erotic decoration that adorned Roman lamps through an examination of both Italian-made and Roman provincial lamps, with an emphasis on the work of Bailey and Loeschcke.  I will address the wide variety of erotic decoration, the relative frequency of various erotic designs, compare their recurrence to non-erotic decorations, what is considered to be erotic adornment, the inspiration for such designs, and what the decoration might suggest about both the owner and the craftsman who made it.
      While Roman lamps vary greatly in decorative motifs, specifically on the discus, Loeschecke’s typology does not rely on the scenes to provide a date range.  With this in mind, this paper will lastly test whether correlations exist between Loeschcke’s typology and subsequent date range with erotic scenes, in hopes to see when erotic lamps flourished during the Roman Empire.

Parker, Holt N. - The teratogenic grid. Roman sexualities : 47-65. • On the categories of Roman sexual behavior, including the normal/active « vir », and the normal/passive « femina » or « puella », along with their antitypes the passive abnormal « cinaedus » and the active/abnormal « virago », « tribas », « moecha ».

Ce travail s’intéresse à la sexualité dans la Rome Antique à travers le prisme de "L’art d’aimer" et des "Remèdes à l’amour" d’Ovide, des poèmes didactiques qui se présentent comme des guides pratiques de l'amour et de la sexualité ; il cherche à comprendre ce que ces œuvres peuvent nous apprendre sur la sexualité romaine. Quelles sont les pratiques sexuelles décrites (et pratiquées par qui) ? Qu’est-ce qui crée le désir dans l’œuvre d’Ovide et quelle place réserve-t-il au plaisir ? Autant de questions explorées en appliquant la méthode du genre, à savoir en s’intéressant aux différences de traitement hommes/femmes, mais aussi aux aspects plus égalitaires présents dans l’œuvre d’Ovide.

The identity of the female prostitute in Ancient Rome is often defined in simplistic bias-laden terms. The contemporary literature is presented from an elite male understanding, and a Western elite male ideology continues to dominate today. This paper attempts to unpick this bias to form a deeper understanding of the identity of the female prostitute. The identity is examined using three definitions: legal, sexual preference, and that of a woman. By looking at these various definitions a more layered and complex identity is presented than simply that of a female sex worker.

We study the Greek and Roman astrological texts in order to collect and analize some of the many references to eroticism and sexuality that appear in them, which often include very precise indications on astral conjunctions and alignments that favor, according to its authors, attitudes and sexual behaviors of all kinds, both “normal” and “anomalous”.

"Abstract:
Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" is meant to offer a true recantation of amor, a palinode of love that includes an apology of poetry. Palinode and apology have become necessary and urgent, for Ovid, for two reasons, which offer a double challenge.
The first challenge comes from the love poetry by his contemporaries. Elegy is lament, protest, recrimination, regret. Occasionally praise, it morphs, more
often, into blame. Supposedly intended to convey erotic passion and impatience for pleasure, it turns into an intermittent profession of pain.
The second challenge comes from the carmina of Lucretius. In those carmina,both love and poetry are crucial, and yet highly problematical, because both, poetry and love, undermine the project of an unrelenting argument on behalf of reason. Passion and fiction are a threat. The philosophical effect of such a critique is immense and terrifying.

I will set out to outline the discord between anti-erotic ratio and ars amatoria. I will then be in a position to provide a panoramic view of Ovid’s work. Ovid’s poetry, I will argue, is philosophy, the musical thinking of a lover of myths, a philómythos who, as Aristotle would put it, was a sort of philosopher, philósophos."

El objetivo de este trabajo es tratar de dilucidar un problema que se nos presenta en torno a las afamadas spintriae. Tan problemático es su propio concepto, cronología, función y significado simbólico, como su nulo contexto arqueológico en lupanares, aunque se conoce un ejemplar -en ámbito funerario- que ha arrojado bastante luz al respecto. En definitiva, planteamos un nuevo estado de la cuestión. Y es que las spintriae suponen un punto de inflexión que viene marcado, además, por las fuentes clásicas, las cuales no nos hablan de la existencia de éstas, sino todo lo contrario: dicho término se ha utilizado en los textos para describir a prostitutas o prostitutos y, muy probablemente, practicar sexo.

MERGING IS SEX OBVIOUSLY,  NORMAL MERGING IS KNOWING THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BOTH BEINGS, NO YOU OR I = ONENESS,  THE TWO ANUs MERGE – IF ONE IS AN ATTACK, THEN THE ORIGINAL ANU BECOMES SMALLER, DUMBER AND WEAKER, WHICH IS WHAT IS GOING ON HERE. 

AND - OUR "REALITY" UNMASKED

The Latin verb pēdīcāre in many scientific works is presented as a loanword from Greek (from the substantiated adjective παιδικά applied in relation to eromenos), and its semantic field is outlined around pederasty. The meaning of this word, as well as its etymology itself, evokes justified controversy. The purpose of this dissertation is therefore to determine the origin and meaning of this word.
The conducted research has revealed that:
 This expression in the extant ancient sources was most often used as a vulgar threat of punishment for improper behaviour (such as theft, peeping, slanders, etc.) and in a mocking function as a vulgar criticism of someone's sexual behaviour.
 The hypothesis about the Greek origin of this word (caused by the believe of the Greek sources of male homosexual behaviour) already existed in the fifteenth century as a communis opinio and became the grounds for introducing the spelling of paedicare in the editiones principes of works by the Roman writers and the first Latin dictionaries, although this spelling is not certified in epigraphic sources or in the traditions of Roman handwritten writers.
 This verb should be regarded as the Latin native word based on the *pēd-/*pōd-stem, with the addition of the word-forming derivation -īc-, productive in the archaic era and present in words such as amīcus → amīcāre.

RESUMO
Os estudos clássicos, de modo geral, desde o final do século XIX até meados do XX, foram permeados de ideais de superioridade e dominação. Buscou-se uma relação imediata com o passado antigo, formando uma linha de tempo ininterrupta e teleológica, na qual estudiosos do mundo clássico, por meio dos ‘usos do passado’, uniram antigo e moderno, misturando-os de acordo com os interesses políticos nacionalistas. Transformando, assim, a Antiguidade, principalmente a romana, em um espelho de suas aspirações ideológicas. Na historiografia a respeito de Roma, preponderou as lembranças de um passado permeado por feitos políticos e militares, delegando à marginalidade os elementos da vida cotidiana e do ordinário, essenciais para compreender a construção das experiências humanas. Temas como as práticas de religiosidade e a sexualidade ou o erotismo foram, por anos, relegados da história tradicional, ou, quando recuperados, estavam imbuídos de uma visão judaíco-cristã na qual se considerava as esferas do sexual e do religioso como algo totalmente distantes. Partindo dessas premissas, nossa investigação se concentrará nas maneiras como se dão as expressões religiosas e as suas especificidades na cidade de Pompeia, focando, sobretudo, em divindades relacionadas com os rituais de fertilidade (Vênus, Baco, Ísis, Priapo, Hermafrodito). De tal modo, a cultura material presente neste sítio arqueológico, proveniente de contextos materiais distintos, em especial, no interior de casas pompeianas, nos desafia a desvincular a sexualidade romana pagã da noção cristã de pecado e reinseri-la no universo religioso, oferecendo assim, uma percepção menos anacrônica da experiência romana em geral e pompeiana em particular.

This article discusses representations of hermaphrodites in the domestic context of Roman gardens and argues that the spatial context of the hermaphrodite body is as germane to critical understanding as the intersexed body itself. The spatial and semantic interrelations between Roman gardens and hermaphrodite images focus on the dynamics of viewing hermaphrodite types in Italo-Roman art (section 1), the spatial configuration of hermaphrodites with documented findspots (section 2), Ovid’s introduction of garden imagery in the tale of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (Met. 4. 285-388) compared to the Salmakis inscription from Kaplan Kalesi at Halicarnassus (section 3), and the historical correlation to Augustan Rome’s vegetative symbolism (section 4). This synthesis of material, literary, and historical evidence for hermaphrodite images indicates that their representation in Roman domestic art can be read as an expression of domestic harmony that mirrored the emphasis on heterosexual union and political concord ushered in by Augustus and Livia.

The multivarious arrangement of mosaic floor pavements in Greek and Roman houses provides us today with clues as to the presumed function of the rooms they decorated. This is something that Pierre Gros recently evoked in his L'architecture romaine, his excellent synthesis of Roman architecture published in Paris in 2001 by Picard. The architectural layout and decoration, especially the mosaic floors, of the given rooms in the House of Leukaktios in Ptolemais have lent support to this idea, contributing to an understanding of specific purpose and function, which can be deemed as very likely.

Posting the TOC of the 2nd edition of my book, from the U. of Texas Press (2018); the new edition has 2 additional chapters (on Greek vase painting and Roman objects and wall paintings), in addition to some updated bibliography and minor changes throughout.

A previously unpublished Attic black-figure neck amphora is attributed here to the Medea Group and dated ca. 530-520 BCE. It illustrates on Side A Apollo and Artemis framed between Poseidon and Hermes, and on Side B a scene of pederastic sexual intercourse (Beazley's Courting Type γ). The latter scene is placed in the context of 38 other examples of this type illustrated in Attic black-figure.

Starting from the legendary tradition of the mutilation of male children by the Amazons, we study its connection with the Greek proverb ἄριστα χωλòς οἰφεῖ, as well as certain ancient and modern ideas about the relationship between lameness
and sexuality.

The notion that sexuality in the Greek and Roman periods was predicated on a social-sexual hierarchy that casts relationships in the binary terms of active/passive and penetrator/penetrated has been both influential and controversial over the last 30 years. Both the articulation of this hierarchy and its critique have been haunted by various gendered and identitarian investments, leading to several theoretical and historical impasses. This essay offers up a second century Christian text, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, as an intervention into this debate and the impasses it produced-that is, as an inquiry into the continuing predominance of penetrative models for relationality in contemporary theory, as well as the near-total subsuming of ancient erotic relations under the rubric of gender. Indeed I read the Acts of Paul and Thecla as an archive of erotic experiences that don't fit comfortably within penetrative and active/passive frameworks, and do so with gender working as a language inflecting (but not determinative of) erotic life. I thus hope to widen our aperture for ancient sexuality, as well as for contemporary theories of sexuality that imagine penetrative wounding as primary models for sex and relational encounters at large.