Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome and the
Construction of Modern
Homosexual Identities
l
ria
te
Ma
Edited by
JENNIFER INGLEHEART
ted
gh
yri
op
-C
wie
ev
Pr
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
# Oxford University Press 2015
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
l
ria
First edition published in 2015
Impression: 1
te
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
Ma
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
ted
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
gh
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
yri
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015935244
op
ISBN 9780199689729
Printed and bound by
-C
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
ie w
ev
Pr
Introduction: Romosexuality
l
ria
Rome, Homosexuality, and Reception
te
Ma
Jennifer Ingleheart
ted
I.1. TERMINOLOGY AND THEORETICAL
gh
APPROACH
yri
The ancient Romans (and Greeks) had very different ways of concep-
tualizing and talking about sexual desire and behaviour from those
op
that are familiar in the modern West; most relevantly for the purposes
of this volume, they did not universally categorize people according
-C
to their sexual conduct using the modern binary of homosexual/

heterosexual, and the application of such terminology (or terms such
as lesbian or bisexual) to antiquity is therefore anachronistic and
w
potentially misleading.
ie
Nevertheless, throughout this volume, the words homosexuality and

homosexual (as an adjective) are used in reference to desire, love, and
ev
sexual encounters in antiquity between persons of the same sex, male

Pr
and female, whereas heterosexuality and heterosexual denote such

interactions involving persons of opposite sexes; when there is a need to
distinguish between male and female homosexuality, male homosexu-
ality has been used to refer to incidences of the former, and female
homosexuality or lesbianism for the latter, but in general the term
homosexuality should be understood as referring to both male and
female same-sex love, given its Greek etymology from - ( (the
same)). Such usage is based on pragmatic considerations, obviating the
need for awkward and lengthy periphrases, and these words should
always be understood in inverted commas when encountered in this
2 Introduction: Romosexuality
volume with reference to the ancient world, without any presump-
tion of identity on the part of the actors involved.
Issues of identity and identication lie at the heart of this volume. It
is now both unfashionable and politically suspect for gay men and
lesbians to seek out legitimation and a sense of identity through
appeal to great homosexual gures of history, including the classical
past: see, for example, Halperin (2002) 16, and for some instances of
these sorts of identications, see for example 148 in this volume. Such
l
appropriations have been ridiculed since at least Proust, who satirized
ria
in 1921 those inverts who go[ing] in search (as a doctor seeks cases
of appendicitis) of cases of inversion in history, taking pleasure in
te
recalling that Socrates was one of themselves (Proust (1961) 23).
Ma
Independently of scholarly debates on the complex history of sexual
identities, however, in modern times such identities have been formed
at least in part through the identication with Rome by a long tradition
ted
of men and women who have identied themselves by or through their
desire for the same sex. Many people (including artists, activists, and
gh
scholars, as well as ordinary people with what are often seen as

extraordinary desires) have wanted to nd precedents, to know that
yri
there were people like them in history, people with similar desires and
experiences. That impulse towards creative identication is what has
op
brought about many of the responses to Rome that are examined in

this volume. While the present work recognizes the difculty or even
-C
the sheer impossibility of projecting modern norms and categories

back on to the ancient world, it also recognizesand interrogates
the long modern history of the need that those who desire members of
w
their own sex have had to nd, and identify with, others in the past who
ie
provide models for such desire.

ev
Pr
I.2. SCOPE, AIMS, AND STRUCTURE
The following scene from E. M. Forsters posthumously published

novel Maurice (which was written in 191314 but left in manuscript
by its author because of its homosexual theme) is often cited by
scholars of the history of homosexuality:1
1
This ctional scene, set in Edwardian Cambridge, is often treated as having the
ring of truth: Forsters own homosexuality and classical studies at Cambridge will
Introduction: Romosexuality 3
Towards the end of term they touched upon a yet more delicate subject.
They attended the Deans translation class, and when one of the men
was forging quietly ahead Mr Cornwallis observed in a at toneless
voice: Omit: a reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks. Durham
observed afterwards that he ought to lose his fellowship for such
hypocrisy.
Maurice laughed.
I regard it as a point of pure scholarship. The Greeks, or most of
them, were that way inclined, and to omit it is to omit the mainstay of
l
ria
Athenian society.
Is that so?
Youve read the Symposium?
te
Maurice had not, and did not add that he had explored Martial.
Ma
Its all in therenot meat for babes, of course, but you ought to read it.
Read it this vac.2
No more was said at the time, but he was free of another subject, and
ted
one that he had never mentioned to any living soul. He hadnt known it
could be mentioned,3 and when Durham did so in the middle of the
sunlit court a breath of liberty touched him. (Forster (1971) 423)
gh
yri
have inuenced such approaches, as will the belief that when we write about
sexuality, we disclose personal truths. Nor should we underestimate the desire of
op
readers to recover examples of lived homosexual experience from the many silences
of history.
2
Forster here hints at a common trope of late Victorian homosexual self-
-C
fashioning, in which reading Plato proves revelatory; later in the novel, he makes
the trope explicit, commenting on Clive Durhams self-recognition: Never could he
forget his emotion at rst reading the Phaedrus. He saw there his malady described
w
exquisitely, calmly, as a passion which we can direct, like any other, towards good or
bad. . . . Plato . . . was offering a new guide for life (Forster (1971) 612). Compare the
ie
narrator of Oscar Wildes 1889 The Portrait of Mr W. H., who comes to understand
his desires through reading homoerotic literature, noting how Platos Phaedrus had
ev
stirred him as an Oxford undergraduate (Wilde (2003) 78)by quoting the exact
phrase from this work that Wilde himself had copied into his commonplace book as a
Pr
student at Oxford (Smith/Helfand (1989) 115; see Evangelista (2006) 2402; see too
Endres in this volume at 161 and 163, and contrast Matzner (in this volume at 96) for
Ulrichss denial that his sexuality is shaped by his reading). Related to this trope is the
way in which those with homosexual inclinations hunt down all possible references to
their predecessors in (often classical) literature: for a ctional instance, see my chapter
on Teleny at 148.
3
As Alastair Blanshard observes (per litteras), this scene is all about knowledge
and the politics of knowing. Cornwalliss instruction provides the catalyst for a
discussion of precisely the topic he had tried to avoid, and nobody in this scene is
ignorant of the topic: Durhams suggestion of Cornwalliss hypocrisy hints that
Cornwallis himself has homosexual leanings, Durham is well informed about Plato
and the place of homosexuality in Greece, and Maurice has already had his eyes
opened by Martial, a fact which he keeps to himself. Forsters readers too know
The importance of this extract to both classical reception studies and
queer studies is obvious, since it vividly captures the signicant but
contested role played by responses to homosexuality in ancient
Greece in constructing and legitimating modern homosexual iden-
tities. However, those who cite this passage tend to overlook a small
yet noteworthy detail: the way in which Forster draws attention to his
hero Maurice Halls suppression of the fact that he had explored
Martial,4 which takes the reader back to an earlier passage on
l
Maurices burgeoning sexuality:5
ria
As soon as his body developed he became obscene. He supposed some
te
special curse had descended on him, but he could not help it, for even
when receiving the Holy Communion lthy thoughts would arise in his
Ma
mind. The tone of the school was purethat is to say, just before his
arrival there had been a terric scandal. The black sheep had been
ted
expelled, the remainder were drilled hard all day and policed at night,
so it was his fortune or misfortune to have little opportunity of exchan-
ging experiences with his school-fellows. He longed for smut, but heard
gh
little and contributed less, and his chief indecencies were solitary. Books:
the school library was immaculate,6 but while at his grandfathers he
yri
came across an unexpurgated Martial,7 and stumbled about in it with

op
precisely what is at stake; the unspeakable vice of the Greeks needs no glossing. See
too Hexter in this volume at 27980 on this passage.
-C
4
Halperin (1990) 1 opens his discussion of one hundred years of homosexuality
with reference to this scene, without mentioning Martial; similarly, the scene is
quoted extensively as the starting point for Nussbaum (1994) 151516, yet the
w
reference to Martial remains unexplored; cf. e.g. Crompton (2003) 1 and Eribon
(2004) 1545.
ie
5
Citing this passage, Aldrich (1993) 979 notes, The classics open Maurices eyes
to forbidden passion (97), but he concentrates on the novels Greek, Platonic
ev
material.
6
As Goldhill (2011) 5 observes, there is a history waiting to be written of how the
Pr
institutionalization of Classics, especially in the public school system, dealt with the
troubling picture of the bearded man pursuing the youth in the gym; as this passage
suggests, one method was to restrict the access of students to potentially offensive
works. On such censorship of the classics, see e.g. Harrison/Stray (2012). I am
currently preparing a studycentred around the classical receptions of Philip
Gillespie Bainbrigge (18901918), who was educated at Eton and Trinity, Cambridge,
and who was a schoolmaster at Shrewsburywhich analyses the way in which public
schools in Victorian and Edwardian England responded to the homosexual content of
much classical literature (Ingleheart (forthcoming a)).
7
Possibly alluding to the anonymous 1868 Index Expurgatorius of Martial; on
which, see Chapter 15 in this volume. For forbidden books (many of them classical or
written in Latin) and the instruction in sex and desire that they provide, see Turner
(2003).
burning ears. Thoughts: he had a dirty little collection. Acts: he desisted
from these after the novelty was over, nding that they brought him
more fatigue than pleasure. (Forster (1971) 16)
In strong contrast to the role which Platos Symposium later plays
within Forsters novelas a coded way for Clive Durham, who rejects
the physical side of relationships, to preface his declaration of spirit-
ual love for Maurice8the Roman poet Martial is linked with
the obscene and solitary indecency, part of a shameful, subter-
l
ria
ranean realm of bodily desires and uncensored language, summed
up as smut.
te
Taken together, these two Forsterian passages and differing schol-
arly responses to them dramatize (and also partially account for)
Ma
the way in which the contribution of Roman antiquity to the
complex development of homosexual identities has been over-
looked, while scholars have extensively and fruitfully analysed the
ted
role played by ancient Greek culture in the construction of Western
homosexual identities.9 One major reason why Romes importance
gh
in this regard has been underplayed is that, until recently, differ-

ences between the attitudes of Greece and Rome towards homo-
yri
sexuality have tended to be blurred or even elided; Rome is often

presented as merely imitating Greece, as many of the texts in
op
Section I.3 demonstrate.10

However, Craig Williamss Roman Homosexuality (1999; second,
-C
revised edition, 2010), marked an important turning point in the

study of ancient sexuality, emphasizing signicant divergences
w
between ancient Greece and Rome by analysing a variety of respects

in which Roman sexual ideas, ideals, and practices are culturally
ie
specic and distinct from those of Greece.11 In many of these areas,

ev
as outlined in this introduction, we can detect, if not direct

Pr
8
Forster (1971) 56. While the role of Plato, Platonism, and Hellenism in Maurice
is contestedsee recently Orrells (2011) 22034the novel does not associate Plato
or Greek love with obscenity.
9
See (e.g.) Turner (1981), Dellamora (1990), Dowling (1994), Taddeo (1997),
Evangelista (2007) and (2009), Prins (1999), Verstraete/Provencal (2005), Thain
(2007), Blanshard (2010), Nisbet (2013), Funke (2013), and Orrells (2014).
10
Another important strand in reception, particularly Anglophone scholarship of
the mid-twentieth century, views the Romans as paragons of macho heteronormativ-
ity, who either disapproved of homosexuality or were even unaware of it before
coming into contact with Greece: see Williams (2010) 2534.
11
See too important earlier work on Roman sexualities: Lilja (1983), Richlin
(1983), Veyne (1985), and Hallett/Skinner (1997).
inuences, then at least clear cultural connections with modern
homosexual identities and ideals, which this volume sets out to
probe, exploring how Rome has been (variously) appropriated,
subverted, and excoriated.12
Areas in which specically Roman rather than Greek sexual
practices and ideologies intersect in signicant ways with modern
homosexualities include, in particular, Romes Priapic fascination
with well-endowed males,13 its greater concentration on and cand-
l
our about sex (Williams (2010) 179 and see Section I.3 of this
ria
introduction), and its adherence to a less rigidly structured age-
related model of same-sex relationships than that of Greek peda-
te
gogic pederasty; Roman texts contain more examples of mens
Ma
desire for and sex with other adult males, and have thus been
read as authorizing same-sex relationships which involve partners
dened by their same-sex attraction rather than their desire for the
ted
sexually other.14
Since Roman homosexuality can no longer be seen as aping Greek
gh
ideologies and practices, the time is therefore ripe for an examination

of responses to distinctively Roman discourses of homosexuality and
yri
the ways in which such acts of reception have shaped modern (i.e. for
the purposes of this volume, post-classical) homosexual identities.15
op
This volume accordingly constitutes a re-evaluation of the contribution

made by the appropriation of classical antiquity to the construction of
-C
w
12
In many of the acts of reception which this volume explores, the connections
ie
between modern homosexualities and Roman homosexuality involve wishful think-

ing, special pleading, and/or misunderstanding on the part of the moderns who
ev
appropriate Rome; Roman homosexuality is inevitably transformed in its reception,

and how and why it is misapprehended are fascinating questions that this volume
Pr
probes.
13
Williams (2010) 94102. For modern responses to Romes Priapic preoccupa-
tions, see Chapters 7, 8, and 14.
14
For Roman desire between and for adult males (and, crucially, disapproval of
desire for exoleti or mature males), see Williams (2010) 8490; for Greek near-silence
on this score, ibid. 89; however, James Davidson controversially rejects the common
association of Greek homosexuality with pederasty: Davidson (2007), esp. 6898. On
adult men desired for their similarity to the desiring male subject as mediated through
Roman models, see Chapters 68.
15
I use the plural identities advisedly: this volume demonstrates Romes wide
appeal to those with various queer identities. Furthermore, many of those under
consideration in this volume had different labels for (and understandings of) their
sexual identities: e.g. see Matzner at 96.
post-classical homosexual identities in the West, by analysing the
previously little studied but nevertheless crucial role played by Rome.16
In what follows, I outline rst the scope, aims, and structure of this
volume. In Section I.3, I offer a history of the reception of antiquity
which places Roman homosexuality side by side with Greek homo-
sexuality, analysing how Rome has been variously denigrated and
overlooked but has nevertheless played an important part in dis-
courses of homosexuality and the ways in which homosexual people
l
have understood, defended, and constructed their identities. While its
ria
scope and length mean that this section could have functioned as a
separate essay, the importance for the volume as a whole of the
te
delineation of the historical development of the different roles that
Ma
Greece and Rome have played and continue to play in the erotic
imaginary of the West means that it belongs most naturally here; the
Greek/Roman binary that I analyse is key to the volumes interests,
ted
approaches, and arguments. The concluding section lays out a meth-
odological framework for dealing with the vexed question of separating
gh
out responses to Greece and Rome when we study ancient reception

and offers a survey of this volumes main research ndings. It synthe-
yri
sizes and summarizes the major themes and questions that emerge
from individual chapters and assesses how these reect back on Roman
op
homosexuality and its role in constructing homosexual identities.

Romes originary contribution to Western constructions of homo-
-C
sexuality,17 while underexplored, is important, not least because the

Latin language has been more accessible than Greek to later audi-
ences, particularly before the Renaissance, when Greek was forgotten
w
in the West.18 In more recent times, ancient Rome has appealed to a

ie
ev
16
Some studies of Romes inuence existe.g. Fitzgerald (2001), Malamud (2001),
Wyke (2001), Richlin (2005), and Ingleheart (2014)but are piecemeal; Rome is
Pr
repeatedly overlooked in favour of Greece. So e.g. in Verstraete/Provencal (2005), an

edited volume entitled Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in
the Classical Tradition of the West, a single essayRichlin (2005)treats the recep-
tion of Greece and Rome, whereas several chapters concentrate on the appropriation
of Greece. A synthesized analysis which lays out a historical background, establishes
methodological limits for this study, and explores multiple aspects of the reception of
different facets of Roman culture has never before been attempted.
17
This volume focuses on the post-classical West because the practice and ideology
of same-sex love in the East is largely separate from the Western tradition (Crompton
(2003) 21344, 41143).
18
Highet (1949) 6, 1317. Furthermore, Latin was the language of sexual know-
ledge in post-classical Europee.g. Smith (1991) 834 and Turner (2003) 57, 169; cf.
Orrells in this volume at 128, and Orrells (2014)and in pornographic texts was
less elite audience than has classical Greece,19 as this volume demon-
strates in its studies of the role played by Roman homosexuality in
modern popular culture, a topic treated in Chapters 9 and 13. Further-
more, in the modern era, images of Rome have been more widely
disseminated than those of Greece, in terms of volume production,
access through education, and popular culture saturation. Despite its
prominence in scholarly accounts of homosexuality, and its import-
ant role for early gay rights activists, it might be argued that Greek
l
homosexuality does not play a comparable role in contemporary
ria
popular culture: its pederastic aspect provides a stumbling block for
many gay men.20 In addition, Latin literature provides some of an-
te
tiquitys best known and most inuential examples of texts which treat
Ma
sexual desire and/or encounters between males (such as Petronius
novel known as the Satyricon or, more properly, Satyrica)21 as well as
some of the frankest ancient references to and depictions of homo-
ted
sexual practices (for example, in the works of Catullus, Juvenal, and
Martial).22 In the historical realm, Rome contains many famous
gh
examples of homosexual relationships and conduct, particularly in

accounts of the lives of the emperors, including allegations that the
yri
op
frequently deployed to describe sexual acts of all permutations; see Chapter 7. Nor
have readers ignored Roman homosexuality: from Renaissance texts which decry it
(some examples are found in Chapter 2) to modern pornography which celebrates it,
-C
Roman homosexuality has long been a source of fascination to later cultures.

19
For the preference for, and privileging of, Greece over Rome from the nineteenth
century onwards in formal classical studies in Britain (another factor leading to
w
Romes neglect in studies of homosexuality and reception), see e.g. Turner (1989).
20
See further Blanshard (2010) 15963 on reasons for Greeces diminished appeal,
ie
to which might be added the racism inherent in modern Western identications with
the Greeks (Bravmann (1997) 4767).
ev
21
Satyrica is a modern gay classicMorales (2008) 44; cf. Boroughs (1995) 18
and has long had such associations. It serves as a marker of the preferences of Earl
Pr
Strutwell (one of the rst explicitly homosexual characters in English literature:

Mitchell and Leavitt (1997) 1) in Tobias Smolletts 1748 Roderick Random and
features at length in Thomas Cannons 1749 Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investi-
gated and Exemplifyd. Cannons pamphlet, the rst extended Anglophone public
defence of male same-sex relations, includes a version of Petronius tale of the
Pergamene boy, challenging the common conception that the Pathics Part [is]
disagreeable (Gladfelder (2007b) 45). For the text of Cannon (recently uncovered
from the legal archives that record its printers prosecution), and Petronius role in it,
see Gladfelder (2007b; the editio princeps), (2007a), and Ingleheart (forthcoming a).
Chapter 8 in this volume explores Petronius modern reception.
22
The reception of whose works are, respectively, treated in Chapters 1, 14, and 15.
For the gross sexual nature of Catullus and Martial, see further Section I.3 of this
introduction.
youthful Julius Caesar was the queen of Bithynia,23 Neros marriages
to men as both husband and bride,24 the scandalous rumours about
the behaviour of the short-reigned Heliogabalus/Elagabalus (see
further in Section I.3), and the celebrated love between Hadrian and
Antinos.25 Rome also bequeathed to posterity many concrete
examples of (often highly explicit) homosexual content in the
remains of its material culture,26 such as the frescoes and other
nds preserved at Pompeii (treated in Chapter 10), or the Warren
Cup (named for its collector, the early Uranian activist, Edward
l
ria
Perry Warren, who provides the topic of Chapter 11).
As can be seen from this necessarily brief sketch, Roman homo-
te
sexuality is itself broad,27 and therefore demands a comparably broad
Ma
cultural exploration. This volume aims to make an important new
contribution to the eld of classical reception studies, and to queer
studies, by examining the reception of ancient Rome under a wide
ted
lens. Responses are accordingly analysed in a variety of different
areas, including (but not limited to) literature, pornography, popular
gh
culture, the visual arts, collecting, sexology, translation (an often

overlooked aspect of reception, but one which, as it has the capacity
yri
to reach large audiences, can be very inuential for other responses),

and classical scholarship.28 This volume takes an interdisciplinary
op
-C
23
Alluding to his alleged youthful passive homosexual role with Nicomedes, King
of Bithynia; see e.g. Suet. DJ 49 and, for the reception of this rumour, Chapter 5.
24
See Chapter 5.
w
25
A relationship often treated as paradigmatic: see Chapters 7 and 12.
26
See (e.g.) Clarke (1998) and (2003).
ie
27
Williams (2010) 4 denes Roman as referring to those individuals and groups,
mostly living in Italy, who looked to the city of Rome as their cultural center and who
ev
wrote in Latin within a self-conscious literary tradition that identied itself as Roman.
Applying this helpful denition, this volume therefore omits the reception of Greek-
Pr
language authors of the imperial Roman age (such as Strato, Runus, and pseudo-
Lucian), partly in order to limit the scope of an already expansive study, and partly
because they can be viewed as part of the history of Greek homosexuality; for
problems separating the two, see Section I.4. Compare also John Addington
Symondss claim that Strato and Runus suffered the contamination of the Roman
genius . . . coarser and less spiritually tempered in morals and art (Symonds (n.d.
[1883]) 78), as Greece in this period sank into grossness, effeminacy, and aesthetic
prettiness (ibid. 81). Of pseudo-Lucians Erotes, Symonds notes (n.d. [1883]) 756),
We have exchanged the company of Plato, Xenophon, or Aeschines for that of a
Juvenalian Graeculus, a delicate aesthetic voluptuary.
28
For the intersection between classical scholarship and sexology, see Chapters 4
and 5; Chapter 15 probes the translation of Martial; Chapter 14 interrogates responses
to Roman homosexuality in mainstream classical scholarship.
approach in response to the breadth of the available material by
bringing together the fruit of the investigations of scholars working
across a range of disciplines and offers a necessarily broad overview of
how homosexual identities have been contested, negotiated, and
formed in a diachronic context.
This is not to suggest, however, a simple, teleological progression in
responses to Roman homosexuality: see recently Traub (2013) on
how earlier models of homosexuality are not necessarily superseded
l
by later ones, as traces of earlier discourses remain, and compare
ria
Sedgwick (1990) 85 and Williams at 178 in this volume. A version of
classical reception studies which examines chain[s] of receptions
te
rather than modernitys unmediated encounters with great ancient
Ma
texts/authorssee for example Martindale (1993) 210offers an
ideal framework for exploring how different concepts of sexual iden-
tity can be in dialogue simultaneously.
ted
In order to gain a better understanding of various historical cur-
rents in the reception of Rome and its contribution to the history of
gh
homosexuality, Part I of the volume follows a broadly chronological

format: starting with the period sometimes known as the Renaissance,
yri
it moves to the eighteenth century.29 In a post-Foucauldian world, the

importance of these eras for the study of sexuality should not be
op
overlooked. The nineteenth century, crucial for homosexual identity

formation,30 is the focus of several chapters, and the more modern
-C
reception of Rome is analysed in a number of subsequent chapters

which interrogate the continued relevance of Rome in the twentieth
century and even in the post-Stonewall era. It is remarkable that in an
w
age when gay people in the West have largely earned a degree of
ie
societal acceptance and many political rights and no longer have the
ev
same urgent need as those in earlier ages to look back to the classical
world to nd models for their identities or which justify and valorize
Pr
their very existence, many still choose to engage with Rome, and
29
Late antiquity and the medieval period are thus not specic points of focus
within this volume; however, the thousand or so years which precede the starting
point of this study coincide with a signicant trend towards increased engagement
with the culture and literature of ancient Rome, and this is a trend which is now being
approached with consciously evolving philological and historicist standards. This
period therefore deservesnay, demandsa separate study, which lies outside the
scope of the current volume. I am grateful to Ralph Hexter for help in thinking about
and formulating this issue.
30
Controversially: Foucault (1978) 43.
Section I.4 considers some reasons for such ongoing engagement.
Parts II and III of the volume depart from this chronological format:
Part II, on the visual arts, brings together receptions from a wide
variety of periods, and, in Part III, Hexter and Williams explore the
reception history of two key gures: Catullus and Martial. The volumes
remit is therefore wide but can hardly be comprehensive, given that
the eld is itself so broad and in its infancy.
There are necessarily some omissions, or areas which are under-
l
played. Lesbianism is less visible here than male homosexuality, but
ria
this is partially a reection of Roman sources greater interest in the
latter.31 Moreover, Rome has been less available as a model to women
te
because a classical education has long tended to be the preserve of
Ma
men, with some (upper-class) exceptions.32 There is, nevertheless, a
signicant lesbian strand to the present volume: Williamss chapter
on translations of Martial treats translations of lesbian material
ted
(Chapter 15), and Schachters chapter on the gure of the lesbian in
commentaries on Juvenal and Martial (Chapter 1) uncovers an
gh
important point that has previously been missed in studies of early

modern lesbianism.
yri
Again, more might have been said on Virgil (rumoured to be more

prone to boy-love; Suet. Verg. 9), who wrote inuential poems themat-
op
izing erotic relations between males, such as the second Eclogue and the
Aeneids account of the devoted love between Nisus and Euryalus,33 or
-C
w
31
Any study of lesbianism must acknowledge the foundational inuence of the
Greek poetess Sappho (see recently Reynolds (2000); Haggerty (2000) 295 notes the
ie
lack of a single such canonical writer as a male gay ancestor); however, Rome is
important in perpetuating and disseminating depictions of Sappho: e.g. in the Epistula
ev
Sapphus and various Ovidian passages treating Sappho (see Ingleheart (forthcoming b)).
Furthermore, an Ovidian episode involving lesbianism has recently been treated by
Pr
Ali Smith, whose 2007 novel Girl Meets Boy revisits the Iphis and Ianthe myth from
Ovids Met. 9.666797 (see Cox/Theodorakopoulos (2013)). Compare Carol Ann
Duffys reading of lesbianism into the episode of Ovids gender-bending Tiresias
(who admits that women get greater pleasure from sex than men (Met. 3.31638))
in Duffy (1999).
32
e.g. Martial, Juvenal, and Ovid provided coded ways of talking about sexual
behaviours and preferences to other women (and, in the case of Juvenal, masturbatory
material) for Anne Lister (17911840) of Shibden Hall, Halifax (Clark (1996) 316,
402).
33
The second Eclogue in particular is a key text in homosexual reception: see e.g.
Smith (1991) 79115 and Grafton (1985) 6379 for Erasmus understanding of the
nature of the second Eclogue and attempts to keep that knowledge from pupils. See too
Chapter 2.
the role played by receptions of Ovid.34 However, these topics, while
touched on within this volume, deserve book-length studies to do them
justice, and I am indeed currently preparing an extended survey of
the importance of the biographical tradition about Virgils preference
for boys.
Given the Anglophone nature of the British Academy-funded
conference which formed the basis of this volume, there is inevitably
a greater focus on responses which originated in Britain and in
l
English-language texts than those from other traditions and cultures,
ria
although the contributions of both continental scholars and Anglo-
phone scholars with intellectual interests in broader cultural move-
te
ments help to ensure that the wider European story is far from
Ma
overlooked; in particular, the crucial role of nineteenth-century German
classicists and sexologists in shaping recognizable modern homo-
sexual identities is represented in some depth, in Chapters 4 and 5.35
ted
Thus, the volume offers a wide-ranging contribution to intellectual
history.
gh
Above all, by interrogating the desires that create engagements

with the classical past, this volume aims to contribute to the recent
yri
turnsee, for example, Fradenburg/Freccero (1996), Dinshaw

(1999), and Traub (2013)in queer studies from effective to affect-
op
ive history, whereby questions have moved from Were there gay
people in the past? to Why do we care so much if there were gay
-C
people in the past? and What relation with these gures do we hope
to cultivate? (to borrow the formulations of Love (2007) 31). This
shift is highly pertinent to studies in classical reception, including the
w
current volume, which aims to provide some answers to these ques-

ie
tions as they relate to ancient Romes afterlife.

ev
Pr
34
Ovids inuence is massive and wide-ranging, including the material on les-
bianism at my n. 31, many polymorphously perverse tales of homosexual love or
gender-bending transformations in the Metamorphoses (including the pederastic
Orpheus), and rst-person pronouncements on homosexual desire and sex. Only
the last two of these topics are treated at any length in this volume (see chapter by Fox
and Inglehearts chapter on Orpheus); wider coverage would unbalance the aim of a
broad study.
35
cf. e.g. Foucault (1978) 43 on the importance of the psychological, psy-
chiatric, medical category of homosexuality for the creation of a modern homosexual
identity.
I.3. GREEK VIRTUE AND ROMAN VICE
The story of the strategic deployment of Greek models by early modern

homosexual men, who used Hellenism to give a legitimating aura to
their own desires, is a familiar one. This section explores the parallel
and no less inuentialhistory of the reception of Rome, which was
demonized by such champions of Hellenism and homosexuality as
having corrupted ideal (and idealized) Greek homosexuality, through
l
its perceived decadence, licence, and obscenity; disapproval of the
ria
sexual mores of Rome means that it has played a much more muted
role than ancient Greece in histories of homosexuality. While
te
the following historyhardly before explored from such an angle,36
Ma
as Greece is privileged in accounts of the reception of antiquity and the
history of homosexualityis of intrinsic interest for students of
these areas, it is also important insofar as it outlines and foregrounds
ted
many of the concerns treated throughout the volume as a whole.
Despite the fact that, in the earliest essays in the English language
gh
that address homosexuality, there is little explicit differentiation

between Greece and Rome and between their respective practices
yri
(as these essays claim that Roman customs were derivative of Greek
ones), the clear rhetoric of Roman degeneracy found in these
op
accounts suggests that Rome was subject to more negative opinions

than Greece from a very early stage in the modern discourse on
-C
ancient homosexuality.37
Any account of perceived Roman homosexual decadence must
begin with the inuential portrait in Volume 4 (completed in 1776)
ie w
ev
36
Amy Richlin briey treats the Greece good, Rome bad dichotomy (Richlin
Pr
(2005) 448), which she traces to the nineteenth century and a number of factors:
reactions (particularly in England) against Rome in the wake of the reception of the
Roman Republic by the architects of the French revolution (see e.g. Turner (1989),
(1993) 23161); the inuence of Winckelmann and the Romantic idealization of
Greece (cf. Chapter 3); the identication of imperial Rome with the British empire
(see n. 98 and cf. Chapter 6). While these factors are highly relevant to the treatment
of Rome by Victorian authors such as Symonds and Ives (as I discuss here), the
stereotype has a longer history, which this section analyses.
37
In Robert Burtons 1621 Anatomy of Melancholy, a brief Latin discussion of
sodomy (Burton (1621) 3.2 at page 5378), which Crompton (2003) 365 labels the
fullest discussion of homosexuality published by an English writer prior to the
nineteenth century, makes no distinction between Roman and Greek examples: Virgil
and his Alexis, and Anacreon and Bathyllus, are cited side by side.
of Edward Gibbons The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire:38
I touch with reluctance, and dispatch with impatience, a more odious
vice, of which modesty rejects the name,39 and nature abominates the
idea. The primitive Romans were infected by the example of the Etrus-
cans and Greeks;40 in the mad abuse of prosperity and power, every
pleasure that is innocent was deemed insipid; and the Scatinian law,
which had been extorted by an act of violence, was insensibly abolished
l
by the lapse of time and the multitude of criminals. By this law, the rape,
ria
perhaps the seduction, of an ingenuous youth was compensated, as a
personal injury, by the poor damages of ten thousand sesterces, or
te
fourscore pounds; the ravisher might be slain by the resistance or
Ma
revenge of chastity; and I wish to believe that at Rome, as in Athens,
the voluntary and effeminate deserter of his sex was degraded from the
honours and the rights of a citizen. But the practice of vice was not
ted
discouraged by the severity of opinion; the indelible stain of manhood
was confounded with the more venial transgressions of fornication and
adultery; nor was the licentious lover exposed to the same dishonour
gh
which he impressed on the male or female partner of his guilt. From

Catullus to Juvenal,41 the poets accuse and celebrate the degeneracy of
yri
the times; and the reformation of manners was feebly attempted

op
-C
38
On Gibbons history and its inuence, see e.g. Dowling (1985) 5801 and
Goldhill (2011) 16571. For the status of the classics in Gibbons England, see
Toner (2013) 1058; for eighteenth-century hostility towards sodomites, see e.g.
w
Trumbach (1977) 1213. Anticipating Gibbon, Voltaires famous entry on So-called

Socratic love in his Philosophical Dictionary (1764) betrays like prejudices: Voltaire
ie
idealizes Greece, talking of a martial institution and holy . . . corrupted into nocturnal
festivals and orgies (Rome, not directly mentioned, is thereby clearly evoked) and
ev
notes the frequency of boy-love in Rome (Voltaire (1994) 3301).

39
i.e. sodomy, a vice more odious than adultery, treated in Gibbons immedi-
Pr
ately preceding pages. Gibbons disapproval of same-sex love is revealed in his

comment: The deication of Antinous, his medals, his statues, temples, city, oracles,
and constellation, are well known, and still dishonor the memory of Hadrian. Yet we
may remark, that of the rst fteen emperors, Claudius was the only one whose taste
in love was entirely correct (Gibbon (1896) 1.75, n. 48).
40
Gibbon probably draws on Roman texts for the (mis)interpretation that homo-
sexuality was a Greek import (Dupont/loi (2001) 3343 and Williams (2010) 6778.
On homoeroticism in the Etruscan visual arts (our main source of knowledge of
Etruscan civilization), see e.g. Knobel (1990). For the notion of learned homosexual
behaviour through cross-cultural contact, see Boswell (1980) 52.
41
Here, Gibbon (1896) 504, n. 20, notes, A crowd of disgraceful passages will force
themselves on the memory of the classic reader, but quotes only Ovid, Ars 2.6834
(on which, see Fox at 778).
by the reason and authority of the civilians, till the most virtuous of
the Caesars proscribed the sin against nature as a crime against society.
(Gibbon (1896) 4.504)
Despite Gibbons declared aversion to treating the topic, and his
circumlocutory vocabulary, references to the Scatinian law42 and the
contrast with the more venial transgressions of fornication and adul-
tery make it clear that Gibbon alludes disapprovingly to sexual rela-
tions between males,43 which he forebears to name directly. In a
l
ria
passage replete with censorious terms for such intercourse, such as
dishonour, the indelible stain of manhood, and sin against nature,
Gibbons greatest disapproval is reserved for the passive male (the
te
voluntary and effeminate deserter of his sex),44 whom he wish[es] to
Ma
believe was subject to the loss of civic rights at Rome. Gibbon asserts
that this was the penalty for such males in Athens, to what he obviously
believes is the credit of Athens.45 While Gibbon sees Rome as infected
ted
by the example of the Greeks and Etruscans,46 he also detects a
particularly Roman decadence: reference to the mad abuse of prosper-
gh
ity and power in which every pleasure that is innocent was deemed
insipid inevitably evokes the empire, and talk of the degeneracy of the
yri
times suggests that, in Gibbons view, sexual and specically homo-

sexual licence was another manifestation of Romes larger decline.
op
Jeremy Benthams essay Paederasty, the earliest scholarly essay

on homosexuality presently known to exist in the English language
-C
(Crompton (1978a) 383), was written around 1785, arguing for

reform of the law in England which prescribed the death penalty as
the punishment for sodomy,47 but owing to its subject matter
ie w
42
i.e. the lex Sca(n)tinia (see Williams (2010) 1306), the provisions of which
ev
are notoriously unclear but which apparently penalized stuprum (sexual disgrace
involving both male and female freeborn Romans: for the terms untranslatability, see
Pr
Williams (2010) 104).

43
Fornication and adultery are acts; sodomy is the equivalent act under
erasure here.
44
For eighteenth-century notions that sodomites must be effeminate, see
Trumbach (1977) 1213.
45
Gibbon may allude to Aeschines, Against Timarchus 1.19, which suggests that
Athenian citizens who prostituted themselves were apparently subject to the loss of
civic rights; however, the passage is controversial.
46
Perhaps inuenced by nationalistic eighteenth-century notions of sodomy as a
foreign import to England (Trumbach (1977) 12, Gladfelder (2012) 57).
47
Crompton (1978a) 384; the penalty was changed to life imprisonment in 1861,
and decriminalization nally achieved in 1967. Norton (2011) 83 suggests that
Bentham may have been inspired to write on this issue by the controversial 1772
remained unpublished until 1978.48 Like Gibbon, Bentham makes
little distinction between Greece and Rome, talking of a propensity . . .
universally predominant among the antient Greeks and Romans
(Crompton (1978b) 394), but he silently disposes of any suggestion
that sodomy was a product of decadence with the early claim that in
Athens and in antient Rome in the most ourishing periods of the
history of those capitals, regular intercourse between the sexes was
scarcely much more common (Crompton (1978b) 392). Nevertheless,
l
a bias for Greece and against Rome can be detected: Bentham states
ria
that what is remarkable is that there is scarce a striking character in
antiquity, nor one that in other respects men are in use to cite as
te
virtuous, of whom it does not appear by one circumstance or another,
Ma
that he was infected with this inconceivable propensity (Crompton
(1978b) 392) and then enumerates as examples many heroes of
Greece,49 followed by famous Romans, including notorious proi-
ted
gates such as Antony, Clodius, Piso, and Gabinius (Crompton
(1978b) 393). Bentham provides Cicero as the sole representative of
gh
a virtuous Roman who practised homosexuality,50 set alongside many

Roman reprobates who indulged in homosexuality, who are thus
yri
implicitly contrasted with numerous examples of Greeks whose

morals did not diminish their great achievements. He thereby makes
op
a subtle contribution to stereotypes of Roman immorality.

The rst essay to differentiate sharply and explicitly between Greek
-C
and Roman sexual practices and morality is Percy Bysshe Shelleys A

Discourse on the Manners of the Ancient Greeks Relative to the
Subject of Love, written in 1818, immediately after Shelley had
w
translated Platos Symposium as The Banquet. Shelleys essay was

ie
intended as an introduction to that translation but was not published

ev
Pr
case of Captain Robert Jones, condemned to death for sodomy with a thirteen-
year-old boy.
48
The editio princeps is Crompton (1978b, c). For legal sanctions against male
homosexual acts in Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Crompton
(1985) 1314. See Campos Boralevi (1984) 3781 on Benthams writings on homo-
sexuality and sexual non-conformists.
49
Many of whom become part of a gay canon, standard examples of celebrated
Greeks noted for their homosexuality. Compare Ives and Carpenter below at 24 and
26 and cf. my chapter on Teleny at 148.
50
Crompton (1978b) 393: a reference to Ciceros verses on the kisses he stole from the
exoletus Tiro, as summarized by Pliny, Epist. 7.4 (see Richlin (1983) 34, 223). Benthams
difculty in reconciling such actions with Cicero as austere philosopher . . . [and]
affectionate husband, is echoed in modern scholarship (e.g. McDermott (1972) 275).
in its entirety until 1931, and then only in a run of a hundred copies,51
and must be read throughout as an attempt to rehabilitate Plato from
contemporary neglect, and Socrates from attacks on the grounds of
homosexuality.52 Shelleys anti-Roman, pro-Greek stance must also
be viewed in the wider context of the nineteenth-century British
philhellenic discourse, for there was a decisive break with Rome as
a model for British society after the French revolution (see n. 36), and
Rome quickly became other, while classical Greece was put on a
l
pedestal: compare Chapter 3 and Stray (1998) 18.
ria
In Shelleys treatment, Rome provides an important rhetorical
contrast to Greece.53 At the start of the essay, Shelley explains
te
Greek homosexuality by reference to the degraded (Notopoulos
Ma
(1949) 408) condition of women in ancient Greece, as this state
gave them the habits and qualities of slaves (ibid.) and left them
devoid of . . . moral and intellectual loveliness (ibid.); nevertheless,
ted
the Greeks were not incapable of sentimental love (ibid.) and,
deprived of its legitimate object (ibid.), they turned to the male sex
instead as a compensation and a substitute (Notopoulos (1949) 409)
gh
for the qualities which modern men desire in women: hence the
yri
feelings which are only cultivated at present towards females

(Notopoulos (1949) 410) were directed by the Greeks towards
op
males. Conversely, Shelley notes that Roman women held a higher

consideration in society, and were esteemed almost as the equal
-C
partners with their husbands in the regulation of domestic economy

and the education of their children (Notopoulos (1949) 409). Shelley
thereby excuses Greek homosexuality as a product of necessity,
w
whereas Roman homosexuality can only be vice, since the Romans

ie
were not forced to turn to males to look for qualities which were
ev
missing in women (for Shelley, the proper object of male affections).

Shelleys Greek/Roman binary involves a fair amount of special
Pr
pleading. He shies away from the notion that the Greeks may have
physically acted on their feelings for beautiful males, employing
51
For the text, see Notopoulos (1949) 40413 (the rst publication available to the
general reader) and, on Shelleys essay, see ibid. 381401 (esp. 383 on Shelleys
recognition that the subject matter of the translation and essay prevented their
publication), Crompton (1985) 28499, and Brown (1979).
52
For Platos contemporary fortunes, see Brown (1979) 67; on contemporary
attacks on Socratic love, see Brown (1979) 1489.
53
See Brown (1979) 1201.
evasive language to deny that the Greeks could have practised anal
intercourse:54
We are not exactly aware,and the laws of modern composition
scarcely permit a modest writer to investigate the subject with philo-
sophical accuracy,what that action was by which the Greeks
expressed this passion. I am persuaded that it was totally different
from the ridiculous and disgusting conceptions which the vulgar have
formed on the subject, at least except among the more debased and
l
abandoned of mankind. It is impossible that a lover could usually have
ria
subjected the object of his attachment to so detestable a violation or
have consented to associate his own remembrance in the beloved mind
te
with images of pain and horror. (Notopoulos (1949) 411)
Ma
Whatever Shelleys reasons for such loaded language to excoriate
physical expressions of passion, albeit expressions that he is not
prepared to name,55 and the striking reference to pain and horror
ted
reects a view of sodomy as a violent, repulsive act incompatible with
love, which recurs in his references to the Romans as he goes on to
gh
state (ibid.):
yri
That it could seldom have approached to a resemblance with the vulgar

imputation, even among the more gross and unrened Romans,
op
I appeal to a passage of Petronius, well known to every scholar, in

which Giton, the pathic, is represented to talk the language of a
woman receiving pleasure from the embrace of Encolpius.56 This,
-C
w
54
cf. Crompton (1985) 294 and Woods (1998a) 11718. Gilbert (1977) argues for
an increase in concern about sodomy, and consequent harsher punishments for and
ie
public hostility towards it, during England in the period in which Shelley wrote.
55
Crompton (1985) 293 speculates on the line between Shelleys aesthetic appre-
ev
ciation of male beauty and eroticism; cf. (e.g.) Lauritsen (2005).

56
Brown (1979) 121 identies this passage with Petr. Sat. 114, where we nd
Pr
amplexus (embraces) between the lovers, and Giton, fearing imminent shipwreck,
kisses Encolpius on request, making a melodramatic speech hoping they will be united
even in death; Panayotakis (1994) 622, n. 75, notes a similar speech by the courtesan
Philaenium in Plaut. Asin. 61015, which may explain Shelleys allusion to the
language of a woman receiving pleasure. I am not, however, wholly convinced by
Browns identication: another candidate for the passage that Shelley thinks of might
possibly be Sat. 79.8, where one of the lovers rapturously describes how he and his
beloved spent the night in mutual love, in terms which sidestep the issue of penetra-
tive role (so Williams (2010) 206, quoting haesimus calentes | et transfudimus hinc et
hinc labellis | errantes animas, lines which he translates at 207 as We clung together,
hot, and on this side and that we exchanged our wandering souls by our lips).
However, the problem with this identication is that these words are spoken by
Encolpius and not Giton; it is possible, however, that Shelley misremembers his
even as a piece of meretricious attery, is wholly inconsistent with the
vulgar notion.
Shelleys telling characterization of the Romans as more gross and
unrened than the Greeks leads him to further moralistic differenti-
ations (ibid.):
But let us not measure the Greeks of that age to which I refer, with our
own feeble conceptions of the intensity of disinterested love; or accord-
ing to the horrible commentary which the imitation of their manners by
l
ria
the licentious Romans who had contributed to the overthrow of the
Republic, produced upon the text.
te
Shelleys metaphor of commentary and text here is striking: it
Ma
serves to paint Greek homosexuality as authentic and original, and
Roman homosexuality as secondary, uninspired, and possibly even
based on a misunderstanding or biased reading of the original that the
ted
depraved Romans of the empire imitated.57 Shelley soon returns to
that horrible commentary of the licentious Romans of the late
gh
republic and empire (implicitly following Gibbons narrative of

decline and fall):
yri
The ideas suggested by Catullus, Martial, Juvenal and Suetonius never

occur among the Greeks; or even among those Romans, who, like
op
Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, imitated them.58 The Romans were brutally

obscene; the Greeks seemed hardly capable of obscenity in a strict sense.
-C
How innocent is even the Lysistrata of Aristophanes compared with the

infamous perversions of Catullus!59 (Notopoulos (1949) 412)
ie w
Petronius here, as he wrote his translation and essay at breakneck speed: see
ev
Notopoulos (1949) 3823. I am grateful to Costas Panayotakis and Matthew Fox for
discussion of this vexed issue.
Pr
57
Shelleys ideas about the corruption and distortion of Greek ideals and Roman
grossness in the imperial period are echoed in the work of the American Edward
Prime-Stevenson, writing under the pseudonym of Xavier Mayne; e.g. Mayne (1908)
53: homosexual passion suffer[ed] shameful debasement from Greek ideals, when
Roman corruption of social morals was at the fullest, along with the Roman grossness
that distorted so much of what in Greek conditions was richly ideal and spiritual.
58
A distorting distinction, ignoring imitation of Greek literature by writers such as
Catullus and Martial.
59
Shelley attributes Roman obscenity to luxury (Notopoulos (1949) 412); what
was a necessity for the Greeks (in the absence of equal mates among women) is a mark
of Roman decadence, since the Romans had no such need to turn to males. For
the greater incidence of lexical obscenity in Latin than Greek literature, see Adams
(1982) 21826.
Shelley indulges in questionable argumentation in opposing Roman
obscenity to Greek decency via the use of the Lysistrata, alluding to
the ancient etymology of the word ob-sc(a)enus and its connotations
of the exposure on stage of things that should be hidden.60 Given that,
as we have seen, anal intercourse constitutes Shelleys greatest prob-
lem with homosexuality, to make this sort of claim unfairly overlooks
(e.g.) Aristophanes Knights 364, with its similar threat Ill fuck your
ass like a sausage skin, to (e.g.) Catullus 16.1: Ill fuck your ass and
l
your gob.61 Thus, for Shelley, the Romans turned to homosexuality
ria
even though they did not have any pressing need, unlike the Greeks,
to pursue such relations and further offended against morality by
te
refusing to respect the standards of decency set by the Greeks in their
Ma
pursuit of this passion.
In the Terminal Essay on pederasty62 by Sir Richard Burton,
appended to his translation of the The Arabian Nights (Burton
ted
(18856)), which Boswell (1980) 4, n. 3, labels the rst well-known
overview . . . of the subject of homosexuality,63 Burton provides an
gh
idiosyncratic, lengthy anthropologicalethnographical study of the

phenomenon, in which Greece and Rome gure alongside many
yri
other cultures, part of an alien, Eastern Sotadic Zone in which

pederasty ourishes (Burton (18856) 2068);64 Burtons work in
op
many ways anticipates the approach of the sexologists in its scientic

cataloguing of the sexually alien behaviour of other cultures,65 and its
-C
attempt to differentiate itself from contemporary prudery, which

w
60
Maltby (1991) 421.
61
Symonds (n.d. [1883]) 778 likewise opposes Catullus to Aristophanes: There
ie
is nothing in extant Greek literature, of a date anterior to the Christian era, which is
foul in the same sense as that in which the works of Roman poets (Catullus and
ev
Martial) . . . are foul. Only purblind students will be unable to perceive the differ-
ence between the obscenity of the Latin races and that of Aristophanes; cf. Funke/
Pr
Langlands at 112.
62
The term homosexuality was not yet in use at the time at which Burton wrote,
and Burton clearly uses pederasty in a wider sense to refer to same-sex relations,
as do his contemporaries: compare the reference at Anon. (1881) 5 to the pede-
rastic game.
63
cf. Reade (1970) 30. The essay became a scandal, and helped the translation to
become a bestseller (e.g. Colligan (2003); Nelson (2000) 12).
64
See Orrells (2012a) 2037 on Burtons treatment of pederasty as Other; Burton
may write less disapprovingly of the Greeks than the Romans, but neither are gures
of identication. However, Burton also troublingly suggests that the difference
between antiquity and modernity might not be all that great (ibid).
65
Kennedy (2000) 3201 and (2005) 241 for Burtons contribution to the devel-
opment of a recognizably modern homosexual identity.
Burtons essay attacks throughout,66 but Burton nevertheless seems to
buy into stereotypes of Greek purity and Roman vice. However, as
we shall see, his essay has an ironic tone that makes it hard to take his
condemnations of Rome too seriously, and at times he seems to
celebrate such vice.
Furthermore, in his approach towards Rome, Burton was clearly
inuenced by his reading of erotica, such as the highly inuential
seventeenth-century Satyra Sotadica (which must, at least in part,
have inspired Burtons choice of the name Sotadic Zone),67 a Latin
l
ria
dialogue which draws heavily on Roman texts which include some
very frank sexual subject matter.68 His approach thus seems some-
te
what prurient, not least when he makes use of texts such as Forbergs
Ma
De Figuris Veneris (1824), which treated Roman sexual practices
under several headings, including de pedicando (on pedication)
and de irrumando (on irrumation), most obviously in his lengthy
ted
discussion of Latin homosexual vocabulary.69 Knowingly or not,
Burtons Sotadic Zone is thus squarely post-classical, as is clear
gh
from his reference in his opening sentence to having learned from

his time in India of the execrabilis familia pathicorum (Burton
yri
(18856) 205), the accursed/detestable race of pathics (my transla-

tion); this Latin phrase is not found in any classical text and seems to
op
be Burtons own coinage. Moreover, the essays opening, which tells

of Burtons undercover experiences in disguise in a Karachi male
-C
brothel, sets the tone for the rest of the essay by daringly hinting
that Burton may have had some extremely close personal encounters
with pederasty and its pleasures and makes it hard to read any of his
w
later condemnations of ancient practices entirely straight.70

ie
ev
66
See Kennedy (2000) 31920, for the origin of the Nights in a Victorian moral
Pr
panic, and cf. my n. 78.

67
The phrase Sotadic Zone is usually thought to be a reference to the Hellenistic
poet Sotades (e.g. Turner (2003) 1701).
68
For the use of the vocabulary of this text in the Terminal Essay, see Turner
(2003) 392.
69
Burton (18856) 221. On Forbergs work, and its reception as pornography, see
Blanshard (2010) 525. Burton had a considerable interest in erotica, particularly texts
which depicted homosexual relations: witness e.g. his annotated translations of the
Perfumed Garden, Priapeia, and Catullus (on which, cf. my chapter on Teleny at 146);
cf. Sigel (2002) 5165.
70
For rumours about Burtons own homosexual proclivities, see e.g. Kennedy
(2005) 2378; for Burtons humorous affection towards pederasty, see e.g. Lutz
(2011) 247.
The love of boys is allowed to have its noble sentimental side, as
illustrated by the Platonists and pupils of the Academy (Burton
(18856) 207), and Burton states: amongst the Greeks of the best
ages the system of boy-favourites was advocated on considerations of
morals and politics (ibid.).71 However, disapproving comments are
found of Roman examples side by side with an acknowledgement that
such Greek nobility could be found here too: even Virgil, despite the
foul avour of Formosum pastor Corydon, could write: Nisus amore
l
pio pueri (Burton (18856) 208; my italics).72 Burton goes on to
ria
identify a (by now familiar) narrative of Roman decadence and
corruption: Pederasta had in Greece, I have shown, its noble and
te
ideal side; Rome, however, borrowed her malpractices, like her reli-
Ma
gion and polity, from those ultra-material Etruscans and debauched
with a brazen face.73 Burton sees the Romans as habituated to
sodomy even under the Republic (Burton (18856) 218) and notes
ted
that with increased luxury the evil grew, talking of the ood of
infamy which surged in with the Empire (ibid.) and how the wild
gh
debaucheries of Heliogabalus seem only to have amused, instead of

disgusting, the Romans (ibid., 219). While Burton may present his
yri
work as breaking free of contemporary cant, he thus nevertheless

reproduces many contemporary prejudices against Rome and misrep-
op
resents the ancient evidence in a way that serves to blacken Rome: the
claim that Heliogabalus sexual behaviour amused his compatriots
-C
overlooks the fact that Roman texts are united in expressing disgust at
ie w
71
As in Shelleys essay, classical Greece is held up as a model of civilization, and
homosexuality has a positive social function.
ev
72
Burton quotes in the rst instance Virgil, Eclogue 2.1 (on this text, see Ingleheart
at 62) and then Aen. 5.296, a reference to the pious love of Nisus for the boy Euryalus;
Pr
see Makowski (1989), Oliensis (1997), and Dupont/loi (2001) 5982. It is not
immediately apparent why Burton describes the former text as having a foul avour:
the line that Burton quotes continues ardebat Alexin and can be translated as a whole
as Corydon the shepherd was blazing with passion for beautiful Alexis, and the poem
tells of Corydons unrequited love in terms that are lexically inoffensive. However, the
fact that Alexis is described in the poems second line as delicias domini (the pet of his
master, my translation) suggests that Alexis is a sexual boy-toy in a master/slave
relationship, and in the poems nal line, Corydon consoles himself with the thought
that if Alexis spurns him, he will nd another (male) beloved. Given the disgust that
the combination of Roman slavery with homosexuality seems to have aroused (see my
comments on e.g. Ives in this section), the former point may explain Burtons
characterization.
73
Compare Gibbon on the Etruscans as having corrupted Rome (see 14).
such excesses.74 Nevertheless, Burtons tone is ironic and hard to pin
down throughout the essay, in a manner that seems calculated as a
provocation to contemporary moral standards,75 and Burton himself
seems more amused than disgusted at some Roman literary depictions
of homosexuality, describing Petronius Satyrica as marvellous and a
kind of Triumph of Pederasty (Burton (18856) 2201).
In the politically campaigning writings of the early advocates of
homosexual love in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
l
we can observe a change of approach insofar as these writers have an
ria
explicitly apologetic agenda; but censure of Rome persists, providing
an effective contrast for an idealized vision of Greek love (as in
te
Shelley), which is now presented as a defence of and plea for the
Ma
tolerance of modern-day same-sex love; this is well illustrated
by Funke/Langlandss analysis in Chapter 5 of John Addington
Symondss treatment of antiquity, which should be read alongside
ted
my survey of some parallel treatments, noteworthy as public, cam-
paigning statements.
Our rst witness is George Cecil Ives, the founder in the late 1890s
gh
of the rst British support/pressure group for homosexual men, the

yri
Order of Chaeronea, whose name looks back to the Greek heroic

exemplar of the sacred band of Thebes.76 Ives bravely wrote under
op
his own name about homosexuality in antiquity in a letter published

in The Humanitarian in October 1894:77
-C
w
74
See n. 55 in Chapter 5 and e.g. SHA, Elagab. 5.24 on the lack of tolerance for
ie
such a depraved emperor; on Elagabalus queer afterlife, see e.g. Icks (2012).
75
See n. 70; for the many ambiguities of Burtons slippery text, see also (e.g.)
ev
Kincaid (1992) 434.

76
On Ivess activist work, see Cook (2003) 323, (2007). Ivess Order, naturally
Pr
secretive in nature, was also socially exclusive, and class surely structures Ivess
approach to ancient models, given the appeal of aristocratic Greek examples of
homosexuality, alongside Ivess distaste for the Roman freedman Trimalchio and
vices which combine cruelty and slavery (see the passage quoted in Section I.3).
77
My quotation is taken from Ives (1894) 2945; the letters start makes a
historical distinction between Greek and Roman antiquity, saying that Ives will not
bracket together the passion of the past, just as he would not bracket together Mary
and Victoria as queens of England. For the letters background, see Cook (2003) 191,
n. 89. The anonymous reader for Oxford University Press noted the sad irony that
Ivess letter predates Oscar Wildes conviction by less than a year: soon the limited
window of opportunity for tolerance that allowed Ives to defend Greek homosexuality
(while decrying Roman vice) would be slammed shut by Wildes unsuccessful appeal
to a similarly elevated model from the dock (see my comments at 27).
I have read of the lthy riots described by Cicero, of the base debauches
of the Empire and of the odious banquet of Trimalchio. I know of those
hateful oriental vices combining cruelty and slaveryand for this
I blame them, the rest is only nastiness78which the new morality
would surely denounce as bitterly as did the old.
But what have these things to do with the cold rectitude of Socrates,
or the sublime idealism of Plato. Yet both were moulded and inspired by
that very anthropomorphic passion which is supposed by some to
engender only what is base.
l
ria
Yet it was not orgiastic saturnalia which left their impress on the
works of Phidias; it was not these things that winged the soul of
Hellas.79 It could have been no mean and unworthy ideal of love
te
which was followed by so many of the master minds, by Solon and
Ma
Demosthenes, by Alexander and Epaminondas, by Pindar and by
Sophocles. . . . We must indeed be cautious in viewing ideals through
the glasses of those who do not see them, and of blindly accepting as
ted
true those accounts of the passion, devotion and heroism of the past
which have reached us through the corrupt alembic of current
grundyism.
gh
Ivess selection of Roman in comparison with Greek examples is

yri
highly tendentious: he rst cites two examples of Roman homosexu-

ality that apparently come from the historical record, albeit reported
op
by hostile witnesses: the orator Cicero in invective mode, and

(although the source is not explicitly indicated) Latin historiographers
-C
w
78
Ivess remarks must be read against the perceived crisis in morality in Britain
from the late 1880s onwards. Homosexual panic was intensied by (e.g.) the Cleve-
ie
land Street Scandal of 188990, and the 1885 Criminal Law (Labouchere) Amend-
ment Act, which criminalized all homosexual acts, in public or private (Orrells
ev
(2012b) 199; Dellamora (1990) 193217). For the race issue evoked by Ivess reference
to oriental vices, and its connection with Hellenizing discourses of homosexuality in
Pr
the late Victorian age, see Orrells ibid., passim, Chapter 2, and see further in
Section I.4. Ives may also allude to Burtons comments on the Orient and pederasty
(where there is indeed a lot of what Ives calls nastiness in Burtons explication of
homosexuality) in his notorious Terminal Essay (discussed earlier in this section).
79
Ivess reference to the winged soul of Hellas evokes the notion of Uranian and
heavenly Eros found at Plato, Symposium 180c4e3 and identies it with ancient
Greece, against the notion that Rome, with her oriental vices and base debauches,
embodies base, physical Pandemic Eros; see e.g. Nisbet (2013) 307 on the distinction
between the two in the Victorian period, and compare Chapter 2 of this volume. At
Ives (1894) 296, the author claims that Greek ideals were quite changed and brutal-
ized in Rome, Magna Grecia, and Byzantium, evoking the same disgust at the
physicality of sodomy that is found in Shelley, as well as Shelleys notion of the
imperfect imitation of Greece in Rome.
of the empire.80 He follows these with an episode from Petronius
notorious Satyrica.81 These representatives of vice are ranged against
Greek philosophy: the reference to Socrates rectitude alludes to
Platos Symposium and Alcibiades account of how Socrates resisted
his advances (21718). Furthermore, Ivess contrast of orgiastic
saturnalia82 to the work of Phidias, the master of the plastic arts
(who produced idealized representations of male beauty, and was
known for his love of the boy Pantarkes), suppresses the personal,
l
erotic note in treating the Greek material, while presenting Rome as
ria
sexually incontinent on a grand scale.83 Ives has unfairly loaded the
dice against the Romans in this scenario which plays off Roman
te
vice against Greek virtue, since philosophy and the visual arts
Ma
naturally lend themselves to idealization, whereas invective, imperial
historiography, and novels tend towards the opposite. Plato versus
Petronius is hardly a fair competition.
ted
Similar comments are found in Edward Carpenters Iolus: An
Anthology of Friendship, the rst edition of which appeared in 1902
gh
and which was widely enough circulated to merit several later edi-
tions; it is probably the rst English-language homosexual anthol-
yri
ogy.84 Booksellers nicknamed this work The Buggers Bible, utterly

misrepresenting its high-minded approach.85 Although Carpenter
op
80
For Ciceronian invective against (e.g.) Verres, Catiline, and Clodius Pulcher for
-C
sexual conduct with males, see (e.g.) Verr. 2.2.192, Cat. 2.8, and Red. Sen. 11; for
imperial historiography (particularly Suetonius) on the sexual mores of the emperors
and its reception, see e.g. Chapters 5 and 8 in this volume.
w
81
On references in the Trimalchio episode to slaves as their masters sexual
playthings, see Richlin (2009) 8991.
ie
82
Ivess rst word may evoke the Greek Z but the second refers to the
distinctively Roman Saturnalia: for this festival and its licence (albeit licence that
ev
was precisely extraordinary, although Ivess rhetoric obscures this), see e.g. Versnel
(1993) 136227.
Pr
83
Ives overlooks Paus. 5.11, which suggests that the idealizing element of Phidias
work was balanced by personal passion: Phidias sculpture of a youth was supposed to
resemble his boy-beloved, Pantarkes.
84
See Mitchell and Leavitt (1997) xiii; for the anthology as a distinctively gay
genre, see Hurley (2010). See Matzner at 105 on Carpenters debt to pioneering
German homosexual anthologies; cf. Rowbotham (2008) 199 on Carpenters popu-
larizing desire to make classical material available to working-class homosexual men
and women, notwithstanding his awareness of the problems of utilizing the classics as
a plea for homogenic love.
85
Norton (2008). Carpenters work on friendship must be read in the light of the
1895 conviction of Oscar Wilde and the consequent public awareness of the use of
classical models to defend sodomy; cf. though Cook (2003) 11920 for a dissection of
the myth that Wildes trials ushered in a period of homophobic repression.
discusses instances of malemale love from many periods and cul-
tures, ancient Greece is naturally a main witness. Quoting earlier
works on Greek homosexuality, such as Symondss Studies of the
Greek Poets (1873) and K. O. Mllers Die Dorier (1824)published
in English as History and Antiquities of the Doric Race (1830), with a
second edition in 1839 86Carpenter provides example after example
of loving attachments or romantic friendships (Carpenter (1902) 25)
between men in Greek history, myth, and literature. In a section on
Poetry of friendship among Greeks and Romans, Carpenter claims
l
ria
Greek verse illustrates the depth and tenderness as well as the
temperance and sobriety which on the whole characterized Greek
te
feeling on this subject (Carpenter (1902) 67).87 Rome is unhelpful for
Ma
Carpenters purposes and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Carpenter quotes
only a few examples from Latin poetry. He implicitly comments upon
his exclusion of Roman works, which are more frankly physical:
ted
In Roman literature, generally, as might be expected, with its more
materialistic spirit, the romance of friendship is little dwelt upon;
gh
though the grosser side of the passion, in such writers as Catullus and
Martial, is much in evidence. (Carpenter (1902) 889)88
yri
As in Shelley, Catullus and Martial are coupled as unacceptable.89

op
Nevertheless, Carpenter deems a few poems or extracts from Latin

authors worthy of quotation, such as an extract from Virgils second
-C
Eclogue (which, despite what Burton had said about it in his Ter-
minal Essay, is extremely tame in sexual terms; see my n. 72), what
ie w
86
Pioneering German scholarship on Greek homosexuality virtually ignores
Rome: Mller cites Roman sources in discussing Greek phenomena but never treats
ev
Roman homosexuality separately or at greater length; more surprisingly, nor does

Licht (19258) (the pseudonymous work of Latinist Paul Brandt: on whom, see
Pr
Chapter 10). Meier (1837) has a brief concluding chapter on Greek love at Rome
(= Pogey-Castries (1930) 17785).
87
Carpenters socialism probably inuenced his preference for Greek examples:
Greece provided examples of comradeship and manly love, whereas the stereotype of
debauched Romans would have fed into contemporary prejudices (fuelled by the
Cleveland Street Scandal and Wildes trials: see n. 78) that homosexuality was the
preserve of corrupt, depraved aristocrats.
88
For the gross nature of Rome, see my earlier comments on Shelley.
89
Given such views of Martial, and the parallel of the quotation from Forsters
Maurice with which this introduction opened, it is worth noting that Forster claimed
that this novel came about when Carpenters lover, George Merrill, touched his
backside (Forster (1971) 235). The physical had a place in Carpenters private life.
For grossness (homosexual and otherwise) in Martial, see Chapter 15.
Carpenter labels some verses of real feeling from Catullus, and a
short extract from Martial 3.65 (on kissing Diadumenus). In these
carefully selected passages, at pages 8793, Carpenter allows some
mention of physical expressions of loveCatullus 48 focuses on
Catullus desire for a great number of kisses from the boy, Juventius
(addressed only as my Fair in the translation provided, with no
indication of his gender or age, however)90and the chosen passages
conform to Carpenters vision of romantic friendship between men,
while Carpenter declines to provide examples of the grosser side of
l
ria
the passion.91
At this historical distance, it would be easy to label these activists
te
tendentious lionization of Greece and condemnation of Rome as
Ma
disingenuous or hypocritical.92 In retrospect, such polarized engage-
ment with the ancient world looks particularly suspect in light of the
fact that the most famous proponent of Greek love, Oscar Wilde,
ted
defended himself from the dock on charges of sodomy by appealing
to a similarly noble Greek ideal93 but was convicted on evidence
gh
which included stained bedsheets and stories of parties involving

multiple sexual partners which are more evocative of the orgiastic
yri
saturnalias decried by these apologists than the vision of romantic,

pure Greek love which they and Wilde espoused in public.94 As Linda
op
Dowling (1994) 35 observes, Immediately after Oscar Wildes trial . . .

it would be difcult to pronounce the word Hellenism without an
-C
insinuating leer. But the attitudes of Symonds, Ives, and Carpenter

w
90
Carpenter uses the translation of Lamb (1821) 86. For the bowdlerization of
ie
Juventius by treating him as female, cf. Byrons translation of Cat. 48 rst as To Anna
and (in a second edition) To Ellen (Gaisser (2001) 123).
ev
91
While Carpenters approach may appear very much of its time, Boswell (1980)
81 sets more romantic accounts of love in Roman authors against the rather
Pr
sensational sexuality of the Empire.

92
The works analysed here are representative of the period: compare e.g. n. 57 or
Edward Prime-Stevensons 1906 novel Imre, wherein the homosexual hero lists
historical heroes who loved men against depraved man-loving-men; many Greeks
exemplify the former, and Heliogabalus heads a list of the latter category (Prime-
Stevenson (2003) 867).
93
See e.g. Orrells (2011) 193218.
94
A contemporary public/private split in treatments of antiquity can be observed:
cf. Chapter 7. Nikolai Endres reminds me that, for all his public embrace of Greece,
Oscar Wilde more privately turned also to Roman models: for example, after his
imprisonment, he referred to his heyday as his Neronian hours (Hart-Davis (1979)
278), and one of the young men who testied against him claimed Wilde used to talk
of poetry and art . . . and of the old Roman days (Hyde (1948) 194).
must be understood in their contemporary context: whatever their
own sexual desires and experiences, these men may well actually have
believed in an ideal in which love, not sex, is the most important
factor in homosexual relations. Furthermore, the valorization of
Greece and simultaneous condemnation of Rome is rhetorically
effective as a public plea for acceptance of homosexual love and, for
those who did not aunt the sexual side of such relationships, an
assimilationist tactic which makes sense both in terms of the con-
l
temporary illegality of male homosexual activities of all kinds,95 and
ria
also the more widespread characterization of Rome as corrupt and
lustful in the period.96
te
So, for example, Tennysons Boadicea (1864), written in imitation
Ma
of the galliambics of Catullus 63, has Boadicea (granted, hardly a
neutral witness, as a noble Briton, who contrasts her virile warriors
with the effeminate Romans in Dio; see below) declare of the Roman
ted
conquerors behaviour in her homeland:
There they drank in cups of emerald, there at tables of ebony lay,
gh
Rolling on their purple couches in their tender effeminacy.

yri
There they dwelt and there they rioted; theretherethey dwell no more.
Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary,
op
Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable,
Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness.
-C
w
95
Concerning the use of assimilationist tactics, cf. n. 78 and Funke/Langlands
at 113. While the early activists work was important in leading to greater tolerance of
ie
homosexuality, their homophobic excoriation of Rome makes uncomfortable reading,

particularly given modern attempts by some gay people to construct divisions
ev
between acceptable and unacceptable homosexuals, whereby those whose behav-

iour mirrors more mainstream heterosexual society try to gain acceptance by deni-
Pr
grating, and dissociating themselves from, those with less compromising styles (e.g.
drag queens, effeminate men, butch women, trans people, the polyamorous, sado-
masochists, etc.); on such moves, see e.g. Dollimore (1991) 54. The Greek/Roman
binary thus parallels the split that has emerged after Stonewall between assimilation-
ists (e.g. Stonewall and homophile organizations in the UK and US, respectively) and
subversives (Outrage and the Gay Liberation Front), who appeal, respectively, to a
decent, desexed, normalized homoerotic attraction and a subversive, destabilizing,
over-sexed queer identity. Thus, the very different reception histories of Greece and
Rome form part of a larger continuum of polarized attempts by sexual minorities to
establish their status and relationship to dominant sexual regimes: homonormativity
vs queerness operates in parallel with Plato vs Petronius. I am grateful to Sebastian
Matzner for helping me to think through and formulate these issues.
96
e.g. Vance (1997) 25068; David (2001); Goldhill (2011) 1601.
Roman vice is here tied up with sex and uncontrolled, luxurious
appetites (as in Shelley), sexual and otherwise, given the tender effem-
inacy97 and lust and voluptuousness of the Roman boy, although the
specically homosexual aspect is muted. Tennyson draws closely upon
Boadiceas contemptuous characterization of the Romans as the oppos-
ite of the manly Britons who oppose them at Dio 62.6.34 (singling
Nero out as the epitome of effeminacy at 62.6.3 and saying of the
Roman more generally: if I must call men those who bathe in warm
l
water, eat articial cuisine, drink unmixed wine, anoint themselves
ria
with myrrh, sleep with boysand outgrown ones to boot (4); my
translation). However, Boadiceas description of the sexual peculiarities
te
of Rome (the exoleti alluded to at the passages close; see my n. 14) is
Ma
elided here in favour of Tennysons more generalized reference to the
lust of the Roman boy.98
Such cultural stereotyping of Rome was widespread in the Victor-
ted
ian age, as was the condemnation of Roman licentiousness. However,
as several chapters in this volume demonstrate, Roman vice has often
gh
been celebrated rather than excoriated, particularly in more recent

times; that is, Roman lust, decadence, and grossness have been
yri
recuperated as positive values by queer communities, like former hate

terms such as faggot, dyke, or indeed queer itself. In the next
op
section, we shall see that the views that have just been analysed
about Roman decadence have been immeasurably inuential on
-C
responses to Roman homosexuality, and, furthermore, that they are

connected with many of the major research ndings and questions to
emerge from this volume.
ie w
ev
97
Effeminacy is not primarily about gender binarism here but rather part of a
Pr
contemporary discourse of virile warriors and the need for Britain to defend her
empire (Dowling (1994) 56 and passim).
98
My analysis of responses to Greek and Roman homosexuality has necessarily
focused largely upon sex and sexuality, but these are, crucially, intertwined with the
way in which antiquity is viewed through the prisms of Roman and British imperi-
alism (cf. nn. 46, 54, and 78), and ancient and modern Christianity: cf. most obviously
my quotations from Gibbon and Ives. In his 1896 A Problem in Modern Ethics,
Symonds was clear that the abominable corruption of imperial Rome (7) led early
Christianity to separate itself from ancient paganism, introducing a new and stringent
morality (5) that forbade homosexual relations previously valorized or at least
tolerated. For the nexus between Christianity, imperialism, and classical reception
in Victorian Britain, and Romes stereotyping as corrupt, see e.g. Chapter 6 and
Goldhill (2011) 15392.
I.4. LINES OF ENQUIRY
Although Section I.3 demonstrates that Greece and Rome could be

separated sharply in terms of their sexual mores and practices, the two
cultures are also often lumped together in reception, with little or no
distinction.99 As I noted earlier, this has been an important explana-
tory factor for the way in which the reception of Rome has been
overlooked in the history of homosexuality: Greece is always anterior
l
to Rome, and Rome often seen simply as an imitator (frequently a
ria
vastly inferior and incompetent one, as in the case of Shelleys
commentary and text metaphor, discussed in Section I.3). This phe-
te
nomenon is partly a consequence of the way in which Rome itself so
Ma
often acted as a conduit for Greece, as is clear from the present volume:
it is a major theme of many chapters, most notably Chapters 3
and 1012, which explore the way in which ancient Rome itself
ted
participates in the appropriation of Greek cultural models, myths,
and ideals.
gh
Romes debt to Greece creates a methodological problem: how can

we be sure that we are dealing with responses to Rome and not to
yri
Greece? And, no less important, which of the two cultures did later
generations think that they were responding to? This volume takes
op
the methodological approach that, if a text explicitly names Roman

examples, these should be examined as a response to Rome, whether
-C
or not these examples also constitute a response to Greece. Addition-

ally, this volume also considers cases where Rome is not explicitly
evoked but nevertheless in mind, as in the responses to what is clearly
w
the Ovidian portrait of the Greek mythical gure Orpheus considered

ie
in Chapter 2. Furthermore, this volume is interested precisely in the

ev
areas where responses to Greece and Rome may overlap and be

confused: possible misapprehensions in the reception of antiquity,
Pr
and how and why respondents made such misapprehensions, have

the potential to be revelatory.
99
See e.g. the title of Ives (1926), but note that Ives does distinguish between
Greece and Rome within that talk, making similarly hostile comments on Rome at
5461 and (e.g.) its coarseness and brutality unknown to the Greek age (54).
Compare too the Byronic Don Leon, which identies Horace, Virgil, Socrates, and
Plato among predecessors who loved men (ll. 27182), and the anonymous notes to
that poem which talk of the physical effects of buggery on the anus among the ancient
Greek and Roman cinaedi (Anon. (1866) 22; on this work and the annotations to it,
see Crompton (1983)).
Another area in which blurred boundaries are probed by several
contributors to this volume (particularly Vout, Ingleheart on Teleny,
Endres, Grove, Williams on historical ction, and Blanshard) is the
overlap between the generalized cultural stereotyping of Rome as
sexually decadent and licentious and the specically homosexual
aspect of this portrayal. While Section I.3 of this introduction
explored this issue in some detail by analysing writings about
antiquity up to the early years of the last century, the twentieth and
twenty-rst centuries have witnessed Romes portrayal as a porno-
l
ria
topia, a hell (or paradise, depending on ones predilections, preju-
dices, and pursuits) of polymorphous perversity, where anything
te
goes. This image is particularly prevalent in popular culture, in
Ma
media such as lms and genre novels, and sub-literary genres
such as pornography.100 There are real tensions in such receptions,
given Romes canonical, elite status and the much lower cultural
ted
status of such media and genres, and one nding to emerge from
this volume is that Rome, freed from the immense cultural baggage
gh
that comes with its massive importance to Western culturefor

which, see Boswell (1981) 87in more elite genres and forms, tends
yri
to be challenged and interrogated rather than simply viewed as sex

positive and so authorizing a modern sexual free-for-all; see, for
op
example, my chapter on Teleny (Chapter 7) for the subversion of

Roman codes of masculine sexual behaviour.
-C
Many of the chapters in this volume treat another phenomenon

already observed: what amounts to an obsession in later ages with the
sexual conduct of the Caesars, and the related issues of power play,
w
excess, and decadence. This is a topic for which there is no Greek

ie
precedent, given the unique nature of the institution of the Roman

ev
princeps and his command over a worldwide empire. This gave rise to
a gossipy interest in the emperors sex lives, which were treated in
Pr
ancient biographies and explored in modern sensationalist depictions

of antiquity.101 This peculiarly Roman theme is explored in this
volume from a variety of different perspectives and across a range
100
See Nisbet (2009) and Blanshard (2010). On the need for classicists to study
responses to antiquity in popular culture, see e.g. Lowe/Shahabudin (2009) xixviii.
101
See e.g. Vout (2014a). The emperors command over a worldwide empire gives
his sexuality the potential for world-shaking consequences: compare (e.g.) the tag line
to the 1979 movie, Caligula (dir. Tinto Brass/Bob Guccione): What would you have
done if you had been given absolute power of life and death over everybody else in the
whole world? For more on the lms Roman homosexuality, see Chapter 13.
of historical periods and contexts: so, for example, Section I.3 dis-
cussed distaste for the generalized corruption and luxury of the
imperial period; Chapter 5 analyses the approach of the early sexolo-
gists to the biographical traditions about the emperors; Chapter 8
treats Vidals delighted response to Robert Gravess 1957 translation
of Suetonius; and Chapter 9 interrogates responses to the attitudes of
Augustus and Claudius in twentieth-century historical novels. One
important discovery to emerge from these individual studies is that
l
Roman emperors and their homosexual exploits have frequently been
ria
co-opted into a narrative of Roman decline and decadence which is
alleged to have contemporary resonances; a model which continues to
te
be employed to the present day.102
Ma
Linked (but not limited) to the issues raised by the sex lives of the
Caesars is the distinctive role that the eroticization of power plays in
receptions of Rome; we might label such receptions fantasies, and
ted
indeed the place of desire and sexual fantasy in receptions of antiquity
should not be overlooked. This is a crucial element, and not only
gh
when it comes to responses that are openly pornographic, such as

Teleny: Joshua Billings has recently called for a study of the erotics of
yri
reception, arguing that erotics is a condition of classical reception

(Billings (2010) 22), since antiquity initiates a dialect of absence and
op
presence, desire and distance; compare Fradenburg/Freccero (1996)

viii on history as an erogenous zone, and Dinshaw (1999) 36 on the
-C
erotic charge in queer studies that emerges from the loss of the past.
In terms of the erotic treatment of power, while power imbalances
are a feature of many erotic relations, ancient and modern, Rome
w
brings these into sharp relief,103 as is clear in several receptions that

ie
are explored in this volume (in particular, in the chapters by Blan-

ev
shard and Ingleheart on Teleny). This can be attributed to a number

of factors, not least the Roman obsession with the virile, impenetrable
Pr
male who exercises imperium or domination over inferiors such

as women, boys, and foreigners.104 Furthermore, the homosexual
102
Witness e.g. the widely reported 2011 claim by Professor Roberto De Mattei
that the collapse of the Roman Empire and the arrival of the barbarians was due to the
spread of homosexuality (<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1374823/Outrage-
Italian-history-professor-blames-fall-Rome-rise-homosexuality.html>; last accessed 8
October 2013).
103
For the complex nexus joining Rome, imperium, and the erotic, see Vout
(2007).
104
Williams (2010) 13748.
relationships that are valorized in Greece are asymmetrical insofar as
they are between an older adult male and a boy, but they are more
equal than many Roman examples, because they involve a citizen and
a younger male who will become a citizen,105 whereas Rome suggests
more naked imbalances of power, such as the asymmetrical sexual
relations inherent when sex involves the emperor and anyone else,
and the extended role that slavery plays in literary depictions of
Roman homosexual relations.106 Several of the chapters in this vol-
l
ume show that Roman slaves are eroticized in reception, particularly
ria
in pornographic contexts, where slaves bodies are often naked and
openly available, and slavery can be used as an alibi for depicting
te
sadomasochistic practices; see particularly Chapters 9 and 13. Con-
Ma
versely, as these chapters demonstrate, the abject status of the Roman
slave is sometimes subverted in modern reception, as sexual and
social roles are not always necessarily aligned, and love between
ted
master and slave occurs surprisingly frequently.107
No study of ancient and modern homosexuality can ignore mas-
gh
culinity and femininity, issues crucial to many of the chapters

included in this study; see, for example, Chapter 4, 6, 9, 11, and 14.
yri
This volume explores, particularly in Chapters 6, 7, and 12, a richly

productive dichotomy in representations of Rome in terms of gender
op
as it relates to male homosexuality: on the one hand, Rome is the

-C
105
Nussbaum (2010) xiiixiv.
w
106
Williams (2010) 3140, 678; slaverys increased role in Roman homosexual
discourse can be attributed to societal disapproval of relations between freeborn
ie
Roman males, which conicted with Roman ideas about normative masculine (i.e.
penetrating) behaviour. Boswell (1980) 57 comments: In Roman literature no class
ev
consciousness seems to intrude on erotic interest: emperors sleep with actors, kings
with soldiers, senators with slaves; conversely, Boswell notes that most lovers in
Pr
(Greek) literature are aristocratic, while also citing evidence of Greek citizenslave
homosexual relations.
107
Possibly a consequence of the fact that one of the most famous ancient
homosexual couples, Hadrian and Antinos, are often presented as master and
slave: see Ingleheart at 151. Lesbian receptions also play on the erotic potential of
slavery and of love between owner and slave: in Rene Viviens 1904 short story Bona
Dea, the aristocratic Caia Venantia Paullina loves her little Gallic slave, the appro-
priately named Amata, in a passage with multiple inversions of both power and
gender. She tells Amata: I am she who rules and protects. I love you with a sweet
and imperious love. . . . You shall obey me, my sweet burden, but you will have from
me all that you wish! I shall be at once your master and your possession. I love you
with the frenzy of male desire and with a languid, feminine tenderness (Vivien (1904)
21213; translation = (1983) 117).
home of the ultra-masculine,108 a model which can be deployed for
the ridicule and denial of same-sex relations in Rome,109 but can also
(converging neatly with a modern homosexual aesthetic which fet-
ishizes hypermasculinity) serve to eroticize Rome and relations
between adult males: see the pornographic imaginings that Alan
Hollinghurst treats (for which, see Chapter 7), and the chapter by
Blanshard. In strong contrast, often in conjunction with treatment of
the emperors, particularly Nero and Elagabalus, Rome can gure as
l
the epitome of effeminacy, as Funke/Langlands persuasively show in
ria
Chapter 5; compare my previous comments at 29. The wavering
gender role which Rome plays in reception often depends on whether
te
Rome is viewed as a model for imperial Britain (hence, Western,
Ma
powerful, and virile)110 or identied with the East (other, exotic,
feminized, and corrupt); a similar split in treatments of ancient
Greece has been probed by Orrells (2012a).
ted
A major nding to emerge from this volume, related to many of my
previous points, is that Rome allows for a multiplicity of different
gh
approaches. Therefore, Roman homosexuality and discourses of sex

are open to a wider range of differing appropriations than Greek
yri
models are; Greece offers a more restrictive paradigm of pederastic

pedagogy.111 This may ensure continued interest in Rome from those
op
who want to explore less constrained, more open-ended, and more

uid identities than identications with Greece allow.112 This intro-
-C
duction began with a quotation from E. M. Forsters Maurice, in

which Plato and Greek homosexuality appear as liberatory; con-
versely, the same novel paints Roman homosexuality as part of a
ie w
ev
108
See Williams (2010) 13776 and 2534 for subversions of and resistance to
Romes masculinist ideology.
Pr
109
Williams (2010) 2534.
110
For equations between the British and Roman empires, see e.g. Betts (1971).
In the passage from Tennyson discussed earlier, Rome is clearly no model for
Britain.
111
For the diminished appeal of Greece in recent years, see n. 20.
112
Boswell (1981) 54 notes that Athenian evidence gives the impression that a
majority (if not almost the whole) of the adult male population was involved in
homosexual relationships and feelings and contrasts Rome: In Rome gay feelings do
not seem to have been more than a part of the erotic life of the population (55).
Roman sexual uidity and the breadth of its erotic lifewhich are by no means
limited to the gender of the sexual object choicemeans that Rome (as discussed in
Chapter 13) represents a place whose people have an appetite for both oysters and
snails, or, indeed, an even more exotic, varied erotic banquet.
realm of secretive reading, masturbation, and shame (see 5).113
Similarly, in Section I.3, with reference to Ivess championing of
Greek virtue and excoriation of Roman vice, I noted that Plato versus
Petronius is hardly a fair competition. As previously noted, the terms
of this competition, or Greek/Roman binary, have been reversed in
more recent times, with physicality, sexual frankness, and relations
between adult males all coming to be seen as positive rather than
negative inheritances from the Romans. Indeed, one of the major
l
advantages for those who want to look back to Rome to explore a
ria
range of sexual possibilities is precisely that it lacks the inuential
gure of Plato, who has dominated discussion of Greek love and led
te
later commentators to underplay the sexual component of homo-
Ma
sexuality; Roman homosexuality, while less obviously present in
modern discourses of homosexual identity, is able to encompass a
variety of physical pleasures and erotic options to a much greater
ted
extent than didactic and spiritual Greek homosexuality. Or, to put
it another way, Rome provides fertile ground for those with a queer
gh
historical impulse.114 The Romans are here, theyre queer, and, as this
volume shows, they always have been.
yri
op
-C
ie w
113
Earlier generations were unable to appreciate the liberatory potential of Rome,
a culture that took a very different approach towards sexuality from that found in
ev
Judaeo-Christian traditions, and it is important to remember that many aspects of

Roman homosexuality potentially remain problematic for those moderns who search
Pr
for ancestors in Rome. These include the pederastic aspect; the aforementioned
emphasis on slavery in homosexual relations, which means that these are necessarily
unequal, with the problem further compounded by the inevitable power imbalances in
sexual relations in a society so rigidly focused on penetration as a virile act, and the
consequent shame attached to those who take on a receptive role; distaste for adult
males who act a receptive part believed to be suitable only for boys; and scorn for
women who act on desire for other women. Rome was not simply a sex positive
society, a gay San Francisco ante diem, foreshadowing modern liberal and tolerant
approaches to homosexuality.
114
Dened by Dinshaw (1999) 1 as an impulse towards making connections
across time between, on the one hand, lives, texts, and other cultural phenomena
left out of sexual categories back then and, on the other, those left out of sexual
categories now.

Ancient Rome

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ancient Rome

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ancient Rome and the

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

to their sexual conduct using the modern binary of homosexual/

Nevertheless, throughout this volume, the words homosexuality and

sexual encounters in antiquity between persons of the same sex, male

and female, whereas heterosexuality and heterosexual denote such

scholars, as well as ordinary people with what are often seen as

brought about many of the responses to Rome that are examined in

the sheer impossibility of projecting modern norms and categories

provide models for such desire.

I.2. SCOPE, AIMS, AND STRUCTURE

The following scene from E. M. Forsters posthumously published

came across an unexpurgated Martial,7 and stumbled about in it with

in this regard has been underplayed is that, until recently, differ-

sexuality have tended to be blurred or even elided; Rome is often

Section I.3 demonstrate.10

revised edition, 2010), marked an important turning point in the

between ancient Greece and Rome by analysing a variety of respects

specic and distinct from those of Greece.11 In many of these areas,

as outlined in this introduction, we can detect, if not direct

ideologies and practices, the time is therefore ripe for an examination

This volume accordingly constitutes a re-evaluation of the contribution

between modern homosexualities and Roman homosexuality involve wishful think-

appropriate Rome; Roman homosexuality is inevitably transformed in its reception,

out responses to Greece and Rome when we study ancient reception

homosexuality and its role in constructing homosexual identities.

sexuality,17 while underexplored, is important, not least because the

in the West.18 In more recent times, ancient Rome has appealed to a

repeatedly overlooked in favour of Greece. So e.g. in Verstraete/Provencal (2005), an

examples of homosexual relationships and conduct, particularly in

Roman homosexuality has long been a source of fascination to later cultures.

Strutwell (one of the rst explicitly homosexual characters in English literature:

culture, the visual arts, collecting, sexology, translation (an often

to reach large audiences, can be very inuential for other responses),

homosexuality, Part I of the volume follows a broadly chronological

it moves to the eighteenth century.29 In a post-Foucauldian world, the

overlooked. The nineteenth century, crucial for homosexual identity

reception of Rome is analysed in a number of subsequent chapters

important point that has previously been missed in studies of early

Again, more might have been said on Virgil (rumoured to be more

Above all, by interrogating the desires that create engagements

turnsee, for example, Fradenburg/Freccero (1996), Dinshaw

current volume, which aims to provide some answers to these ques-

tions as they relate to ancient Romes afterlife.

The story of the strategic deployment of Greek models by early modern

that address homosexuality, there is little explicit differentiation

accounts suggests that Rome was subject to more negative opinions

which he impressed on the male or female partner of his guilt. From

the times; and the reformation of manners was feebly attempted

Trumbach (1977) 1213. Anticipating Gibbon, Voltaires famous entry on So-called

notes the frequency of boy-love in Rome (Voltaire (1994) 3301).

ately preceding pages. Gibbons disapproval of same-sex love is revealed in his

times suggests that, in Gibbons view, sexual and specically homo-

Jeremy Benthams essay Paederasty, the earliest scholarly essay

(Crompton (1978a) 383), was written around 1785, arguing for

Williams (2010) 104).

a virtuous Roman who practised homosexuality,50 set alongside many

implicitly contrasted with numerous examples of Greeks whose

a subtle contribution to stereotypes of Roman immorality.

and Roman sexual practices and morality is Percy Bysshe Shelleys A

translated Platos Symposium as The Banquet. Shelleys essay was