by K J Dover
Still, this hostility to same-sex sexual behaviour between (freeborn) Roman men is not the whole story. In the first century C.E., for instance, we find evidence of pleasure just below the surface of critical words in works by Juvenal, Martial, and Seneca the Younger, to take some examples.33 In contrast, Petronius’ Satyricon is memorably unapologetic. In still other sources, there is evidence of obsession over penetration of one man by another. Pseudo-Quintilian’s third declamation, a work in which a soldier rebuffs his commander’s attempt to compel him to have sex with him by murdering him, features repeated visualisation of a sexual penetration that did not occur.34 Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae 4, Pr. 10 features jokey by-play around the suggestion that, while it is a necessity for a slave to submit to penetration by his master, for a freedman (i.e. a former slave) it is a duty: indeed, the word ‘duty’ became for a time a euphemism for allowing anal penetration.35 It should be noted that these readings of the Roman sources, employing psychoanalytic and post-structural approaches, are different in kind from Dover’s work. Interestingly, too, as is the case in the Greek sources, there is not much talk about same-sex desire between women in surviving materials from Rome, though it does appear here and there.36
As noted above, Greek ideals of same-sex behaviour remained in play as a provocative and influential counter-example during periods after the heyday of Athens because of the magnificence of the Greek cultural inheritance. Dover’s pioneering work has been most helpful for making this important dynamic clear, especially when scholars have turned their attention to such things as the philosophical roots of Christianity. One thinks here, for example, of the early Stoics (fourth century B.C.E.) who modelled the transmission of education on the example of Greek pederasty, but with modifications. An educative relationship with a sexual component was pursued but the essential asymmetries of age and gender were both changed: an erōmenos could be in his late twenties and girls and women could be erōmenai.37 To take a different example, the discussions appearing in recent years of emperor Marcus Aurelius (second century C.E.) and his teacher Fronto and their educative relationship would be inconceivable without Dover’s discussion of Athenian pederasty.38
In general, too, Dover’s work has been invaluable to scholars in the ongoing work of understanding the dynamics in Greek texts written during the Empire. Recollections of Athenian pederasty impart corporeal urgency to later texts even as they import Athenian glamour. Aelius Aristides, the second-century C.E. orator, speaks of his unadorned and manly style of speech (‘I do nothing to please, and I fail to please in nothing’) that compels the desire of his audience, making them into his desperate lovers (duserōtes).39 This characterisation calls to mind Dover’s smitten erastai scheming to get their admirable, and perhaps a little stand-offish, erōmenoi to give in to their entreaties. If we consider another example, St. Gregory of Nyssa, the fourth-century C.E. theologian, projects a protean persona liberally influenced by Plato and pederasty. He characterises himself sometimes as the boy awaiting the instruction of his philosopher teacher/lover,40 and other times as an erastēs.41 Indeed a thorough knowledge of the language of Greek pederasty means that textual dynamics that don’t appear to be carnal at first turn out to be just that. Emperor Julian’s depiction (fourth century C.E.) of Marcus Aurelius, intertextual with Plato’s Symposium at a notoriously pederastic moment, has such a complexion.42
If we move further on into the future, Boswell had recourse to Dover’s work in his discussion of precursors to same-sex unions in medieval times.43 Indeed, we find the example of Greek homosexuality persisting into the Middle Ages. Nikephoros Ouranos, general of the armies of Emperor Basil II and writing in the first decade of the eleventh century, can ask for a letter from his dilatory friend, Paulos, saying that such a letter would be as welcome to him ‘as insult and blows are to [besotted] lovers from their beloveds’.44 Such language is to be found elsewhere in educated Byzantine writing.
Richlin has remarked that ‘historians of sexuality desire the desiring past’.45 Dover’s work provides a nuanced understanding of a complicated system, an understanding that still repays attention and continues to enable the generation of new insights.46
Mark Masterson, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand James Robson, Open University, UK
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* * *
1. Scarborough (1979).
2. Pp. 13 and 68.
3. Pp. 100-9.
4. E.g. Henderson (1979) and Demand (1980), who also questions Dover’s understanding of erōs as sexual and philia as non-sexual.
5. E.g. Boardman (1980), Humphreys (1980) and Robinson (1981): notwithstanding the fact that Dover had pre-empted such criticisms to a certain extent, e.g. in talking about how only a ‘leisured class’ could pursue elaborate social rituals of courtship: p. 150. Hubbard (1998) would later suggest that there is evidence of growing popular hostility towards pederasty in Athens in the classical era.
6. Davidson (2007) 68-98 argues that boys under the age of eighteen were off limits, a view refuted by Lear (2015) 120-1 (the issue of age was also the subject of a heated exchange between Davidson and his reviewers on Bryn Mawr Classical Review). Different perspectives are taken by Hubbard (1998), Davidson (2007), esp. 64-7 and 446-65 and Lear (2015) on the changing attitudes towards pederasty in the classical era. On the term kinaidos, see below.
7. Whilst Foucault was heavily influenced by Dover’s work, Davidson (2008) 152 finds no evidence of the two men having met to discuss their ideas.
8. Halperin (1990) 15.
9. Winkler (1990a) 4.
10. See e.g. Foucault (1985) 215-25; Halperin (1990) 32; Winkler (1990a) 11. NB ‘zero-sum competition’ is not a term used by Dover.
11. P. 17.
12. Winkler (1990b) 177.
13. Thornton (1991) 185.
14. Hubbard (2003) 10.
15. DeVries (1997).
16. Davidson (1997) 169. Davidson singles out Dover for specific attack: see esp. Davidson (2007) 122-66.
17. Davidson (1997) 167.
18. Davidson (1997) 250-60.
19. Davidson (1997) 174.
20. Davidson (2007) 55-60.
21. Briefly discussed by Hawley (1998) 38-9, Osborne (2011) 27-54 and Robson (2013) 130-3.
22. See Rabinowitz and Auanger (2002) and Boehringer (2007).
23. Richlin (2015).
24. For more on stuprum, see discussions in Richlin (1992) and Williams (2010).
25. For earlier centuries, see Richlin (1993) and Williams (2010); for late antiquity, see Harper (2013) 141-58 and Masterson (2014) 19-30.
26. Richlin (1992) 59, Williams (2010) 18.
27. Pp. 91 and 156 n.6.
28. P.viii.
29. See Masterson (2013) for some limitations to the priapic model.
30. Fredrick (2002).
31. Fox (1998).
32. For statements of the importance of penetration as an indicator of masculine authority and of the loss of honour incurred by being penetrated in Rome, see Richlin (1992, 1997), Walters (1997a), Parker (1998) and Williams (2010).
33. See Juvenal’s Satires 9.43-46, Martial Epigrams 10.64, and Seneca the Younger’s Natural Questions 1.16.
34. Walters (1997b), Gunderson (2003), Masterson (2013).
35. Gunderson (2003), Masterson (2013).
36. Same-sex desire between women appears, e.g., at Romans 1:26; Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.2.22-23; Martial, Epigrams 1.90, 7.67, and 7.70. For discussions of these (and other loci) see, e.g., Brooten (1996), Auanger (2002), Boehringer (2007, 2015), Oliver (2015).
37. Gaca (2003) 75-81.
38. Richlin (2006), Williams (2012) 238-56.
39. Gleason (1995) 125-26.
40. Burrus (2000) 83.
41. Burrus (2000) 132.
42. Masterson (2014) 45-62.
43. Boswell (1994) 53, 60.
44. Nikephoros Ouranos, Letter 44, Darrouzès (1960) 243.
45. Richlin (2013) 294.
46. Thanks are due Stephen Halliwell and Andrew Lear for their comments on earlier drafts of this piece.
Preface
This book has a modest and limited aim: to describe those phenomena of homosexual behaviour and sentiment which are to be found in Greek art and literature between the eighth and second centuries B.C., and so to provide a basis for more detailed and specialised exploration (which I leave to others) of the sexual aspects of Greek art, society and morality.
In an article published seventy years ago Erich Bethe observed that the intrusion of moral evaluation, ‘the deadly enemy of science’, had vitiated the study of Greek homosexuality; and it has continued to do so. A combination of love of Athens with hatred of homosexuality underlies the judgments that homosexual relations were ‘a Dorian sin, cultivated by a tiny minority at Athens’ (J.A.K. Thomson, ignoring the evidence of the visual arts) or that they were ‘regarded as disgraceful both by law and ... by general opinion’ (A.E. Taylor, ignoring the implications of the text to which he refers in his footnote). A combination of love of Greek culture in general with an inability or unwillingness to recognise behavioural distinctions which were of great importance within that culture generates statements to the effect that ‘homosexuality’ tout court or ‘pederasty’ was forbidden by law in most Greek cities (Flacelière, Ma
rrou). I know of no topic in classical studies on which a scholar’s normal ability to perceive differences and draw inferences is so easily impaired; and none on which a writer is so likely to be thought to have said what he has not said or to be charged with omitting to say something which he has said several times. From personal knowledge I endorse Karlen’s comment that ‘Some (sc. public and academic experts on sex) are secret homosexuals, their “research” disguised apologetics. Other researchers and clinicians reveal in private a vengeful hatred toward sexual deviants that they would never display in print or in public.’ Naturally, I cannot see my own blind spots or explain adequately why my own attitude is what it is, but I will describe it briefly, so that the reader may bear it in mind.
Established linguistic usage compels me to treat ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ as antithetical, but if I followed my inclination I would replace ‘heterosexual’ by ‘sexual’ and treat what is called ‘homosexuality’ as a subdivision of the ‘quasi-sexual’ (or ‘pseudo-sexual’; not ‘parasexual’). Anyone who wishes to make an impression on me by ascribing my inclination to prejudice must first persuade me that he has made a serious attempt to distinguish between prejudice and judgment.