Greek Homosexuality

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

  Bibliography

  Auanger, L., ‘Glimpses through a Window: An Approach to Roman Female Homoeroticism through Art Historical and Literary Evidence’, in Rabinowitz, N.S., and Auanger, L. (eds), Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (Austin, Texas 2002) 211-55

  Boardman, J., Review: ‘Greek Homosexuality by K. J. Dover’, JHS 100 (1980) 244-5

  Boehringer, S., L’homosexualité féminine dans l’antiquité grecque et romaine (Paris 2007)

  id., ‘What is Named by the Name “Philaenis”? Gender, Function, and Authority of an Autonomastic Figure’, in Masterson, M., Rabinowitz, N.S., and Robson, J. (eds), Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World (London/New York 2015) 393-407

  Boswell, J., Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York 1994)

  Brooten, B.J., Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago 1996)

  Burrus, V., ‘Begotten, not Made’: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Stanford 2000)

  Darrouzès, J., Épistoliers Byzantins du Xe siècle (Archives de l’Orient Chrétien 6) (Paris 1960)

  Davidson, J.N., Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (London 1997)

  id., The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece (London 2007)

  Demand, N., Review: ‘Greek Homosexuality by K. J. Dover’, AJP 101.1 (1980) 121-4

  DeVries, K., ‘“The Frigid Eromenoi” and Their Wooers Revisited: A Closer Look at Greek Homosexuality in Vase Painting’, in Duberman, M.B. (ed.), Queer Representations: Reading Lives, Reading Cultures (New York 1997) 14-24

  Dover, K.J., ‘Eros and Nomos (Plato, Symposium 182a-185c)’, BICS 9 (1964) 31-42

  id., Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford 1975)

  Foucault, M., The History of Sexuality 1: The Will of Knowledge, transl. R. Hurley (New York 1978)

  id., The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, transl. R. Hurley (New York 1985)

  Fox, M., ‘The Constrained Man’, in Foxhall, L., and Salmon, J.B. (eds), Thinking Men: Masculinity and Its Self-Representation in the Classical Tradition (London 1998) 6-22

  Fredrick, D., ‘Mapping Penetrability in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome’, in Fredrick, D. (ed.), The Roman Gaze: Vision, Power, and the Body (Baltimore 2002) 236-64

  Gaca, K.L., The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Berkeley 2003)

  Gleason, M.W., Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton 1995)

  Gunderson, E., Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity: Authority and the Rhetorical Self (Cambridge 2003)

  Halperin, D.M., One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love (New York/London 1990)

  Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J., and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton 1990)

  Harper, K., From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass. 2013)

  Hawley, R., ‘The Dynamics of Beauty in Classical Greece’, in Montserrat, D. (ed.), Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity (London/New York 1998) 37-54

  Henderson, J., Review: ‘Greek Homosexuality by K. J. Dover’, Classical World 72.7 (1979) 434

  Hubbard, T.K., ‘Popular Perceptions of Elite Homosexuality in Classical Athens’, Arion 6 (1998) 48-78

  Hubbard, T.K. (ed.), Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 2003)

  Humphreys, S.C., ‘Review: Greek Sexuality�
�, CR 30.1 (1980) 61-4

  Lear, A., ‘Was Pederasty Problematized? A Diachronic View’, in Masterson, M., Rabinowitz, N.S., and Robson, J. (eds), Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World (London/New York 2015) 115-36

  Lear, A., and Cantarella, E., Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: Boys Were Their Gods (London/New York 2008)

  Masterson, M., ‘Studies of Ancient Masculinity’, in Hubbard, T.K. (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities (Malden, Mass./Oxford 2013) 17-30

  id., Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood (Columbus, Ohio 2014)

  Oliver, J.H., ‘Oscula iungit nec moderata satis nec sic a virgine danda: Ovid’s Callisto Episode, Female Homoeroticism, and the Study of Ancient Sexuality’, AJP 136 (2015)281-312

  Parker, H., ‘The Teratogenic Grid’, in Hallett, J.P., and Skinner, M.B. (eds), Roman Sexualities (Princeton 1997) 47-65

  Richlin, A., The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, revised edition (New York 1992)

  id., ‘Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 3.4 (1993) 523-73

  id., ‘Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools’, in Dominik, W.J. (ed.), Roman Eloquence: Rhetoric in Society and Literature (London 1997) 90-110

  id., Marcus Aurelius in Love (Chicago 2006)

  id., ‘Sexuality and History’, in Partner, N.F., and Foot, S. (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Historical Theory (Thousand Oaks, Cal. 2013) 294-310

  id., ‘Reading Boy-Love and Child-Love in the Greco-Roman Word’, in Masterson, M., Rabinowitz, N.S., and Robson, J. (eds), Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World (London/New York 2015) 352-73

  Robson, J., Sex and Sexuality in Classical Athens (Edinburgh 2013)

  Robinson, T.M., Review: ‘Greek Homosexuality by K. J. Dover’, Phoenix 35.2 (1981) 160-3

  Scarborough, J., Review: ‘Greek Homosexuality by K. J. Dover’, American Historical Review 84.4 (1979) 1028-9

  Thornton, B., ‘Constructionism and Ancient Greek Sex’, Helios 18 (1991) 181-93

  Walters, J., ‘Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought’, in Hallett, J.P., and Skinner, M.B. (eds), Roman Sexualities (Princeton 1997a) 29-43

  id., ‘Soldiers and Whores in a Pseudo-Quintilian Declamation’, in Cornell, T.J., and Lomas, K. (eds), Gender and Ethnicity in Ancient Italy (London 1997b) 109-14

  Williams, C.A., Roman Homosexuality, second edition (Oxford/New York 2010) id., Reading Roman Friendship (Cambridge 2012)

  Winkler, J.J., The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (London/New York 1990a)

  id., ‘Laying Down the Law: The Oversight of Men’s Sexual Behaviour in Classical Athens’, in Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J., and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton 1990b) 171-209

  * * *

  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.