Greek and Roman Sexualities

Estas Formas de hacer el amor (De figuris Veneris en el original latino), de Friedrich Karl Forberg, constituyen el primer intento serio de catalogar, explicar y comentar las prácticas sexuales de la Antigüedad clásica. Estamos ante un tratado erudito, en el que son muy numerosas las citas literales de los autores clásicos, por lo que la sexualidad descrita por Forberg no es fantasiosa, no es el resultado de actualizar el mito tan recurrente sobre la depravación de los antiguos. Sin embargo, la obra de Forberg también es obscena, desprejuiciada, descarnada: el autor no se esconde detrás de un lenguaje alambicado, emboscado entre paráfrasis y circunloquios, para endulzar el testimonio de los antiguos. Su tono y sobre todo su expresión son vulgares, soeces, malsonantes, lo que tal vez explica que la obra circulara casi en secreto, en ediciones reducidas y generalmente de encargo, durante el siglo XIX.

Background: In the Western world, it is widely accepted as natural – and seen almost as a law of nature – that mankind is divided into two sexes or genders – males and females. In many cultures and societies, however, more than two sex and/or gender categories are recognized, which in some instances refer to the biological sex and in others to gender roles and social status. Aims: To give an intercultural comparison of various ways of dealing with gender variance. Methods: In the following paper, we review the anthropological literature during the last 100 years describing individuals who live neither as men nor women in various non-Western cultures. Results: Only rarely, these individuals suffer from disorders of sex development in the modern medical or biological definition: in many if not all societies there have been individuals who are not covered by the gender category of male and female. Conclusion: There thus appears to be a cultural need for people with a special neither-ma...

Esse capítulo corresponde a um verbete que escrevi para um compêndio sobre História das Mulheres na Antiguidade. O livro propõe a reunião de textos breves que indiquem os pontos-chaves da vida de uma personalidade com algumas referências principais a estudos marcantes sobre a personagem. Nesse capítulo, abrevio sobre o tema da Lesbia, personagem da obra de Catulo.

Background: In the Western world, it is widely accepted as natural – and seen almost as a law of nature – that mankind is divided into two sexes or genders – males and females. In many cultures and societies, however, more than two sex and/or gender categories are recognized, which in some instances refer to the biological sex and in others to gender roles and social status. Aims: To give an intercultural comparison of various ways of dealing with gender variance. Methods: In the following paper, we review the anthropological literature during the last 100 years describing individuals who live neither as men nor women in various non-Western cultures. Results: Only rarely, these individuals suffer from disorders of sex development in the modern medical or biological definition: in many if not all societies there have been individuals who are not covered by the gender category of male and female. Conclusion: There thus appears to be a cultural need for people with a special neither-ma...

This article considers the Roman body chain  (catena),  which comprises two long lengths of woven gold chain worn crisscrossing the torso. Roman illustrations of women wearing catenae demonstrate that the form carried strongly erotic connotations relating to the goddess Venus and female sensuality. A small corpus of preserved body chains from the Vesuvian region testifies to their actual use by women in the first centuries BC and AD. This study examines the status of the women who wore such jewellery, which combined clear economic expense with erotic messaging. In opposition to claims that the sexual nature of body chains signals their association with prostitutes, it is argued here that visual and textual sources contemporaneous with the Vesuvian chains point to women of “respectable” social categories having both the freedom and incentive to express a confident sexual identity. Important archaeological evidence offers further indications for the ownership and use of catenae by Roman women of varying status. The potential meanings and motivations underlying the shared use of this symbolic form of adornment are also addressed.

Building on post-colonial archaeological studies and earlier reflections on apotropaic graffiti by one of the authors, we shall now discuss the value of this corpus of graffiti as evidence for a gender approach of Roman daily life. The aim of this paper changed considering the former one to an approach which emphasises the role of graffiti and the urban written spaces in rethinking Roman identity during the Early Principate. We shall argue that such written-on spaces, when analysed in their material context, can be taken as evidence in the discussion of social conflicts, identity and diversity in Roman society. They also enable a more balanced approach to the Roman Empire by taking into consideration the worldviews of people of humble origins.

Construído a partir das teorias arqueológicas pós-coloniais e de um estudo anterior sobre grafites apotropaicos de um dos autores, neste artigo discutimos a importância de deste corpus de grafites como fonte para um estudo de gênero sobre o cotidiano romano. O objetivo deste artigo é, portanto, distinto do que o inspirou, mudando a perspectiva para a importância do espaço da escrita para repensar a identidade romana no início do Principado. Argumentaremos que espaços da escrita, quando analisados a partir de sua materialidade, se torna evidência para a discussão de conflitos sociais, identidade e diversidade na sociedade romana. Também permitem uma leitura mais balanceada do Império, levando em consideração as diferentes visões de mundo das pessoas de origem humilde.

This volume is a collection of papers presented
at a conference held in Beaulieu-surmer,
in France, in March 2016, that was the
starting point of the association Etygram,
whose participants are working on an
open-access online dictionary of Ancient
and Medieval etymologies.

This book (of which this article is the introduction) is intended as a corrective to the mentality of cultural colonialism to which such relationships have often been subjected, under the rubric of "bacha-bazi", in the global media in recent decades. While such relationships necessarily exist on a spectrum ranging from harmful to beneficial, as do all human relationships, ethnocentric reporting by western observers has focused exclusively on the negative aspects. In this work I aim to give voice to other perspectives as experienced by, and in the words of, native participants.

The cross-cultural work of documenting and putting an end to endemic child abuse is necessary, and admirable. Foreign eyes can sometimes see painful truths long obscured by home-grown blindness. But foreign eyes may be blind to other truths alien to them. Life in other cultures does not fit simplistic models, and even educated people can succumb to racist ideation. Timeless ethical problems do not lend themselves to arithmetical solutions. The tension between love and abuse, between nurturing and predation, has preoccupied careful observers since antiquity, as we can see in the works of Plato, Aeschines, Plutarch, and Jami, for example. It continues today.

It would be a pity if, by helping those who are being burned by the flames of abuse, we end up hurting others who thrive when warmed by the bonfire of love. As a Central Asian Sufi author, teacher, and activist recently commented to me, "We have this love in our culture. We do not have it in our religion, but we have to respect people's feelings." It is to be hoped that this work will begin to restore the respect that has sometimes been lacking in the Western gaze, when directed at masculine loves in other cultures, traditional love affairs that have nothing to do with the modern western "gay" model.

A year ago I published here on Academia an article examining three stories from Ancient Greece, the stories of Narcissus, Leucocomas, and Timagoras. These three stories all had a common theme. They were all tales of pederastic love. In particular, they were moral parables that addressed the problem of the boy beloved who takes advantage of the man who is in love with him. Two of the stories were clearly mythical. As for the third story, some scholarly evidence seemed to point to the possibility that it described a historical event, a notion that I must now at least partially recant. Herein follows the sequel to that theory.

Collecting water in the ancient Greek world was an inherently social activity in public and private contexts. Using archaeological evidence of water collection, especially wells, cisterns, and fountain-houses, we can piece together numerous elements of the daily lives of the ancient Greeks. The present chapter explores the sociological nature of Greek water collection using the depictions of wells and fountain-houses on vases and the archaeological remains of fountain-houses themselves to understand better social relations in- and outside the domestic sphere, paying close attention to issues surrounding gender in the ancient Greek world. Further, contexts with wells and cisterns, such as brothels and religious sanctuaries, are also explored to shed light on new ways that scholars today can use water infrastructures in these spaces to prompt new questions about life in Greece in the past. By examining Greek water collection points more closely, we can repopulate these spaces and understand how individuals in the past used and interacted with these structures—and others around them—in addition to the impact of collecting water in the daily life of the Greeks.
Whole volume Open Access: https://ecsi.se/actaath-8-23/

This paper examines discourses around male sexuality from the Middle Republic (c.300–100 BCE), arguing that sexual restraint was an ideal for Roman men even as imperial expansion offered new temptations abroad and triggered new anxieties at home. While the integrity of endogamous marriages was critical to the aristocratic political class, elite behavior was further constrained by public opinion and the Roman electorate.

El estudio de las técnicas empleadas en la manufactura de las esculturas ibéricas ha recibido escasa atención por parte de los especialistas. Sin embargo, estas investigaciones han ofrecido importantes resultados en otras áreas del Mediterráneo, proporcionando conocimientos clave no sólo sobre las técnicas, talleres y estilos, sino también sobre el papel social de los escultores y de aquellos que los sostienen. Mediante el estudio de un ejemplo concreto, el grifo-león enfrentándose a la serpiente del conjunto de Porcuna, se ofrece una visión general del proceso de trabajo de la escultura. Se ha reconocido por primera vez la presencia de lo que puede ser interpretado como una marca de escultor, y se discute la función de este tipo de signos.

The fourth letter is the shortest and arguably the least studied of Aelian’s 20 Rustic Epistles. A closer examination of this letter reveals, however, that it has some interesting aspects in terms of both language and content. In Ep. 4, Aelian presents himself as a capable Atticist author who has specialist vocabulary at his command. Furthermore, this article argues that Ep. 4 should be read together with the following letter and thus tells in nuce the story of how and why Anthemion took Baeton’s bees.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.

Nas sociedades antigas, a utilizacao de imagens estava generalizada atraves da cerâmica, estatuas, relevos, pinturas, afrescos, mosaicos, moedas, amuletos, adornos... Numa epoca em que o dominio da escrita era privilegio de poucos e sua circulacao era restrita, a imagem constituiu-se numa forma de comunicacao com maior amplitude que a escrita. Contemplando ou fabricando a imagem, as sociedades antigas a utilizavam, decifravam e interpretavam.

La posición de Virginia Woolf acerca de la exclusión sistemática de las mujeres (del acceso a la educación superior y de la consecuente expresión de una opinión pública y cualificada) halla sus fundamentos en categorías jurídicas occidentales que, según Roberto Esposito, las han relegado a la condición de cosas desde la Antigüedad. La literatura inglesa recoge y reelabora motivos de la historia y del mito sobre la violencia sexual impuesta a los cuerpos femeninos que somete y degrada; denuncia, de esta manera, una pérdida de valor moral, económico y social de esos cuerpos revelando, así, la articulación entre patriarcado y propiedad que Woolf y el feminismo del siglo XX han visibilizado ostensiblemente.

Este trabajo analiza algunos usos de ciertos juguetes sexuales llamados dildos entre mujeres lesbianas de la ciudad de Cordoba. Para ello, trazamos una breve genealogia de esos objetos y exploramos algunos saberes de un conjunto de entrevistadas en relacion a sus practicas eroticas para aprehender los significados que (se) realizan performativamente en el dildo. Metodologicamente se trabajo con entrevistas en profundidad realizadas durante 2011 y 2012 a mujeres de entre 25 y 40 anos, de clase media, estudiantes y/o trabajadoras, residentes en la ciudad de Cordoba. A traves de las experiencias eroticas de las entrevistadas, aprendimos que el dildo permite reescribir de maneras variadas el guion de genero oficial que mantiene el binario hombre-mujer y la penetracion vaginal como medidas del sexo ideal. En sus performances eroticas esas mujeres construian una experiencia subjetiva en la cual el cuerpo fagocitaba al objeto que dejaba de ser un juguete para devenir parte del Yo. Las entr...

Entre las diferentes luchas sociales del siglo XIX, destaca la feminista, por su impacto entre los políticos e intelectuales de la época. Muchos pensadores la criticaron, pero otros defendieron los movimientos de liberación de las mujeres. Muy llamativo fue el caso de Ettore Ciccotti (1863-1939) político del Partido Socialista Italiano y profesor de Historia Antigua. Este historiador se inspira en los hechos protagonizados por las matronas romanas, sobre todo en los dos últimos siglos de la República, para reflexionar sobre el alcance de las actividades políticas de las mujeres en su época. Y lo hace como un hombre inmerso en el contexto político e historiográfico de la Italia de su tiempo. A pesar de su compromiso político, sus imágenes de las antiguas romanas no se sustraen a los prejuicios androcéntricos que predominaron en la Europa decimonónica. De su curiosa obra Donne e política negli ultimi anni della repubblica romana (1895), el contexto en que se publicó y su posterior inf...