Timeline

The expedition would have to take into account at least the following historical shifts and events:

By 14 ce: Rome: the Julian Laws promoting marriage and childbearing and criminalizing adultery have just been passed. Now a ‘‘world-city,’’ Rome has become a place where writers, as Juvenal would later say, stand at the crossroads with a notebook (Sat. 1.63-4; see Habinek 1997).

By 84 ce: Pompeii is buried (79 ce); the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed by the emperor Titus (70 ce), while the Jewish diaspora has been well under way for some time, with some efforts at resistance. Paul has been an active organizer of the nascent Christian sect after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Rome has invaded Britain and put down Boudicca’s rebellion.

By 154 ce: The emperor Domitian tightens up the enforcement of the punishment of sexual misconduct with legal disabilities (85-90 ce), and makes the castration of infant slaves illegal (McGinn 1998: 106-16; Mart. 9.6, 9.8); some Greek and Roman pundits write serious tracts on marriage, others stage debates on the relative merits of sex with women and with boys. Alexandria and Antioch are major cultural centers. There is a boom in texts about sex in Greek and Latin; romance novels grow in visibility (Elsom 1992; Goldhill 1995; Konstan 1994; Reardon 1989). Some Rabbis critique Roman mores. Rome invades Dacia, Armenia, and Mesopotamia; Palestine rebels under Bar Kochba (131-35).

By 224 ce: Christian pundits, as the church now begins to be institutionalized, debate the relative merits of procreative sex within marriage vs. celibacy (notably Tertullian and clement of Alexandria). Roman jurists collect and codify Roman law; the Rabbis collect the Mishnah. Along with novels, apocalyptic texts are popular (see Himmelfarb 1983 on tours of Hell). The law has begun to draw sharp divisions between honestiores and humiliores in assigning punishments to crimes (Garnsey 1970). Rome faces attacks along the Danube frontier; Rome annexes Osrhoene and Mesopotamia.

By 294 ce: Persecutions of Christians produce a boom in martyr texts, many with erotic elements. Rabbis who have fled Palestine for Babylonia begin to develop norms for Judaism that differ from the Greek-influenced norms of Palestine; the stricter Babylonian norms will prevail. Secular erotic writing has become scarce; pederastic literature is disappearing. Rome has abandoned Dacia, and Germans and Persians invade across the northern and eastern frontiers. The western provinces and Palmyra briefly break away from the empire.

By 364 ce: Constantine begins to halt persecutions of Christians in 306 ce, and imperial favor is increasingly shown to the church. Despite an interruption during the reign of Julian (360-63 ce), this trend continues. Monasticism is now flourishing; eunuchs have become important presences at the imperial court. Erotic writing blooms again in Gaul with Ausonius, but without pederasty. Goths move into the empire.

By 434 ce: State support for pagan cults has been withdrawn. Monasticism continues. Women go in for religious tourism in Egypt and the Near East; Olympias founds a women’s religious community in Constantinople, Paula founds one in Judaea. The Theodosian Code appears in 438 ce, collecting laws since 313, some imposing extremely violent punishments for acts defined as sex crimes. Saints’ lives become popular, often much resembling novels in structure. The redaction of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds begins. Rome is sacked by the Goths (410 ce); the western empire is invaded by Germanic peoples.

Overall: In 203 ce, Perpetua writes in her prison journal that she had a dream about her brother Dinocrates in which ‘‘there was a great abyss between us: neither could approach the other’’ (Kraemer 1988: 100). This brother had died a pagan at the age of seven. The abyss between Christian sister and pagan brother could well stand as a figure for the sexual life of the empire before Perpetua, in the reign of Septimius Severus, and after her: a great change is in progress, and women will finally join the conversation. Phyllis Culham (1997), asking ‘‘Did Roman women have an empire?’’, concludes that elite women did, at least in that they gained access to the public sphere through benefaction. It might be said of the late empire that women were able to give up sex publicly on an almost equal footing with men. But for the poor, at risk of slavery and prostitution, not much ever changed.