Sparsely Attested Cultural Issues

Contraception and abortion: Most cultures of the empire practiced both contraception and abortion, though most simultaneously placed a highly positive value on motherhood and babies. Attitudes towards contraception and abortion thus often manifest ambivalence; outside Christianity, only gynecological texts devote major attention to these issues (see Richlin 1997d: 208-10, with bibliography). Abortion and infanticide do appear in tours of Hell (Himmelfarb 1983; cf. Boswell 1988: 41-5). For rabbinic attitudes, see Satlow 1995: 232-6.

Sex between women: No one pays much attention to sex between women, but male-authored sources that do notice it or make up stories about it take a negative attitude. Evidence from women themselves is rare but not unattested - no more Sappho, just graffiti and love-charms (Brooten 1996; A. Cameron 1998; P. Gordon 1997; Hallett 1989; Milnor 2000).

Masturbation: Masturbation holds its usual humble place: the subject of low poetry, and associated with slaves; frowned upon by Rabbis and churchmen (Satlow 1995: 246-64 on rabbinic attitudes). Martial makes masturbation a substitute for a boy he cannot afford (Richlin 1992a: 135-6), and pictures slaves ‘‘masturbating behind the door’’ as they watch Hector and Andromache having sex (11.104.13-14; cf. Clarke 1998: 88 on voyeur figures in Roman erotic art). The dildo, a popular comic item in classical Greek text and art (Jeffrey Henderson 1992: 221-2), is all but unmentioned, if not extinct; it reappears briefly but spectacularly in ps.-Lucian Erotes (28) as a ‘‘monstrous enigma without seed.’’

Circumcision: Male circumcision constitutes a big marker of the division between Jews and non-Jews, though it was also practiced by other cultures at the time (see S. Cohen 1997; Montserrat 1996: 36-7). In non-Jews it is often associated with general antiSemitic statements (Richlin 1997b: 32-3); here is Rutilius Namatianus, city prefect of Rome, in his famous poem on his return to Gaul in 417:

A complaining Jew was in charge of the place, an animal alien to human food; he put his bruised bushes and dented seaweed on our bill, and cried out over the great cost of the water we poured. We gave back to him the insults owed to that obscene race, that shamefully snips off the genital head; root of stupidity, with its frigid sabbath in its heart, but a heart more frigid than its own religion. (De Reditu Suo 1.383-90)

For Christians circumcision posed problems; see Boyarin 1993: 7-8, 233; Brown 1988:59.

Castration: Eunuchs and castration have no fans, though some individual eunuchs rose to positions of power (Hopkins 1978a; Kuefler 2001; Masterson 2001: 143209; Roller 1997; and especially Butler 1998, on self-castration and slave identity). Origen’s reputed voluntary castration may represent a trend in third-century Christian asceticism (Brown 1988: 168-9).

Sex with children below the age of puberty: What is now thought of as ‘‘pedophilia’’ is rarely mentioned, and comes up only in the context of prostitution, slavery, or a few salacious tales. The concept of‘‘child molesting’’does not exist, or of child pornography as a genre. Yet the Rabbis posit that female slaves might be used sexually after the age of three; the Romans had a law against sex with prepubescent girls, so maybe this was not just hypothetical (Roman law on nondum viripotentes virgines, Paul at D. 48.19.38.3; rabbinic rules on the virgin status of slaves past the age of three, yMoed-Katan 1:2,1:4, cf. 3:1, 3:2 (with thanks to Catherine Hezser; see also Satlow 1996: 284).

Incest: Similarly, incest, though forbidden in Roman law, receives very little attention, and is usually treated as an aberrant form of marriage rather than as akin to rape (Gardner 1986: 125-7). The exception is Egyptian brother-sister marriage, a remarked-upon anomaly (Montserrat 1996: 89-91).

Clitoridectomy: Clitoridectomy is attested as a rite de passage, though only in Egypt and rarely; elsewhere it is a medical procedure for the correction of improper (lesbian) desire (Montserrat 1996: 41-6; Brooten 1996: 162-71).

Infibulation: This practice (piercing and clamping the foreskin) shows up only in Roman jokes (Richlin 1997b: 32).