14 ce: Horace, poet, freedman’s son from southern Italy, Rome, 30s bce:
When your groin swells, if a slave girl or homegrown slave boy is near, that you could jump right away, would you rather burst with a hard-on? Believe me, I like sex that’s easy and ready. (Hor. Sat. 1.2.116-18; on Horace’s sexual satires, see Richlin 1992a: 174-85)
Ovid, poet, equestrian from central Italy, Rome, c.1 bce:
I hate sex that doesn’t get both partners off; this is why I’m less moved by love with boys. (Ov. Ars 2.683-4; on sexuality in Ovid, see Richlin 1992a: 156-61; 1992c)
84 ce: Philo, writer and community leader, Jew, Alexandria, 30s ce:
[A]nother evil... has ramped its way into the cities, namely pederasty (to paiderastein).
In former days the very mention of it was a great disgrace, but now it’s a matter of boasting not only to the active but to the passive partners who habituate themselves to endure the disease of effeminization... These persons are rightly judged worthy of death by those who obey the law, which ordains that the man-woman who debases the sterling coin of nature should perish unavenged... and the lover of such may be assured that he is subject to the same penalty... Certainly you may see these hybrids of man and woman continually strutting about through the thick of the market. ...(Spec. Leg. 3.37-42, passim, trans. Colson 1935)
This is only an excerpt from a lengthy section on what are supposedly Jewish laws on sexuality, including strictures against sex during menstruation on the grounds that ‘‘the generative seeds should not be wasted’’ (32). At Spec. Leg. 1.325 Philo says that ‘‘the men who belie their sex’’ should be debarred from congregations, along with whores and the children of whores (326). At Vit. Cont. 59-62 he critiques Plato’s Symposium and pederasty in general; at Abr. 133-41 he recounts the edifying story of the Cities of the Plain and how God punished the Sodomites. Throughout, Philo merges pederasty with the making of eunuchs and sex between adult males, which he sees as a continuum of practices (see Satlow 1995: 216). Philo also says of women who get into brawls in the marketplace and actually grab their male opponents by the genitals, ‘‘the hand shall be cut off which has touched what decency forbids it to touch’’ (Spec. Leg. 3.169-75, trans. Colson 1935).
Petronius, novelist, courtier, Rome, ?60s ce [unsuccessful poet, Eumolpus, character in novel, speaks]:
When I was out in Asia serving with the quaestor, I had lodgings in Pergamum. And I was happy to be there... because of my host’s very good-looking son, so I cooked up a plan how I could not be suspected by the father. Whenever anybody said anything at dinner about the use of handsome [boys], I blushed so much, I expressed so severe a displeasure that my ears should be violated by obscene speech, that the mother totally started looking at me like I was some philosopher. So now I start taking the boy to the gym, I’m organizing his studies... (Petron. Sat. 85.1-3)
Petronius [freed slave, Trimalchio, character in novel, speaks]:
I was my master’s sex toy (ad delicias) for fourteen years. What the master orders is not shameful. I also serviced the mistress. (Petron. Sat. 75.11)
154 ce: Martial, epigrammatist, originally from Spain, Rome, 90s ce:
The sulks and pride of these boys and their petulant quarrels... I prefer to a dowry of a million sesterces. (Mart. Ep. 12.75.6-8; on Martial’s pederastic epigrams, see Richlin 1992a: 34-44, 55-6)
Dio Chrysostom, rhetorician, from Bithynia, performing in Rome, Greece, and Asia Minor, c.100 ce:
Indeed a man who is insatiable in desires of this sort [= seducing women], when he finds nothing scarce or resistant in that gender, scorning what is easy and having no respect for sex with women as something ready to hand and actually completely feminine itself, will go over to the men’s quarters, lusting to dishonor those who will very soon be rulers and judges and generals, as if he would find there some difficult and hard-to-get kind of pleasure... (D. Chr. 7.151-2; note the slippery-slope argument. For discussion, see Houser 1998)
Juvenal, satirist, Italian, Rome, 110s ce:
... taking a wife? Don’t you think it’s better to have a boy sleep with you? (Juv. Sat. 6.28,
34; on Juvenal’s sexual satires, see Richlin 1992a: 195-209)
Tacitus, senator and historian, Rome, 110s ce
A slave of the city prefect Pedanius Secundus killed him, whether because he had refused to free him though he had settled on a price or whether he was fired up with love for an exoletus and could not tolerate his master as a rival. (Tac. Ann. 14.42.1)
An exoletus is literally a ‘‘grown-up male,’’ a ‘‘ripe male’’; the word oftenseemstoreferto male prostitutes, or to boys who are past adolescence but still attractive to older men.
Strato, poet, Sardis, 120s-30s ce:
I delight in the bloom of a twelve-year-old, but one of thirteen’s much more desirable than he. One hitting twice seven is a sweeter flower of the Loves, and one who is beginning his third pentad is even more delightful. But the sixteenth year is that of the gods, and the seven-and-tenth is not mine to seek, but Zeus’. But whoever has a desire for those still older, he’s no longer kidding around, but is on the lookout for ‘‘do so to me also.’’ (AP 12.4)
The last words of the translation aim for a biblical equivalent to the poem’s Homeric ton d’ apameibomenos, ‘‘then answering him in reply.’’
Marcus Aurelius, son of the emperor, age 18, Rome, 139 ce, to his teacher Fronto:
I am dying so for love of you... and...I still will love you while I live and breathe... (Fronto, Ep. Add. 7.1, trans. Haines adapted)
Cornelius Fronto, professor of rhetoric, Libyan, Rome, to M. Aurelius, 143 ce:
Do you think that my consulship brought me as much joy as the proofs of your love you packed into that one letter? ... nobody could ever have struck such a flame into a lover by potion or love-charm as you have made me dazed and love-struck both by your deeds and your burning love. (Fronto, Aur. 1.7.2)
Lucian, satirist, Greek, after 140 ce [three characters in a debate speak]:
Charicles: But if anyone tries it on a boy of twenty, he seems to me to want to have it done to him, chasing after a double-pointed kind of sex. For, as they turn into men, the bulk of their limbs is hard, and the cheek previously soft is rough and covered thickly with fuzz, while the well-grown thighs are practically filthy with hair; and what’s less visible than these parts, I leave to you who have tried it to know. . . . [and as for sex with boys,] the one who’s in charge, in his view, goes away having taken a choice pleasure, but for the one outraged there are first pain and tears, and then, as the pain loosens a little over time, you won’t hurt him any more, so they say, but there’s no pleasure whatsoever. Callicratidas: But for men [as opposed to animals, previously adduced by Charicles as evidence that male-male sex is unnatural], practical wisdom combined with knowledge based on frequent experiments, grasping what is best, has judged males the most steadfast of loves.
Lycinus: And so everybody should marry, but the love of boys should be permitted only to the wise, for complete virtue grows least of all among women. (Luc. Amatores 26, 27,
36, 51; see discussion in Halperin 1992)
This debate on the relative merits of boys and women presents lengthy arguments on both sides; see especially also section 53, where another participant rejects Platonic love and describes an explicit ‘‘ladder’’ of sexual experience with boys. For other debates, see Plutarch Amatorius (Mor. 748f-71e); Ach. Tat. 2.35-7 (below), discussed in Konstan 1994: 28.
224 ce: Achilles Tatius, novelist, Alexandria, c.150-75 ce:
It does look as if male-directed love is becoming the norm.... Young men are more open and frank than women, and their handsome bodies offer a sharper stimulus to pleasure. (Ach. Tat. 2.35, trans. Winkler, in Reardon 1989: 205)
This Greek novel may date to 150-175 ce, and was very popular in Egypt, continuing to be read well into the Byzantine period (Winkler in Reardon 1989: 170-5). The lines quoted here are the beginning of a debate on the relative merits of pederasty and sex with women; it is a short version of the extended debates in Plutarch’s Amatorius and Lucian’s Amatores.
Paul, lawyer, Rome, c.220 ce:
A man who shall have led a boy into illicit sex (stuprum) after abducting him or bribing his chaperon, or shall have accosted a woman or girl or done anything for the sake of unchastity... if he has carried out the crime, he is punished capitally; if he has not carried it out, he is deported to an island; the bribed chaperons are visited with the supreme punishment. (D. 47.11.1.2)
294 ce: Athenaeus, writer on parties, from Naucratis in Egypt, at Rome, c.228 ce:
So you watch out, you [Stoic] philosophers, who have sex contrary to nature and sin against the goddess [of love], that you don’t come to ruin the same way. For boys are beautiful (as the courtesan Glykera said) at the time when they look like a woman... (Ath. Deip. 605d)
The ‘‘ruin’’ here alludes to a story of a dancing girl torn to bits by a crowd as punishment for sacrilege. At 563d-e the speaker has stated that the charge against the Stoics is that they keep boys up to the age of 28. Compare 654f (the Stoics take boys around with them who already need a shave), 565d-f (if the Stoics want to call others kinaidoi, they shouldn’t have boyfriends who shave their cheeks and rear ends). Contrast Cynic sexuality, known for crudity and public display (Krueger 1996).
Philostratus, sophist, Athens and Rome, 200-240s ce:
Why, boy, do you point to your chin? You are not ceasing to be beautiful but beginning... Homer, too, says that the bearded one is the loveliest, and he was a poet who knew how to see beauty as well as how to make it; he would never have said so if he himself had not first held and kissed the chin of his beloved. (Philostr. Ep. 15 [63])
As in the excerpt from Lucian above, the advent of body hair forms a conventional part of the poet’s argument to the boy, warning of the end of his attractiveness; the attribution of pederastic desire to Homer is a sly extrapolation from the post-Homeric idea of pairs of male lovers in the Iliad. The identity of this author is somewhat confused, but he seems to be the same Philostratus who wrote the Lives of the Sophists; the Erotic Letters are prose poems, much resembling in theme the erotic epigrams written by Martial and the Greek epigrammatists, and likewise addressing boys as well as women. Especially notable is Letter 7 [44], a lengthy word-painting of the social behavior of boys and lovers.
Nemesianus, poet, from Carthage, Rome, c.280 ce:
Whoever loves boys, let him harden his heart with steel, let him be in no hurry, and learn to love patiently for a long time, and not scorn a prudent spirit in tender youth, but even put up with sulks. Thus, someday, he will get his joy... (Eclogue 4.56-9)
This is to my knowledge the latest extant pederastic text in Latin.
364 ce: Isaac of Kellia, monastic, Egypt, 300s ce:
Don’t allow the boys to remain here in this way, for four churches at Scetis have become deserted because of boys. (Isaac of Kellia 5 [PG 65 225 A-B]; trans. and disc. in Masterson 2001: 109-10)
Athanasius, exiled bishop of Alexandria, 356-62 ce:
Finally therefore, as the serpent was not able to take Antony in this way [i. e. in the form of a woman], but rather saw himself thrust from his [Antony’s] heart,... so as a black boy did he subsequently appear to him in a vision [as] the spirit of fornication. (Ath.
V. Ant. 6.1, trans. and disc. in Masterson 2001: 123-4)
434 ce: John Chrysostom, preacher, Antioch, 380s ce:
A certain strange and illicit sort of love has burst into our time: a disease has befallen us, very serious and incurable, a plague that is the foulest of all plagues.... Not just the written laws, but the laws of nature are being overturned. . . . Thus in the middle of the cities, as if in a vast desert, males practice indecency on males.... Moreover the fathers of the corrupted boys bear this in silence. (Jo. Chr. Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life 3 [PG47: 360-2]; see Boswell 1980: 131-2, 362-3)
Ausonius, rhetorician and courtier, Bordeaux, 380s ce:
‘‘Which Marcus?’’ The one recently called the cat that goes for the chickens - [the one] who corrupted the entire boyish sex, a digger at the backdoor wound of perverse Venus, the poet Lucilius’ ‘‘stealthy boy-screwer.’’ (Auson. Ep. 77.5-8; modified trans. Master-son 2001: 62-4, with disc.)
This is the only piece by Ausonius that deals with pederasty, and not from the enthusiastic standpoint of Martial (otherwise a model for Ausonius), or Strato (though Ausonius translates about a dozen epigrams directly from the Palatine Anthology). The juxtaposition of‘‘recently’’ (nuper) with Lucilius, and Ausonius’ choice of interlocutor for the poem’s frame - Pythagoras - puts a sort of unreality frosting on what is otherwise a lively and original epigram. And a lonely one. Ausonius does have one epitaph for a boy dying at the age of 16 and just losing his gender ambiguity (62), and a series on cute boys of mythology (97-103), but where an earlier epigrammatist would have made the boys explicitly sexy, Ausonius stops short of it, with a kind of emphatic ellipsis.
Shenute, abbot, White Monastery, Egypt, c.400 ce:
Cursed is he who will kiss his neighbor or a boy with lustful passion. (Shenute, Concerning the life of Monks 25; trans. Foat in Brooten 1996: 350 n. 201, with disc. 348-50)
(2) sex between adult males?
14 ce: Phaedrus, fable-writer, freedman of Augustus, from Thrace, 10s ce:
What.. .produced lesbians (tribades) and soft (molles) males? ... [Prometheus] fitted a girl thing on the masculine type and put the masculine member on the women. So now lust enjoys a deformed pleasure. (Phaedr. 4.12.1-2, 12-14)
Here, as elsewhere, tribades seems to mean roughly ‘‘lesbians;’’ molles, literally ‘‘soft,’’ refers to effeminate men who like to be penetrated anally. For discussion see Hallett 1989; Brooten 1996: 45-6.
Q. Haterius, lawyer, senator, Rome, c.10s ce:
Unchastity (impudicitia = allowing anal penetration) is a source of accusation for a freeborn (male), a necessity for a slave, and a duty for a freed slave. (Haterius, as recalled in Sen. Con. 4. pr.10. For discussion, see Richlin 1993: 535-6)
‘‘Phokylides,’’ writer, Alexandria, c.10s ce:
Transgress not for unlawful sex the natural limits of sexuality. For even animals are not pleased by the intercourse of male with male. And let not women imitate the sexual role of men. ([Phoc.] Sent. 190-2. Trans. van der Horst and disc. Satlow 1995: 215; cf. Brooten 1996: 63)
84 ce: Paul, Christian organizer and theologian, from Tarsus, at Ephesus, 57 ce:
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither prostitutes, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminates, nor those who have sex with men... shall inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6:9-10. See Brooten 1996: 260-1, and cf. Rom. 1:18-32, with Brooten’s whole discussion, 1996: 215-302; Moore 2001: 133-72)
Anonymous inscription, Pompeii, before 79 ce :
Equitias’ slave Cosmus is a big queer and a cocksucker with his legs wide open. (Diehl 648 = CIL 4.1825)
The spelling in the Latin original probably indicates a person without advanced education. On Roman sexual graffiti, see Richlin 1992a: 81-3, 277-8; Milnor 2000.
154 ce: Suetonius, civil servant and biographer, from North Africa, Rome, 110s ce, writing about events between 85-90 ce:
[the emperor Domitian] condemned certain men from either order under the lex Scantinia. (Suet. Dom. 8.3)
The lex Scantinia seems to have penalized sex between adult males, but its date (c.149 bce) and content are vexed questions; see bibliography at McGinn 1998: 140-1; Richlin 1993: 569-71.
Tacitus, senator and historian, Rome, 98 ce:
[The Germans] make the punishment fit the crime: they hang traitors and turncoats from trees, while cowards and the unwarlike and those who are infamis with respect to their body they drown in muddy bogs, pressing a wicker framework on top of them.
The distinction in punishments has this meaning: that crimes should be made public while they are being punished, but sins should be hidden. (Tac. Germ. 12.1-2; see Richlin 1993: 555)
Juvenal, satirist, Italian, Rome, 110s ce:
What neighborhood isn’t full of moralizing perverts? Better a guy who announces his disease by his expression and his walk - he acts more honestly, more like a gent; I chalk it up to destiny. (Juv. Sat. 2.8-10, 15-17)
Juvenal’s second satire concerns men who are secretly molles but dress like macho Stoic philosophers; this theme recurs in Martial and Lucian. For discussion see Richlin 1992a: 201-2; 1993: 548-54.
Rabbi Akiva, Palestine, 110s ce:
[Scripture says, ‘‘Do not lie with a male as one lies with a female.’’ I only have (here) a warning for the penetrator... where is there a warning for the one penetrated...? ]
‘‘ ‘Do not lie with a male as one lies with a female,’ read it: ‘Do not be laid...’.’’ (Sifra Qod. 9:14 [Weiss, 92b], on Leviticus 18:22, trans. in Satlow 1995: 195, with disc.)
See also Peskowitz 1997: 52-62. The Sifra, a legal midrash on Leviticus, was compiled in the late fifth or early sixth century ce; the attribution to Akiva may be fictional.
Julian redaction of the praetor’s edict, under Hadrian, 120s ce:
Persons infamable on account of foulness [include] a man who has undergone womanish things in his body.... But whatever man has been raped by the force of robbers or the enemy ought not to be marked [as infamis], (D. 3.1.1.5, 6; cf. Richlin 1993: 558-9)
Lucian, satirist, Greek, after 140 ce:
To get together with Rhetoric, you need not a masculine teacher, but] some wholly wise and wholly beautiful guy, with a wiggling walk and a lolling neck, a womanish look and a honeyish voice, reeking of perfume, scratching his head with the tip of his finger, primping his hair (now thin, but fleecy and hyacinth-hued), a delicate Sardanapalus or Kinyras, a very Agathon.... (Luc. Rh. Pr.11)
For the stereotype, see Richlin 1992a: 221, 258 n. 3, 285-6; 1993: 542; Gleason 1995; for the casual conflation of the Orient with effeminacy, see Richlin 1995: 20115; and in the context of oratory, Richlin 1997c.
224 ce: Artemidorus, dream analyst, Daldis (Asia Minor), c.170 ce:
[to dream ofhaving] sex with one’s own female slave or male slave is good, for slaves are the dreamer’s possession; therefore taking pleasure in them signifies the dreamer’s being pleased with his own possessions.... To be penetrated by one’s house slave is not good. This signifies being despised or injured by the slave. The same applies to being penetrated by one’s brother...or a fortiori by one’s enemy. (Artem. p. 88.5-12 Pack, trans. MacAlister 1992: 149, with discussion and bibliography)
Clement, Christian teacher, Alexandria, c.190-92 ce:
He who denies his masculinity in broad daylight will certainly prove himself a woman at night. (Clement of Alexandria Paed. 3.3.20.3, trans. in Brooten 1996: 322 n. 76, 323, discussed 320-32)
‘‘Paul,’’ Greek-speaking ascetic, early 200s ce:
[Paul sees in Hell] men and women covered in dust, and their faces were like blood, and they were in a pit of tar and brimstone, and they were running in a river of fire.... They are those who have committed the iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah, men with men. (Apocalypse of Paul 39, trans. in Brooten 1996: 313, discussed 313-14)
For the date, see Himmelfarb 1983: 16-18: Origen seems to be familiar with the text, and the author probably wrote before institutionalized monasticism. Tours of Hell were popular beginning in the second century ce; these texts seem to be aimed at a general audience rather than a literary elite. Himmelfarb argues that the format reflects a mixed Greek and Jewish tradition. The texts often include a view of sexual deviants among the damned; homosexuality is punished as a sin in seven of the 17 tours she charts (1983: 70; cf. discussion of sins and punishments, 69-126). Compare the tenth-century Coptic church murals in Wilfong 1998.
Paul, lawyer, Rome, c.220 ce:
A man who shall have raped a free male against his will is punished capitally. A man who of his own free will suffers illicit sex (stuprum) or impure outrage is fined of the half part of his goods; neither is he permitted to make testamentary disposition of the remaining part. (Paul Sent. 2.26.12-13)
This collection of opinions is thought by some to be spurious, though it was accepted as genuine in the fourth century ce; the penalty listed here is so much more lenient than those allotted in the later empire that it seems unitkely to be late. See Richlin 1993: 567.
Diogenes Laertius, biographer, before 250 ce:
While [Cleanthes] was saying that, according to Zeno [both c.300 bce], character is graspable from appearance, some lively young men brought before him a queer (kinai-dos) who had become hardened from outdoor work, and asked him to show the man’s character by reasoning. Flummoxed, he ordered the man to go away, but as the man did so he sneezed. ‘‘I have him,’’ said Cleanthes, ‘‘he’s swishy [malakos].’’ (D. L. 7.173)
Nothing is known of the life of Diogenes Laertius except that he lived in the early third century. This story, popular earlier, was recirculated by others as well; see discussion in Gleason 1995: 77, and Masterson 2001: 9.
294 ce: ‘‘Thomas,’’ Syria, c.200-250 ce:
And I saw the first pit, and as it were fire was blazing in its midst. . . ‘‘Into this torment are destined to come those souls which transgress the law, which change the union of intercourse that has been appointed by God.’’ (Acts of Thomas 6.55, trans. in Brooten 1996: 310, discussed 309-13; Himmelfarb 1983: 11-13)
Rabbi Hiyya bar Abbah, Galilee, 290s ce:
Is it not enough that we are subjugated to the seventy nations, but even to this one [i. e. Rome], who is penetrated like women? (GenR 63: 10 [Theodor and Albeck, p. 693], trans. and disc. in Satlow 1995: 213)
The text is ostensibly about Esau, who is, however, routinely identified with Rome. These sentiments are not restricted to Jewish circles: Romans say similar things about eastern peoples, and it is much like what Cassius Dio has Boudicca say about the Romans under Nero (62.6.2-5).
364 ce: Firmicus Maternus, astrologer, from Syracuse, 334-37 ce:
If Venus should be discovered located at the setting of the natal star, and Mars likewise should be found in a feminine sign, and the Sun and Moon too should be possessing feminine signs, that natal star points out a cinaedus-man to you. (Firmicus Maternus Mathesis 6.31.4, trans. Masterson 2001: 65, with disc.)
Constans, emperor, Milan, December 4, 342 ce:
When a man marries as a woman who would offer herself to men, what should he want when sex has lost its place? When the crime is the one which it does no good to know: when Venus is changed to another form: when love is sought, but is not seen; we order the laws to rise up and the statutes be armed with the avenging sword, so that (these) infames may be laid low with exquisite punishments, those who are or will be defendants. (CJ9.7.6, trans. Masterson 2001: 48-9, with disc. through 52)
The translation of the first sentence is much vexed; see Masterson 2001: 47-8, with bibliography; Boswell 1980: 123. ‘‘Exquisite punishments’’ means death by torture; this law marks a watershed in the legal treatment of cinaedi.
434 ce: Ausonius, rhetorician and courtier, Bordeaux, 380s ce:
To a certain man who was making his groin smooth: [ . . . But why depilate your buttocks?] Unless because the desire to be penetrated (patientia) craves the two-man disease, and you’re a man in front but a woman in the rear. (Aus. Ep. 93.3, 5-6)
See also Epigrams 92 and 94, both addressed to men identified as semivir who have married adulterous wives; both are treated as men who desire to be penetrated anally. On patientia, see section 4 below.
Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius, emperors, Rome, August 6, 390 ce:
All who have made a practice of sin by condemning their manly body in the guise of a woman to the passive nature of a sex not their own (for they seem to have nothing different from women) will expiate a crime of this nature in the avenging flames as the populace looks on. (CJ9.7.6, trans. Masterson 2001: 48-9, with disc. through 52)
This law appears in a fuller version in the Comparison of the Laws of Moses and the Romans, which specifies that both partners are to die (5.1.1) and attaches the legislation to a prohibition of male prostitution (5.3.1-2); cf. Masterson: ‘‘this section of the Collatio is surely one of the markers of the end of the ‘romance,’ such as it had been, between ‘normal’ men and a class of their objects, the cinaedi’ (2001: 52). Mommsen’s comment in his edition of the CJ: Haec lex interpretatione non indiget (‘‘This law requires no interpretation.’’).
Salvian, bishop of Marseilles, from Trier, c.439-50 ce:
[contrasting the Vandals with the Roman peoples of Africa] In such affluence and luxury did not a one of them become effeminate (mollis)? ... Certainly Roman nobles became so all the time.... Certainly for a long time now among the Romans... those men believed themselves to be of a more manly strength who had most broken men to the disgracefulness of womanish usage. And so it came about that, when boy groupies were following the armies around, they were distributed as retirement benefits to veterans with a deserving record - as if, because they were brave men, they might change men into women. What a sin!... more like Greeks than Romans... The Roman state is now undergoing (patitur) what it has long deserved.-And this impurity began to be among the Romans even before the mission of Christ.... (Salvian, Degub. Dei 20-1 [— PL 53 167-8])
This work of Salvian is a bit past the Kinsey II deadline, but he and his text are of interest for several reasons: his home town was overrun by invaders four times in his lifetime; he repeats the noble-savage critique of Rome (see especially Tacitus, quoted above under 154 ce), but this time from the perspective of a native of Gaul using North Africa as an example of Roman-ness; and he brings in the issue of sex and the army, on which see Phang2001: 229-95; Walters 1997aandb. to SaraPhang for this reference.
(3) sex between husband and wife?
14 ce: Julia, daughter of Augustus, mother of five, Rome, c.21-12 bce:
[When those who knew of her sins used to marvel at how she gave birth to sons resembling (her husband) Agrippa, when she made such public property of her body, she said,] ‘‘Why, I never take on a passenger unless the ship is full.’’ (recounted in Macrob. Sat. 2.5.9 [early 430s ce]; see Richlin 1992b)
Ovid, poet, equestrian, Rome, c.1 bce:
But don’t you fail your lady, hoisting bigger sails, and don’t let her get ahead of you on the track either; race to the finish together: that’s when pleasure is full, when man and woman lie there, equally vanquished. (Ov. Ars 2.725-8)
This poem is explicitly not directed at married women, and certainly not at married couples, but the narrator’s philosophy of male/female sex is an important attestation of the sort of connubial values commonly associated with the second century ce and clearly present earlier.
84 ce: Sulpicia, satirist, Rome, 60s ce:
If... should show me naked, having sex with [my husband], after the bedsprings have been [broken and] fixed again.... (Sulpicia the satirist, fragment; see Hallett 1992; H. Parker 1992b; Richlin 1992d)
Rabbi Eliezer, Palestine, c.80 ce:
The obligation which is stated in the Torah: Tayalin [students? the unemployed?], every day. Workers, twice a week. Donkey drivers, once a week. camel drivers, once every thirty days. Sailors, once every six months. (mKetubot 5: 6; trans. in Satlow 1995: 268)
This is one of many comments on the famous rule that among the duties of husband towards wife was the duty to have sex with her on a regular basis; see discussion in Satlow 1995: 268-82; Boyarin 1993: 107-66.
Musonius Rufus, Stoic philosopher, equestrian, from Volsinii in Etruria, latter half of the first century ce :
For what purpose, after all, did the craftsman of the human species in the beginning cut our kind into two, and then make two types of genitals, the one female and the other male, and then make in each a strong desire for the other, for association and partnership, and mix into both a strong longing for one another, in the male for the female and in the female for the male? Isn’t it clear that he wanted them to be together and to live together and to devise together things for one another’s livelihood, and to engage together in the reproduction and rearing of children, so that our species will be eternal? (Musonius Rufus, from ‘‘Whether Marriage Is an Impediment to Doing Philosophy,’’ trans. Nussbaum; in Nussbaum 2002: 320)
154 ce: Martial, epigrammatist, 90s ce:
Wife, get out of my house or conform to my preferences.. .You won’t let me bugger you: Cornelia allowed this to Gracchus, Julia to Pompey, Portia to Brutus; when the Trojan cupbearer was not yet mixing the wine, Juno served Jupiter in place of Ganymede. If you like to be serious, you can be Lucretia all day long; I want Lais at night. (Mart. Ep. 11.104.1,17-22; Lais was a famous prostitute, see Richlin 1992a: 41,159-60)
Plutarch, moral philosopher, Boeotia, c.100-120 ce:
This is the way, I think, for the lady of the house: not to run away, nor to bear such things with bad grace when her husband begins, but not to initiate it herself, either. The latter is prostitute-like and hasty, the former is arrogant and lacking in affection. (Plut. Con-iugalia praecepta 18 [Mor. 140c]; see Richlin 1998: 158-9)
Rabbi Akiva, Palestine, 110s ce:
[A menstruating woman] imparts uncleanness to him who has sexual relations with her. (mNiddah 2:3 G, trans. Kraemer 1988: 47)
The tractate Niddah concerns ritual uncleanness due to menstruation; see Satlow 1995: 296-8. For comparison with Christian attitudes, see S. Cohen 1991; for Roman ideas on menstruation, Richlin 1997d.
Sexuality in the Roman Empire
224 ce: Clement, Christian teacher, Alexandria, c.190-92 ce:
So it is altogether necessary to marry, both for the sake of the fatherland and of the succession of children and of the debt we owe to the universe as best we can. And so the poets pity a marriage ‘‘half-finished’’ and childless.... (Clement of Alexandria Stromata 2.23.140.1)
Clement wanted all sex to be procreative; see Brooten 1996: 325; Brown 1988: 1326; E. Clark 1989: 90-1; Satlow 1995: 261.
Rabbi [Yehudah the Patriarch], Palestine, before 217 ce:
[A certain woman came before Rabbi. She said to him: Rabbi, I set him the table, and he turned it over. He said:] ‘‘How is the case different from fish?’’ (bNedarim 20a-b, trans. Boyarin 1993: 110, with disc. at 109-13; cf. Satlow 1995: 239-41; 1996)
This passage concerns the Rabbis’ attitude towards non-procreative sexual techniques, which they treat as a matter of choice (for the husband), like cuisine.
Heliodorus, novelist, Phoenician, Emesa (Syria), 200-250 ce (the speaker is Per-sinna, Queen of Ethiopia):
Those who. . . came to build the royal palace. . . made use of the romance of Perseus and Andromeda to adorn the bedchambers. It was there one day that your father and I happened to be tdcing a siesta in the drowsy heat of summer.... that day your father made love to me, swearing that he was commanded to do so by a dream, and I knew instantly that the act of love had left me pregnant. (Heliod. 4.8, trans. J. R. Morgan [in Reardon 1989])
294 ce: Domitiana, Egypt [date uncertain]:
Urbanus, whom Urbana bore, Domitiana, whom Candida bore, bring him to her, full of love, raging with jealousy and without sleep over his love and passion for her, and make him ask her to return to his house as [his wife].. .Yoke them in marriage and [make them] live together in love for the rest of their lives. Make him her obedient slave, desiring no other woman or maiden, but Domitiana alone.... (Ant. Fluch. 5, trans. in Kraemer 1988: 108-9)
Kraemer notes the relation ofthe language in this magical papyrus to the Septuagint, but I would also draw attention to Domitia’s investment in the values of the Greek romance.
Rabbi Abba bar Ayvo (also known as Rav), the founder and leading scholar of the rabbinic academy in Sura, Persia (in the mid third century ce):
‘‘She eats with him every Friday night.’’ This is euphemistic. (Rav at yKetubot 5.8 30a-b; trans. and disc. in Satlow 1995: 270)
This famous dictum suggests that a husband’s duty be performed every Friday night.
364 ce: Rabbi Avin, Palestine, 360s ce:
The Holy One loves procreation more than the Temple. (bNiddah 16b-17a, trans. Boyarin 1993: 125, with lively discussion)
434 ce: Ausonius, rhetorician and courtier, Bordeaux, 380s ce:
Eunus, because you lick the putrid genitals of your pregnant wife, you’re in a rush to put your tongue to the buttocks of your unborn sons. (Auson. Ep. 86)
This is one of a string of epigrams on the repulsiveness of oral sex, especially cunnilingus (78, 79, 82-7), six ofwhich are addressed to this Eunus, who is identified as a Syrian and a schoolteacher. Several of the epigrams involve elaborate word games based on elementary education, and 86 involves a double pun on glossas ‘‘tongues/ explanations’’ and natis ‘‘buttocks/sons.’’ Like 94, addressed to a semivir called Zoilus, all these poems are strongly reminiscent of Martial.
(4) sex between women?
14 ce: Hybreas, rhetorician, Mylasa (Asia Minor), 30s-20s bce:
[When he was speaking on the practice case about the man who caught the tribades and killed them, he began to describe the feelings of the husband...]: I looked first at the ‘‘man,’’ [to see if] he was born like that or something had been stitched on.
Grandaus, rhetorician, ? Asia Minor, ? before 14 ce:
They wouldn’t allow male adulterers to be killed for such a cause;... but if they caught a pretend-male adulterer...
The words of these Greek speakers are recalled by the elder Seneca, Controv-ersiae 1.2.23 (published c.30s ce). Hybreas was famous; Grandaus is otherwise unknown, and this name may be corrupt. For discussion, see Hallett 1989. For the idea that lesbians wore strap-ons, see ps.-Lucian Erotes 28 (2nd c. ce), a reductio ad absurdum arguing that if men can have sex with men, women should be able to have sex with women. The speaker calls this tes tribakes aselgeias, ‘‘the rubbed licentiousness,’’ saying he is using a word seldom heard and one he is ashamed to say.
Ovid, poet, equestrian, Rome, c.8 ce:
A desire known to no one, freakish, novel... among all animals no female is seized by desire for female. (Ov. Met. 9.727, 733-4; see Pintabone 2002)
84 ce: anonymous graffito, Pompeii, before 79 ce:
I wish I [fem.] could hold to my neck and embrace the little arms, and bear kisses on the tender lips. Go on, doll, and trust your joys to the winds; believe me, light is the nature of men.. .. (CIL 4.5296; arguments that this poem scratched onto a wall in Pompeii is from one woman to another were presented in Milnor 2000)
154 ce: Martial, epigrammatist, Rome, 90s ce:
The lesbian Philaenis buggers boys, and, rougher than the hard-on of a husband, she bangs eleven girls a day. (Mart. Ep. 7.67; cf. Hallett 1989)
Herais, Hawara, Egypt, 100s ce:
I adjure you, Evangelos, by Anubis and Hermes and all the rest down below; attract and bind Sarapias whom Helen bore, to this H., whom Thermoutherin bore, now; quickly, quickly. By her soul and heat attract Sarapias herself.... (PGM 32.1-19; trans. in Krae-mer 1988: 95; cf. discussion in Brooten 1996: 78)
‘‘Peter,’’ ? Egypt, c.100-150 ce:
But men and women [there in Hell have to jump repeatedly off] a high cliff... These were those men who defile their bodies, behaving like women, and those women who have sex with one another as a man (does) with a woman. (Apocalypse of Peter 17; trans. and disc. Brooten 1996: 306)
For the date, see Himmelfarb 1983: 8-11; this text was cited by Clement of Alexandria as scripture, and exists in Greek and Ethiopic.
Lucian, satirist, Greek, after 140 ce [one prostitute quizzes another who has a female customer]:
... they say there are women like that in Lesbos, masculine-looking, but they don’t want to give it up for men. Instead, they consort with women, just like men.... How did she do it? That’s what I most want you to tell me. (Dialogues of the Courtesans 5)
224 ce: Clement, Christian teacher, Alexandria, c.190-92 ce:
[luxury] confounds nature; men... suffer the things of women, and women behave like men in that women, contrary to nature, are given in marriage and marry (other women). (Paidagogos 3.3.21.3, translated and discussed in Brooten 1996: 322 n. 76)
Tertullian, Christian theologian, Carthage, c.208-12 ce:
Look at the whores, the marketplaces of public lust, and at the very rubsters [frictrices - literal Latin translation of tribades], and if you can wrench your eyes away from these disgraces of chastity publicly done away with, just look up, and you’ll see they’re the wives of citizens. (DePallio 4.9; discussed in Brooten 1996: 317-18; McKech-nie 1992)
Note that Tertullian seems to assume the spectator will be distracted by the bodies of these women from some sign in their faces that they are matronae.
294 ce: Rav Hunah, Persia, 290s ce:
Women who ‘‘rub’’ with each other are ineligible to marry a priest. (bYevamot. 76a, A, trans. Satlow 1995: 190)
Rabbinic texts discuss sex between women rarely and briefly; this opinion of Rav Hunah is qualified by an unattributed (= consensus) opinion that seems to take such sex acts less seriously. Compare an unattributed opinion from the Palestinian Talmud (yGittin 8:10, 49 C) that says there are two schools of thought on this; discussion in Satlow 1995: 189-90, with fuller explanation in Brooten 1996: 64-70.
364 ce: Sophia, Hermoupolis Magna, Egypt, fourth century ce (?):
By means of this corpse-daemon inflame the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore. (Suppl. Mag. 1.42 [trans. Daniel and Maltomini 1990: 138] with Brooten 1996: 81-90)
434 ce: John Chrysostom, Christian preacher, Antioch, 380s ce:
[men who have sex with men] are excluded from any pardon, since they have outraged nature herself. And it is even more shameful that the women should seek this type of intercourse, since they ought to have more modesty than men. (John Chrysostom, Commentary on Romans, Homily 4 [PG 60: 417-22]; trans. in Boswell 1980: 360; see also Brooten 1996: 344-8)
Jerome, Christian scholar and monastic, Bethlehem, 412 CE:
I have heard that you at once took my place in clinging to her companionship and never left her by so much as even a fingernail’s breadth, as they say - living in the same house, the same bedroom, the same bed - so that to all in the city [= Rome] it became very well known that you had found a mother and she a daughter. A farm outside the city served you as convent and the country was chosen because of its solitude. And you lived there thus for a long time, so that because of the copying of you and the conversion of many women I rejoiced that Rome was made Jerusalem. Convents of virgins [were] everywhere.... (Jer. Ep. 127.8, with J. M. Bennett 2000 on recognizing ‘‘lesbian-like’’ behavior in pre-modern history)
Caelius Aurelianus, physician, Numidia, mid-400s ce:
For [the effeminate men] are just like the women who are called tribades, because they practice both kinds of love, rush to have sex with women more than with men and pursue women with an almost masculine jealousy. (Caelius Aurelianus On Chronic Diseases 4.9, trans. in Brooten 1996: 150, with disc. at 147-62)
This text is a translation into Latin from the Greek of Soranus, so the idea seems to go back to the second c. ce but still to be current.
[Unattributed rabbinic opinion], Palestine, post-400 ce:
You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt...or the land of Canaan [Lev. 18: 3].. .And what would they do? A man would marry a man; and a woman [would marry a] woman. (Sifra Ahare 9: 8 [Weiss, 85c-d]: trans. in Satlow 1995: 188, with discussion)
World History
