Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

328 RABUN TAYLOR
pius as active, Giton as passive. But the language they use of each
other, particularly Encolpius' descriptions of their behavior in love
and in danger, encourages readers to understand them not as a
phallocentric configuration of active amator and passive puer but
as a loving couple who share erotic pleasure.... the Satyricon offers
its readers a glimpse at fuller three-dimensional relationships
between male sexual partners that stand in vivid contrast with the
normal "insert tab A into slot B" model. When these characters,
or indeed any Roman men, speak of a male sexual partner as aJfater,
the active/passive polarity so typical of their culture's representation
of erotic relationships is, for once, not the central
consideration 26
In the Roman world, this kind of relationship could only have existed
in a subculture. A public life is out of the question for the protagonists,
and the fugitive status of Encolpius and Giton seems appropriate. They
and their colleagues move from one anonymous situation to the next,
usually in large population centers of the Roman empire, while the threat
of being recognized is always palpable. They trade juicy stories, like Eumolpus's
account of his secretive seduction of a freeborn boy in Pergamum
(85-87), as they could never do in a more open context. Just as
"brother" and "sister" are common terms of affection within the American
homosexual subculture, so frater and soror are the terms in which
the members of the Satyricods subculture identify their current love interest.
In this environment of solidarity, the expression of power and
control is of secondary importance; but significantly, as soon as lovers'
quarrels arise, the mainstream attitudes spring forth in their full brutality.
These men must wrestle with cultural tensions and paradoxes of quite
a different order from the tidy moralities of Cicero or Seneca, the
surface-dwellers.
The world of ancient Rome seems to have had at least two identifiable
subcultures of homosexuality. The first is a group of mendicant religious
cults and extends well beyond the bounds of urban areas. The second is
in Rome itself, a shadowy and ill-defined institution that one may nevertheless
glimpse from behind the door of a hostile literature.
A RELIGIOUS
SUBCULTURE
It is useful to view some Roman religious cults as subcultures in their
own right. Greek and Roman mystery cults often disregarded social and
gender boundaries, could be highly institutionalized, and served both as
26Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 342, 344-45, 348-49.
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