Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

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Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome RABUN TAYLOR Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies University of Minnesota S I N C E K. J. D 0 V E R' S pathbreaking study of Greek homosexuality in 1978, students of antiquity have slowly but surely recognized that the Roman world, though owing much to Greece, has its own distinct sexual history.' In the Roman sources we see a social model of male homoeroticism clash head-on with the perpetual Roman fantasy of ancestral virtue, while amid this turmoil a homosexual subculture of immeasurable influence, resiliency, and complexity develops in the city of Rome. Roman culture is a more dynamic source of information than the Athens, Sparta, or Crete of historical record, because it witnesses-and to some extent, records-a fundamental change in its sexual identity. To combat this alarming emergence in its own body politic, Rome's dominant culture My special thanks to Elizabeth Belfiore, John K Evans, and George Sheets for their helpful comments and encouragement during the slow and fitful gestation of this article. ' K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, MA, 1978). For bibliographies on the subject, unfortunately now quite dated, sce Beert Vcrstraete, Homosexuality in Ancient Greek and Roman Civilization: A Critical Biography with Supplemcnt (Toronto, 1982); and Wayne Dynes, Homoscxuality: A Research Guide (New York, 1987). For a review of rccnt literature, see Mark Golden, "Thirtcen Years of Homosexuality (and Other Recent Work on Sex, Gender and the Body in Ancient Grcecc)," Classical Views/Echos du monde classique 35, n.s. 10 (1991): 327-40. Other important secondary sources will be cited in context. Abbreviated citations of primary sources arc those listed at the beginning of the 2d ed. of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1970). When the author's name is given but no title, only one extant work or collection is attributed to that author. Most of these sources are available in parallel Latin-English editions from Harvard's Loeb Classical Library. More obscure authors and sources are given their full conventional name or title, cither in English or in Latin. All translations from Greek and Latin are my own unless otherwise indicated. [ Journal of thc History of Scxuality 1997, vol. 7, no. 3] 0 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights rcserved. 1043-4070/97/0703-OOO01$1.00 319 This content downloaded from 71.172.231.156 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:27:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
320 RABUN TAYLOR invoked a savage moralism targeting the New Pathic, a once harmless (if detested) character now marked as an obnoxious threat. Behind the paranoia lies a case study for the development of homosexual subcultures in the face of adversity. Although four extensive treatments of Roman male homosexualityby John Boswell, Saara Lilja, Eva Cantarella, and Amy Richlin-exist in book form, only Lilja's is exclusively devoted to this topic and hers alone takes adequate stock of the change in attitudes and behavior during the early period of Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean. The best and most comprehensive treatment of the topic is Craig Williams's 1992 dissertation, "Homosexuality and the Roman Man" which, however, denies any substantive change in the Roman sexual identity during the historical period.2 All these works emphasize societal attitudes toward sexual behavior. But Richlin has recently opened up a new dimension of the study of ancient sexuality, the Roman homosexual subculture, in the pages of this journal.3 The present article builds on Richlin's recent work; it seeks to characterize not just the attitudes of the dominant culture but the behavior of the subculture as well. What was it like on the inside of same-sex adult male relationships in Rome? Time and again, a full answer to this question is frustrated by the unfriendly bias of the sources. Of all the surviving literature from the Roman period, only Petronius's Satyricon offers a sympathetic view of homosexual relationships between coevals.4 Even Richlin7s admirable article, which aspires to "flesh out the 2John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1980); Saara Lil'a, Homosexuality in Republican and Augustan Rome (Helsinki, 1982); Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (New Haven, CT, 1983); Craig A. Williams, "Homosexuality and the Roman Man: A Study in the Cultural Construction of Sexuality" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1992); and Eva Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancicnt World, trans. C. O'Cuilleanain (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992). See also Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia, PA, 1983). Another study, Franqoise Gonfroy, "Un fait de civilisation m&connu: L'homosexualite masculine a Rome" (diss., Poitiers, 1972), remains unpublished. Since Boswell claims that Roman society condoned homosexual activity from the very beginning of its recorded history, he is naturally troubled by what he sees as the sudden onset of homophobia in the early Christian period (pp. 61-87, 91). Cantarella adopts Paul Veyne's view (see n. 15 below) that the period of the Empire witnessed a slow but profound change from aggressivc malc bisexual libertinism to an ethic of heterosexual fidelity. But although she devotes a chaptcr of her book to the metamorphoses of sexual cthics in the Greco-Roman world, in that chapter she deals only with the late empire and the onset of Christianity. 3Amy Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality: The Matcriality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1993): 523-73. 4Williams, pp. 341-49; T. Wade Richardson, "Homosexuality in the Satyricon," Classica et Mediaevalia 35 (1984): 105-27. This content downloaded from 71.172.231.156 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:27:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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