Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome 339
bisexual men-and despite the fact that transvestism is a complex phenomenon
that in many societies, including our own, has little bearing
on sexual orientation. Perhaps they do so as a mechanism of maximizing
self-expression and heightening the image that they are different from
the culture of the majority. The same development seems to have taken
place in Rome, eliciting a predictably hostile reaction; effeminate men
are accused of invading even the Senate, and dressing provocatively in
court (Cic. Phil. 3.12; Juv. 2.65-68). Richlin has frilly documented the
received attitude toward such behavior."' A hostile Senatorial reaction to
effeminacy in public might take the shape of Controversiae 5.6, where
the elder Seneca describes a hypothetical case in which a young man is
prohibited by a chastity law from speaking in court because he once
dressed like a woman and consequently had been gang raped.6' The argument
against him is that he willfully invited rape simply by dressing as
he did: the act and thereby the actor are inherently unchaste. Although
the prosecutor feigns outrage and surprise at the young man's behavior,
he hints that it is perfectly in character with the man and his loose generation.
The prevalence of high-pitched, effeminate voices and womanly gait
and gestures is also well in evidence among this group. Seneca suggests
that such habits betray whorishness in men (QNat. 7.31.2); Juvenal's
Oxford fragment includes these features in his catalog of the quintessential
"queen" (6.019-24). Mannerisms of speech, dress, and movement
were so important for identifying a person's true nature that professional
physiognomists made a living defining and identifying them.62 Feminine
mannerisms were consolidated by the late Republic into an image that
served both as grounds for derision by detractors and as a vehicle of selfdefinition
for homosexual men. The stereotype of the womanish man
may actually have strengthened the solidarity of men in the subculture
by lending a sense of uniformity to their nonconformity.
Because of the nature of the literature, we have little surviving evidence
of an argot among the Roman subculture, but the various physical
mannerisms served as a sort of rudimentary sign language misunderstood
by outsiders. The curious habit of scratching one's head with a
single finger, attested in several sources, appears to have been a code
gesture among homosexual or bisexual men, perhaps for soliciting sex.63
60Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality."
61
Similar laws are invoked in the Tabula Heracleensis and Ulpianis commentaries in Justinian's
Dilgest. See Dalla (n. 13 above), pp. 5 1-53; Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 59-61; Richlin,
"Not before Homosexuality," pp. 559-61.
62Gleason (n. 12 above), pp. 406-11.
63On scratching one's head with a single finger, see Juv. 9.133; Calvus fragment, in
Carolus Bucchner, cd., Fragmcnta poctarum Latinorum (Leipzig, 1982), p. 112; Lucian
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