Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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 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
340 RABUN TAYLOR Thus Seneca says that "the lecher is revealed by gait and the movement of his hand, at times by a single answer, or by putting his finger to his head or casting a glance.'"6 Maud Gleason sees such mannerisms as part of the culturally established physiognomy of effeminate men, over which they were thought to have no control. But she acknowledges that Dio Chrysostom (Or. 33.52) called such mannerisms symbola "because masculine deportment and grooming habits constituted a system of social communication."65 To this behavior might be added another indicator of a subculture of homosexuality: imitation of heterosexual family behavior. Just as the hijras of India or the American Indian berdache "married" men and played female kinship roles such as mother, daughter, and sister with each other, men of the great European urban centers of the eighteenth century performed same-sex weddings and even mimicked childbirth.66 In light of this behavior, Juvenal's vitriolic description of an allmale marriage (2.126-43), although substantially embellished, seems believable. Martial 1.24 and 12.42 also attest to such marriages, but none of this material lends itself to useful evaluation, any more than the alleged same-sex marriages of Nero and Elagabalus can be introduced as evidence for broader behavior within a subculture.67 Rhetorum Pracceptor 11; Plut. Pomp. 48.7, Cacs. 4. Ovid Ars Am. 1.137-38 attests that courtcsans used similar sign language to communicate with potential clients. 64"Inpudicum ct incessus ostendit et manus mota ct unum interdum rcsponsum et relatus ad caput digitus et flexus oculorum" (Sen. Ep. 52.12). Coded messages in a questionanswer format are a common method of solicitation today, as they were in eighteenthcentury London and Amsterdam. More common in Holland were purely visual two-way codes, such as putting one's hands on one's hips and rcsponding in the same way or mutual nudges. See Theo van der Meer, "The Persecutions of Sodomites in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam: Changing Perceptions of Sodomy," in Tbe Pursuit of Sodomy: Mak Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, ed. Kent Gcrard and Gert Hekma (New York, 1989), pp. 263-310, at p. 288; see also Trumbach, "London's Sodomites," p. 15. 65Glcason, pp. 399-400. "Nanda, "A Prcliminary Report" (n. 45 above), p. 66; Trumbach, "Londonfs Sodomites," pp. 15, 17; P. Howell, A Commentary on Book I of the Epigrams of Martial(London, 1980), cpigram 25. 67For Ncro, see Tac. Ann. 15.37; Aur. Vict. Cacs. 5.5; Suct. Nero 28-29. For Elagabalus, see S.H.A. Heliogab. 10.5, 11.7. See also Dalla, pp. 63-69; Williams, pp. 322-3 1. Jean Colin, "Juvenal et le manage mystique de Gracchus," Atti della Accademia delle scienze di Torino 90 (1955-56): 114-216, offers the intercsting but unconvincing hypothesis that all thcsc weddings werc not homosexual unions but mystical marriages of an cxtraordinary man to the goddess Cybele or Bellona, in which the other malc partner (sometimes an "archgallus," sometimes a flutc-playcr for the cult) served as the goddess's surrogate during the ceremony and nothing morc. Yet Juv. 2.126-43 emphasizes that both partners are in it for the long run: he imagines aloud their hilarious efforts at conceiving children. Whether or not therc is a pattern of religious ritual behind thcsc scenes, ncither the authors nor their intended rcaders understood this as the motive for the marriages. 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
Page 1 and 2: Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient R
Page 3 and 4: 320 RABUN TAYLOR invoked a savage m
Page 5 and 6: 322 RABUN TAYLOR tion, between inte
Page 7 and 8: 324 RABUN TAYLOR A FEW REMARKS ABOU
Page 9 and 10: 326 RABUN TAYLOR context of the ant
Page 11 and 12: 328 RABUN TAYLOR pius as active, Gi
Page 13 and 14: 330 RABUN TAYLOR arouse] me, if you
Page 15 and 16: 332 RABUN TAYLOR ously he had broug
Page 17 and 18: 334 RABUN TAYLOR In his description
Page 19 and 20: 336 RABUN TAYLOR cult may also have
Page 21: 338 RABUN TAYLOR AN URBAN SUBCULTUR
Page 25 and 26: 342 RABUN TAYLOR corresponding lack
Page 27 and 28: 344 RABUN TAYLOR by freeborn males
Page 29 and 30: 346 RABUN TAYLOR are effeminati; he
Page 31 and 32: 348 RABUN TAYLOR Empire, "those who
Page 33 and 34: 350 RABUN TAYLOR or, more likely, t
Page 35 and 36: 352 RABUN TAYLOR dia with "shameful
Page 37 and 38: 354 RABUN TAYLOR But another cinacd
Page 39 and 40: 356 RABUN TAYLOR both the active an
Page 41 and 42: 358 RABUN TAYLOR lectual patronage
Page 43 and 44: 360 RABUN TAYLOR of these prostitut
Page 45 and 46: 362 RABUN TAYLOR behind when they e
Page 47 and 48: 364 RABUN TAYLOR four bathhouses."
Page 49 and 50: 366 RABUN TAYLOR tency of the repor
Page 51 and 52: 368 RABUN TAYLOR dresses the part o
Page 53 and 54: 370 RABUN TAYLOR men solicited in b

Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?