Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

364 RABUN TAYLOR
four bathhouses." Syriscus too appears to be just the sort of "cymbalcrashing
friend" ("cymbala pulsans . . . amicus"; Juv. 9.62, i.e., a Gallus)153
who Juvenal's Naevolus so fears will steal his patron's heart-and
Naevolus's legacy.
What can we say about the men who are the objects of bathhouse
cruising? Clearly physical appeal was important, but can we believe Juvenal
when he says that Naevolus was picked up primarily because of the
size of his genitals? Naevolus's case is not an isolated one. In fact, the
phenomenon of cruising men for their size constitutes a veritable literary
convention; in Petronius 92, Martial 9.33 and 11.63, Juvenal 6.374-76
and 11.156-58, and Straton of Sardis (Anth. Pal. 12.207), young men
who are particularly well endowed find themselves the object of wonder
and admiration in the baths. In Apuleius's Metamorphoses Philebus's
band of Galli brings home from the local bathhouse a rustic iuvenis (the
term for a man roughly between the ages of twenty and forty-five) "well
equipped with busy flanks and low-hanging loins" ("industria laterum
atque imis ventris bene praeparatum"; 8.29) and offers him dinner as a
prelude (and probable payment) for debauchery.
Naturally, not all the situations cited are alike. Petronius's Ascyltos
falls into his misadventure by accident. The prodigy of Juvenal's sixth
satire is an adult eunuch recently parted from his "two-pound weights"
(bilibres, 6.372), prized for his ephemeral capacity to perform active intercourse
without the danger of impregnating his mistress. Naevolus's
behavior, and perhaps his orientation as well, is bisexual; we have no such
information about other bathhouse favorites. But the similarities in these
passages are equally striking. The universal admiration of genital size
suggests that these men are selected at the baths for their perceived excellence
in performing the active role in homosexual intercourse. At least
three of them-Ascyltos, Naevolus, and the generic puer of Juvenal
11 the latter two because they habitually shave their bodies after the
fashion of pathics-can be expected to be well versed in the passive role
as well.'54 Moreover, most of these men are manifestly past their teenage
years and are consequently at or beyond the terminus of desirability ad-
'53"[Cymbals] like tympana belonged to the cult of Cybele with its cunuch pricsts"
(Edward Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires ofjuvenal [London, 1980], p. 434). The
Galli in Apul. Met. 8 and 9 are also equipped with them.
154A passage in Petronius 9 makes Ascyltos's experience clear: "When I heard this I
shook my fist in Ascyltos' face. 'What have you to say?' I cried, 'You! Worked on like a
woman-a whore, whose very breath is unclcan?' Ascyltos first pretended to be shocked,
and then made a braver show of fight, and roared out much more loudly: 'Hold your
tonguc, you filthy prizefightcr.... I was the same kind of brother to you in the gardcn, as
this boy is now in the lodgings'" (Michael Hezeltine and E. H. Warmington, trans., Petronius,
Loeb Classical Library [1969], pp. 15-17). For Naevolus, see Juv. 9.12-15.
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