Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

322 RABUN TAYLOR
tion, between intent and signification, must necessarily modify our ideas
about what Romans really felt when they engaged in sexual activity.
This said, like Williams and Richlin, I use the term "homosexuality"
with little satisfaction. Williams writes, "We cannot understand Roman
attitudes toward 'homosexuality' or 'homosexual acts' any more than wc
can profitably speak of 'heterosexuality' or 'heterosexual acts.' Instead,
the fundamental organizing issues concern physical role (penetrating as
opposed to being penetrated), aesthetic stigma (the defilement of the
mouth and tongue by contact with male and female genitalia), and socially
responsible behavior (respecting the integrity of free persons, and
in particular the dependents of the paterfamilias)."9 Ancient Mediterraneans
would doubtless regard the aggregate of behaviors categorized as
"homosexual" to be somewhat arbitrary. They would justifiably see little
in common, for example, between a habitual pederast and a transvestite
pathic. But even if Winkler and Halperin are right that ancient society
perceived sex primarily as an instrument of status or shame, sexual orientation
in the Roman world was not trivial. Behind the phenomenon of
the New Pathic lies the reality that some males acted according to their
object preference for grown men or for teenage boys who could take the
insertive role.
Like Richlin, when I refer to homosexuals or homosexuality, I am referring
specifically to men who found primary fulfillment in same-sex
unions that at times involved the assumption of the passive role. But
although these men were "pathics" in the eyes of society, we should by
no means impute to them a preference for the passive role, though this
character trait, pars pro toto, was the inevitable burden of repute they had
to bear. As we shall see below, there is abundant literary evidence that
males of the "pathic" stamp were known, and even expected, to take the
insertive role as well. Even this group is far from homogeneous. Many
males within it had a subordinate interest in the opposite sex; some
found age limits important in their object preference, but many others
did not. The Greek ethos strictly relating age to sex role had limited
bearing on Roman society.
When a man's sexual nature conflicted with his social persona, it may
have led him to seek refuge in a subculture. This institution developed
in Rome, I will argue, in much the same way as the one in England at
the cusp of the Early Modern period, which, according to Alan Bray,
"was not mediated by existing social forms, of class or otherwise: it was
set alongside them, a social institution in its own right. But most of all
what gave it its independence in society was its elaboration of its own
distinctive conventions: ways of dressing, of talking, distinctive gestures
9Wiliams, p. 320; see Richlin, 'Not bcefore Homosexuality," pp. 525-30.
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