Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome 371
to us in uneven chronological clusters in the works of a very few authors,
or on a few surviving walls in Pompeii dating to the Julio-Claudian or
Flavian periods. Still, the record is sufficiently intact to show that awareness
of nonpederastic homosexual behaviors did develop during the early
Empire, even if tolerance did not.
The two subcultures we have examined have a fundamental difference.
The cult of the Galli, like that of the hijras, was a haven for a fairly small
class of men who had strong transgender, even gynemimetic, tendencies.
Some had sexual drives, others were asexual, but all belonged to a type
of subculture that in modern times is sometimes called the Berdache Society.'70
These males had no inclination, and no means, to perform the
active role in sexual intercourse. The urban subculture of Rome embraced
a greater variety of tastes and persuasions, all of which prefigured
vigorous or latent sexuality. Surprisingly, the phenomenon of sexual patronage,
so well documented in Roman literature, has held little interest
for scholars of the Roman patronage system. Alan Booth's article has
started down this path of inquiry, but others have neglected it altogether.
171
In literature, both the Galli and the urban subculture are tarred with
the same brush. Barring anatomical distinctions, a cinaedus in Martial's
lexicon is no different from a Gallus. As Gleason says, "The ancient cinaedus
was defined not in terms of the gender of his sex partners, but by
his own gender deviance, his departure from norms of 'correct' masculine
deportment."'72 This simply describes how some men perceived
other men. It does not even explain how effeminate or homosexually
inclined men perceived themselves, much less explain their behavior. Yet
behavior-in the context of the cult, the Senate, the home, the bathhouse,
and the brothel-may often be gleaned from the literary sources.
Never do these sources imply that sexuality was somehow contextually
absent. Men were constrained by their identities and orientations then
as now.
'70Anne Bolin, "Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy
and Diversity," in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture
and History, ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York, 1994), pp. 447-85.
'17 Booth (n. 29 above).
172
Gleason (n. 12 above), p. 41 1.
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