GREEK HOMOSEXUALITY

1 00 I I The Prosecution of Timarkhos
heterosexual copulation, and of the circumstances in which
homosexual anal copulation is practised, threatened or symbolised,
may throw some light on the terms in which the important distinction
between prostitution and 'legitimate eros' was conventionally drawn.
6. Dominant and subordinate roles
When heterosexual intercourse is portrayed in vase-painting, we very
commonly see the woman bending over (sometimes with her hands on
the ground) while the man stands and penetrates her from behind and
below: B134; B450; B518 (the man kneels); B666; B676; c78; CE36;
CE37; R361; R434; R545* (the woman almost standing on her head);
cf. B60 and B586, in which the man is closing up but has not yet
penetrated. In some cases there can be no room for doubt that it is the
woman's anus, not her vagina, which is being penetrated ; 80 the
clearest case is B51 *, where the vulva, carefully depicted, is nowhere
near the point of penetration, and in R543* the painter cannot have
been unaware of the distance he has put between the woman's pubic
hair and the point of entry of the penis. In many other cases (e.g.
B6 70, CP16, RS 77 *) the point of entry is so high that is is reasonable to
suppose that the painter had anal penetration in mind; unambjguous
portrayal of vaginal penetration from the rear (e.g. B516, R490) is less
common. 81 The characteristic configuration- the woman bent over,
the man standing behind her - is described in the late fifth century by
a passage of Aristophanes (Thesm. 479-89), where the speaker is a man
disguised as a woman and 'confessing' to a woman's tricks:
My husband was asleep beside me. I had a friend who'd popped me
when I was seven, and he missed me so much he came and scratched on
the door. I knew at once who it was, so I tiptoed down. My husband
asks me, 'Where are you going?' 'Why, I've got an awful pain in my
stomach, so I'm going to the loo'. So he mixed me juniper and dill and
sage, and I put a bit of water on the hinge (sc. of the outer door) and
from using the term 'homosexual' with reference to wild animals if the definition
given at the start of I A 1 is satisfied. A Peruvian community mentioned by Tripp 70f.
seems to divert almost all its sexually motivated behaviour into homosexual
relationships; if so, it invalidates the generalisation of Karlen 4 76.
80. Correctly observed by Pomeroy 144. Peisistratos fell out with Megakles
because, married to Megakles' daughter, he 'had intercourse with her not in the
normal way' (Hdt. i 61.1 f.), but he had strong reasons for not wishing her to conceive.
81. Devereux ( 1970) 21 n. 1 regards the urge towards the portrayal of heterosexual
anal intercourse as a manifestation of homosexuality (cf. Pomeroy loc. cit.), and we
may well suspect a divergence between homosexual copulation in vase-paintings and
what an erastes actually hoped to achieve.