Greek and Roman Sexualities: A Sourcebook

Jennifer Larson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441123428
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Since the publication of Foucault's History of Sexuality the volume of Classical scholarship on gender, sexuality and the body has steadily increased in tandem with the expansion of these topics in other areas of the Humanities. This volume will provide readers with a substantial selection of primary sources documenting sexualities, sexual behaviors, and perceptions of sex, sexuality, gender, and the body among people in the ancient Greco-Roman world. The coverage will begin with Homer in the eighth century BCE and will focus most heavily on Classical Greece and Rome from the Republic to the early Empire, though sources reflecting societal changes in later antiquity and a selection of Jewish and Christian readings will also be included. Authors will include Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Ovid and Plutarch, with each chapter including one or two substantial 'focal' readings. The materials will include poetry, history, oratory, medical and philosophical writings, letters, and inscriptions, both public and private.

1

Sexuality and the Gods

Myths and rituals in both Greek and Roman culture attest belief in a dynamic relationship between human sexuality and natural fertility. In Archaic Greek thought, creation is established and maintained through reproductive processes analogous to human sexual relations and birth. Although the primordial beings in the universe arise spontaneously and asexually, Eros (Sexual Desire) is among the first of these (2.2). Ge or Gaea (Earth) comes together with her son and partner Uranus (Heaven) in a union that ensures the earth’s fertility, for the rain from the heavens impregnates the land (1.5). This concept of the ‘sacred marriage’ between deities is recapitulated in the union of Zeus and Hera, which produces lush greenery and flowers from the earth (1.1). The sacred marriage was also enacted in ritual, as in the Athenian ceremony uniting the wife of the King Archon with the god Dionysus (1.8). We do not know how this ‘marriage’ was consummated: did the King Archon play the role of the god, wearing his mask, or was the bride shut into a chamber alone to await the god’s visit?

A similar ritual is probably reflected in the myth that Demeter had sexual intercourse with the mortal man Iasion in a thrice-ploughed field (1.3). Ploughing and sowing are common metaphors for sexual intercourse, and many sexual elements are present in the rituals of the cult of Demeter and Persephone, which was concerned with both grain agriculture and afterlife hopes. Performed primarily by women, these rituals include aischrologia (sex-talk, often in the form of bantering insults) and the handling of sacred objects in the shape of male and female genitals. The scholiast on Lucian (1.18) provides two key descriptions of these types of rites, although questions surround the accuracy of this late source. Another figure in the Demeter cult was the woman Baubo or Iambe, who seems to personify this type of salacious, insult-laden ritual banter. Baubo’s scurrilous exposure of her genitals to Demeter (1.16) does not provoke divine wrath; instead, the sight of the human organs of generation cheers the goddess of agriculture. This myth pertained to the Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the most prestigious cults in the ancient Mediterranean world, whose initiates held hopes for a better afterlife. Pagan mystery religions competed directly with Christianity, which also required initiation rites and promised a life after death. Christian authors such as Clement of Alexandria and Augustine vigorously attacked pagan practices and beliefs they deemed indecent (1.16, 1.17), making the mysteries special targets of ridicule. While they must be read with care, these authors often provide the most detailed evidence (and in some cases the only evidence) for specific myths or rituals.

Evoking Archaic Greek practices of bride capture, the myth of Persephone’s abduction and sexual conquest by Hades has many layers of meaning. Familiar in Greek thought is the idea that for a girl, marriage is a kind of death, requiring the extinction of the girl’s former life in favour of her new identity as wife. Premature death, meanwhile, can be visualised as a marriage to Hades (8.3). In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the rape of Persephone planned by Zeus and his brother without the consent of her mother Demeter provides the waiting cosmos with its Queen of the underworld (1.4). Persephone’s union with Hades, however, is also a kind of sacred marriage, because her descent to the underworld recapitulates the planting of the seed grain and its germination, while her annual ascension to the earth and the embrace of her mother represents the emergence of the crops.

Archetypal masculine and feminine sexual qualities are embodied in the goddesses and gods (beauty, chastity, seductiveness, sexual jealousy, sexual prowess, and so on). Zeus, the ‘father of gods and men’, embodies a male fantasy of supreme power and unlimited access to sexual partners (1.1, 1.2); his sexual potency is closely tied to his identity as progenitor and king. Zeus helps to populate the cosmos with deities and humans through his activities as husband, lover, seducer, and rapist. So great is his procreative power that he usurps in part the reproductive prerogative by birthing Athena from his head, while Hera, angry at this infringement, produces the lame Hephaestus without a male partner (1.2). The myth reflects cultural views, later enshrined in scientific writings by Aristotle (6.6), Galen (6.14, 6.15), and others, about the superior instrumentality of the male role in reproduction. As the divine exemplar of wifely deceit, jealousy, and attraction, Hera uses sexual wiles to draw Zeus’ attention from the events at Troy; her elaborate grooming in preparation for the seduction is parallel to a warrior’s arming scene. Such emphasis on rich dress and ornament (also evident in the description of Aphrodite’s preparations to meet Anchises [2.3] and in the Maiden Song of Alcman [5.1]) characterises the Archaic Greek ideal of feminine beauty.

In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual desire must disguise herself as a mortal in order to overcome Anchises’ scruples and fire his passions, enabling him to undertake an active, masculine role in their lovemaking (2.3). Once their union is consummated, she reveals her true identity to her terrified suitor, who anticipates punishment for his presumption in touching a goddess. Unlike Zeus, whose affairs with mortals are brief, Aphrodite longs to make Anchises her permanent companion and spouse, but the example of Tithonus’ fate shows why this is impossible. In the Odyssey, Calypso offers Odysseus immortality as her consort, but he proves unwilling to relinquish his human identity (and vitiate his masculinity) as the price of avoiding death. When she is ultimately forced to release the captive Odysseus, Calypso complains bitterly about the divine double standard (1.3): while the male gods have as many mortal lovers as they wish, they disapprove of unions between goddess and man. Indeed, they often take steps to end such episodes by destroying a goddess’ favourite. Through such ‘case studies’ of sex between mortals and deities, the myths explore the boundaries of traditional ideas about gender and power. In relationships between gods and mortal women or boys, the standard hierarchies are preserved, but when goddesses desire mortal men, these hierarchies are thrown into chaos.

The cult of Dionysus was another major venue for ritual involving sexual elements. In contrast to the focus on the female generative role in the worship of Demeter and Persephone, Dionysiac cult was permeated by images of the penis, a symbol of natural vigour and procreative energy. The god himself is virtually never shown with an erection and, unlike the other male Olympians, is usually clothed – often in feminine dress. Dionysus was not perceived as a promiscuous lover in the style of his father Zeus. His rituals involve gender-deviant behaviours, and in a few myths he appears to accept penetration by another male (1.16), but he is also represented as the loving husband of Ariadne (8.9). His exuberant mythic entourage of satyrs, on the other hand, is comically preoccupied with sex; satyrs existed in a nearly permanent state of sexual excitement and/or frustration. One of the most characteristic Dionysiac rituals was the procession with model phalluses on poles or carts (1.6); the phallus was also a sacred object, revealed in Dionysiac mystery rituals. The penis could be perceived as a willful part of the body, which often functioned independently of its owner’s wishes and seized control of the proceedings (6.4). Thus the phallus is an appropriate symbol of the loss of control experienced in Dionysiac ecstasy and the god’s power to impose his will on the minds and bodies of any who refused to worship him. This aspect of Dionysus, as well as his challenge to gender roles, was already problematic in Classical Greece, as Euripides’ dark portrait of the god in the Bacchae illustrates (9.7). The focus on the iconic phallus does not imply an androcentric cult, for Dionysus was a deity notably attractive to women, and the ecstatic Bacchants of myth had their counterparts in real life thiasoi, or bands of female celebrants.

Worship of Dionysus/Bacchus included secret mystery rites that promised afterlife benefits to initiates. Greek colonists brought this cult to Italy, and its popularity, as well as innovations in ritual practice that conflicted with traditional Roman ideas of sexual modesty and decent behaviour, alarmed the Senate. As depicted in Livy’s account (1.11), the Bacchic worshipers were murderous, criminal monsters in pursuit of sexual debauchery, led by domineering women who decreed that the sexes would worship together, rather than in the gender-segregated groups of the past. The report that large numbers of people were involved in the Bacchic mysteries may well be correct, and the pervasiveness of this movement, which ‘almost amounted to a second state’, goes far to explain the hostility of the Senate. Whether these groups actually engaged in systematic criminal behaviour is unknown, but the account reflects entrenched suspicion of a cult that emphasised ecstatic experience and blurring of gender roles.

In spite of the Roman Senate’s concerns about the lack of modesty in Bacchic rites, what concerned it was certainly not the display of the phallus itself, for in the early Italian context, too, the penis was symbolic of generative powers. A number of traditional tales attribute the birth of various heroes to the appearance of a phallus from the hearth, which then impregnates a woman (1.12). The worship of the phallic god Priapus, imported to Italy from the Greek city of Lampsacus, became extremely popular in Roman Italy. Priapus was essentially a protector of gardens who threatened anal rape to any would-be thieves (1.14). His phallicism is here tied to the popular Italian concept of the penis as a talisman to ward off evil. As every visitor to Pompeii knows, the phallus was a familiar neighbourhood image, carved on walls and streets. During the early empire, poets amused themselves by composing brief, comic poems about Priapus and his monstrous penis; later, Petronius played on the suspect associations between religious mysteries and sexuality when he made supposed ‘mystery rites of Priapus’ an important motif in his Satyrica (9.14).

The early Romans had fused Priapus’ worship with that of a native phallic deity, Mutinus Titinus, and employed his statue in a ritual meant to ensure a bride’s fertility. Another distinctive practice of the early Romans was the enumeration of individual nūmina or deities assigned to specific functions, including those to be performed on the wedding night. Long after these beliefs were no longer current among the Romans and had faded to the realm of antiquarian scholarship, the Christian father Augustine used them in a polemical attack on paganism (1.17).

As we have seen, ecstatic forms of religion, which often include sexual elements, were problematic in Greek and especially in Roman culture because of the challenge they posed to gender norms. The cult of Adonis, Aphrodite’s consort, involved passionate laments for the death of the youthful and handsome god. Athenian men associated this worship with licentious and disruptive behaviour (1.7). In Hellenistic Alexandria, by contrast, the Adonis cult was adopted as a state festival and lavishly celebrated with elaborate effigies of Aphrodite and her consort. Theocritus’ depiction of the women at the Adonia (1.9) emphasises Adonis’ physical attractiveness to his female worshipers.

The self-castrated devotees of Cybele known as the Galli were objects of fascination, suspicion, and disgust in Rome, even as the Senate imported the goddess’ cult from Hellenised Asia Minor. The myth of Agdistis (another name for Cybele) appears in several versions that contradict each other in various specifics, but in each case they evoke disturbing images of castration, madness, androgyny, and rejection of heterosexual and marital relation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Using This Book
• 1 Sexuality and the Gods
• 2 Deities of Desire Their Nature and Effects
• 3 Anxiety, Suspicion and Blame
• 4 Pederasty and Male Homoerotic Relations
• 5 Female Homosocial and Homoerotic Relations
• 6 Philosophical and Medical Models of the Body and Sexuality
• 7 Virginity, Chastity, and Modesty
• 8 Marital Sexuality
• 9 Transgression and Deviance
• 10 Prostitutes and Courtesans
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Sources
• Index