Two pathic subcultures in ancient Rome

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 7, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 319-371

  Taylor, Rabun ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

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EID: 21444454210     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (221)

1. K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, MA, 1978).
2. For bibliographies on the subject, unfortunately now quite dated, see Beert Verstraete, Homosexuality in Ancient Greek and Roman Civilization: A Critical Biography with Supplement (Toronto, 1982);
3. Wayne Dynes, Homosexuality: A Research Guide (New York, 1987).
4. For a review of recent literature, see Mark Golden, "Thirteen Years of Homosexuality (and Other Recent Work on Sex, Gender and the Body in Ancient Greece)," Classical Views/Échos du monde classique 35, n.s. 10 (1991): 327-40. Other important secondary sources will be cited in context. Abbreviated citations of primary sources are those listed at the beginning of the 2d ed. of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1970). When the author's name is given but no title, only one extant work or collection is attributed to that author. Most of these sources are available in parallel Latin-English editions from Harvard's Loeb Classical Library. More obscure authors and sources are given their full conventional name or title, either in English or in Latin. All translations from Greek and Latin are my own unless otherwise indicated.
5. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1980);
6. Saara Lilja, Homosexuality in Republican and Augustan Rome (Helsinki, 1982);
7. Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (New Haven, CT, 1983);
8. Craig A. Williams, "Homosexuality and the Roman Man: A Study in the Cultural Construction of Sexuality" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1992);
9. Eva Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World, trans. C. O'Cuilleanáin (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992).
10. See also Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia, PA, 1983).
11. Another study, Françoise Gonfroy, "Un fait de civilisation méconnu: L'homosexualité masculine à Rome" (diss., Poitiers, 1972), remains unpublished. Since Boswell claims that Roman society condoned homosexual activity from the very beginning of its recorded history, he is naturally troubled by what he sees as the sudden onset of homophobia in the early Christian period (pp. 61-87, 91). Cantarella adopts Paul Veyne's view (see n. 15 below) that the period of the Empire witnessed a slow but profound change from aggressive male bisexual libertinism to an ethic of heterosexual fidelity. But although she devotes a chapter of her book to the metamorphoses of sexual ethics in the Greco-Roman world, in that chapter she deals only with the late empire and the onset of Christianity.
12. Amy Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1993): 523-73.
13. Williams, pp. 341-49; T. Wade Richardson, "Homosexuality in the Satyricon" Classica et Mediaevalia 35 (1984): 105-27.
14. Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," p. 530.
15. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, 1978);
16. John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York and London, 1990);
17. David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York and London, 1990).
18. For criticism, see Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," pp. 523-28, and the reviews cited in her n. 3;
19. see also Ralph Hexter, "Scholars and Their Pals," Helios 18 (1991): 147-59.
20. Halperin, p. 29.
21. Ibid., p. 25.
22. Williams, p. 320; see Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," pp. 525-30.
23. Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982), p. 86.
24. On the semiotics of subcultures, see Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London 1979).
25. For a recent summary of Boswell's views (n. 2 above), see Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," pp. 528-30.
26. Maud Gleason, "The Semiotics of Gender: Physiognomy and Self-Fashioning in the Second Century C.E.," in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma M. Zeitlin (Princeton, NJ, 1990), pp. 389-415; Winkler; Halperin, pp. 21-24.
27. Boswell repeatedly cites the Romans' well-known tolerance for penetrative exploitation of social inferiors as evidence that there were no taboos against homosexual behavior in general. In fact, homosexual behavior in which freeborn boys or men played the passive role was socially condemned and legally prohibited. This did not, of course, prevent such boys from being sexually exploited; see inter alia Petronius 85-87; Pliny Ep. 3.3.3-4, 7.24; and especially Valerius Maximus 6.1.6-12, which illustrates the continuing exploitation of freeborn boys throughout the Republic as well as the moral outrage and legal penalties incurred by such acts. Martial and Juvenal are also rich sources for this kind of evidence. See Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 157-205; and Danilo Dalla, "Ubi Venus mutatur": Omosessualità e diritto nel mondo romano (Milan, 1987), a useful book-length study of Roman law and homosexuality.
28. Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality" (n. 3 above), p. 524.
29. Not before Homosexuality Ibid., pp. 532-40;
30. Williams, Not before Homosexuality pp. 87-119, 157-205;
31. Françoise Gonfroy, "Homosexualité et idéologie esclavagiste chez Cicéron," Dialogues d'histoire ancienne 4 (1978): 219-63, at 227;
32. Beert Verstraete, "Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Male Homosexual Relations in Ancient Rome," Journal of Homosexuality 5 (1980): 227-36.
33. Several other articles have tried, with varying success, to characterize Roman homosexuality as a historical phenomenon. Ramsay MacMullen, "Roman Attitudes to Greek Love," Historia 31 (1982): 484-502,
34. which is also published in Homosexuality in the Ancient World, ed. Wayne Dynes and Stephen Donaldson (New York and London, 1992), pp. 340-58, attributes the increased visibility of homosexuality in this period to Roman adoption of Greek attitudes and ideals.
35. Paul Veyne, "Homosexuality in Ancient Rome," in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, ed. Philippe Ariès and André Béjin, trans. A. Forster (Oxford, 1985), pp. 26-35, emphasizes the differences between Greek and Roman attitudes and downplays Greek influence.
36. Several sources deal in detail with homosexual relations between master and slave in the context of a single author's work: Maria Antonietta Cerverella, "Omosessualità e ideologia schiavistica in Petronio," Index (Naples) 11 (1982): 221-34;
37. Marguerite Garrido-Hory, "La vision du dépendant chez Martial à travers les relations sexuelles," Index (Naples) 10 (1981): 298-315,
38. Martial et l'esclavage (Besançon, 1981);
39. René Martin, "La vie sexuelle des esclaves d'après les Dialogues rustiques de Varron," in Varron, grammaire antique et stylistique latine: Recueil offert à Jean Collart (Paris, 1978), pp. 113-26.
40. Richlin, The Garden of Priapus (n. 2 above), p. 225. See Petronius 105, where Giton's looks disarm not only Tryphaena and her ladies but all the male sailors as well. Modern Mediterranean cultures are little different. A homosexual sojourner in various Arab cities in the 1950s described to Alfred Kinsey how men of the dominant culture desire to have effeminate men for pathic partners and yet violently deny taking the pathic role themselves
41. (see Martin B. Duberman, About Time: Exploring the Gay Past [New York, 1986], pp. 173-83).
42. See Williams, pp. 91-92. All this evidence severely compromises Cantarella's claim (n. 2 above) that, before Christianity became generally accepted in the fourth century, the Romans "had not . . . invented the theory of sexuality against nature" (p. 188). Also see Epictetus (Arr. Epict. Diss. 3.1.27-31) and Dio Chrysostom 33.52-60. For the possible origins of this notion in Stoic thought, see Elaine Fantham, "Stuprum: Public Attitudes and Penalties for Sexual Offences in Republican Rome," Classical Views/Échos du monde classique 35, n.s. 10 (1991): 267-91, at 289, n. 60. For an analysis of the widespread notions of inherent and cultivated effeminacy in physiognomy,
43. see Gleason. Walter Stevenson ("The Rise of Eunuchs in Greco-Roman Antiquity," Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 [1995]: 495-511) evokes the "strong Roman sense of nature" in the context of emasculation. At least two classical sources suggest this is true: the elder Seneca asserts that castrating young boys for prostitution is contra naturam (Controv. 1.4.17), and on the same topic, Petronius says, "nature seeks herself and findeth naught" (119.1.24).
44. Williams, pp. 11-119; Cantarella; Lilja (n. 2 above), pp. 82, 123-24. Verstraete's argument that Rome had undergone centuries of Greek influence through the Etruscans and Magna Graecia is well taken ("Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Male Homosexual Relations in Ancient Rome," p. 230). But given the paucity of early evidence, his claim that "we see from the late third century B.C. onwards an increasing acceptance of alternative sexual behaviors of almost every coloring and variety" (p. 230) is tenuous and is plainly wrong if he means that the dominant culture, as opposed to the subculture, accepted any of these behaviors.
45. Richlin, The Garden of Priapus, pp. 26-31;
46. see also Williams, The Garden of Priapus, pp. 206-80.
47. John Clarke, "The Warren Cup and the Contexts for Representations of Male-to-Male Lovemaking in Augustan and Early Julio-Claudian Art," Art Bulletin 75 (1993): 275-93.
48. In The Houses of Roman Italy: Ritual, Space, and Decoration (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 323-24), Clarke suggests that the scene represents a homosexual brothel, but there is no reason why it could not be a private house.
49. Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, MI, 1988).
50. Randolph Trumbach, "London's Sodomites: Homosexual Behavior and Western Culture in the 18th Century," Journal of Social History 11 ( 1977): 1-33, at 5.
51. "Hunc ego fatis / inputo, qui vultu morbum incessuque fatetur. / horum simplicitas miserabilis, his furor ipse / dat veniam; sed peiiores, qui talia verbis / Herculis invadunt et de virtute locuti / cluncm agitant" (Juv. 2.16-21).
52. Frederick Whitam and Robin Mathy, Male Homosexuality in Four Societies (New York, 1986), pp. 133-53.
53. "Respice primum / et scrutare viros, faciunt nam plura; sed illos / defendit numerus iunctaeque umbone phalanges. / magna inter molles concordia" (Juv. 2.44-47).
54. Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 342, 344-45, 348-49.
55. For more on Greek and Roman mystery cults, see Clara Gallini, Protesta e integrazione nella Roma antica (Bari, 1970), pp. 30-44;
56. Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, 1975), pp. 205-26;
57. J. A. North, "Religious Toleration in Republican Rome," Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, n.s., 25 (1979): 85-103, at 94-95.
58. See H. Rushton Fairclough, trans., Virgil, Loeb Classical Library (1934), 2.505.
59. "Vel acta puero cum viris convivia / udaeque per somnum nates" (Verg. Catal. 13-14). This seems to be an instance of sexual patronage. The act is deemed perverse in light of the Roman custom of not allowing boys to recline at meals with adults until they assumed the toga virilis; see Alan Booth, "The Age for Reclining and Its Attendant Perils," in Dining in a Classical Context, ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor, MI, 1991), pp. 105-20.
60. This is the perfect passive participle of either retineo, "hold back," or retendo, "release from tension."
61. As examples of this usage, Gaston Vorberg, Glossarium Eroticum (Rome, 1965), s.v. frater, cites Tibullus 3.1.23; Mart. 2.4.3; 10.65.15; Petron. 9. See also Williams, pp. 342-49.
62. "Quid palluisti, femina? an ioci dolent? / an facta cognoscis tua? / non me vocabis pulchra per Cotytia / ad feriatos fascinos, / nee deinde te movere lumbos in stola / prensis videbo altaribus / flavumque propter Thybrim olentis nauticum / vocare, ubi adpulsae rates / stant in vadis caeno retentae sordido / macraque luctantes aqua; / neque in culinam et uncta compitalia / dapesque duces sordidas, / quibus repletus et salivosis aquis, / obesam ad uxorem redis / et aestuantes docte solvis pantices, / osusque lambis saviis. / nunc laede, nunc lacesse, si quicquam vales! / et nomen adscribo tuum. / cinaede Luciene, liquerunt opes / fameque genuini crepant. / videbo habentem praeter ignavos nihil / fratres et iratum lovem / scissumque ventrem et herniosi patrui / pedes inedia turgidos" (Verg. Catal. 13.17-40).
63. For more direct imagery, see Priapea 68.8; Juv. 9.44; CIL X.4483.
64. For the laxative effect of anal penetration, see Priapea 17; Martial 11.88 and 13.26.
65. Lucienus's wife seems nothing more than a lugubrious concession to the dominant culture. Compare Ausonius's epigram 78 and the wife of a long string of cinaedi in Martial 7.58.3-5: "Then, having tested their loins and dongs like wet thongs uncoaxed to a stand by your long-laboring hand, you desert weaponless bed and effeminate husband alike."
66. For a convenient presentation of the source material on the Cybele cult, see Maarten J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult (London, 1977), esp. pp. 96-144.
67. "Quid cum femineo tibi, Baetice Galle, barathro? / haec debet medios lambere lingua viros. / abscissa est quare Samia tibi mentula testa, / si tibi tam gratus, Baetice, cunnus erat?" (Mart. 3.81.1-4). See also Mart. 2.45.
68. N. M. Kay, Martial Book XI: A Commentary (Oxford, 1985), p. 225.
69. On castration practices, see Theodor Hopfner, Das Sexualleben der Griechen und Römer (Prague, 1938), pp. 387-88;
70. Charles Humana, The Keeper of the Bed: The Story of the Eunuch (London, 1973), p. 14;
71. Peter Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven und Freigelassene in der griechischrömischen Antike (Stuttgart, 1980), p. 48.
72. Catullus 63 often refers to the castrated Attis (Cybele's consort) with feminine adjectives and imagery.
73. "'Puellae, servum vobis pulchellum en ecce mercata perduxi.' Sed iliac puellac chorus erat cinaedorum, quae statim exsultantes in gaudium fracta et rauca et effeminata voce clamores absonos intollunt, rati scilicet vere quempiam hominem servulum ministerio suo paratum. Sed postquam non cervam pro virgine, sed asinum pro homine succidaneum videre, nare detorta magistrum suum varie cavillantur: non enim servum, sed maritum ilium scilicet sibi perduxisse. Et 'Heus,' aiunt, 'cave ne solus exedas tam bellum scilicet pullulum, sed nobis quoque tuis palumbulis nonnumquam impertias'" (Apul. Met. 8.26). Compare Lucian Asinus 36.
74. "Apparently the only scholar who has explored this link is Sumant Mehta, "Eunuchs, Pavaiyas and Hijadas," Gujarat Sahitya Sabha, Amdavad, Karyavahi, Ahmedabad, pt. 2 (1945-46): 3-75.
75. have not had access to this article, but A. M. Shah, "A Note on the Hijadas of Gujarat," American Anthropologist 63 (1961): 1325-30, reports that Mehta "traced analogous institutions in other parts of India and also in other parts of the world in modern as well as ancient times" (p. 1325).
76. For anthropological parallels, see Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, pt. 4: Adonis Attis Osiris: Studies in the History of Oriental Religion, 3d ed., 2 vols. (London and Basingstoke, 1980).
77. E. O. James, The Cult of the Mother-Goddess: An Archaeological and Documentary Study (London, 1959), pp. 100, 113-20, 123; Vermaseren, p. 17.
78. "During their spring festival of the Cybele/Attis cult in Rome, the Galli would throw themselves into a frenzy, lacerating their arms and scourging one another to the accompaniment of drums, cymbals, and pipes. The arch-priest sacrificed a bull to Attis on the Ides. Several days after the vernal equinox, the lavatio took place. The image of Cybele - the Anatolian meteorite that was thought to contain the goddess - was brought outside the pomerium [the religious boundary of the city] in a wagon procession and ritually washed" (James, pp. 172-74; see Frazer, 1: 273 and n. 4). The image of the Mother Goddess in southern India is often just a plain stone standing upright outside the boundaries of the village. During periods of illness or epidemic the image is bathed and sheep or water buffalo are sacrificed "amid wild dancing, drumming and horn-blowing. . . . Food is then poured out before Ankamma [the local name of the goddess] and the festival closes with the usual procession of carts round the temple" (James, p. 117).
79. "Serena Nanda, "The Hijras of India: A Preliminary Report," Medicine and Law 3 (1984): 59-75 (hereafter referred to as "A Preliminary Report"),
80. "The Hijras of India: Cultural and Individual Dimensions of an Institutionalized Third Gender Role," Journal of Homosexuality 11 (1985): 35-54 (hereafter referred to as "Cultural and Individual Dimensions"),
81. Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont, CA, 1990). The newly castrated Gallus "was called 'κύβηβος' and, as the male counterpart of the Goddess, by sacrificing his virility he assimilated himself to her so completely that he shared in her life-giving power. Henceforth he adopted female attire, having consecrated himself to her service even at the cost of his manhood" (James, p. 168). Similarly, the emasculated hijra initiate "becomes one of Bahuchara Mata's favorites, serving as a vehicle of her power through [his] symbolic rebirth . . . emasculation certainly brings the hijra devotee into a closer identification with the female object of devotion" (Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 40).
82. According to Vermaseren (n. 36 above), p. 96, the Galli, whose name can be translated as "cocks" as well as "Galatians," took the rooster as their symbol; the most popular image of the hijras' goddess, Bahuchara Mata, depicts her riding a cock (Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 40). Both cults are associated with the emasculation of male mythological figures; in the Cybele cult, it is Attis (Catull. 63); in the Mata cult, it is Arjuna (Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 72,
83. Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 30-31),
84. Shiva (Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 24, 29-30),
85. and Bahuchara (Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 39). Both cults feature icons of the mother goddess (Apul. Met. 8.25, 27; Shah, p. 1326; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 72). Members of both cults are mendicant and live off the charity of others (Cic. Leg. 2.22.40; Apul. Met. 8.24, 28; Shah, pp. 1326-27; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 69, and "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 41); both share earnings among themselves (Apul. Met. 8.28; Shah, p. 1328; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 69). They are itinerant (Apul. Met. 8, passim; Shah, pp. 1326-27; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 67) and are especially active during festivals (Apul. Met. 8.29; Shah, p. 1327; see Frazer, 1: 266-73).
86. Morris E. Opler, "The Hijara (Hermaphrodites) of India and Indian National Character: A Rejoinder," American Anthropologist 62 (1960): 505-11, witnessed a ceremony and dance where the hijras took up a collection afterward in the folds of their dresses (p. 506), just as the Galli do in Apuleius Met. 8.28. Both groups sing, play music, and dance using drums and cymbals (Apul. Met. 8.24, 26-27; Catull. 63.21; Suet. Aug. 68; Lucian Syr. D. 50; Opler, p. 506; Shah, p. 1327; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," pp. 66, 68); both are expected to be lewd and sexually suggestive (Apul. Met. 8.26; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 68, and "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 38); both are capable of issuing curses in the name of their goddesses (Apul. Met. 8.25; Shah, pp. 1327-28; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 60). Both groups think of themselves as primarily female or "not-men" (Apul. Met. 8.26; Shah, p. 1328; Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," pp. 38, 44, and Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 15-17, 114-16) and engage in ridiculous public behavior or are ridiculed by the public (Apul. Met. 8.25; Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 38; Shah, p. 1328). Many parallels to the citations in Apuleius can be found in Pseudo-Lucian's Asinus, upon which Apuleius's story is based.
87. Frazer, 1:268-70; Vermaseren, p. 97.
88. Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," pp. 39-40, and "A Preliminary Report," pp. 73-74. For more detail on the ritual, see Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 24-37.
89. Frazer, 1:272; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 34.
90. While there is good evidence for ritual pederastic behavior in some Greek settings (Jan Bremmer, "An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite: Paederasty," Arethusa 13 [1980]: 279-98) and a few Greek cults adopted by the Romans, such as the cult of Demeter, featured ritual intercourse of some kind, there is no indication that the Anatolian cults discussed here practiced homosexual behavior in the context of ritual. As with the hijras, their castration seems to have been a physical confirmation of sworn chastity. This would explicitly put the priests' homosexual behavior outside the sphere of their religious duties and beliefs and may help to explain the aura of fraud and hypocrisy that surrounds the Galli, especially in Lucian and Apuleius. For an update on the burgeoning scholarship dealing with Greek or Indo-European pederasty rites, see Golden (n. 1 above), p. 330.
91. Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 48.
92. Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 73, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," pp. 38-43, and Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 15-16. Compare Mart. 2.45: "That dick that wouldn't stand tall for you has been cut off, Glyptus. Fool, what need for the knife? You were a Gallus before." ("Quae non stabat praecisa est mentula, Glypte. / demens, cum ferro quid tibi? Gallus eras")
93. Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 65, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 44, and Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 57-59; Whitam and Mathy (n. 24 above), pp. 32-67. Marcel Saghir and Eli Robbins, Male and Female Homosexuality (Baltimore, 1973), find that two-thirds of their sample of homosexual males recall exhibiting cross-gender behavior as young children.
94. Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions" (n. 45 above), pp. 44, 71, and Neither Man nor Woman (n. 45 above), pp. 12, 16, 61-65, 73-79, 122-25.
95. Werner A. Krenkel, "Pueri meritorii," Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Wilhelm-Pieck-Universität (Rostock) 28 (1979): 179-89, at 187. Also in Dynes and Donaldson, eds. (n. 15 above), pp. 269-79.
96. Thomas A. J. McGinn, "The Taxation of Roman Prostitutes," Helios 16 (1989): 79-110, at 86-87.
97. "Ñùìáßùí äåôùíáyèéãå ípíïyôåìçôñá ãõñôpíôéòïyô åêáôáõëüìåí ïòoïñåyåôáéäé á ôçòoüëåùòoïé êßëçíÝíäåäõ êùòóôïëçíïû ôåïñãéÜæåéô çíèåïíôïéòÖ ñõãßïéòüñãé áóìïÀò êáôÜíüìïíêá Àøpøéóìáâïõ ëpò" (2.19.5).
98. MacMullen (n. 15 above), p. 498, wrongly claims that homosexual behavior in Greco-Roman society was confined to the rich and their minions; for Greece, see Halperin (n. 6 above), pp. 88-112. Petronius, Apuleius, and more fragmentary sources display a broad social base in Roman society. There is little doubt that a homosexual clique existed among the upper class; but as historians of the early modern period have argued, upper-class or court networks and cross-class subcultures can exist separately and simultaneously (Trumbach, "London's Sodomites" [n. 22 above], esp. p. 23; M. Rey, "Police et sodomie à Paris au XVIIIe siècle: Du péché au désordre," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 29 [1982]: 113-24). Martial 9.59 even implies that there were two classes of male prostitutes in Rome: one for the ordinary citizen and another, much more discreet, for the wealthy and discriminating.
99. Lucilius enumerates effeminate characteristics as follows: "I'm scraped, underplucked, scaled, pumiced, adorned, polished, and painted" ("rador subvellor desquamor pumicor ornor expolior pingor" [in E. H. Warmington, ed., Remains of Old Latin, Loeb Classical Library [1938], 3: 90, lines 296-97).
100. See Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality" (n. 3 above), pp. 542-43;
101. Valerie A. Tracy, "Roman Dandies and Transvestites," Classical Views/Échos du monde classique 20 (1976): 60-63;
102. Emiel Eyben, De jonge Romein volgens de leteraire bronnen der periode ca. 200 v. Chr. tot ca. 500 n. Chr. (Brussels, 1977), pp. 180-92; and Krenkel, p. 186. For Cicero's insults, see Richlin, The Garden of Priapus (n. 2 above), p. 98; Lilja (n. 2 above), pp. 88-94; and, esp., Gonfroy, "Homosexualité et idéologie esclavagiste chez Cicéron" (n. 15 above).
103. Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality."
104. Similar laws are invoked in the Tabula Heracleensis and Ulpian's commentaries in Justinian's Digest. See Dalla (n. 13 above), pp. 51-53; Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 59-61; Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," pp. 559-61.
105. Gleason (n. 12 above), pp. 406-11.
106. On scratching one's head with a single finger, see Juv. 9.133; Calvus fragment, in Carolus Buechner, ed., Fragmenta poetarum Latinorum (Leipzig, 1982), p. 112; Lucian Rhetorum Praeceptor 11; Plut. Pomp. 48.7, Caes. 4. Ovid Ars Am. 1.137-38 attests that courtesans used similar sign language to communicate with potential clients.
107. "Inpudicum et incessus ostendit et manus mota et unum interdum responsum et relatus ad caput digitus et flexus oculorum" (Sen. Ep. 52.12). Coded messages in a question-answer format are a common method of solicitation today, as they were in eighteenth-century London and Amsterdam. More common in Holland were purely visual two-way codes, such as putting one's hands on one's hips and responding in the same way or mutual nudges. See Theo van der Meer, "The Persecutions of Sodomites in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam: Changing Perceptions of Sodomy," in The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, ed. Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma (New York, 1989), pp. 263-310, at p. 288; see also Trumbach, "London's Sodomites," p. 15.
108. Gleason, pp. 399-400.
109. Nanda, "A Preliminary Report" (n. 45 above), p. 66; Trumbach, "London's Sodomites," pp. 15, 17; P. Howell, A Commentary on Book I of the Epigrams of Martial (London, 1980), epigram 25.
110. For Nero, see Tac. Ann. 15.37; Aur. Vict. Caes. 5.5; Suet. Nero 28-29. For Elagabalus, see S.H.A. Heliogab. 10.5, 11.7. See also Dalla, pp. 63-69; Williams, pp. 322-31. Jcan Colin, "Juvénal et le manage mystique de Gracchus," Atti della Accademia delle scienze di Torino 90 (1955-56): 114-216, offers the interesting but unconvincing hypothesis that all these weddings were not homosexual unions but mystical marriages of an extraordinary man to the goddess Cybele or Bellona, in which the other male partner (sometimes an "archgallus," sometimes a flute-player for the cult) served as the goddess's surrogate during the ceremony and nothing more. Yet Juv. 2.126-43 emphasizes that both partners are in it for the long run: he imagines aloud their hilarious efforts at conceiving children. Whether or not there is a pattern of religious ritual behind these scenes, neither the authors nor their intended readers understood this as the motive for the marriages.
111. For brothels, see A. Varone, Erotica Pompeiana: Iscrizioni d'amore sui muri di Pompei (Rome, 1993). The House of Jupiter and Ganymede in Ostia seems to have been a brothel specializing in same-sex services to males, but some women left their names on the walls as well. See Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy (n. 20 above), pp. 323-24. For wharves, see Verg. Catal. 13 and S.H.A. Heliogab. 8.7.
112. MacMullen (n. 15 above), p. 495.
113. Lilja (n. 2 above), p. 39; Jane M. Cody, "The senex amator in Plautus' Casina? Hermes 104 (1976): 453-76, at 473-76. Cody correctly distances the transvestic elements in Casina and Atellan farce from homosexuality. Cross-dressing is simply a natural device for producing comic situations with rich potential for sexual misadventure. The possible exceptions are the male dancers called cinaedi, who apparently wore women's clothes (see Plaut. Men. 513-14), and other stage types such as depilated actors (Asin. 402). But these are a marginal group in Plautus, and they never play significant roles in his plays.
114. Regarding effeminate men in Greek Comedy, see Cody, p. 474.
115. Lilja, p. 39. The rare cases when a master is threatened with the same (Plaut. Asin. 703-5, Rudens 1073-75) only happen if he was once a pathic slave himself; see Williams (n. 1 above), pp. 43-44.
116. "EUCLIO: Quid comminatu's / mihi? CONGRIO: Istud male factum arbitror, quia non latus fodi. / EUCLIO: Homo nullust te scelestior qui vivat hodie, / neque quoi ego de industria amplius male plus libens faxim. / CONGRIO: Pol etsi taceas, palam id quidem est: res ipsa testist; / ita fustibus sum mollior magis quam ullus cinaedus. / sed quid tibi nos tactiost, mendice homo? EUCLIO: Quae res? / etiam rogitas? an quia minus quam aequom erat feci? CONGRIO: Sine, at hercle cum magno malo tuo, si hoc caput sentit. / EUCLIO: Pol ego haud scio quid post fuat: tuom nunc caput sentit."
117. Lilja, pp. 29, 39; Cody, p. 474. Pathic behavior in Plautus is never regarded as a matter of choice, except possibly in the case of Dordalus, who is accused of being a cinaedus (Persa 804) and of depilating his buttocks (847-48). But Dordalus is a low-life pimp and probably of freed status; he is simply bowing to his duty as defined later by the elder Seneca's friend Haterius: "Unchastity is grounds for incrimination in the freeborn man, a necessity for the slave, and a freedman's duty to his patron" ("inpudicitia in ingenuo crimen est, in servo necessitas, in liberto officium"; Sen. Controv. 4.pr.10). There is no indication that he seeks out men for sexual pleasure.
118. Therefore I cannot agree with Richlin, The Garden of Priapus (n. 2 above), pp. 91-92, that effeminate men throughout Roman literature are given to indiscriminate bisexual lust.
119. The seduction of young freeborn males was considered a crime punishable by death. Valerius Maximus (6.1) records several early instances. In 226 B.C.E., a certain Capitolinus was condemned in a case of pudicitiae quaestio (trial of chastity) for seducing a freeborn boy (6.1.7). Similarly, in the early third century B.C.E., M. Laetorius Mergus committed suicide when he was accused of trying to seduce a subordinate but was condemned posthumously (6.1.11). These and the other cases that Valerius cites have been explained as matters of rape or assault rather than of sexual behavior per se. But a freeborn boy's loss of his chastity was a deadly serious matter, regardless of how it came about. In 108 B.C.E., Q. Fabius Maximus Eburnus killed his own son, whom he claimed was "of questionable chastity" (dubiae castitatis; 6.1.5), meaning he had probably submitted to seduction. This is not a matter of assault but of personal defilement; the son's misstep was to manifest his weakness of character by assuming the sexual role of a slave. See Michael Gray-Fow, "Pederasty, the Scantinian Law, and the Roman Army," Journal of Psychohistory 13 (1986): 449-60. For a comprehensive evaluation of the legal dimension of such activity, see Fantham (n. 17 above).
120. John D'Emilio, "Capitalism and Gay Identity," in Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University, ed. John D'Emilio (New York, 1992), pp. 3-16.
121. Bray (n. 10 above), p. 16; Randolph Trumbach, "Sodomitical Subcultures, Sodomitical Roles, and the Gender Revolution of the Eighteenth Century: The Recent Historiography," in 'Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality during the Enlightenment, ed. Robert P. Maccubbin (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 109-21, at p. 116.
122. Randolph Trumbach, "Sodomitical Assaults, Gender Role, and Sexual Development in Eighteenth-Century London," in Gerard and Hekma, eds. (n. 64 above), pp. 407-32, at p. 408.
123. The first full European homosexual subculture arose in Venice in the fifteenth century (see Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice [New York, 1985] ). Fantham draws many interesting parallels between Rome's sexual climate and that of Venice.
124. Trumbach, "Sodomitical Subcultures, Sodomitical Roles, and the Gender Revolution of the Eighteenth Century," p. 116.
125. Pierre Salmon, Population et dépopulation dans l'Empire romain (Brussels, 1974), p. 15.
126. Fantham, p. 288; Williams (n. 2 above), p. 221.
127. Verstraete, "Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Male Homosexual Relations in Ancient Rome" (n. 15 above), p. 231.
128. Trumbach, "Sodomitical Assaults, Gender Role, and Sexual Development in Eighteenth-Century London," p. 408. The earliest datable occurrences of the word pathicus are in Catull. 16.2, 57.2, and 112.2.
129. Collected in Fantham, p. 288.
130. "Qui barba vulsa feminibusque subvulsis ambulet, qui in conviviis adulescentulus cum amatore cum chiridota tunica inferior accubuerit, qui non modo vinosus, sed virosus quoque sit, eumne quisquam dubitet, quin idem fecerit, quod cinaedi facere solent?" (Henrica Malcovati, ed., Oratorum Romanorum fragmenta liberae rei publicae [Paravia, 1953], 1: 127, entry number 21.17).
131. Williams, pp. 206-80.
132. Suet. Dom. 8.3. On the lex Scantinia, see Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality" (n. 3 above), pp. 569-71; Williams, pp. 187-91; Lilja (n. 2 above), pp. 112-21; Fantham (n. 17 above), pp. 285-90; Dalla (n. 13 above), pp. 82-99; Derrick S. Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (London, 1955), pp. 64-65; Boswell (n. 2 above), pp. 65-69;
133. Johann F. Christ, Historia legis Scatiniae: Antiquorum codicum testimoniis emendandis illustrandis passim distincta (Magdeburg, 1727).
134. Regarding tolerance of pederasty in Rome in the first century B.C.E., see Williams, pp. 11-22; Veyne (n. 15 above), pp. 28-29; Booth (n. 29 above), pp. 105-20.
135. "Ut nullum civem pedicavi per dolum / nisi ipsus orans ultro qui ocquinisceret" (in Paulus Frassinetti, ed., Fabularum Atellanarum fragmenta [Paravia, 1955], p. 38, lines 154-55).
136. Warmington, ed. (n. 59 above), 3:340, line 1048. The term barbati, bearded, may carry the additional implication that these are men of a philosophical cast, since ordinary Romans of the late Republic rarely grew beards. For other pathic philosophers, see below.
137. For example, Cic. Planc. 12.30 describes such activity as a maledictum. In Cicero, see also Att. 1.14.5, Cat. 2.8, Dom. 139, Fam. 16.27.1, Har. Resp. 42, and Verr. 2.2.192. According to Plutarch, Cicero himself accused Caesar of scratching his head with one finger (Plut. Caes. 4), and the Roman populace accused Pompey of the same, explicitly attaching the gesture to pathic desire (Plut. Pomp. 48.7). Licinius Calvus's famous couplet accusing Caesar of being Nicomedes' catamite in Bithynia (Suet. Iul. 49) dates from roughly the same period.
138. Chalinus's cross-dressing escapade in Casina is not habitual and has nothing to do with effeminacy, as Cody (n. 70 above), pp. 473-76, demonstrates.
139. Dalla, p. 53. Jerome Bernay-Vilbert, "La repression de l'homosexualité dans la Rome antique," Arcadie 250 (1974): 443-55, however, goes too far when he claims that, in the case of mutual consent, only the passive partner is condemned (p. 447). While some juristic statements might support this conclusion (e.g., Dig. 3.1.1.6), the lex Iulia probably targets the penetrator as the offender in both consensual and violent sex acts. The juristic commentaries usually impute stuprum only to the penetrator (Dalla, pp. 101-31). Fantham argues that stuprum, at least in Republican times, encompassed illicit acts of both homosexual and heterosexual nature; it was "either a form of corruption or violation of the passive partner by the penetrator, or (where the passive partner is held up for reproach) of self-corruption" (p. 270). For example, see Quintilian 11.1.84. According to Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 157-205, a man may be accused of stuprum if he penetrates any person other than his own wife, slaves, or freedmen. Roman jurists commenting on the lex Iulia often interpreted the term stuprum to include homosexual behavior. Bailey suggests that these interpretations were aimed specifically at protecting freeborn boys from the advances of men (pp. 68-69). But some interpretations of stuprum in the context of the lex Iulia - "sex offense with a male" ("stuprum cum masculo"; Dig. 48.5.8) or "unspeakable lust with males" ("cum masculis infandam libidinem"; Inst. 4.18.4) - seem deliberately vague and all-encompassing. Lilja finds striking referential relations between the lex Iulia and the lex Scantinia, leading her to conclude that the former included some sort of provision against homosexual activity or prostitution (pp. 119-21). Dalla argues that it did not but simply was a refinement of the lex Scantinia (p. 109). Cantarella's conclusion (n. 2 above) that the late juristic reconstructions of the lex Iulia are spurious leads her - rather precipitously - to dissociate the law entirely from homosexual behavior (pp. 142-45). On stuprum, see also Krenkel (n. 55 above), pp. 181-82.
140. Gleason (n. 12 above), p. 401.
141. On viri molles, see Dalla, pp. 33-35; P. H. Schrijvers, Eine medizinische Erklärung der männlichen Homosexualität ans der Antike (Caelius Aurelianus DE MORIBUS CHRONICIS IV 9) (Amsterdam, 1985); Dr. Schramm, "Viri Molles: Geistesstörung im Altertum," Archiv, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie und gerichtliche Psychologie 17 (1870): 19-37. An excellent study of gender paradigms in ancient literature, particularly in treatises on medicine and nature, may be found in Gleason. On the ancient physiology of manhood, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), esp. pp. 10-19.
142. L. J. Boon, "Those Damned Sodomites: Public Images of Sodomy in the Eighteenth Century Netherlands," in Gerard and Hekma, eds. (n. 64 above), pp. 237-48, at pp. 241-42; Bray (n. 10 above), pp. 19-21; Rey (n. 58 above), pp. 113-24. See also van der Meer (n. 64 above), pp. 263-310. For Roman blame of foreign cultures, see J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London, 1979), pp. 225-26; MacMullen (n. 15 above), p. 494, n. 39. Ovid (Met, 9.727, 736) uses the word monstrum of female same-sex unions. For an equivalent sentiment in Greek writers, see Epictetus (Arr. Epict. Diss. 3.1.27-31); Dio Chrysostom 33.60.
143. Trumbach, "Sodomitical Assaults, Gender Role, and Sexual Development in Eighteenth-Century London" (n. 79 above), p. 409.
144. Niall W. Slater, Reading Petronius (Baltimore, 1990), p. 42;
145. Vincenzo Ciaffi, Petronio in Apuleio (Turin, 1960), pp. 112-13.
146. Williams, pp. 341-49.
147. It is worth noticing that the British term "molly" refers to an effeminate man or a male prostitute. While most etymologists accept this as the diminutive of the name Mary, Latin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in the theater, had a great influence on the language of the subculture. Thus in Elizabethan times a male prostitute or a male brothel is called "spintry" (from the rare Latin word spintria, an exotic male prostitute); see Wayne Dynes, Homolexis: A Historical and Cultural Lexicon of Homosexuality (New York, 1985), p. 23. For etymologies, see the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. "Catamite" meaning "kept boy" (from catamitus) first appears in 1593. It is possible, then, that "molly" derives from mollis and likewise got its start in the Elizabethan, Jacobean, or Restoration theater cultures (it is not attested until the beginning of the eighteenth century), which were repositories of classical learning and, like theater cultures in many societies, havens for a "sodomitical" subculture (see Bray, pp. 54-55). Many derogatory terms for members of a subculture are invented or preserved by the members themselves, not by hostile outsiders.
148. Gulielmus Meyer, ed., Publilii Syri mimi sententiae (Leipzig, 1880), p. 18, line 24. However, R. A. H. Bickford-Smith, ed., Publilii Syri sententiae (London, 1895), p. 2, line 24, reads astus and aestus in the places of aetas.
149. See Catull. 16, 25; Mart. 3.73, 7.58; Petron. 23.3; Phaedrus 10.2-3, 18-20; Plaut. Aul. 422; Pliny Ep. 9.17.1.
150. PW, s.v. "κίναιδος"; Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 214-17; J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore, 1982), p. 194; Lilja (n. 2 above), p. 22; Jean Granarolo, "L'heure de la vérité pour Tallus le cinède (Catulle XXV)," Revue des études anciennes 60 (1958): 290-306, at 292.
151. Arist. Phgn. 808a.12, 810a.34, 813a.18, 813a.35. In the first citation, the word μαλακός appears in association with this word.
152. (Aeschin. In Tim. 131). Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon claims the origin of this nickname is Demosthenes' stutter. But the first- or second-century-B.C.E. lexicographer Harpocration explains that Eupolis, a fifth-century-B.C.E. comedian, calls the buttocks βάταλος and that with respect to Demosthenes, Aeschines is "quoting comedy [or mocking him] about his effeminacy" ( 72.4).
153. Not all the instances of the word in Catullus are so flexible. Poems 16 and 25 both use the word to mean a simple pathic; but both poems are Priapic in nature and, thus, follow the old stereotypes that dominate the poems of the phallic god.
154. "Cinaede Romule, haec videbis et feres? / es impudicus et vorax et aleo. / eone nomine, imperator unice, / fuisti in ultima occidentis insula, / ut ista vestra diffututa mentula / ducenties comesset et trecenties?"
155. For another example of this, see Priapea 26.
156. "Pulcre convenit improbis cinaedis, / Mamurrae pathicoque Caesarique. / Nec mirum: maculae pares utrisque, / urbana altera et ilia Formiana, / impressae resident nec eluentur: / morbosi pariter, gemelli utrique, / uno in lecticulo erudituli ambo, / non hic quam ille magis vorax adulter, / rivales socii et puellularum. / Pulcre convenit improbis cinaedis."
157. On Caesar's pathic role in early manhood, see Suet. Iul. 49; Plut. Caes. 1; Dio Cass. 43.20.2.
158. It seems unlikely that the dative is meant instead of the ablative here, although "for Vitalius" is conceivable (if Vitalius is the pimp). The verb futuo (fuck) appears several times with cum + ablative. See CIL IV.2258, 2192, 2193.
159. Christopher Gill, "The Sexual Episodes in the Satyricon," Classical Philology 68 (1973): 172-85, at 177 and n. 16.
160. "Huc huc cito convenite nunc, spatalocinaedi, / pede tendite, cursum addite, convolate planta / femoreque facili, clune agili et manu procaces, / molles, veteres, Deliaci manu recisi."
161. The practice of castrating young boys for pathic prostitution would be outlawed, ineffectually, by Domitian and again by Hadrian.
162. "Modo extortis nos clunibus cecidit, modo basas olidissimis inquinavit, donec Quartilla ballaenaceam tenens virgam alteque succincta iussit infelicibus dari missionem" (Petron. 21.2).
163. According to Richardson (n. 4 above) the cinaedi here are a "class who are capable of arousal and orgasm (as modern medicine confirms) although confined by surgery to active pursuit of passive postures" (p. 121).
164. Adams (n. 104 above), pp. 145-46. This passage from Petronius is included in his citations.
165. See Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality" (n. 3 above), pp. 543-54; Jérôme Bernay-Vilbert, "Folies romaines: Les homosexuels dans l'oeuvre de Juvénal," Arcadie 259-60 (1975): 356-64.
166. Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 187-91. Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," pp. 552 and 569-71, argues instead that the lex Scantinia is aimed at the passive partner. She concludes that the two "diseases" are performing fellatio and being anally penetrated, both exclusively the province of the pathic.
167. "Respice primum / et scrutare viros, faciunt nam plura; sed illos / defendit numerus iunctaeque umbone phalanges. / magna inter molles concordia" (2.44-47).
168. Williams, pp. 221-22, 341-49; Richardson, p. 113.
169. "Plutarchus refert Arcesilaum philosophum vehementi verbo usum esse de quodam nimis delicato divite, qui incorruptus tamen et a stupro integer dicebatur. Nam cum vocem eius infractam capillumque arte compositum et oculos ludibundos atque inlecebrae voluptatisque plenos videret: 'nihil interest,' inquit 'quibus membris cinaedi citis, posterioribus an prioribus'" (Gell. N.A. 3.5). Plutarch actually does not relate the story but only the saying.
170. Plutarch uses the saying "fore or aft" figuratively to distinguish between open manipulation and secret subversion of a man's health (Mor. 126a-b) and spirit (Mor. 705e-f); i.e., one can be knowingly incited to "active" debauchery (not necessarily sexual) or unknowingly seduced by eastern luxuries into "passive" laxity.
171. A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine (Paris, 1932), s.v. paedico.
172. See also M. Negri, "Paedicare o pedicare? Rendiconti Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, classe di lettere, scienze morali, e storiche 112 (1978): 220-24.
173. Two of the better examples are: "ACCENSVM QVI PEDICAT VRIT MENTVLAM" ("He who cornholes a squire [accensum = "burning one"] sets fire to his dick"; CIL IV 1882); "[amat qui scrib]ET PEDIC[a]TUR QVI LEG[et Qui] OBSCVLT[a]T PRVRIT [pathicus est qui pr]AETE[ri]T SCRIBIT PEDICATOR SEPTV[m]IVS" ("He who shall write is the bugger; he who shall read it gets buggered; he who kisses [?] itches; he who passes by is a pathic. Septimius the bugger writes this"; CIL IV 4008).
174. For a different reading, see Williams, pp. 314-15.
175. "Sit culus tibi quam macer, requiris? / pedicare potes, Sabelle, culo"; "Multis iam, Lupe, posse se diebus / pedicare negat Charisianus. / causam cum modo quarerent sodales, / ventrem dixit habere se solutum." This latter epigram has a simple medical explanation: taking the passive role in anal sex tends to relax the bowels. Charisianus, who is already suffering from diarrhea, does not wish to compound his problem by playing the pathic with his "buddies."
176. Kay (n. 38 above), p. 249.
177. "Quotiens placet ire fututum." CIL IV has several instances of the preposition cum with the verb futuo - a sure sign that the verb had acquired an intransitive meaning by the early Empire. The House of Jupiter and Ganymede in Ostia Antica includes a graffito employing the verb with ad + accusative (see Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy [n. 20 above], p. 324). For evidence of the agent noun fututrix, see Adams (n. 104 above), p. 122.
178. And, less frequently, male-female contacts; see, e.g., Ov. Ars Am. 3.639-40; Juv. 6.418-23.
179. Krenkel (n. 55 above), p. 181.
180. "He looked pompous and feigned moderation, pretending to love learning, ever submitting and in every way prostrating himself to [= lying beneath] those who consorted with him for this purpose. Leaving his father's house, and renting for himself a paltry hole-in-the-wall [ = a tight crack], he made that his home base, forever quoting Homer, welcoming and befriending everyone who served his desires" 8.9.2-3).
181. Cic. Cat. 2.24, Dom. 49, Phil. 2.44, and Sest. 39.6; Curtius Rufus History of Alexander 6.7.33, 6.10.16, 10.1.26-42; Livy 39.42.8-12; Petron. 9.7, 119.1.25; Plaut. Capt. 72-73; Pseudo-Quintilian Declamations Maiores 3.3, 3.12.
182. Boswell (n. 2 above), p. 79. Perhaps he has in mind the rich man's wine server described by Seneca who, "dressed like a woman, fights advancing age" ("in muliebrem modum ornatus cum aetate luctatur"), and "plays the man in the bedchamber, but the boy in the dining room" ("in cubiculo vir, in convivio puer est"; Ep. 47.7). While his sexual task is apparently to take the active role, he can hardly be termed a prostitute.
183. Seneca is probably describing a eunuch, since an exoletus with normal hormonal levels, like the one in Suetonius, would have body and facial hair.
184. Ampelius 11.4; Mart. 3.82.8, 12.91.2; S.H.A. Comm. 5.4; Sen. Contrav. 10.4.17, excerpta 10.4.1, Dial. 10.12.5, and Ep. 12.8, 66.53, 95.24, 114.25; Suet. Calig. 24.3, Galba 22.1, Iul. 49.2, Tib. 43.1, and Tit. 7.1; Tac. Ann. 15.37.
185. Heinrich Keil, ed., Grammatici Latini (Leipzig, 1855-80), 2: 489.
186. Lilja (n. 2 above), p. 30; Williams (n. 2 above), p. 36.
187. The exception is Ergasilus in Captivi, whose nickname is "Scortum" because "at banquets my lover / is liable to invoke a scortum, a scortum I say, when he rolls the dice" ("scortum in convivio / sibi amator, talos quom iacit, scortum invocat"; 72-73). Most commentaries assume that the invoked prostitute is a mistress. A simpler explanation is that the winner of the dice game gets to have the prostitute of his choice. This would make sense of a passage in Petronius, where Ascyltos is described as a male prostitute "whose youth is available at the throw of a die" ("cuius anni ad tesseram venierunt"; 81.4).
188. Williams, pp. 130-42. Compare Boswell, p. 79 and n. 87.
189. "Non arvos hic, sed pascuost ager: si arationes / habituru's, qui arari solent, ad pueros ire meliust. / hunc nos habemus publicum, illi alii sunt publicani" (Plaut. Truculentus 149-51).
190. Krenkel (n. 55 above), p. 184.
191. Bailey (n. 88 above), p. 66; Christopher Carey, "A Note on Torture in Athenian Homicide Cases," Historia 37 (1988): 241-45. See also Xen. Ath. 1.11; Aeschin. In Tim. 1.97; Theophr. Char. 30.15.
192. Susan Treggiari, "Concubinae," Papers of the British School at Rome, n.s. 36 (1981): 59-81.
193. Richardson (n. 4 above), p. 113.
194. "Circe"'s maid in Petronius 126 offers Encolpius his choice of two agreements: "So if you sell us what I'm after, there is a buyer at hand, but if you do the more generous thing and oblige her for free, I will owe you a favor [beneficium]."
195. The careful computations described in lines 38-42 are done purely at Virro's pleasure; the situation is not a strict fee-for-service arrangement. That Naevolus is not asking a price, that he is receiving nothing but an honorarium or a fixed wage, is implicit in line 38: "But what's more brutish than a tightwad fairy?" ("Quod tamen ulterius monstrum quam mollis avarus?") Naevolus's unenviable situation probably reflects his advancing age and consequent decline in marketability.
196. On the various aspects of Roman patronage, see Richard P. Saller, Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge, 1982).
197. Mart. 1.23, 6.50, and 9.63 may possibly involve sexual patronage, although the status of the relationships is not clear.
198. For example, see Juv. 1.40-41: "Proculeius gets a mere twelfth, while Gillo gets eleven, each an heir according to the size of his cock" ("unciolam Proculeius habet, sed Gillo deuncem, / partes quisque suas ad mensuram inguinis heres"). In this case the amorous patron is a woman.
199. "Infusum sibi nuper a patrono / plenum, Maxime, centiens Syriscus / in sellariolis vagus popinis / circa balnea quattuor peregit. / o quanta est gula, centiens comesse! / quanto maior adhuc, nec accubare!"
200. "[Cymbals] like tympana belonged to the cult of Cybele with its eunuch priests" (Edward Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal [London, 1980], p. 434). The Galli in Apul. Met. 8 and 9 are also equipped with them.
201. A 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 unclean?' Ascyltos first pretended to be shocked, and then made a braver show of fight, and roared out much more loudly: 'Hold your tongue, you filthy prizefighter. . . . I was the same kind of brother to you in the garden, 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.
202. See Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 120-31; Richlin, The Garden of Priapus;
203. Herbert Moller, "The Accelerated Development of Youth: Beard Growth as a Biological Marker," Comparative Studies in Society and History 29 (1987): 748-62. Boswell (n. 2 above), pp. 74-75, tries to argue ex silentio that this formal terminus broke down in the early Empire. Martial is more savage to adult pathics than Boswell acknowledges, and Juvenal's Virro is quite forcefully condemned by Naevolus. Virro also appears in a negative light in Juv. 5. The term invenis, used of Ascyltos in Petronius and the young rustic in Apuleius, generally refers to a man who is between the age of the onset of beard growth and forty-five. Moller argues that young men from antiquity through the Renaissance acquired beards at a considerably later age than modern Western males - generally between age twenty and twenty-two.
204. "Ut ex eo condiciones bene vastorum hominum colligeret. idque diligenter curatum est, ut ex tola penitus urbe atque ex nauticis onobeli quaererentur. sic cos apellabant qui viriliores videbantur" (S.H.A. Heliogab. 8.7).
205. See Mart. 3.20.15-16: "Does he bathe in the thermae of Titus or Agrippa, or in the bath of shameless Tigillinus?" ("Titine thermis an lavatur Agrippae / an inpudici balneo Tigillini?"). When a man is inpudicus, it usually means that he engages in passive sex acts (Williams, pp. 206-80). See also Mart. 7.34.9-10: "I prefer Nero's thermae to the baths of a pathic" ("Neronianas / thermas praefero balneis cinaedi"). In both cases, the large public baths are considered "safer" than the private ones.
206. Gleason (n. 12 above) suggests that open effeminacy was designed "to translate the ideal of beardless ephebic beauty, via depilation and ingratiating mannerisms, into adult life." But this ideal could not be handled in literature "unless it first be sterilized by the brine of invective" (pp. 405-6).
207. A. E. Housman correctly emends with dracti in Mart. 11.8.1 ("Draucus and Martial 11.8.1," Classical Review 44 [1930]: 114-16).
208. Draucus appears as a masculine proper name (Howell [n. 66 above], p. 308). An inscription from a brothel in Pompeii reads, "ARPHOCAS HIC CUM DRAUCA BENE FUTUIT DENARIO" ("Here Arphocas had a good fuck with [a?] DRAUCA for a denarius"; CIL IV 2193). Either this is the feminine form of the name Draucus or it is an actual word referring to some kind of female prostitute. Or perhaps it is both; it was a common practice for prostitutes to take or acquire suggestive names. See John K. Evans, War, Women and Children in Ancient Rome (New York, 1991), p. 138;
209. H. Herter, "Die Soziologie der antiken Prostitution im Lichte des heidnischen und christlichen Schrifttums," Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 3 (1960): 70-111, at p. 77. The suggestion that draucus was a proper name before it became a descriptive noun is appealing. This would place it in the same etymological category as the English "John."
210. Balsdon (n. 97 above), p. 229, assumes that infibulation involves only adolescent males; but the evidence is unclear about this point. For more detailed treatments, see E. J. Dingwell, Male Infibulation (London, 1925); PW, s.v. infibulatio.
211. Housman, pp. 114-16.
212. "Rogabit unde suspicer virum mollem. / una lavamur: aspicit nihil sursum, / sed spectat oculis devorantibus draucos / nec otiosis mentulas videt labris. / quaeris quis hic sit? excidit mihi nomen."
213. "Occurrit aliquis inter ista si draucus, / iam paedagogo liberatus et cuius / refibulavit turgidum faber penem, / nutu vocatum ducis, et pudet fari / Catoniana, Chreste, quod facis lingua."
214. Juvenal 6.73: "The comedian's fibula is loosed by them at great price" ("Solvitur his magno comoedi fibula"). Martial 14.215: "Tell me straight, Fibula, what do you guarantee to comedians and minstrels? 'That they'll fuck at a greater cost.'" ("Die mihi simpliciter, comoedis et citharoedis, / fibula, quid praestas? 'Carius ut futuant.'")
215. His exact function is uncertain, but he may be an urban equivalent of the vilicus (Mart. 3.58). We learn from this same poem that household slaves have access to wrestling masters (25). Linus, the addressee of 12.49, is a paedagogus of wanton boys and the wealthy favorite of his patroness.
216. "It is the heterosexual male willing to enter into a relationship with a bayot [pathic male] who is likely to capture the bayot's heart, either for a few months or for a fleeting sexual relationship. Sexual relations between the callboy and the bayot are not characterized by the rigid activo-pasivo relations which tend to be found between homosexual and heterosexual in Latin America. While bayot report that callboys prefer the active role, they do not rigidly insist upon it, and the nature of the sexual contact largely depends upon the financial arrangement worked out by the partners" (Whitam and Mathy [n. 24 above], p. 150).
217. Van der Meer (n. 64 above), p. 288.
218. "Qui alios ipse amabat turpissime, aliorum amori flagitiosissime serviebat" (Cat. 2.8). See Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 269-70.
219. Anne 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.
220. Booth (n. 29 above).
221. Gleason (n. 12 above), p. 411.