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Archive 1

Sexuality in ancient Rome

Any reason this article is almost three times as long as the stub sexuality in ancient Rome? Did Rome need the barbarian slaves only to reproduce at all because Romans were so gay? Undue weight, anyone? I'm not necessarily saying make this one shorter, but the other one certainly needs expansion, probably by taking some information from or merge with marriage in ancient Rome (which badly needs sourcing). --87.154.29.109 (talk) 02:16, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much for this comment. Jeez, these guys write like someone could analyze the sex lives of americans in the frontier west from the LGBT-friendly books on the 2012 New York Times Bestseller List. Undue weight indeed. Scholarship has rarely been so thoroughly confused with a political agenda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.4.100.26 (talk) 15:00, April 17, 2015
The original comment in this section was WAY out of date (2008), Sexuality in ancient Rome is now a large, fleshed-out article. I also object to your categorization of this article/its editors as having a political agenda or applying undue weight to the topic of Homosexuality in ancient Rome. Obviously the topic is notable and well-sourced, and if you read it you would understand that sexuality of all kinds was a widely-documented element of ancient Rome (in ancient art and literature, etc) in way that was not so highlighted in other eras like, um, the American West. Further, academic interest in Homosexuality in ancient Rome is now heightened due to the increased visibility of LGBT people and issues and their opposition in our current culture, and one article's level of "completion" compared to another was a reflection of editor interest rather than notability of the topics themselves.— TAnthonyTalk 17:57, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Removed poorly sourced material.

The article says (actually, said, I've removed it):

"The fact that Claudius had no male lovers actually drew criticism from Suetonius."

There's no specific citation given to Suetonius, so it's impossible to know what this is referring to. The closest passage I could find is "Libidinis in feminas profusissimae, marum omnino expers. " which is a simple statement that he was profusely passionate towards women and uninterested in men. It's a complete mischaracterization to describe this as "criticism for having no male lovers."

The citation to Gibbon has no page numbers. It's not acceptable to wave your hand vaguely towards a 6-volume work. Cite the source in a verifiable way.

The comment about Hadrian, in additional to being editorial in tone and normative in nature, is wholly unsourced. Nandesuka (talk) 01:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm almost happy to see Gibbon gone (he's rubbish, mostly); but I must add that "hand-waves" such as this happen consistently across the Wiki with no umbrage that I have seen.
Isn't the Suetonius citation a protracted claim? I mean, Suetonius mentions male lovers (in some way or another) for every emperor other than Claudius. This is hardly a "criticism" as the previous version of the article suggested; but this fact, coupled with the very statement you quoted, does show that Claudius' behavior was abnormal enough to draw attention to it. I'd advocate for renewed wording something along the lines of the following: "In his Lives of the Caesars, Suetonius claims that Claudius was the only Emperor who did not engage in same-sex relationships of some kind." I'd want to add a caveat somewhere about the questionable trustworthiness of Suetonius. Any thoughts? CaveatLector Talk Contrib 09:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
That phrasing is still a synthesis; it's of the nature of saying something along the lines of "While walking through LA on Monday, many people did not hear dogs barking". In other words, true, but it carries implications that were not obviously the author's intent. I wouldn't be opposed to mentioning the places where Gibbon or Suetonius discuss emperors who did have men as lovers, but using those to infer that Claudius was somehow atypical is original research. Another thing to keep in mind is that "So-and-so lets himself be buggered by boys!" was a standard political slur in Roman society (see the next section of this talk page). This is not to say that no emperors had male lovers — far from it! — but rather that we need to be careful to distinguish reliable claims of this behavior from unreliable political smack talk (especially if we're then using the widespread nature of these claims to make inferences about normative values).
I would never characterize Gibbon as "trash" - although many of his theories have been criticized, his factual research is still considered the gold standard over 300 years later, which is quite an achievement. If we can find specific citations in Gibbon on this topic, we should use them. Nandesuka (talk) 16:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree about the political nature of this information (hence why I said I hesitate to use Suetonius. However, we also cannot "distinguish reliable claims...from unreliable political smack talk" because that is maddeningly considered OR by WP:OR standards, right?
On the topic of Gibbon, I have to disagree with you. Gibbon being "rubbish" is a personal opinion of mine; but the fact remains that the work is 300 year old and is therefore by far out of date. I'm also not entirely sure his research is the "gold standard" (maybe among Rankean historians?). I haven't seen a reference to Gibbon in a modern source that pointed to anything other than his misconceptions. CaveatLector Talk Contrib 20:36, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

"Homosexuality" as a 21st century projection on ancient Roman values considered harmful

One structural problem with this article is that there is a bit of orientalism going on here in even trying to apply the word "homosexual" to Roman culture. The Romans themselves were quite clear in drawing a bright line between, for example, male irrumators and fellators. One role was considered (in broader society) to be slightly distasteful and embarrassing, while the other role was considered to be scandalous and a sign of a fundamental moral failing. That we in the 21st century conflate or group both of these roles under the label "homosexual" or 'bisexual" is no excuse for not accurately presenting the Roman view of them. The article sort of tries to touch on this in its topic headings, but the text itself muddies the issues. I'll see if I can find some academic discussion of this and clean things up. Nandesuka (talk) 16:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

concubinus(concubini)

Why don't you write about "concubinus(concubini)" ? I suppose Nandesuka a,k.a. infamous "ARASHI" could not understand the term. 124.255.12.224 (talk) 07:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)Hadrianvs et Antinovs124.255.12.224 (talk) 07:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Valerius Maximus

The statement in the article appears to be blatantly incorrect; Maximus gives an account of one Roman (Gaius Lusius) who was killed simply for requesting sexual favours from another Roman, and states that this killing (which we might consider murder) was perfectly justified and considered acceptable. There's nothing about excess or abuse in this case; it was simply homosexual propositioning. The Jade Knight (talk) 17:42, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Warren Cup and balance

The side of the Warren Cup used for this article is the so-called "Greek" side; see Greek love#Ancient Rome. The cup's authenticity has been cast in doubt; this doesn't matter so much in the Greek love article, which is about the reception of classical models anyway, but it may matter here. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:43, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Williams

Isn't it somewhat problematic that the most important book on Homosexuality in ancient Rome isn't actually cited as a source for this article? I refer to Craig Williams, Roman Homosexuality. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:16, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Problem with understanding sentence in lead section

This text fragment needs fixing by someone knowledgeable please "Sextus Empiricus, who asserted that άρρενομιζία was outlawed in Rome, Athens and Cyprian."

"άρρενομιζία" is not previously explained and Google Translate doesn't help, Wikipedia search shows it's used precicely once in English Wikipedia, on this page & the only page that Google search found for it that wasn't from the wikipedia text was in the greek text of Julianis imperatoris Opera quae supersunt omnia et sancti Cyrilli. Possibly it's the "arsenokoites" used later, but it would help if this was clarified.

What does "Cyprian" refer to. The disambiguation page it links to doesn't help. Is it meant to be Cyprus?

Thanks Kiore (talk) 21:17, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Your concerns are well founded. As I pointed out above, the article doesn't cite the major book in English on the subject, Craig Williams' Roman Homosexuality. I don't mean to complain and not contribute, but overhauling the article would require a substantial investment of time. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:09, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

arsenokoites

I spent several months refurbishing Sexuality in ancient Rome, and never once in the many sources cited there did I encounter this term arsenokoites, which is from the New Testament. Although the NT originates in the Roman world, placing discussion of the word in the intro seems grossly undue, as does the prominence of a Greek term, rather than any Latin, in the first paragraph. The Gibbon quote says more about later attitudes toward homosexuality than it does about the Romans. I also don't understand the organization of the article. I see that the article hasn't been edited for a few months, and I just wondered whether I'd be stepping on any toes if I did a complete overhaul. Interested editors can look at Sexuality in ancient Rome to see the kind of thing I have in mind (though that article is naturally quite massive, since it has to encompass so much), and the sources I'd be using. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I've started a draft on a user page and welcome feedback. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:53, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
I proceeded with this. There were some legitimate specific examples that I've probably inadvertently deleted; please feel free to locate those and restore them within the new structure. In particular, I hope to develop the "Roles", with more detailed exploration of terms such as cinaedus and pathicus. There will also be a section on "Pederasty in ancient Rome," currently covered mainly at Greek love#Ancient Rome. Some of the new material here may repeat too much from Sexuality in ancient Rome; I hope to differentiate these passages more in future. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:43, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

The 21st century

After a brief discussion, I have removed this addition which picked Eerdmans' viewpoint that an artist in the 21st century creating the Warren cup would be put in jail for creating indecent pornographic art with minors. There is a danger of giving inappropriate and off topic weight to poorly supported editorials, such as Eerdmans, and dubious moralizing. It seems to me highly anachronistic to describe the artwork as indecent or paedophile in nature and ignores the issue of how youth was interpreted or any comprehension of how households worked in the ancient world, including the position of slaves. If we include the "21st century view" then there is as strong a case for including the 20th century or 19th century viewpoints (for which many sources exist expounding on the decadence of the ancient world), and even less helpfully, one would have to define pederasty and paedophilia in those periods and in alternative legislations in different countries which defined minors and pederasty in many different ways. There is a danger of turning this article specifically about homosexuality in ancient Rome into a general exposition on pederasty which I suggest is to be avoided as being massively off-topic and covered adequately in more relevant articles. --Fæ (talk) 18:23, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

First of all, Eerdmans is the publisher, not the author. In pronouncing on extremely difficult topics, it's usually best to be as accurate as possible. Second, I don't object to deleting the sentence, and I recognize the risks you're trying to express. But I might suggest that you calm down a little, as here and on my talk page you imply that I lack an adequate understanding of ancient Roman culture. In general, ancient societies had rites of passage to mark the end of childhood and the beginning of sexual majority. I suggest that you read Sexuality in ancient Rome#Sexuality and children and Lex Scantinia to gain some additional familiarity with Roman views on sex with minors. In fact they didn't think it was OK. They thought it was something they should protect their own children from. This particular form of the exploitation of slaves is just one example of how the Romans, who are so careful to define the integrity and rights of citizens, excuse themselves from treating slaves as human beings. (Some Romans, such as Seneca, criticize the inhumane treatment of slaves.) Consequently, some scholars on Roman sexuality do indeed take the view that the puer delicatus was an outlet for pedophilia, if the child was prepubescent or "underage" by the Romans' own definition. The boy on the "Roman" side of the Warren Cup appears in the eyes of any scholar I've read to at least push the lower limits of "youth." Cynwolfe (talk) 20:01, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Nero

Nothing in the Nero article suggests that he ever married a male. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.222.192.96 (talk) 19:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Suetonius, Nero XXVIII: "[Nero] castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. And the witty jest that someone made is still current, that it would have been well for the world if Nero's father Domitius had had that kind of wife. This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing him from time to time." --Jere7my (talk) 08:21, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

In which case this is not an example of explicity same-sex marriage, but under pretence of having "made him a woman", Nero married him as a woman. --NihilNominis (talk) 23:06, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


What about Pythagorus?

To the unsigned comment above: yes, there are many omissions in the article still. No Hadrian and Antinous, for instance. There should probably be a whole section specifically on the emperors, who are a special case. I'm willing to try to address these as time permits. Thanks for the reminder. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:26, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Material from Greek love

I'm pasting here some material from Greek love as it is better suited here or in other related articles and it is clogging the works over there. I'll almost certainly transfer some more material here later. Please use it here where it belongs. McOoee (talk) 21:11, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Slaves often were given, and prostitutes sometimes assumed, Greek names regardless of their ethnic origin; the boys (pueri) to whom the poet Martial is attracted have Greek names.[1] As a form of literary and aesthetic conspicuous consumption, "homosexuality was for the rich," in the view of Ramsay MacMullen.[2] No assumptions or generalizations should be made about any effect on sexual orientation or behavior;[3]

Sexual behaviors also played a role in 186 BC in the suppression of the Bacchanalia, an imported "Greek" rite conducted with a secrecy that was antithetical to the public cult practices of ancient Rome. Conservative Romans expressed anxieties that young freeborn males would be led astray and undergo anal penetration [Caution: this is the interpretation of Pollini as to what Livy means, which needs illuminating by some additional sources] during the required initiation — whether or not such sexual behaviors were an actual part of the rites.[4] — Preceding unsigned comment added by McOoee (talk • contribs) 21:28, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The literary ideal celebrated by Catullus stands in contrast to the practice of elite Romans who kept a puer delicatus ("exquisite boy") as a form of high-status sexual consumption, a practice that continued well into the Imperial era. The puer delicatus was a slave chosen from the pages who served in a high-ranking household. He was selected for his good looks and grace to serve at his master's side, where he is often depicted in art. Among his duties, at a convivium he would enact the Greek mythological role of Ganymede, the Trojan youth abducted by Zeus who served as a divine cupbearer.[5] — Preceding unsigned comment added by McOoee (talk • contribs) 21:36, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

  1. ^ Sandra R. Joshel, Slavery in the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 78 and 95; John G. Younger, Sex in the Ancient World from A to Z (Routledge, 2005), p. 38.
  2. ^ Ramsay MacMullen, "Roman Attitudes to Greek Love," Historia 31.4 (1982) p. 498.
  3. ^ David M. Halperin, "The First Homosexuality?" in The Sleep of Reason: Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece (University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 242 and 263, with criticism of MacMullen.
  4. ^ Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 39.13.14, as cited and discussed by Pollini, "Warren Cup," p. 28. See also Bremmer, "An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite," p. 287.
  5. ^ Pollini, "Warren Cup," p. 34.

Female-female sexuality

The stuff about female-female sexuality needs refurbishing. The quote from "Ovid" is in fact from one of his characters, Iphis, and taking her (deliberately) over-the-top teenage soliloquy as evidence for "Roman sexuality" is problematic, to say the least (there's a TON of scholarship on Iphis/Ianthe). Also, how can Ovid be "advocating for a heterosexual lifestyle" when such a category, as scholars have recognised for some years now, simply isn't a coherent one for Romans? (I wonder if that quote comes from Habinek ultimately; if so, he should really know better.) Ovid says something about preferring male-female sex because there is equal pleasure for both partners (which is cited elsewhere in this article), and the Ars Amatoria is peculiarly focused on male-female relations, but there's some problematic identification between author and narrator/character going on here again (even the narrator of the Ars is hardly the historical person "Ovid"), not to mention the fact that Ovid is completely blase about same-sex sexuality elsewhere, as he should only be expected to be as a Roman of his time.

"Lesbian", like "homosexual" or "heterosexual", is also not meaningful for Rome in the same way as it for modern Western society. Martial doesn't "describe lesbians" at all. He's talking about tribades - and more discussion of the problems of that term would be nice as well (Brooten, Halperin). And the quote from Lucian is, again, a quote from one of his characters. More contextualisation of it would be nice.

Sandra Boehringer's L'homosexualité féminine dans l'Antiquité grecque et romaine is the most recent and complete discussion of the topic in general (which remains lamentably obscured in scholarship), and should really be being cited here. She has a lot of very smart things to say on all this. It's just getting through the French.... Brooten has more issues, but she could do with more citation here as well.

An article I will get around to some day - I hope! Cta77 (talk) 01:20, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, of course there's a difference between "Ovid" the writer of a poem and the real-life Ovid who tucks into his dinner, but we don't know anything about that guy. The "Ovid" we can talk about is the author. I think you're missing Habinek's point. A later heterosexual bias has obscured the novelty of Ovid's advocacy for heterosexuality (that, an exclusive preference for sex with women), which was contrary to Roman social norms. This differentiates Ovid from the other Latin love poets of his time: Catullus, Vergil, Propertius and Tibullus (and even Lucretius) all affirm the usual Roman attitudes toward the pleasures of sex with young men, as Martial and Petronius do later. So yes, there are always invisible scare quotes about "Ovid," but the importance of Ovid's attitudes in the history of sexuality is evident: his love poems, despite their sexual frankness, provided one of the inspirations for so-called "courtly love" in the Middle Ages, in part because a Christian society could handle their rampant heterosexuality. Not so Catullus and his Juventius, who survived the Middle Ages by the skin of his teeth (a single ms.). The Metamorphoses has male-male sexuality where it's conventional, but in the Heroides, even the letter from Sappho is to a man. (It's sometimes doubted that Ovid wrote this letter.) Here's one summary of the sexual construction of Iphis and Ianthe. They're only allowed to love each other because one of them becomes a man. Classicists do have some criticisms of Brooten, whose focus is not classical antiquity but early Christianity, but her introductory survey on classical depictions of love between women is useful. She summarizes Judith Hallett, for instance, who "has identified three characteristics of representations of female homoeroticism in the elite Latin literature of the Republican and early Imperial periods: masculinization, hellenization, and anachronization. She argues that these techniques imply these authors' refusal to accept female homoeroticism as Roman and as real." The point that follows is also crucial: Romans are not like the Greeks on sexual matters.
I know the section seems ugly, and I noted above that it's underdeveloped. The fact of the matter is, though, the Romans (as they can be known through the sources) had very ugly attitudes towards expressions of sexuality among women. I can't think of a single Latin author who says anything understanding or positive about erotic relationships between women. They're quite a nasty lot when it comes to that, particularly Martial. There is indeed a ton of scholarship on Iphis/Ianthe, and that is a deficiency of the article, but I don't think any of it says "oh look, here's a lovely sympathetic portrayal of women in love." Although the Roman poets admire Sappho's poetry, if I'm not mistaken there are even passages of Latin literature making fun of masculine Sappho and her girls. There are very few glimpses into how lesbians themselves might feel, and if you read Sexuality in ancient Rome it may become clearer that it's because sexual love between women didn't fit into their sexual theories or patriarchal sexual constructs. So the conceptual difficulty is inherent to the Roman way of thinking about sexuality—to Martial, a woman is a tribas if she takes the dominant role in a sex act. The other woman is "just" a woman. The graffito is a rare glimpse into an expression by a woman toward a woman. There are other glimpses as well (mentioned by the article). But the truth is, one of the reasons I wearied of developing the section was the overwhelming negativity. Homosexuality in ancient Greece has an extremely thin section on women too, but it would undoubtedly be less repulsive to write. I once had a classics prof (of high repute) tell me that Sappho only addressed love poems to women because she was writing like a man. I suppose this is possible, especially if we take your view that Ovid wrote only heterosexual love poetry, but we shouldn't take that to mean that he was abnormally heterosexual for his time, compared to other Latin love poets. Again, those invisible scare quotes are always around "Ovid."
I would love to see the section properly developed, though. One of the things that occurred to me when I was doing the reading was how the Romans differed so drastically from contemporary heterosexual men who have fantasies about viewing attractive lesbians having sex. You just don't see that in Roman art and literature. Naked people, sometimes having explicit sex, are everywhere in Roman art, but the rarest sexual scenario is two women. That would seem to indicate that it wasn't that appealing to the Roman male gaze. Glimmers of prurient male interest in women having sex are rare: maybe on the part of Clodius in the Bona Dea scandal. But again, the point of the Iphis/Ianthe episode is that in order to "normalize" their love, one has to become a man. It really isn't very accepting of love between women. And there's a difference between the realia of love between women, which surely existed in ancient Rome but which is largely unrecoverable through scholarly methods because it's so sparsely represented, and Roman social attitudes and norms, which are expressed and documented in the existing literature as mainly negative. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:27, 7 July 2012 (UTC)


Yeap, I'm perhaps all too familiar with all this scholarship! ;)
I absolutely take Habinek's point, and it's a very good one. What I find a little less than satisfactory is the use of the phrase "heterosexual lifestyle" - how can you have a "heterosexual lifestyle" when you don't have "heterosexuality" (and when most Romans, men or women, wouldn't have had a choice about whether they got married or not, regardless of personal feeling)? Constructionists wouldn't like the phrasing (again I don't remember if it's how Habinek phrases it; he's a very smart scholar though so no doubt knows this), though it's always possible to be far too hardline about these things. As I read the Ars passage in question (2.683-4, Odi concubitus, qui non utrumque resolvunt | Hoc est, cur pueri tangar amore minus), the narrator is expressing a personal preference for sex with women over sex with boys rather than advocating exclusive sex with women (and in the Ars especially, the praeceptor is a rather problematic narrator in many ways). Unless there's something elsewhere in Ovid's oeuvre that I've forgotten? Certainly in Amores 1.1.19-20 (nec mihi materia est numeris levioribus apta | aut puer aut longas compta puella comas) he treats boys and girls as interchangeable love-objects in a rather more standard manner. The absence of same-sex sexuality in the Ars is definitely a peculiarity, as I say, that raises a number of questions. But I just don't think he can be called an "advocate of a heterosexual lifestyle" simpliciter.
As for Iphis/Ianthe - yeap, people take the hard-constructionist line that it is representing sex between women as impossible without a penis and thereby fits nicely into the tribadic discourse (Kirk Ormand comes to mind). But others have argued that part of the humour of the passage is the fact that, contrary to Iphis's insistence, readers would have understood that female same-sex activity was quite possible and imaginable; that is, the isolated, somewhat rustic teenage girl complaining about the fact she knows nothing of such a thing is supposed to be comical, and "sophisticated" readers chuckle behind her back (gosh, I forget who argued that; there's so many endless goings-over of this episode). Besides, can we take anything in the Met, of all texts, "seriously"? Should we? I think the whole episode is laced with all sorts of ironies. I remember Pintabone in Rabinowitz/Auanger's Among Women being useful on that; perhaps it would be one place to start disentangling the web of scholarly disagreement on the topic. Hallett's article is getting a bit dated now, and though it's definitely very useful, it's somewhat over-schematic, and some of her analyses seem a little forced. (I'm sure there are critiques of it somewhere in the literature, but I can't remember exactly where at the moment; I'd have to go investigate again) The issue with Brooten is essentially (heh) that people see her as an essentialist; that particular critique seems a bit overplayed. I agree that her introductory sections are excellent, but she plays up very heavily the oppression and condemnation line - which, yes, is a big part of what's going on, but it's never the full story in any society (There's a very interesting forum on her book in the journal GLQ, 1998). I think you may even have to go outside Classics to find scholarship on that point.... Further on tribadism, though, there's an interesting (also over-schematic, if you ask me) article in the book Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, which also argues for the tribas as a kind of hellenised scare-figure which had cultural force at a time when Roman matrons were gaining power.
Horace's Mascula Sappho is a problem too; nobody knows exactly what he means by mascula (Auanger in Rab/Auanger has stuff on this), and there are fairly neutral references to Sappho's love of girls elsewhere (I should track them down and put them in here, I guess). Heroides 15 gets a going-over in the book Roman Sexualities, ed by Hallett and Skinner, but also really interesting is Victoria Rimell's discussion of it in her book Ovid's Lovers, which manages to salvage other dimensions of the text, quite liberatory and homoerotic ones. Rimell is not really trad classicist though, and I guess the point of wiki is to be pretty trad.
What really needs to be in here, though, is Ovid's Callisto episode in Met. 2. Boehringer has a reasonable amount of stuff about it which I'll need to sift through, because that episode represents a rather radical challenge to all this normativity: Callisto and Diana aren't masculinised, phallic or tribades, but nonetheless Ovid rather strongly implies a homoerotic overtone to their relationship, which, as Boehringer would have it, is implicit in versions of the myth itself from the start. And nobody is condemned or called monstrous. Valerie Traub has a discussion of the reception history in her Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England which would suggest strongly that people read Ovid's account as homoerotic too (not to mention a couple of peculiar references in the imperial Greek epicist Nonnus who arguably might have known Ovid, but that's a whole other kettle of fish!). There are hints of other such things in other texts (Statius' Achilleid, not the least; transvestism has an interesting role here), but that gets into the realm of original research, because they're not adverted to much in the scholarship. My take on it is that there are multiple discourses going on, of which condemnation and tribadism is only one. Again, alas, not in the scholarship (yet).
Interestingly, in regard to your point about the male gaze, there's a hint of such titillation in the Callisto episode (arguably; WR Johnson has an article in which he takes that line). Jupiter disguises himself as a woman to erotically approach a woman; what's Jove getting out of it, and what's the reader getting out of it? (PS, sorry if I'm making any mistakes or formatting things incorrectly; I'm new to this business... I also suspect I say "interesting" too much, but heck, it kinda is. I appreciate your work on this article!) Cta77 (talk) 03:40, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I agree about Hallett in particular. And I know that WR Johnson article and am happy to have you remind me of it; he's one of my favorite scholars. I would be delighted if you would do all the things you've discussed here. I agree that "heterosexual lifestyle" is kind of a punt (in American football slang), but I'm not sure it's an inaccurate shorthand, because in the love poems he's advocating a, er, lifestyle characterized by having sex with women as a preference over boys. Anyway, I thought it was very useful to think about Ovid as a place to see the first explicit rupture into sexual preference. Both Roman sexuality articles were in such a sad state that I spent a couple of months working on them, and got to a point where I just couldn't write about sex any more, despite the remaining deficiencies. (I made a few halfhearted efforts at Prostitution in ancient Rome, which is also still sadly lacking.) And then I hit a wall where frankly I thought some of the scholarly interpretations were wrongheaded, and I got tired of promulgating what I thought might be misguided. In putting the article together, I also came to disagree with the insistence on binary gender roles, and the explicit assertion in one source that there was no concept of a third gender among the Romans. Maybe in law, but in life? Then later, in researching something else entirely, I happened on a wonderful and quite recent article that dealt with so-called hermaphroditism and the Roman fascination for it. I'm not sure I could find it again, but it solves what I see as some of the contradictions in the sections on gender. Another problem is that while the article was created under the title "Homosexuality in ancient Rome," and that's probably OK in terms of WP article naming conventions (since it's what readers would be most likely to look up), you can't really divorce the topic of "sex between people of the same gender" from questions of what gender means in ancient Rome, or how it's constructed, or whatever theoretical framework. So again, if you would work on all this, I would be so very happy that I might even put a kitten on your page. Cynwolfe (talk) 04:16, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
I completely agree about the limitations of the scholarly discourse, and I suspect that's what would frustrate me too if I did any substantial amount of work on this page. Things are starting to change recently, though; sadly much of the really fun stuff is not yet published (talking to people informally, one gets the sense that frustration with the binarism is not uncommon). I agree too that "heterosexual" is a perfectly legitimate shorthand for male-female sexual relations, but I'm not sure if Ovid is advocating any particular kind of sex as such rather than just expressing a personal preference (or, you know, the preference of the narrator, or whatever). Then again, the Ars is very heteronormative, and he (the narrator, whoever) has some less than nice things to say about men who have sex with men in book 3, so y'know. (I find the sexual ideology of the Ars quite repellent, actually; I think Ovid's oeuvre as a whole is much more fluid about all sorts of desire. Peter Heslin does productive things with the Ars' sexual ideology versus that of the Met in his work on Statius.) So heterosexual lifestyle does make sense, but in this day and age it has certain connotations that might make it read less than accurately. Though that is perhaps not an editor's problem.
The Romans do love hermaphrodites and stories about sex change and transvestism, and particularly in the Flavian period there's quite an obsession with gender ambiguity. The swaggering priapic male cannot be the whole story. I'm sure I could dig up scholarship on that too, but where it all fits becomes unclear (this is a large project, as I'm sure you're aware!). Cta77 (talk) 01:13, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

"Female-female sexuality" section, revisited

I find it curious that a section purporting to be about female-female erotics should so studiously avoid the most important books on the subject, namely the following:

  • Boehringer, Sandra. L'Homosexualité féminine dans l'Antiquité grecque et romaine. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007.
  • Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin, and Lisa Auanger, eds. Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
  • Martos Montiel, Juan Francisco. Desde Lesbos con amor: homosexualidad femenina en la antigüedad. Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 1996. 

Boehringer's study is by far the best ever written on the matter. Instead, we get references to the highly controversial Bernadette Brooten, who isn't a classicist, and whose Love Between Women has been largely rejected, excoriated, or ignored by specialists with regard to its more unique, unusual, or outdated claims. This approach is unhelpful. (Of course, citing Amy Richlin in this context is only somewhat better.) Antinoos69 (talk) 07:17, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Problems with sources

This article exhibits multiple problems in its use of sources: 

  1. The article should use secondary sources written by classicists and historians of ancient Greece and Rome who actually specialize in same-sex sex in Antiquity, especially Rome. The speculations of scholars specializing in other areas should not be of concern. Even classicists specializing in Greek and Roman "sexuality" more generally constitute a largely disjoint group from that specializing in same-sex sex. They generally don't specialize in the subjects addressed by this article. Unfortunately, the article uses far too many sources by these nonspecialists, with very predictable results, while ignoring or underutilizing far too many sources by specialists. 
  2. The article should focus on the consensus of specialists, clearly designating any minority or dissenting views mentioned precisely as such. Brooten (not even a classicist or historian of ancient Greece and Rome) and Richlin fall into this latter group.
  3. This article cites primary sources directly in support of some of its claims, seemingly independently of interpretation by secondary sources. This is a clear, straightforward, and indisputable violation of Wiki policies on the use of primary sources and "original research," such as they are. It is unhelpful that some instances involve(d) misinterpretations of those primary sources. Think what you will about these Wiki policies—and I've been known to point out that secondary sources don't magically interpret themselves, though mostly in vain—but they are what they are, nonetheless. (Nor will it help to refer to the critical and historical importance of primary sources to classics. Primary sources are central to all disciplines. Classics is in no way unique in this regard, yet Wiki policies are what they are.)
  4. I've also noted at least some instances when secondary sources are inaccurately cited, whether due to misinterpretation or to inaccurate or dubious edition/page citation. Antinoos69 (talk) 20:49, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

WP:SPLIT material on hermaphroditism to Intersex in history

I have been WP:BOLD and WP:SPLIT some material on biological variations, previously in a section on 'Gender Identity', into a new article on Intersex in history. In the context of that new article, other contemporaneous material on Favorinus, regarded as a "eunuch by birth", becomes relevant, as well as later Canon Law and medical approaches towards intersex people, and other material on "eunuchs by birth". I appreciate that this is bold, but the fit of the material here and the primary focus and length of this article were factors, as well as the broader scope of the material on the new page. Trankuility (talk) 03:39, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Trankuility, considering that what you split does belong in this article, I can't agree to you removing all of that material. You should have downsized the section and left a hatnote at the top of the section pointing to the article you created. There is no valid reason to exclude intersex history from this article when it absolutely belongs in discussions of homosexuality in ancient Rome. The role of intersex people in ancient times is commonly discussed among scholars when commenting on homosexuality in ancient Greece and Rome. Right now, this article is missing a significant aspect because you removed the intersex piece. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:43, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
You are free to add back material if you wish, however, there is no mention of intersex anywhere else in the article including the lede so relevance is undetermined. I am responding to what is actually in the article, not what might be commonly discussed but not verifiable in the article. Trankuility (talk) 19:53, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
The text you removed was clearly discussing intersex people. That's why you moved it to the Intersex in history article. Of course, most intersex people these days object to the term hermaphrodite, but it was the term commonly used to describe intersex people. And intersex people are clearly relevant to the topic of homosexuality in ancient Greece and Rome. Whether or not such material is in the lead, it belongs in this article. This edit is better. Thank you. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 25 August 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. The oppose rationales highly outweigh the support vote, which is not based on any policies. (non-admin closure). Anarchyte (work | talk) 06:26, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Homosexuality in ancient Rome → LGBT+ Identity in Ancient Rome? – H*mosexuality is a slur and is not an appropriate title for this page. "Gay" is as easily identifiable and fits the Wikipedia guidelines for page titles just as well. Additionally, the page has expanded to include mentions of androgyny, crossdressing, and transgender people. These sections would be irrelevant under the title "H*mosexuality in Ancient Rome." Patracleo (talk) 01:34, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
  • Support The term h*mosexual is considered a slur and a violent term by many LGBT+ people, whose history this article is trying to illuminate. Thus, it would be disrespectful to continue to refer to their history as h*mosexual history, when many LGBT+ people have made it clear they do not want to be referred to as such. Furthermore, not all of the history described on this page falls under gay sexuality. Much of it falls under the other parts of the LGBT umbrella, thus making it more appropriate for the page to be rechristened "LGBT+ Identity in ancient Rome". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Faunadolls (talk • contribs) 01:38, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose – Homosexuality is a factual, neutral description, not a slur. Looks like agenda-pushing here and at Talk:Homosexuality in China. Besides, we're talking about ancient Rome here, millennia before the LGBT+ acronyms were invented. — JFG talk 08:43, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose – "homosexual" to describe a person is sometimes considered undesirable (though the idea that it is a slur is a minority position). However, to describe sexual behaviour it's a perfectly acceptable term (WP:LGBT's WP:GAY? guideline explicitly says that "Generally homosexual should be confined to descriptions of sexual activity or clinical orientation.") To use "LGBT+" for this article would be massively anachronistic. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:52, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
  • "Ancient" is considered a slur by some as well but this is a view of a small minority. In 2016, I hope most Wikipedia readers not so homophobic as to oppose "homosexual" in an article title. —  AjaxSmack  01:58, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
AjaxSmack, I didn't quite understand what you meant by "I hope most Wikipedia readers not so homophobic as to oppose 'homosexual' in an article title." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:45, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
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