This volume is absolutely superb: from cover to cover, 30 chapters and an introduction, it is a tour de force. The text takes the reader into a diversity of ancient conditions at the centre of which are analyses of the ideological play of gender, sex and sexualities in the Ancient Near East (Part 1), Archaic Greece to the Hellenistic world (Part 2) and the Roman world from the first century b.c.e. until 500 c.e. (Part 3). Together the three sections provide an overarching view of the variegated representations of masculinities and femininities, erotic play and hetero-, bi- and homosexualities that attest to the queerness of the ancient world.
The first Part comprises five chapters beginning with S. Ackerman's piece: it looks at reproductive magic in biblical texts and notes that they tend towards the ambivalent in so far as such practices are condemned vociferously as necromancy (Ezekiel), and yet practised seemingly unproblematically (Genesis 17). S. Budin's contribution, ‘Fertility and Gender in the Ancient Near East’, draws on a number of texts, mythic and ritual, referencing heterosexual reproduction to challenge the narrative of the ‘patriarchal power flip’ (p. 30), and demonstrates how mythic texts locate fertility and creation with the male/masculine, while the female/feminine is the site where creation is moulded into life (p. 37).
E. Solvang takes up the second Samuel story of Absalom and David in her contribution challenging the horror of rape. To make this point, she relates the torture, rape and mutilation of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana at the hands of Hutu militants as a means to provide a robust rereading of the Davidic story, something echoed in the homecoming of Odysseus.
The last two chapters of Part 1 are equally informative. R. Boer's article examines Mesopotamian, Hittite and biblical texts with regard to erotic love between human and non-human animals. Boer demonstrates that the texts do not reject outright sex with animals; instead only some animals were considered anathema. Shifting from animals to children, G. Leik's chapter inquires as to how age and sexuality are correlated in cuneiform texts and what might be implied therein with regard to the sexual experiences of girls and women.
Part 2 covers three periods of ancient Greece across thirteen chapters. A. Blanshard investigates the ‘scripting’ of male-to-male group sexual behaviour as represented visually and in oratorical texts and is a cautionary tale about reading too much into the sexual world of ancient Athens. Instead, he argues that participation in such erotic play was not received without some censure (p. 110). Next, A. Lear argues that ‘the concept of sexuality also had a history within ancient Greek culture’ (p. 115, author's italics) while convincingly constructing a composite history of pederasty based on visual and textual data.
Like the previous chapters, W. Penrose draws on visual media, this time from the Etruscan ‘Tomb of the Diver’. He complements this data with Orphic texts so as to discuss the variations and similarities of male-to-male erotic relations across the Greek and Etruscan landscapes. A. Glazebrook, whose chapter is concerned with the interplay of erotic love and power as represented in the sixth and fifth centuries b.c.e., argues that symposia were sites of erotic relations as well as sites of education.
The succeeding two chapters shift the reader's attention to representations of the female/feminine in the figures of the ‘prostitute’, more particularly the hetaira, and Helen, two mythical characters who have shaped the idea of Greece. S. Goldhill historicises the figure of the girl/woman who sells her love in the streets and symposia of ancient Athens, while C. Calame engages lyric poetry and choral performance to think about sexual identities and erotic play during the pre-classical period, using the texts of Sappho and Alcaeus of Lesbos and of Alcman of Sparta.
N. S. Rabinowitz leads the way for the next series of chapters as each engages with texts of differing kinds in their study of sexualities in ancient Greece. In her view ancient Athenian drama rendered variant imaginings of Electra; still, an overarching narrative combined gender and melancholy, which destabilises normative hetero-textual impulses and, she argues, left a queer Electra in their wake. Love and bondage, dogs loving dogs, and sexual secrets are the topoi for the next three chapters. In M. Cyrino's contribution, Hippolytus refuses his sexuality and in so doing remains an eternal ephebe, while D. Dutsch demonstrates how Kynogamia, public sex called dog sex (p. 245), operated within the ethical systems of the Cynics. S. Murnaghan studies the political implications of sexual secrets as female characters negotiate masculine hegemonies in ancient Greek narrative.
The links between gender, sex, sexualities and violence are the subject of the last three chapters of the section on Greece. K. Gaca's incisive and astute analysis of ancient Greek warfare and ‘the ravishing martial rape’ undercuts romantic notions of war and the heroic warrior. Beginning with the very materiality of war evidenced in such actions as the wholesale murder of the majority of the population by slaughter, ‘lethal gang rape’, ‘mocking torment’ and the enslavement of pubescent and younger children, she leaves no room for a discussion of heroics (pp. 280–1). Next, E. Harris enquires into the representation of feminine desire in Athenian dramatic and comedic texts and law, and what this might imply with regard to the capacity of (free) women to speak and claim their sexual desire. Finally, J. Robson looks at the representation of sexual assault in Aristophanes, arguing its ambivalence could suggest ‘a sensitivity to the plight of victims of sexual assault’ (p. 426), although I suspect ‘victims’ were only among one's own people or kinship group.
Part 3 takes the reader into the Roman context and consists of twelve chapters, pursuing such themes as bisexuality, pederasty, flaccidity, monstrosity, misogyny and enforced heteronormativity. M. Fox applies object relations to Ovid's representation of Orpheus and his shifting erotic desire, while A. Richlin provides a discerning analysis of the sexual use of children in ancient Rome, an analysis that insists on the inclusion of slavery since it ‘enabled sexual use at any age’ (p. 352).
The following chapters provide analyses of language, authority, gender and power, noting how the de-authorised feminine is authorised in pornographic texts and manuals, and how agentic play is evident in the use of passive and active forms of verbs as well as feminine and masculine noun endings. Continuing with textual representation, the next three chapters provide readings of texts in relation to the figuring of the female/feminine. H. Gardner provides a rich reading of the multiple forms of the monstrous (curiosus) feminine in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, while J. Hallet examines Suetonius’ representation of Tiberius’ monstrous sexuality, pointing out how this trope was connected to the Julio-Claudian line of emperors.
B. Gold and S. Smith concern themselves with finding traces of the subjugated voice, be it the ‘textual’ voice of a female martyr such as Perpetua, or persecuted male-to-male lovers who, in the time of Justinian, hid their illicit desires in poetry and behind feminine names. D. Boyarin and M. Masterson end the volume with their contributions, questioning, in the case of Boyarin, the often problematic assumptions about the antagonistic relations between Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianities that continue to distort narratives of sexualities ascribed to both. Masterson's chapter provides a nice conclusion as it shifts from a discussion of gender, sex and sexualities to that of bodies. Engaging the ‘Anonymous Latin Physiognomy’ from the fourth century c.e., Masterson observes the contradictions as physiognomy and philosophy intertwine in their attempt to locate the (masculine) subject.
It is hard to do justice to the text in a short review, but I hope that I have said enough to intrigue potential readers. The contributions are informative, insightful, articulate and well researched. Although not perfect (e.g. many of the authors did not theoretically situate their analyses), the book is an impressive and important work and a necessary read for scholars of the ancient world and sexuality studies.
