Halliwell, Masterson and Robson have provided a welcome gift to the academic community. Their re-edition of Greek Homosexuality offers to senior scholars a stimulating reading, while it presents to younger students an exemplary book that shows how scientific research should ideally open up new frontiers, leaving at the same time space for further questions, debates and theorisations. This is an iconic book indeed, one that not just concerns historical phenomena, but which is a story in itself, a historiographical milestone. In this review, I will try to avoid repeating notorious matters, hoping, however, to give a transparent picture to those who are not familiar with the scholarly discussion on ancient sexualities.
The cover image beautifully zooms in the Ganymede vase that decorated the 1978 edition (Louvre G175). Two forewords, whose layout differs from that of the reprinted monograph, contextualise the author and the book's legacy. Halliwell fascinatingly reveals the making of the book, how it was intertwined with D.’s teaching and research interests and how the project idea matured along with his intellectual profile. Masterson and Robson provide a clear overview of the studies that appeared afterwards and how these reacted to D.’s work and the penetration model. They remind us that in the UK of the 1970s images for the book were preferably not sent by post, but were collected from the British Museum by the staff of the publishing house and delivered to D. sometimes by his colleagues. Alongside this foreword, the reader may want to look at the preface to the volume Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World (2015), which Masterson and Robson edited together with N.S. Rabinowitz and in which they indicate the major turning points in the historiography of ancient gender and sexualities.
As Masterson and Robson indicate in the foreword (pp. xvi–xviii), D.’s book generated controversies especially on the definition of the relationship between erastês and erômenos and the intercrural position, as regards questions such as whether desire and pleasure were reciprocated, what was the age and social class of partners, how social attitudes changed over time and space. More importantly, his philological analysis missed the opportunity to include theories of sex and gender as cultural constructs. Michael Foucault had not yet been translated into English in 1978, but he was not even mentioned in D.’s postscript to the 2nd edition in 1989. Conversely, Foucault extensively used D. in his theory on power hierarchies and the sexual act delineated in History of Sexuality (Histoire de la sexualité, vol. II: l'usage des plaisirs and vol. III: le souci de soi [1984]). In his review of the book, the French philosopher praised D.’s rigorous examination of texts and images, and emphasised how sexual preferences and social life were intertwined; same-sex love was not an exclusive or irreversible option, but its principles, rules and effects influenced customs (‘les formes de vie’): a sexual choice, within a given society, is a way of life, culture and artistic expression in itself (M. Foucault, ‘Des caresses d'hommes considérées comme un art’, in Liberation, 1 June 1982). As is well known, Classicists and Ancient Historians after D. picked up the baton of applying Foucault to Greek and Roman sources, as recently examined in Foucault, la sexualité, l'Antiquité (edd. S. Boehringer and D. Lorenzini [2016]), in which C. Calame questions the appropriateness of the terms homosexuality and heterosexuality for understanding ancient love.
Although Greek Homosexuality does not need a review about content and structure 40 years after its first edition, a few points can be highlighted here. First, the value of the book is not limited to the specific object of inquiry, since it illustrates Athenian society more generally. However, Classical Athens often paradigmatically stands for the whole Greek-speaking world, and only in the fourth part (‘Changes’) do chronological and geographical variations come more into focus. Second, one of the most remarkable features is the use of iconographical evidence. Visual sources are essential to the argument as much as texts. Images greatly enrich the analysis, although the way in which they are referenced slows the flow of reading. They can also be elusive, and their interpretation is sometimes too literal, as noted by J. Boardman (JHS 100 [1980], 245; on Greek vases and sexuality, cf. C. Meyer, ‘Foucault's Clay Feet’, History Workshop Journal 85 [2018], 143–68). On p. 99, a reference to the vase B271 (Munich 1468) as an example of male-to-male fellatio as typical of satyrs is wrong (perhaps B 370 = Athens 9690 is meant?); similarly, on p. 135, there is no vulva prominently represented in R462 = Munich, Bareiss 229 (perhaps R970 = Berlin F2414 can be more indicative?). A third remark can be made that D.’s twelve pages on female homosexuality are now replaced by S. Boehringer, L'Homosexualité féminine dans l'antiquité grecque et romaine (2007). Finally, reviewing for this journal the first edition of the book (treated together with P. Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite [1979]), S. Humphreys wrote that ‘we must make an effort to overcome inherited Christian prejudices in studying Greek society – and this in turn may suggest that greater tolerance of diversity in sexual behaviour would be salutary in our own society too’ (CR 30 [1980], 61). What happens when we read Greek Homosexuality against our contemporary sexual mores? Are we still incurring the risk of analysing ancient sources with a prudish eye? Luckily, epistemological perspectives – from feminism to social constructionism via post-structuralism – have freed academic research, with an increasing number of scholars and students coming out professionally, although there is no biunivocal correspondence between an author's sexual orientation or gender identity and ancient sexualities as an object of study.
In the acknowledgments of his autobiography (Marginal Comment. A memoir [1994]), D. added this linguistic note, showing attention to gender issues when using impersonal pronouns: ‘the grapheme “hrm” should be pronounced “him”, “her” or “him or her”, according to the context and the reader's predilection. So too “hrs” is the grapheme for “his”, “her”, “hers”, “his or her” or “his or hers”, and “s/he” for “he”, “she” or “he or she”’. In the preface of the same book, D. writes: ‘in my professional life as a scholar I have hardly ever been a worker at the rock-face, discovering and editing inscriptions, papyri or hitherto unknown manuscripts, but rather a commentator, synthesising and interpreting what others have brought to light and, to the best of my ability, generating new ideas from old material’. The field has certainly benefited from his ideas, and they have been fruitful.
The inputs from D., however, cannot be received acritically. This is the reason why this re-edition is essential: the book can be read only with the two new forewords, which put it into a historical perspective, lucidly assessing its innovations, weaknesses and aftermath.
