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HERODAS' MIMIAMB 7: DANCING DOGS AND BARKING WOMEN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2015

Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides
Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides*
Affiliation:
Monash University
*
Eva.AnagnostouLaoutides@monash.edu
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Extract

Herodas' Mimiamb 7 has often attracted scholarly attention on account of its thematic preoccupation with the sexuality of ordinary people, thus offering a realistic and exciting glimpse of everyday life in the eastern Mediterranean of the third century b.c.e. In addition, his obscure reference in lines 62–3 to the obsession of women and dogs with dildos has been the focus of long-standing scholarly debate: while most scholars agree that the verses employ a metaphor, possibly of obscene nature, their exact meaning is still to be clarified. In response, this article offers an additional paradigm which stresses the cultural osmosis between the Greeks and their eastern neighbours in the Hellenistic period; in my view, Herodas' peculiar choice of expression could be explained more aptly through this hitherto unnoticed perspective. Despite having frustratingly little information about the poet and his life, his familiarity with the Hellenistic East is often implied in his poetic settings: for example, Cos in Mimiamb 2 and probably locations in Asia Minor in Mimiambs 6 and 7 are considered likely to reflect the places where he lived. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that Herodas spent periods of his life in areas of the eastern Aegean where cultural interaction was practically unavoidable. Moreover, his first poem exhibits a certain amount of knowledge and admiration for Ptolemaic Egypt and, although this does not necessarily mean that he lived there, he must have been very familiar with Alexandria and its erudite circles. After all, Herodas, a contemporary of Theocritus who subscribed to his preference for short, elegant poetic forms, shared the latter's interest in the lowly mime, which both of them invested with learned language. Thus, specific motifs, such as the visit of an abandoned mistress to the witches in a desperate attempt to coax back a cruel lover, are treated by both poets and ultimately derive from the literary corpus of mimes by the influential Sophron. Theocritus was also familiar with locations in Cos, an island that appears to have been culturally diverse. One of the foreign communities that increasingly made its presence felt in third-century b.c.e. Asia Minor and the nearby islands of the eastern Aegean was that of the Jews, although the history of particular communities is often difficult to recover. Nevertheless, we do know that as early as the third century b.c.e. ‘various Jewish authors writing in Greek had adopted the prevailing patterns of Greek literature in its many forms, filling them with Jewish content’. The Jews had a prominent and well-documented presence at Alexandria, where their interaction with the Greeks was promoted by the Ptolemies. There, already by the middle of the third century b.c.e., the Pentateuch (the Hebrew Torah) had been translated into Koine Greek by royal request, which probably indicates a sizeable community able to participate dynamically in the cultural interface of Ptolemaic Alexandria. In the following pages, I shall revisit the past interpretations of the aforementioned verses in Mimiamb 7 before arguing that the key to their understanding lies in the interaction of the Greeks with near eastern cultures, particularly the Jews, who seemed to have employed a distinctive metaphor about ‘dogs’ and their perceived sexual habits.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , May 2015 , pp. 153 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

INTRODUCTION

Herodas' Mimiamb 7 has often attracted scholarly attention on account of its thematic preoccupation with the sexuality of ordinary people,Footnote 1 thus offering a realistic and exciting glimpse of everyday life in the eastern Mediterranean of the third century b.c.e. In addition, his obscure reference in lines 62–3 to the obsession of women and dogs with dildos has been the focus of long-standing scholarly debate: while most scholars agree that the verses employ a metaphor, possibly of obscene nature,Footnote 2 their exact meaning is still to be clarified. In response, this article offers an additional paradigm which stresses the cultural osmosis between the Greeks and their eastern neighbours in the Hellenistic period; in my view, Herodas' peculiar choice of expression could be explained more aptly through this hitherto unnoticed perspective. Despite having frustratingly little information about the poet and his life,Footnote 3 his familiarity with the Hellenistic East is often implied in his poetic settings: for example, Cos in Mimiamb 2 and probably locations in Asia Minor in Mimiambs 6 and 7 are considered likely to reflect the places where he lived.Footnote 4 Hence, it is reasonable to assume that Herodas spent periods of his life in areas of the eastern Aegean where cultural interaction was practically unavoidable. Moreover, his first poem exhibits a certain amount of knowledge and admiration for Ptolemaic Egypt and, although this does not necessarily mean that he lived there, he must have been very familiar with Alexandria and its erudite circles.Footnote 5 After all, Herodas, a contemporary of Theocritus who subscribed to his preference for short, elegant poetic forms,Footnote 6 shared the latter's interest in the lowly mime, which both of them invested with learned language.Footnote 7 Thus, specific motifs, such as the visit of an abandoned mistress to the witches in a desperate attempt to coax back a cruel lover, are treated by both poets and ultimately derive from the literary corpus of mimes by the influential Sophron.Footnote 8 Theocritus was also familiar with locations in Cos,Footnote 9 an island that appears to have been culturally diverse. One of the foreign communities that increasingly made its presence felt in third-century b.c.e. Asia Minor and the nearby islands of the eastern Aegean was that of the Jews, although the history of particular communities is often difficult to recover.Footnote 10 Nevertheless, we do know that as early as the third century b.c.e. ‘various Jewish authors writing in Greek had adopted the prevailing patterns of Greek literature in its many forms, filling them with Jewish content’.Footnote 11 The Jews had a prominent and well-documented presence at Alexandria, where their interaction with the Greeks was promoted by the Ptolemies.Footnote 12 There, already by the middle of the third century b.c.e., the Pentateuch (the Hebrew Torah) had been translated into Koine Greek by royal request, which probably indicates a sizeable community able to participate dynamically in the cultural interface of Ptolemaic Alexandria.Footnote 13 In the following pages, I shall revisit the past interpretations of the aforementioned verses in Mimiamb 7 before arguing that the key to their understanding lies in the interaction of the Greeks with near eastern cultures, particularly the Jews, who seemed to have employed a distinctive metaphor about ‘dogs’ and their perceived sexual habits.

THE ARGUMENT: HERODAS, DOGS AND THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

It is generally acknowledged that Mimiambs 6 and 7 were written as a diptych,Footnote 14 although scholars remain divided on whether Kerdon is selling shoes in Mimiamb 7 or whether the leather objects are really dildos.Footnote 15 In Mimiamb 6 Coritto overcomes her original annoyance that her addiction to dildos is no longer a secret (lines 19–47) and confides to Metro that the cobbler Kerdon is the supplier of her coveted scarlet artefact (lines 48, 57–73). In Mimiamb 7 we see Metro at Kerdon's shop where he boasts to a group of eager female customers about the quality of his products, all of his products (lines 40–63). However, while Kerdon's double entendre of shoes/dildos has been established satisfactorily,Footnote 16 scholars have been less successful in interpreting lines 62–3 of Mimiamb 7 for the past twenty years. In this gnomic phrase, Kerdon, the skilled manufacturer of the dildos, urges his eager clients to

ὧν ἐρᾷ θυμός
ὑμέων ἑκάστης εἴπατ’, ὡς ἂν αἴσθοισθε
σκύτεα γυναῖκες καὶ κύνες τί βρώζουσιν.

say which ones the heart of each of you desires, so you can find out why women and dogs ‘eat’ leather.

The expression has been variably interpreted as a reference to the women's keen interest in buying/wearing shoesFootnote 17 – typically made of leather in antiquity – or as an allusion to their obsessive use of dildos. In Greek comedy ‘leather’ had been employed to denote the phallus or a dildo.Footnote 18 As Cunningham argued,Footnote 19 Herodas probably refers to ‘women [who] are addicted to dildos as a dog to gnawing through its tether’.Footnote 20 By unravelling a number of sexual allusions which the audience would have picked up and stressing the performative aspects of the Mimiambs – in other words, that Kerdon probably engaged in meaningful gestures towards his audienceFootnote 21 – Rist expanded on the understanding of the phrase in a sexual context where the women's obsessive use of dildos is compared with the dogs' inability to resist to a nice sausage once they have tried it.Footnote 22

Indeed, in Aristophanes' Acharnians Dicaeopolis holds a conversation about a pig-sacrifice which could mean either eating or fornicating (lines 794–817).Footnote 23 As Henderson has pointed out,Footnote 24 Dicaeopolis' offerings involve a double entendre with reference to the male organ which the girls will ‘eat’ – rather than gnaw through, which, as Rist observed,Footnote 25 denotes an absence of eating (since the dogs chew their tethers, but do not consume them).Footnote 26 Hence, the voraciousness of dogs (in consuming treats) is comparable to that of women (in ‘consuming’ dildos) since mouths and vaginas are body openings at a receiving end and they were interchangeable in references to (what was perceived as) unorthodox sex.Footnote 27

However, the joke, thus understood, focusses on the obsessive behaviour of dogs and women in general, not on their obsessive use of dildos, which seems to be the target of the poet.Footnote 28 Herodas refers to σκύτεα (skin/hide, esp. a dressed or tanned hide; LSJ s.v. σκῦτος, I) and not to appetizing sausages made of intestinesFootnote 29 which could make the reading of leather both as dildo and dog treat acceptable (along with the respective reaction of dogs and women to leather).Footnote 30 But if σκύτεα refers only to leather goods (shoes and dildos),Footnote 31 then the joke must be about the predilection of women and dogs for dildos.Footnote 32 In comedy the dog implied both male and female genitalia,Footnote 33 though it makes little sense for Herodas to have repeated the alleged predilection of women and their vaginas for dildos. The key to understanding the phrase lies, in my view, in the neighbouring Jewish communities, which employed the term ‘dog’ as invective targeting the (perceived) sexual antics of pagan priests in the service of Inanna, Ištar and other fertility deities.

In Mimiambs 6 and 7, Herodas discusses the sexual desires of women in the absence of men or, to be more precise, in the absence of their penises which Koritto scorns anyway, since τὰ βαλλί’ οὕτως ἄνδρες οὐχὶ ποιεῦσι | ... ὀρθά (‘men do not make their penises as straight as these [i.e. the dildos made by Kerdon]’, Mim. 6.69–70; cf. 6.68 where the sight of the dildos make Koritto's eyes pop out). The obsessive – almost aggressive – way in which these women seek relief for their ‘hungry’ vaginas (Mim. 6.97–8; also, see n. 26 above)Footnote 34 implies a gender reversal which plays out the male fear of a world where men are no longer needed or they are deemed ineffective.

The references to Nossis, the daughter of Erinna, in whose hands Metro saw the dildo for the first time (Mim. 6.20–1), allude to female homoeroticism, especially since Erinna was known as a friend of Sappho and Nossis' reputation as a poet came to match that of the famous Lesbian.Footnote 35 In this private space where women interact without men's interference, sharing their innermost desires (cf. Mim. 6.70), only Kerdon seems to know what women really want (Mim. 6.72–3). Herodas sheds light on the world of women stressing their sexual aggression and their challenging of traditional gender roles; therefore, comparing them to furious cultic dancers who often pose in our sources, as we shall see, as transvestites or eunuchs with a predilection for dildos would make sense since they also challenged the gender norm: just as the women display male aggression, so eunuchs and transvestites were perceived as more feminine than it was socially accepted.

Furthermore, as Stern argued,Footnote 36 the names of Metro and Koritto, the protagonists of Mimiamb 6, bear cultic associations because they are close to the Eleusinian Meter and Kore. Stern also read the reference to the βαυβών (= dildo) in Mimiamb 6.19 as an allusion to Orphic rites since the Eleusinian Baubo, the rude old lady that made Demeter laugh during her deep mourning for Persephone, was the Orphic equivalent of Iambe.Footnote 37 In addition, the references to Adrasteia in Mimiamb 6.35, a goddess akin to Cybele,Footnote 38 as well as to the μεδέουσα Paphian in Mimiamb 7.26,Footnote 39 seem to corroborate Herodas' intention to compare the frantic desire of his female protagonists for dildos with delirious celebrants of fertility goddesses.

Such cultic figures had troubled the ancient Jewish tribes over a significant period of time; in the eighth century b.c.e. Hezekiah was still trying to expel them from his land (Hosea 4:14).Footnote 40 In Deuteronomy 23:18–19, written mainly in the late seventh century b.c.e., the term ‘dog’ seems to refer to a class of male prostitutes with cultic associations:Footnote 41

οὐκ ἔσται πόρνη ἀπὸ θυγατέρων Ισραηλ, καὶ οὐκ ἔσται πορνεύων ἀπὸ υἱῶν Ισραηλ. οὐκ ἔσται τελεσφόρος ἀπὸ θυγατέρων Ισραηλ, καὶ οὐκ ἔσται τελισκόμενος ἀπὸ υἱῶν Ισραηλ. οὐ προσοίσεις μίσθωμα πόρνης οὐδὲ ἄλλαγμα κυνὸς εἰς τὸν οἶκον κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ σου ...

There shall be no prostitute from the daughters of Israel, there shall be no prostitute from the sons of Israel. There shall be no sanctuary woman from the daughters of Israel, there shall be no sanctuary man from the sons of Israel. You shall not bring the cost of a prostitute or the price of a dog into the house of YHWH your god.Footnote 42

The phenomenon of ‘sacred prostitution’, described in the lines cited above,Footnote 43 has been understood as Jewish polemic against the priests of pagan fertility deities,Footnote 44 not dissimilar to the account of Herodotus (1.199), who (allegedly) reports that Babylonian women had sex with a foreigner once in their lives outside the temple of Aphrodite.

Our evidence about such cultic personnel dedicated to the worship of the fertility goddess is limited, although their sexual ambivalence is often emphasized in our sources.Footnote 45 The most prominent group of professional singers and dancers, male and female, in the service of Inanna were the Sumerian gala priests (Akkadian kalû).Footnote 46 They praised the goddess in emesal, a Sumerian dialect used to render the speech of women and goddesses in literature;Footnote 47 they wore women's clothes and even adopted female names. The gala priests were perceived as passive partners in same-sex dalliances,Footnote 48 as this Sumerian proverb – most likely intended as a derisive comment – indicates:Footnote 49

gala-e bìd-da-ni ha-ba-an-da-zé-er

èm-ga-ša-an-na ga-ša-an-gu10 ba-ra-zi-zi-dè-en-e-še

The lamentation priest wipes his bottom: ‘One should not remove what belongs to my mistress Inanna.’Footnote 50

In Babylon such cultic figures, known as kurgarrû and assinnu,Footnote 51 were particularly associated with Ištar.Footnote 52 Their sexuality was also questionable given that in the tale of Erra and Išum they pose as men transformed into women by the goddess in an act of showcasing her omnipotence.Footnote 53 According to Nissinen, the expression that Ištar had ‘transformed their masculinity into femininity’, along with the symbolic cutting weapons they carried, strongly suggests that these cultic servants were eunuchs.Footnote 54 The Sumerograms for the word assinnu are UR.SAL and one of their suggested meanings is dog/man-woman.Footnote 55 These figures are akin to the Greek kinaidoi,Footnote 56 who were frequently associated with the orgiastic cult of Dionysus where the god is typically portrayed as an effeminate youth.Footnote 57 These male prostitutes (kulu'u),Footnote 58 whose antics were known to the ancient Jews (i.e. 2 Samuel 3:29),Footnote 59 remained a fixed feature in the cultic life of near eastern cultures for centuries and records from Hellenistic Babylon refer to the practice of the so-called ritual of the love-lyrics to which kurgarrû and assinnū were present.Footnote 60 Their ambivalent sexuality and their devotion to the fertility goddess made them comparable to the Galli, the eunuch followers of Phrygian Cybele, whose popularity rose dramatically during the Hellenistic period.Footnote 61

Later authors attacking paganism also stress the sexual ambivalence of the aforementioned cultic figures, which are treated as generic to all pagan cults.Footnote 62 Hence, Philo in the first century c.e. associated eunuch priests with the pagan mysteries of Demeter (Spec. Leg. 3.37–42 Colson):

τοὺς γοῦν ἀνδρογύνους ἔστιν ἰδεῖν διὰ πληθυούσης ἀγορᾶς ἀεὶ σοβοῦντας κἀν ταῖς ἑορταῖς προπομπεύοντας καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ τοὺς ἀνιέρους διειληχότας καὶ μυστηρίων καὶ τελετῶν κατάρχοντας καὶ τὰ Δήμητρος ὁργιάζοντας. ὅσοι δ’ αὐτῶν τὴν καλὴν νεανιείαν προσεπιτείνοντες εἰς ἅπαν ὠρέχθησαν μεταβολῆς τῆς εἰς γυναῖκας καὶ τὰ γεννητικὰ προσαπέκοψαν ...

Certainly you may see these androgynous creatures continually strutting about through the thick of the market, heading the processions at the feasts, appointed to serve as unholy ministers of holy things, leading the mysteries and initiations and celebrating the rites of Demeter. Those of them who by way of heightening still further their youthful beauty have desired to be completely changed into women and gone on to mutilate their genital organs ...Footnote 63

In his reproach Philo hardly expresses an exclusively Jewish opinion since ancient societies were characterized by what KeulsFootnote 64 described as phallocracy. Kinaidoi and eunuchs, typically ridiculed in Greek comedy and the Greek Anthology,Footnote 65 serve as clear indications of the prejudice that such figures faced in the Greek world. A Greek text from Eresos in Lesbos, dating from the second or first century b.c.e., confirms that the Galli were equally disreputable. The text forbids temple entrance to women who have given birth, Galli and women who engage in γαλλάζειν, that is, hold Gallic rites to Meter.Footnote 66 The confirmation that women participated in these rites is very interesting because these female Galli, just like the ecstatic followers of Dionysus and Osiris,Footnote 67 participated in phallic processions and even performed ritual acts that involved carrying artificial phalli which they often used on their male counterparts.Footnote 68 The spectacle would not be unfamiliar to the ancient Greeks: Dionysian phallophoria were celebrated everywhere in GreeceFootnote 69 and a rare vase from CorinthFootnote 70 shows a woman dressed in Satyr pants and equipped with a male organ. In addition, we have evidence for other rites such as the kordax, performed in honour of Artemis at Elis. During this dance-drama whose origins Pausanias traces in Lydia (6.21.6; cf. Ar. Nub. 553–7), ‘women and men dressed in the garments of the opposite sex and the women wearing lombai, enormous phalli, pretended to penetrate the male dancers’.Footnote 71 The reference would be especially appropriate for the Herodean context where the women are depicted as interested in double dildos, a point raised by Cunningham and credited by Rist.Footnote 72 Now, if Herodas compared the women of his poems to cultic dancers in the service of eastern fertility goddesses, whom the Jews degradingly referred to as ‘dogs’, he was implying that they were equally frenzied, compulsive and shameless in their love for dildos, an allusion that would add something new to Kerdon's teasing of his customers and would draw directly on ritual acts that were often performed at local festivals.

Nevertheless, it has been argued that the understanding of the Jewish invective ‘dog’ as referring to passive homosexuals (or more generally to ‘pervert pagans’, whether they were in fact eunuchs or homosexuals or not) is uncertain because the word kalbu (= dog) does not seem to have had such a metaphorical meaning in Akkadian, despite the general correspondence in the proverbial usage of words in Akkadian and Hebrew. In the famous Amarna Letters kings and other royal officials would typically refer to themselves as ‘obedient dogs’ in an attempt to persuade the Egyptian Pharaoh of their self-effacement before him;Footnote 73 hence, in EA 60.6–7 (cf. EA 61.2–4) Abdi-Aširta promises to the Pharaoh that he is IR′ LUGAL ú / UR.GI7 ša É-šu ú (‘the servant of the king, and the dog of his house’). In fact, kalbu could be compounded with the title of a god to show priestly servitude to that god such as Kalbi-Sin, Kalbi Samas, Kalbi-Marduk – without, however, bearing negative associations.Footnote 74 The Amarna Letters also indicate a second, less complimentary, usage of the term dog reserved for throwing insults against self-abasing enemies, especially when used by a third person (EA 71.16–9; 76.11–13; 79.45–7, etc).Footnote 75 Apparently, the ancient Israelites were familiar with both usages of the word kalbu;Footnote 76 hence, it is not impossible to assume that the Jews employed the term to refer to the (allegedly) undignified, lecherous devotees of pagan goddesses as their enemies whose frenzied and overtly sexual dancing alarmed them.

Furthermore, outside the Amarna corpus of diplomatic exchanges, the word dog seems to have had sexual connotations already since the Old Babylonian period (twentieth to sixteenth centuries b.c.e.). Hence, in incantations from that period which remained in circulation well into the Hellenistic periodFootnote 77 the compelling force of sexual desire is often compared to a hunting dog. For example, in one of them we read:Footnote 78

Uzzum illaka rīmāniš
ištanaḫḫiṭam kalbāniš
kīma nēšim ezzi alākam
kīma barbarim mali libbātim
Passion comes over me like a wild bull,
it keeps springing at me like a hound;
like a lion it is fierce in its onslaught,
like a wolf it is full of fury!

In other incantations, passion is described as a dog, ‘long of leg, swift in running’ (urruk birkāšu aruḫ lasāmam), a phrase that is reminiscent of Enkidu and his detrimental introduction to sex in the Epic of Gilgamesh: for, shortly after lying down with the harlot, his legs (birkāšu), we are told, could no longer run (lasāmu) with the herds (Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet I, lines 183–4) and Enkidu was shunned by the animals whose company he previously enjoyed.Footnote 79

Therefore, it seems that the word kalbu was already linked with sexual excess in Akkadian and that the ancient Jews employed it in an offensive way in an attempt to denigrate the passionate devotees of the pagan fertility goddesses whom they collectively reduced to degenerate invalids.

CONCLUSION

Based on the powerful presence of Jews all over the ancient Near East, but also the intensified interaction of Greek and local eastern communities in the third century b.c.e., I suggest that in Mimiamb 7 Herodas is comparing the allegedly frantic use of dildos by male and female followers of contemporary fertility cults with his clients' acute need to acquire one. The phrase was a standardized term of invective in ancient Hebrew and referred to cultic officials of pagan fertility deities who often engaged in homosexuality and prostitution and would even use dildos for their ritual dancing acts; to those ancient Jewish communities such behaviour was shameful and unacceptable. The ancient Greeks were familiar, of course, with such raunchy behaviour associated with Dionysian rites and in the Hellenistic period increasingly so with the cult of Cybele. However, as our sources indicate, in the Greek world too such cultic figures were met with prejudice and a sense of social marginalization. Of course, as with the Greek term kinaidos, the ancient Jews had a tendency to refer to all pagan priests as ‘dogs’ (shameless homosexuals), rather indiscriminately.Footnote 80

This interpretation of the dogs in Herodas' Mimiamb 6 effortlessly corroborates Kerdon's overt sexual tone and is compatible with his characterization in the poem. It also underlines the fact that the Greeks in the east were part of a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan world, which we ought to recognize in our interpretation of their poetic expressions.

References

1 Ussher, R.G., ‘The Mimiamboi of Herodas’, Hermathena 129 (1980), 65–76Google Scholar, at 66 and id., ‘The mimic tradition of “character” in Herodas’, QUCC 21 (1985), 45–68Google Scholar, at 66–8; although the author refers to the characters as ‘real’, he doubts whether they are ‘completely realistic’; see Ussher above (1980), 71; also, Skinner, M., Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture (Oxford, 2005), 188–190Google Scholar.

2 Headlam, W. and Knox, A.D., Herodas: The Mimes and Fragments (Cambridge, 1922), 347Google Scholar; Williams, G., ‘Dogs and leather’, CR 9 (1959), 97–100Google Scholar, at 99; Cunningham, I.C., Herodas: Mimiambi (Oxford, 1971), 161, 182–3Google Scholar; cf. id., ‘Herodas 6 and 7’, CQ 14 (1964), 32–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 34; Levin, D.N., ‘An Herodean Diptych’, Ziva Antika 26 (1976), 345–55Google Scholar, at 352–3; Rist, A., ‘That Herodean diptych again’, CQ 43 (1991), 440–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 441–2. Lawall, G., ‘Herodas 6 and 7 Reconsidered’, CPh 71 (1976), 165–9Google Scholar, at 167 denies any obscene sense of the proverb, but he represents a scholarly minority; cf. Arnott, W.G., ‘Herodas and the kitchen sink’, G&R 18 (1971), 121–32Google Scholar, at 128 and Simon, H.-J., Τὰ κύλλ’ ἀείδειν: Interpretationen zu den Mimiamben des Herodas (Frankfurt, Bern, New York and Paris, 1991), 140–1Google Scholar. Zanker, G., Herodas: Mimiambs (Oxford, 2010)Google Scholar, 215 takes a middle position between Cunningham and Lawall, accepting that the expression is sexually suggestive, but not explicitly obscene; cf. Gregorio, L. Di, Eronda: Mimiambi (V–XII) (Milan, 2004), 279–80Google Scholar and Kutzko, D., ‘The major importance of a minor poet: Herodas 6 and 7 as a quasi-dramatic diptych’, in Harder, M.A., Regtuit, R.F. and Wakker, G.C. (edd.), Beyond the Canon (Leuven, 2006), 167–84Google Scholar, at 173.

3 See Cunningham (n. 2, 1971), 2 and esp. n. 3, suggesting that Cos was Herodas' possible birthplace; on the dating of Herodas' poems, see Ridgway, B.S., ‘The boy straggling the goose: genre figure or mythological symbol?’, AJA 110.4 (2006), 643–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 644 with n. 8 and Zanker (n. 2), 21, 106, 109, 112. Also, see Hordern, J.H., Sophron's Mimes: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, 2004), 9–14Google Scholar on Herodas and Theocritus as imitators of Sophron, whom the Suda (ς 893) records as a contemporary of Euripides.

4 See Gutzwiller, K., A Guide to Hellenistic Literature (Oxford, 2007), 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Relying on the secure identification of the Asklepieion of poem 4 with the famous Coan sanctuary (see Sherwin-White, S.M., Ancient Cos: An Historical Study from the Dorian Settlement to the Imperial Period [Göttingen, 1978], 350–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar), Zanker (n. 2), 1 argues that the poet ‘lived in the Doric-speaking area of Cos and perhaps the mainland off which it lies’; also see Zanker's pages 79 and 84 for Herodean references to locations in Asia Minor.

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7 Stern, J., ‘Herodas' Mimiamb 6’, GRBS 20 (1979), 247–54Google Scholar, at 252–4; Parker, H.N., ‘Love's body anatomized: the ancient erotic handbooks and the rhetoric of sexuality’, in Richlin, A. (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1992), 90–111Google Scholar, at 106.

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9 In his analysis of Theocritus' Coan locations Hunter, R.L., A Selection: Idylls 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13 (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar, 2, 22, 81, 92, 144, 165, 171 and 199 relies on dialectic clues from Dorian-dominated Cos and the use of popular names such as Philinos and Aratos (p. 146); cf. Verity, A. and Hunter, R., Theocritus: Idylls (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar, viii, 56, 86, 109; Zanker, G., ‘Simichidas' walk and the locality of Bourina in Theocritus, Id. 7’, CQ 30 (1980), 373–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim. For the intense cultural exchanges between Cos and Asia Minor at Herodas' time, see Sherwin-White (n. 4), 245–9, esp. nn. 59–60. For the connections of Cos with Ptolemaic Egypt, see Fraser, P.M., Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar, esp. 1.307, 343–6 and 2.462 n. 11; also, Sherwin-White (n. 4), 82–137 and Burton, J., The Urban Mimes of Theocritus: Mobility, Gender, and Patronage (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar, 19 with n. 58.

10 Goodman, M., ‘Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple period’, in Goodman, M., Cohen, J. and Sorkin, D.J. (edd.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (Oxford, 2002), 36–52Google Scholar, at 37. It seems that the century of Ptolemaic rule over Palestine (301–198 b.c.e.) was peaceful and even popular (cf. Polyb. 5.86.10), thus encouraging cultural interaction; see Schürer, E., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 b.c.–a.d. 135) [English edition revised and edited by Vermes, G., Millar, F. and Goodman, M., vol. 3.1] (Edinburgh, 1986), 68–72Google Scholar; also, Van der Horst, P.W., ‘The Jews of ancient Cyprus’, Zuzot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture 3.1 (2003), 110–20Google Scholar, at 110; cf. id., Jews and Christians in Their Graeco-Roman Context: Selected Essays on Early Judaism, Samaritanism, Hellenism, and Christianity (Tübingen, 2006)Google Scholar, 28. Furthermore, see Sherwin-White, S.M., ‘A note on three Coan inscriptions’, ZPE 21 (1976), 183–8Google Scholar, at 184, discussing Meleager's Anth.Pal. 5.160 as indication for the presence of Jews on the island in the late second or early first century b.c.e.; cf. Barclay, J.M.G., Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 b.c.e.–117 c.e.) (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999), 10–11Google Scholar and Kasher, A., Jews and Hellenistic Cities in Eretz-Israel: Relations of the Jews in Eretz-Israel with the Hellenistic Cities during the Second Temple Period (332 b.c.e.–70 c.e.) (Tübingen, 1990)Google Scholar, 157. Yamauchi, E.M., ‘Daniel and contacts between the Aegean and the Near East before Alexander’, Evangelical Quarterly 53.1 (1981), 37–47Google Scholar, at 41, 44–5 dates the interaction of the Greeks with their eastern neighbours well before the advent of Alexander.

11 Stern, M., ‘Part III. The period of the Second Temple: religion and literature’, in Ben-Sasson, H.H. (ed.), A History of the Jewish People (Cambridge, MA, 1976), 282–95Google Scholar, at 293–4; Gambetti, S., The Alexandrian Riots of 38 c.e. and the Persecution of the Jews: A Historical Reconstruction (Leiden, 2009), 42–3Google Scholar, esp. nn. 79–82.

12 The Jews were seen as key mediators between the Macedonian/Greek rulers and the defiant native Egyptians; see Feldman, L.H., Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton, 1993), 86–92Google Scholar; cf. his p. 48 for the strong presence of the Jews at Cos during the Roman period; cf. Moehring, H.R., ‘Joseph ben Matthia and Flavus Josephus: the Jewish prophet and Roman Historian’, ANWR 2.21.2 (1984), 865–944Google Scholar, at 871–85; Barclay (n. 10), 266; Gruen, E.S., Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of the Jewish Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002), 209–12Google Scholar, 223, 233, 240.

13 Collins, J., J. ‘Jewish literature in the Second Temple period’ in Goodman, M., Cohen, J. and Sorkin, D.J. (edd.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (Oxford, 2002), 53–78Google Scholar, at 69; Gambetti (n. 11), 42.

14 Cunningham (n. 2, 1964), 33–5 and (n. 2, 1971), 174; cf. id. (n. 8), 25; Rist (n. 2), 440–1; Kutzko (n. 2), 167; Sumler, A., ‘A catalogue of shoes: puns in Herodas Mime 7’, CW 103.4 (2010), 465–75Google Scholar, at 465 argues that the list of shoes in poem 7 functions as a list of sexual double entendre to dildos, further linking poems 6 and 7, despite the lack of direct references to dildos in poem 7.

15 Lawall (n. 2), 165, Di Gregorio (n. 2), 279, Kutzko (n. 2), 168 and Zanker (n. 2), 215 argue that Kerdon is only displaying shoes. Rist (n. 2), 440–1 and Sumler (n. 14), 465 take the other position (as I also do).

16 See Cunningham (n. 2, 1964), 34–5; Rist (n. 2), 443; more recently, Sumler (n. 14), 465–6, esp. n. 3.

17 Lawall (n. 2), 165–9; contra, Schmidt, V., Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Herodas (Berlin, 1968)Google Scholar, 125; cf. Levin (n. 2), 345–55; Zanker (n. 2), 214–15.

18 Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven, 1991 2), 221Google Scholar; Rist (n. 2), 440–2, esp. n. 10 noted that in comedy baubones were typically made of scarlet leather citing Cunningham (n. 2, 1971) (cf. Rosen, R., ‘Hipponax, Boupalos and the conventions of psogos’, TAPhA 118 [1988], 29–41, at 35–6Google Scholar); thus, she claimed, the dildos' straps (ἱμαντίσκοι) in Mim. 6.71 could not be an allusion to dogs' (leathern) leashes; cf. Sumler (n. 14), 471, esp. nn. 41–2. The Suda s.v. ὅλισβος adds that Miletus was famous for the manufacture of dildos (citing Ar. Lys. 107–9). The references to Chios and Erythrai in Mim. 6.57–9 may denote places that had a reputation for making dildos and/or the lascivious disposition of their citizens; Rosen (op. cit.), 37 n. 28.

19 See Cunningham (n. 2, 1971), 34.

20 See Luc. Ind. 26.1: οὐδὲ γὰρ κύων ἅπαξ παύσαιτ’ ἄν σκυτοτραγεῖν μαθοῦσα (‘when a bitch has learnt once to gnaw leather it cannot stop’), which the much later (late fifteenth-century) Apostolius (Cent. 13.49 = Leutsch 2.587) explains as ὅτι τὸ ἔθος ἀμετάβλητον (because a habit is unalterable); see Kent, R.G., ‘Classical parallels to a Sanskrit proverb’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 33 (1913), 214–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 215 n. 1. However, as Kent pointed out, Apostolius takes the proverb to refer to a male dog (hence, he ends his rendition of the proverb with μαθών, while Lucian refers to a bitch [μαθοῦσα], which Gregorius Cyprius [thirteenth century] maintained [Cent. 4.74 = Leutsch 2.126]). Cf. Williams (n. 2), 97–100; also, Headlam and Knox (n. 2), 348 for a similar proverb quoted in the scholia to Plato's Resp. 563e.

21 On the performative aspects of the mimiamb, see Zanker (n. 2), 5–6, 129–30 with n. 3, and 199–201; cf. Mastromarco (n. 6), 65–80, esp. 75; Hordern (n. 3), 8–9, esp. n. 22; Puchner, W., ‘Zur Raumkonzeption der Mimiamben des Herodas’, Wiener Studien 106 (1993), 9–34Google Scholar, esp. at 29; Cameron, A., Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton, 1995), 89–90Google Scholar. Hunter, R.L., ‘The presentation of Herodas' Mimiamboi’, Antichthon 27 (1993), 31–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 32 wrote that Herodas' mimiambs were ‘composed … in a mode which strongly suggests … “performance” by more than one actor, rather than solo recitation’. But Panayotakis, C., Decimus Laberius: The Fragments (Cambridge, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 21 expresses doubts.

22 Rist (n. 2), 442–3.

23 Bober, P.P., Art, Culture and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy (Chicago, 1999), 111–13Google Scholar; also, Olson, S.D., Aristophanes: Acharnians (Oxford, 2004), 272–4Google Scholar.

24 Henderson (n. 18), 60.

25 Rist (n. 2), 441.

26 The verbs βιβρώσκω and βορέομαι had acquired sexual connotations from an early period; see Cyrino, M.S., In Pandora's Jar: Love-Sickness in Early Greek Poetry (Lanham, 1995), 140–1Google Scholar. For the equation of sexual parts with foods, see Henderson (n. 18), 29, 144 and 186.

27 For the vagina as ‘tongue-case’, see Henderson (n. 18), 186 (no. 390); also, Hermogenes (second century c.e.), Id. 2.3 argues that in his speech against Neaira Demosthenes claimed that ‘she plied her trade through three orifices’ (= mouth, vagina, anus), although this part was later removed because it was deemed too rude for the court; see Wooten, C.W. (trans.), Hermogenes' On Types of Style (Chapel Hill and London, 1987), 73Google Scholar; also, Parker, H.N., ‘Sex, popular beliefs, and culture’, in Toohey, P. and Golden, M. (edd.), A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Classical World (Oxford, 2011), 125–44Google Scholar, at 134 with n. 71 (on p. 239); cf. Keuls, E., The Reign of the Phallus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985)Google Scholar, 82 for Athenian men fantasizing about the insatiable desire of women for penetration with real or artificial penises.

28 Indeed the many references to shouting and grumbling in Mimiamb 6 make the women appear as neurotic and totally consumed by their need to acquire Kerdon's famous dildos (Mim. 6.13–17; 34; cf. 6.5–8 referring to Koritto's moaning slave; also, see Mim. 6.30, where Euboule is said to have grabbed Metro's dildo, ἁρπάσασα, and 6.17, 19 and 95–6 for Metro's determination to find out who Kerdon is).

29 See choria in Rist (n. 2), 442; cf. Theoc. Id. 10.10. Herodas, who is familiar with Hipponax's work (e.g. Ussher [n. 1, 1980], 65–76), was probably aware of his comparison of the male organ with a sausage (ἀλλᾶς); Hipp. fr. 86.17 with Rosen (n. 18), 38–9.

30 See, for example, the words κρέας (Ar. Eq. 428, fr. 130.3), κωλῆ (Ar. Nub. 52, 989, 1018; Lys. 2), ὄφον (Lyc. Alex. 49.1) cited in Henderson (n. 18), 47. Although numerous Greco-Roman proverbs refer to ‘dogs’ addiction to leathern goods', they do not have overt sexual connotations. See Kent (n. 20), 214; Williams (n. 2), 99–100; also, Henderson (n. 18), 133 and Kutzko (n. 2), 180.

31 The adjective σκύτινος is used by Ar. Lys. 110 to refer to the dildo Myrrhine was using in the absence of men (σκυτίνη ’πικουρία = leathery aid). One may surmise that while in Aristophanes nothing is as good as the real thing Herodas teases the fears of his male audience by confirming that they can be substituted by dildos.

32 Women were compared in ancient sources to bitches with regard to their alleged sexual voraciousness, albeit not as much as to other animals including wild sows and horses; i.e. Hom. Il. 3.180; 6.344; 6.356; Od. 8.319; 11.424–7; 19.154; cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. 7.7.1150b6; in Hist. an. 572a8–13 Aristotle claimed that in eagerness for sexual intercourse of all the female animals the mare comes first, next the cow; Carson, A., ‘Putting her in her Place: woman, dirt, and desire’, in Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (edd.), Before Sexuality (Princeton, 1990), 135–169Google Scholar, at 142–4, esp. n. 23.

33 See Henderson (n. 18), 127 no. 88 and 133 no. 117, citing Ar. Lys. 158 (where the phrase to ‘flay the flayed dog’ implies masturbation); also, see his no. 119.

34 One could compare the phrase with Mim. 7.18, where Kerdon bids quiet to the ‘greedy thing’ (λαίμαστρον), intentionally vague as to whether it refers to the slave Pistos or to Metro's private parts as she is about to see Kerdon's ‘products’.

35 See Headlam and Knox (n. 2), 289–90 and Cunningham (n. 2, 1971), 164; cf. Anth. Pal. 7.718 for Nossis compared to Sappho.

36 Stern (n. 7), 252–3.

37 Hom. Hymn Dem. 202 (Iambe); Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 2.20 (Baubo, the Orphic version of Iambe).

38 Cf. schol. ad Ap. Rhod. 1.1129; Graf, F., ‘Lesser mysteries – not less mysterious’, in Cosmopoulos, M.P. (ed.), Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults (London and New York, 2003), 241–62Google Scholar, at 246–9.

39 The participle μεδέουσα (= ruling) may also refer to Aphrodite Philomedea (penis-loving as in Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 2.14.2; cf. Hes. Theog. 188–91) or Philommeides (laughter-loving as in Il. 4.10; 5.375; 14.211).

40 De Young, J.B., Homosexuality: Contemporary Claims Examined in Light of the Bible and Other Ancient Literature and Law (Grand Rapids, 2000)Google Scholar, 242. During Rehoboam's reign (late tenth century b.c.e.), in the kingdom of Judah, ‘there were male temple prostitutes in the land. They committed all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel’ (1 Kings 14:23–4). All the same, Rehoboam's grandson, Asa, and his son, Jehoshaphat, also dealt with male prostitutes who had remained in the land (1 Kings 15:12 and 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7).

41 For the text of the Hebrew Bible, I used Van Dyke Parunak, H., Whitaker, R., Tov, E., Groves, A. et al. (edd.), The Michigan-Claremont-Westminster Hebrew Bible (Stuttgart, 1990)Google Scholar; for the Septuagint, I used Rahlfs, A. (ed.), Septuaginta (Stuttgart, 1935)Google Scholar.

42 Nissinen, M., Homoeroticism in the Biblical World (Minneapolis, 1998)Google Scholar, 41; also, Burns, J.B., ‘Devotee or deviate: the “dog” (keleb) in ancient Israel as a symbol of male passivity and perversion’, Journal of Religion and Society 2 (2000), 1–10Google Scholar, at 2; Balch, D.L., Homosexuality, Science and the ‘Plain’ Sense of Scripture (Grand Rapids, 2000)Google Scholar, 173 with nn. 61–2 denies that the term qādēš/qědēšim, used in the Deuteronomistic text, refers to a class of male prostitutes. He argues instead that the biblical references are polemical constructions that indicate no first-hand knowledge of the institution of sacred prostitution; cf. Thompson, T.L., Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written and Archaeological Sources (Leiden, 1992), 124–5Google Scholar; also, Anderson, C.B., Women, Ideology and Violence: Critical Theory and the Construction of Gender in the Book of the Covenant and the Deuteronomic Law (London, 2004), 32–3Google Scholar with Bird, P.A., ‘The end of the male cult prostitute: a literary-historical and sociological analysis of Hebrew qades-qedesim’, in Emerton, J.A. (ed.), Congress Volume Cambridge 1995 (Leiden, 1997), 37–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 43–50 and Nelson, R.D., Deuteronomy: A Commentary (Louisville and London, 2002)Google Scholar, 281; Malul, M., ‘אִי ׁש עִתִִי (Lev. 16:21): a marginal person’, Journal of Biblical Literature 128.3 (2009), 437–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 439–40, esp. n. 9 referring to id., ‘David's curse of Joab (2 Samuel 3:29) and the social significance of mḥizyq bplk’, Aula Orientalis 10 (1992), 49–67Google Scholar, at 51–6. Driver, S.R., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (Edinburgh, 1895)Google Scholar, 264 argued that the term ‘dog’ – probably the Phoenician equivalent of qādēšim – was discovered in an enumeration of ministers and attendants from a temple of Astoreth at Larnaca in Cyprus.

43 See Westenholz, J.G., ‘Tamar, qĕdēšā, qadištu, and sacred prostitution in Mesopotamia’, Harvard Theological Review 82.3 (1989), 245–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 246–8, arguing against the existence of sacred prostitution in the ancient Near East; in her opinion the Jewish word qědēša (the etymological equivalent of Akkadian qadištu), refers to someone consecrated to a pagan deity, and although the exact role of such persons is not clearly understood our evidence suggests that they had a special relation with Ištar (see her p. 253 referring to a letter from Sippar where the seals of the goddess participate in the procession of a qadištu woman; cf. her p. 256 for nu-nig, the Sumerian equivalent of qadištu, in the cult of Inanna). Budin, S., The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008), 35–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar discusses Hosea 4:14 referring to Jews sacrificing with the qedešôt as evidence for the cultic function. Also, see her Ch. 4 (pp. 58–92) discussing Herodotus' invention of Babylonian sacred prostitution. Although I agree with Budin that ‘sacred prostitution’ did not exist, in my view the misrepresentation of Babylonian customs does not originate in Herodotus but in our translations of his work (publication in preparation).

44 Hence, John in Revelation 22:15 refers to the κῦνες, the dogs who do not worship true God including the sexually immoral. Paul in the Philippians 3:2–3 warns Christians against the ‘dogs’ who mutilate their flesh, a reference so far understood to target the Jewish practice of circumcision; but, in Leviticus 21:5, mutilation of the flesh is described as an abomination of the pagans; cf. the Wisdom of Solomon 14:12–31, where pagan rituals are associated with sexual perversion.

45 Bottéro, J. and Petschow, H., ‘Homosexualität’, Reallexicon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie 4 (1975), 459–68Google Scholar, at 460–1 summarize textual and artistic evidence; Bachvarova, M., ‘Sumerian gala priests and Eastern Mediterranean returning gods: tragic lament in cross-cultural perspective’, in Suter, A. (ed.), Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Beyond (Oxford, 2008), 18–52Google Scholar, at 20 with n. 11 cites the poem of Inanna and Iddin-Dagan (available from ETCSL [= Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature] 2.5.3.1), where the kurgarrû appear as carrying female implements such as spindles (pilaqqu) and knives with which they slashed themselves in ritual ecstasy; also, see Teppo, S., ‘Sacred Marriage and the Devotees of Ishtar’, in Nissinen, M. and Uro, R. (edd.), Sacred Marriages: the Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (Winona Lakes, 2008), 75–92Google Scholar at 78–9 with n. 25; cf. Greenberg, C., The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago and London, 1988), 96Google Scholar; also, Henshaw, R.A., Male and Female, the Cultic Personnel: The Bible and the Rest of the Ancient Near East (Allison Park, 1994), 284–301Google Scholar and Leick, G., Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (London and New York, 1994), 147–56Google Scholar on sexual deviants.

46 On the gala, see Henshaw (n. 45), 88–96; Cohen, M.E., The Canonical Lamentations of Ancient Mesopotamia (Potomac, 1988), 13–14Google Scholar; Rubio, G., ‘Review: Inanna and Dumuzi: a Sumerian love story’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 121.2 (2001), 268–74, at 270–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Bachvarova (n. 45), 20 argues, it is unlikely that the gala priests were ‘always homosexual or (primarily) eunuchs in the modern sense of the word’. Yet, they were often grouped together with other categories of people of an ‘irregular sexual nature’, while Inanna's ability to transgress the gender boundaries is linked with the ability to mourn and raise the dead – which was the primary role of the gala; cf. Teppo (n. 45), 90–2.

47 H. Hartmann, ‘Die Musik der sumerischen Kultur’ (Diss., Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat, 1960), 138; Cohen, M.E., Balag-Compositions: Sumerian Lamentation Liturgies of the Second and First Millennia b.c.e. (Malibu, 1974)Google Scholar, 11, 32; Bottéro and Petschow (n. 45), 465; Sefati, Y., Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi-Inanna Songs (Ramat Gan, 1998), 53–5Google Scholar; Bachvarova (n. 45), 19–22 and 40 with further bibliography. On the association of emesal with lamentation and female mourners, see Teppo (n. 45), 84 with nn. 53–4.

48 Gelb, I.J., ‘Homo ludens in early Mesopotamia’, Studia Orientalia 46 (1975), 43–76Google Scholar, at 73; Kramer, S.N., ‘BM 29616: the fashioning of the gala’, Acta Sumerologica 3 (1981), 1–12Google Scholar, at 2; Lambert, W.G., ‘Prostitution’, in Haas, V. (ed.), Aussenseiter und Randgruppen (Konstanz, 1992), 127–57Google Scholar, at 150–2; Balch (n. 42), 170–1. Also, see Teppo (n. 45), 80–1 and 83–5.

49 Text and trans. from ETCSL 6.1.02, no. 2.100; note that the word gala was written as UŠ.KU, with the first Sumerogram having also the reading GIŠ3 (= penis) and the second one, DUR2 (= anus). In addition, gala is homophonous with gal4–la (= vulva); G. Rubio, ‘Sumerian morphology’, in Kaye, A.S. (ed.), Morphologies of Asia and Africa (Winona Lakes, 2007), 1327–79Google Scholar, at 1369–70; Steinkeller, P., Third-Millennium Legal and Administrative Texts in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad (Winona Lakes, 1992)Google Scholar, 37, also cited by Teppo (n. 45), 84 with n. 57.

50 Gordon, E., Sumerian Proverbs: Glimpses of Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (Philadephia, 1959), 248–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar chose ‘excite’ instead of ‘remove’ (that which belongs to the goddess). Cf. Teppo (n. 45), 84.

51 Groneberg, B., ‘Die sumerisch-akkadische Inanna/Istar: Hermaphroditos?’, Die Welt des Orients 17 (1986), 25–46Google Scholar, at 33–9; Leick (n. 45), 157–69; Bachvarova (n. 45), 33–4, 44; also, see Henshaw (n. 45), 288. Launderville, D., Celibacy in the Ancient World: Its Ideal and Practice in Pre-Hellenistic Israel, Mesopotamia, and Greece (Collegeville, 2010), 38–9Google Scholar summarizes the bibliography on the androgynous nature of Inanna/Ištar mirrored in the ambivalent status of her gala priests.

52 Limet, H., ‘Le poème épique “Innina et Ebih”: une version des lignes 123 à. 182’, Orientalia 40 (1971), 12–28Google Scholar, at 21; Maul, S.M., ‘Kurgarru und assinnu und ihr Stand in der babylonischen Gesellschaft’, in Haas, V. (ed.), Aussenseiter und Randgruppen: Beitrage zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Alten Orients (Konstanz, 1992), 159–71Google Scholar, esp. 166; also, see George, A.R., ‘Four temple rituals from Babylon’, in George, A.R. and Finkel, L. (edd.), Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W.G. Lambert (Winona Lakes, 2000), 259–300Google Scholar, at 270 n. 21.

53 Erra and Išum, Tablet IV, lines 55–8 in Foster, B., Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 2 vols. (Bethesda, 1993)Google Scholar, 797. In the Uru-Amirabi lamentation Ištar also confirms her ability to reverse the order of things including turning a man into a woman. Tablet 20:64–9 in Volk, K., Die Ballag-Komposition Úru-Am-ma-ir-ra-bi: Rekonstruktion und Bearbeitung der Tafeln 18 (19 ff), 19, 20 und 21 der spätten, kanonischen Version (Stuttgart, 1989), 143–4Google Scholar and 150; Launderville (n. 51), 336–7.

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55 Nissinen (n. 42), 28–32, 41 with 147 n. 45; Teppo (n. 45), 81 with n. 35 listing the meanings of the Sumerian word UR (= dog) as ‘young man, a servant, a warrior, or an enemy’.

56 Skinner (n. 1), 113–27, esp. 126–9. On p. 299 n. 6, Skinner writes: ‘Strictly speaking, a kinaidos was a kind of dancer whose movements accompanied by the rattle of the tambourine included suggestive wriggling of the buttocks; an inscription from the temple of Isis [Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (= CIG) 4926] indicates that such dancing might be performed in honour of Dionysus’; cf. Williams, C.A., Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 2010 2)Google Scholar, 175 with n. 81 and 193. In Roman times, of course, kinaidoi were typically associated with the cult of Dionysus; see Taylor, R., ‘Two pathic subcultures in Ancient Rome’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 7.3 (1997), 319–71Google Scholar, at 337 and 351; Vout, C., Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (Cambridge, 2002), 155–6Google Scholar; cf. Dunbabin, K., ‘Problems in the iconography of Roman Mime’, in Hugoniot, C., Hurlet, F. and Milanezi, S. (edd.), Le statut de l'acteur dans l'Antiquité grecque et romaine (Tours, 2004), 161–81Google Scholar, at 170–5.

57 Dionysus was assumed to be foreign in ancient Greece as Euripides' Bacchae exemplifies (i.e. Bacch. 14–8; 55–60; 64–7; 75–87; 127; 140–4; 159; 233–5; 453; 464; 571; 1035; 1047; cf. Hdt. 2.146). He was described as effeminate and even dressed in women's attire; Frontisi-Ducroux, F. and Lissarrague, F., ‘From ambiguity to ambivalence: a Dionysiac excursion through the “Anakreontic” vases’, in Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (edd.), Before Sexuality (Princeton, 1990), 211–56Google Scholar, at 216–17; Carpenter, T., Dionysian Imagery in Fifth-Century Athens (Oxford, 1997), 105–7Google Scholar; Evans, A., The God of Ecstasy (New York, 1988), 20–1Google Scholar. He was also linked with homosexuality; see Evans (above), 33–4; Jameson, M., ‘The asexuality of Dionysus’, in Carpenter, T. and Faraone, C. (edd.), Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca, NY, 1993), 44–64Google Scholar, at 44–5; cf. Kerenyi, C., Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Princeton, 1976), 275–7Google Scholar about Dionysus' alleged castration; cf. Clement, Protr. 2.19.4; nevertheless, he was worshipped with phallophoria, phallic processions which, as depicted on ancient vases, witnessed a celebration of sexual power; Danielou, A., The Phallus: Sacred Symbol of Male Creative Power, trans. Graham, J. (Rochester and Vermont, 1995), 94–6Google Scholar.

58 CAD (= Chicago Assyrian Dictionary) K: 529, 557; Nissinen (n. 42), 28–33; Burns (n. 42), 3, esp. n. 3.

59 For the familiarity of the ancient Jews with the assinnu, see Malul, M., Knowledge, Control, and Sex: Studies in Biblical Thought, Culture, and Worldview (Tel Aviv, 2002), 290–2Google Scholar and 298–312.

60 See Leick (n. 45), 266; George (n. 52), 270–1; Boiy, T., Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon (Leuven, 2004)Google Scholar, 284.

61 For the similarities of Cybele's Galli with the assinnu, see Nissinen (n. 42), 32–3, 41. Also, see Bachvarova (n. 45), 33–6, who describes the Phrygian Galli as the descendants of the Sumerian gala priests tracing a connection between gala priests and the classical-period Dionysian lamentation rituals.

62 For the Jewish prejudice against eunuchs, see Leviticus 21:20 and Deuteronomy 23:1 (cf. Deuteronomy 22:5 forbidding cross-dressing); also, see Daube, D., ‘The Hebrew Bible prohibitions of homosexuality’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte Romanistische Abteilung 103 (1986), 447–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim argues that the Leviticus laws are comparable to Assyrian laws on passive homosexuality. However, it could be argued that in their polemic the Jews probably classified as ‘eunuchs’ all types of pagan priests and cult officials; cf. Williams (n. 56), 193–4.

63 Text and translation by Colson, F.H., On the Decalogue. On the Special Laws, Books 1–3 (Cambridge, MA and London, 1937), 500–1Google Scholar. Note that I have opted to translate ἀνδρογύνους as ‘androgynous creatures’, which Colson rendered as ‘hybrids of man and woman’. Also, note that, like Cybele, the Ephesian Artemis was also worshipped by self-emasculated eunuchs whom in the second century c.e. Clement [who had an Assyrian (Tatian?) and a Jewish teacher (Theophilus of Caesarea)] referred to as effeminate κίναιδοι (Pedag. 3.4). Ferguson, J., Clement of Alexandria (New York, 1974)Google Scholar, 50.

64 Keuls (n. 27), 1–4.

65 It seems that the ancient Jews shared their ambivalent attitude towards eunuchs/passive homosexuals, ranging from abject scorn to furtive attraction, with other near eastern societies and the Greeks; Hester, J.D., ‘Eunuchs and the postgender Jesus: Matthew 19.12 and transgressive sexualities’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28.1 (2005), 13–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 18–24; cf. Hdt. 8.105–6. Also, see Crompton, L., Homosexuality and Civilisation (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 53–4Google Scholar; Hubbard, T.K., Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (Berkeley, 2003), 86–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Greek Comedy) and 268–306 (Hellenistic Epigrams); on kinaidoi in the classical period, see Winkler, J.J., ‘Laying down the law: the oversight of men's sexual behavior in Classical Athens’, in Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (edd.), Before Sexuality (Princeton, 1990), 176–8Google Scholar, 188–90.

66 Roller, L.E., In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele (Berkeley, 1999)Google Scholar, 318; also, see Greenberg (n. 45), 96–8 and Nissinen (n. 42), 31–2. On the social marginalization of the cultic personnel of Ištar, see Teppo (n. 45), 87–8.

67 Osiris had been allegedly castrated after death and Isis had made for him an artificial phallus worshipped in his festivals; cf. Plut. De Is. et Os. 358B; 353C; 380B–C; Diod. Sic. 1.22.6. Myśliwiec, K., Eros on the Nile, trans. Packer, G.L. (Ithaca, 2004), 27, 57–9Google Scholar discussed the similarities between Dionysian and Osirian phallic processions.

68 This is certainly what Clement believed; see Clement, Pedag. 3.4.29.3; cf. Paul's letter to the Romans 1:18–32 and Banister, J., ‘Ὁμοίως and the use of parallelism in Romans 1:26–27’, Journal of Biblical Literature 128.3 (2009), 569–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 588, esp. n. 38 for additional bibliography.

69 The maenads, followers of Dionysus, pound the ground with the thyrsus, which drips honey and causes milk and wine to gush up from the earth (Eur. Bacch. 700–15); the imagery here is strikingly close to the Mesopotamian hymns that celebrated the union of the fertility goddess and her consort; see, for example, hymn DI C in P. Lapinkivi, The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in Light of Comparative Evidence (Helsinki, 2004), 64; also, Leick (n. 45), 77.

70 Kroeger, C., ‘The apostle Paul and the Graeco-Roman cults of women’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 30.1 (1987), 25–38Google Scholar, at 37.

71 Conner, R.P., Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming the Connections between Homoeroticism and the Sacred (San Francisco, 1993), 96Google Scholar; also, see his p. 116, where he argues that ritualized eroticism experienced a kind of renaissance from the fourth century b.c.e. to the third century c.e. Also, see Hincks, M.A., ‘Le Kordax dans le culte de Dionysos’, Revue archéologique IV/17 (1911), 1–5Google Scholar, passim; Lawler, L.B., ‘IXΘYEΣ XOPEYTAI’, CPh 36.2 (1941), 142–55Google Scholar, at 142 n. 4; Mathiesen, T.J., Apollo's Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln and London, 1999)Google Scholar, 101.

72 Cunningham (n. 2, 1964), 34, esp. nn. 2 and 5; Rist (n. 2), 443.

73 Moran, W.L., The Amarna Letters (Baltimore, 1992), nos. 314–16Google Scholar, 319, 322–5, 378; also Akkadisches Hand-Wörterbuch (W. von Soden = AHw) p. 424b; CAD K 72; cf. Textes cunéiformes du Luvre (= TCL) 3, 12:58, where Sargon refers to the Manaean king thus: eli erbi rettišunu iptaššilū kīma kalbī (‘crawling on all fours like dogs in obeisance before him’); cf. Thomas, D. Winton, ‘Kelebh “Dog”: its origin and some usages of it in the Hebrew Bible’, Vetus Testamentum 10 (1960), 410–27Google Scholar, at 414; Coats, G.W., ‘Self-abasement and insult formulas’, Journal of Biblical Literature 89.1 (1970), 14–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 24.

74 Winton Thomas (n. 73), 425.

75 Even in the earlier Cursing of Agade, the Gutians, the city's enemies, are described as having canine instincts/feelings and monkey features. Text and trans. from ETCSL 2.1.5, lines 155–6; cf. Jastrow, M., A Dictionary of the Targumin, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and Midrashic Literature (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, 1.639 for keleb as a mean person in Aramaic; also, M.H. Pope, Job (New York, 1973), 219.

76 Hutton, J.M., ‘“Abdi-Aširta, the slave, the dog”: self-abasement and invective in the Amarna Letters, the Lachish Letters, and 2 Samuel 3:8’, Zeitschrift für Althebraistik 15–16 (2002/3), 2–18Google Scholar, at 5–6; Hutton disagrees with Margalith, O., ‘Keleb: homonym or metaphor?’, Vetus Testamentum 33 (1983), 491–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argued that keleb in Hebrew could mean dog (as a loan word from Akkadian) as well as slave. Also, see Miller, J.D., ‘Attitudes toward dogs in ancient Israel: a reassessment’, Journal for the Study of Old Testament 32.4 (2008), 487–500CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 497, suggesting that we should take the Deuteronomy text literally (that the price of selling a dog is compared to the price of hiring a prostitute), despite admitting on p. 495 that the ancient Israelites had associated dogs with pagan rituals which they abhorred.

77 Farber, W., ‘Mannam lušpur ana Enkidu: some new thoughts about an old motif’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 49.4 (1990), 299–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 299; Wasserman, N., Style and Form in Old-Babylonian Literary Texts (Leiden, 2002), 180–4Google Scholar.

78 Text and translation from Walls, N., Desire, Death and Discord: Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Myth (Boston, 2001)Google Scholar, 27 with n. 35, also citing the following: Whiting, R.M., ‘An old Babylonian incantation from Tell Asmar’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 75 (1985), 179–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 180–1; Cooper, J.S., ‘Magic and m(is)use: poetic promiscuity in Mesopotamian ritual’, in Vogelzang, M. and Vanstiphout, H. (edd.), Mesopotamian Poetic Language: Sumerian and Akkadian (Groningen, 1996), 47–57Google Scholar, at 47 with n. 4 and 51 with n. 16; Wilcke, C., ‘Liebesbeschwörungen aus Isin’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 75 (1985), 188–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 201; Foster (n. 53), 123, 144. Other incantations describe passion as a wolf, ‘tireless in running’ (lakāta mād), and one must remember that both wolves and dogs belong to the canids.

79 Note the euphemistic use of birkān, knees, for genitals in CAD s.v. birku. Also, see Geller, M.J., Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud (Berlin, 2004)Google Scholar, 18 n. 65, who refers to the rivalry between schools in Palestine and Babylonia in the third century c.e. As he points out, in the Talmud (Pesachim 113b), we read: ‘Our Rabbis taught: Three hate one another, viz.: dogs, fowls, and Parsee priests; some say, harlots too; some say, scholars in Babylonia too.’ As this beraita (= teaching external to the Mishnah) indicates, the ‘dogs’ and ‘fowls’ were replaced by prostitutes in another saying. Despite the late date of the Talmud (the Mishnah is dated around 200 c.e.), the oral tradition it relates goes back several centuries.

80 Hence, see Gleason, M.W., ‘The semiotics of gender: physiognomy and self-fashioning in the second century c.e.’, in Winkler, J.J., Zeitlin, F.I. and Halperin, D.M. (edd.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, 1990), 389–416Google Scholar, at 397–8 for prostitutes as the astrological twin of kinaidoi in second-century c.e. horoscopes on account of their sexual passivity.