* A slightly different version of this review was published in February
2009 on the Hist-Sex list of H-Net.
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-histsex&month=0902&week=b&msg=Ug%2bYuljwHAbsmjyw%2bhMXhQ&user=&pw=
The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in
Ancient Greece. By JAMES DAVIDSON. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007.
Pp. xxii + 634. Cloth, $42.00. ISBN 978–0–297–81997–4.
Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: Boys were their Gods. By ANDREW LEAR AND
EVA CANTARELLA. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Pp. xviii + 262.
Cloth, $115.00. ISBN 978–0–415–22367–6.
Order these texts for $34.96 and $37.75, respectively, from Amazon.com
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Previously published CJ Online reviews are at
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CJ Online 2009.11.03
Study of Greek same-sex relations since Sir Kenneth Dover’s influential
Greek Homosexuality (London, 1978) has been dominated by a hierarchical
understanding of the pederastic relations assumed to be normative between
older, sexually and emotionally active “lovers” and younger, sexually
and emotionally passive “beloveds.” Michel Foucault’s subsequent
History of Sexuality: Vol. 2, The Use of Pleasure (New York, 1986) was
heavily influenced by Dover’s collection of evidence and concretized
these roles into formalized “sexual protocols.” Self-consciously
invoking Foucault was David Halperin’s One Hundred Years of Homosexuality
(London, 1990), which envisioned phallic penetration as a trope for the
asymmetrical political empowerment of adult citizen males over “women,
boys, foreigners, and slaves—all of them persons who do not enjoy the
same legal and political rights and privileges that he does” (Halperin,
p. 30). This orthodoxy, conditioned by the academic hegemony of feminist
theory and contemporary anxieties over child sexual abuse, has begun to be
seriously challenged only during the last several years. Both of the books
reviewed here aim, with varying degrees of success, to offer a more nuanced
and multi-dimensional picture of relations that were often mutual, not
always radically age-different, and seldom crudely exploitive in the way
implied by the Dover-Foucault-Halperin approach.
However, in Davidson’s book, we find a new form of political correctness
substituted for the old: instead of socially constructed relations of power
and domination, Davidson gives us an ancient Greece in which there was no
physical sex with those under 18, male prostitution was condemned, gays
openly served in the military and engaged in long-term monogamous
relationships that were acknowledged in public “wedding” ceremonies. If
this sounds a little too much like the assimilationist preoccupations of
the mainstream lesbian and gay rights movement today, the reader may with
some justification wonder whether he is being sold a bill of goods.
Davidson is the author of an excellent, highly readable first book,
Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens
(London, 1997), and an important 50-page article on the present subject in
the respected historical journal Past and Present. However, fans of his
previous work (among whom I would count myself) cannot fail but be dismayed
by this turgid, self-indulgent, interminable tome of 634 pages, in which
the author with free abandon mingles fact, fantasy, speculation,
mistranslation, misleading paraphrase, and arguments of such impenetrable
convolution and improbability that even the experienced scholarly
specialist is left with head spinning. This is a genuine shame, as there
are actually many valuable observations within the book, but one must wade
through quite a bit of muck to find them.
It is unclear just who the intended audience of this book is. Bound between
handsome, color-illustrated endpapers and heavily promoted by a British
trade press (although no American distributor has yet seen fit to pick it
up), the volume would appear to be intended for a general public of
well-educated, but Greekless readers. But few of these are going to have
the patience to make their way through a book on this subject that is both
so long and long-winded, that indulges in so many allusive in-jokes, and
that casually refers back to factoids or theories last mentioned 300 pages
ago as if they were still in the forefront of the reader’s consciousness.
The scholarly specialist, on the other hand, is likely to be put off by the
author’s breezy style, erratic annotation, outright mistakes, and
repeated assertions of erroneous dogma as established fact.
A major problem that this book shares with much work in the field of
ancient sexuality is a failure to distinguish between primary sources that
are credible and those less deserving of our trust; even sources
contemporary with the practices described need to be interpreted through
the rhetorical inflections and ideological biases of the author or genre.
Anecdotes gleaned from authors like Ephorus, Theopompus, Sosicrates, Nepos,
Aelian, Athenaeus, and Maximus of Tyre should not automatically receive our
credence: some of them wrote history to be colorful and entertaining,
others wrote miscellanies full of tidbits and curiosities from the distant
past. What is most interesting in these authors is not the facticity of
what they report, but what their selection of anecdotes reveals about their
own ideological prisms and contemporary concerns.
A second major issue is the author’s lack of careful engagement with or,
in many cases, even acknowledgment of relevant recent scholarship that
contradicts his assertions. We shall note several specific cases in the
body of this review. Even in cases where he has read something, he may
misrepresent the author’s argument. For example, on p. 184 he states,
“In the real world, any Athenian caught assaulting a boy under Eighteen
… could be punished with death on the same day.” The attached footnote
identifies David Cohen’s 1991 book Law, Sexuality, and Society as his
source for this bold assertion, but Cohen nowhere says anything of the
sort; Cohen merely cites Aeschines 1.7–8 with reference to “acting as a
procurer for a free boy.” Aeschines 1.16 does say something about the
death penalty for assault, but editors of Aeschines universally agree that
this quotation of a law (like all such quotations in the speeches of
Demosthenes and Aeschines) is a later fabrication with no evidentiary
authority for the 4th century.
But the worst problem with this book is its carelessness in translation and
paraphrase of the ancient sources, which often results in serious
misrepresentation of the information they convey. Sometimes the errors are
inconsequential to the broader argument, as when he identifies Pelops as
“Zeus’s attendant on Olympus” (p. 2—a misunderstanding of
Pindar’s Greek in Olympian 1.41–5) or claims, with no specific
citation, that Agathon in Plato’s Symposium is “barely 18” (p. 27);
Plato nowhere says any such thing, although Symp. 175e does identify him as
neos (a term usually referring to young men in their twenties). Similarly,
he claims that Vergil identifies Jupiter’s rape of Ganymede as “the
reason” (p. 177) for Juno’s hatred of the Trojans, when in fact, as
every Latin student knows, he merely includes it as third on a list of
three possible motivations (Aeneid 1.25–8). Few competent Greek scholars
would believe that Phaedrus 263d could possibly be read as “speeches of
Cephalus” (p. 213).
He is no better in dealing with material remains: he states, as if it were
a well-known fact not even needing to be footnoted, that the splendid
François Vase in Florence once contained remains of the dead (p. 260). No
Greek vase found in an Etruscan tomb ever did; indeed the Etruscans did not
even practice cremation during this period. He misreads the inscription on
a jug by the Eretria Painter to identify a character as Kephalos (p. 213),
when even the most cursory examination of the secondary literature on this
piece would have revealed that the character was Kephimos.
More serious, however, are the occasions when tendentious translations are
used to undergird substantive arguments, as when he mistranslates Plato,
Symposium 182b, to mean “it has been straightforwardly laid down by law
[haplôs nenomothetêtai] that it is beautiful to graciously gratify” a
lover (p. 353, italics in original). Although the verb nomotheteô may
indeed refer to the action of a lawgiver, the notion of nomos Pausanias
employs throughout this speech in the Symposium is clearly with reference
to “custom” and not “law” in our usual understanding of the term;
laws can hardly dictate what we find “beautiful.” In another chapter,
he tries to argue that the Greek word katapygon refer to those with a
proclivity to take the active role in anal sex: in support of this notion,
he mistranslates Aristophanes, Knights 640–1 to suggest that a character
“bends over and thrusts his anus” (p. 63) toward a katapygon, whereas
in fact the Greek must mean that he made a quick obeisance to the gods and
then used his rear end to break down the gate into the Council meeting, a
move that would have him facing the katapygon rather than turning his back.
He is equally misleading in translating sophrosynê as “chasteness” (p.
70); the word denotes a more general concept of restraint and moderation,
which in pederastic contexts might mean something other than “abstinence
only” (e.g. being careful and selective in choosing a lover/beloved).
Another substantive contention is that Greek boys encountered puberty much
later than boys nowadays: to support this idea, Davidson must discredit the
testimony of the Aristotelian History of Animals, which clearly states that
male puberty hits at 14 (HA 581a13–17). To do so, Davidson claims (p. 527
n. 30) that the Aristotelian text must be wrong, since it also says beard
growth does not occur until 21 and there cannot be such a long gap between
the onset of puberty and growth of a beard. However, he misinterprets the
Aristotelian text, which in fact asserts (HA 582a16–34) that beard growth
occurs at some point “until three times seven years” (mechri tôn tris
hepta etôn); in other words, rather than saying that 21 is the normal age
of beard development, as Davidson claims, the text says that 21 is the
latest point at which males, whose individual development varies, show a
beard.
Even worse are the cases where he blatantly misrepresents the content of
texts. Nothing in either Xenophon’s Hellenica 7.4.13 (cited on pp.
346–7) or Symposium 8.34 (cited on p. 492) supports the claim that the
Eleans had an elite military band of lovers like the Thebans: the texts
merely refer to a group of 300. Nothing in Maximus of Tyre 20.8
characterizes Spartan relationships as age-equal (p. 85). Nothing in Ibycus
fr. 282(a) identifies Polycrates as a “boy” (p. 412). By all accounts,
Ibycus’ association with Polycrates of Samos was limited to the
latter’s period as a tyrant ruling the island; the praise of his beauty
is an encomiastic topos frequently used of adult patrons in encomiastic
poetry. [[1]] Nothing in Plato’s Lysis, which he cites on p. 425 without
specific identification of the passage, says or implies that there was a
“law against ‘mingling’” between older and younger boys in the
gymnasium. Indeed, Lysis 406d specifically shows them doing so at the
festival of Hermes, and nothing says they were not allowed to do so on
other occasions as well; indeed, Attic vase painting reveals such
interaction in the gym to be ubiquitous. I have by no means checked all the
references within this book, and indeed the style of reference is often so
inexact that they cannot be checked. However, the number that do not check
out when I do track them down leaves me with a deep suspicion of any claim
the book makes that I do not already know to be true from independent
knowledge. This is not a book that the non-specialist reader can rely upon
for accuracy.
With these prefatory caveats, let us proceed to examine the book’s
arguments chapter by chapter. The first two chapters are largely concerned
with issues of terminology. Chapter 1 surveys the various Greek words for
love, focusing particularly on Eros, both as an abstract concept and a
divine personification. Davidson defines erôs as a longing for the absent,
which may be, but need not always be overtly sexual. Scant notice is taken
of Bruce Thornton’s Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Boulder,
1997), which deals with this subject at length. Chapter 2 turns its
attention to charis, which in an erotic context refers to sex offered
freely as part of a gracious interpersonal exchange; as such, Davidson
argues that it can only characterize homoerotic transactions in the Greek
world, since women had no capacity to choose. This is unexceptionable (and
unoriginal) enough, but he is on less firm ground with some of the other
terms covered in this chapter: contrary to previous interpreters, he argues
that the comic word euruprôktos (literally “with a wide-open anus”)
possessed no sexual implications, but was merely a vulgar variant of
eurustomos (“with a wide-open mouth”), referring to orators and other
wordsmiths who are always farting (i.e. talking). However, Aristophanes,
Clouds 1083–1104 makes it very clear that euruprôktos is synonymous with
kinoumenos (“being fucked”); it is not caused by breaking wind, but by
having foreign objects introduced into the anus. He usefully notes that the
pejorative term kinaidos is not used in comic authors, but in serious
authors of the 4th century BCE and later. I believe that he is right to
reject the usual translation of “sexual passive,” since, as he notes,
lexicographers associate the term with general lewdness and debauchery.
However, he is wrong to believe that the term refers specifically to a
corrupting seducer or abuser of other males; it and closely related words
are too often coupled with the term moichos (“adulterer”) in reference
to the same person.
Chapter 3, “Age Classes, Love-Rules and Corrupting the Young,” is one
of the most important in the book, as it is here that Davidson undertakes
to demolish “the fable of paedophile Greeks” (p. 70) by arguing that
physical intimacies could be practiced legally only with “boys” 18 and
older. However, his evidence for this sweeping assertion is extremely thin.
He misinterprets Aeschines 1.139 to affirm that the Law of Solon forbade
such associations with any boy who is akuros (i.e. “not yet in control of
his own affairs legally”). What Davidson fails to see is that Aeschines
is throwing sand in the jurors’ eyes with almost all of his legal
citations throughout the speech, something the Attic orators did commonly;
if one examines the original Greek, it is clear that this particular
sentence (embedded within a paragraph quoting Solon’s actual law, which
merely forbade slaves to enter the gymnasium or pursue free boys) [[2]] is
bracketed as Aeschines’ own opinion (note the opening verb oimai) of what
the law ought to do (note the present tense verbs, in contrast to the past
tense always used of the lawgiver himself).
Equally amazing is the assertion that “Laws forbade anyone of Twenty or
over from entering the gymnasium when under-Eighteens were exercising: The
strictest penalties, not excluding the death penalty, were imposed on those
who transgressed” (p. 69). No textual citation or footnote is attached to
this grand statement, but it continues to be repeated throughout the rest
of the book as an established fact. But at least for Athens in the
classical period, it is pure fiction. We do possess an inscription from the
Macedonian town of Beroea in the 2nd century BCE that tells the gymnasiarch
to prevent young men and boys from mingling in the gymnasium, but it
contains no reference to the death penalty. Although Davidson does not
mention it, some scholars interpret Aeschines 1.10 as referring to an
Athenian law with similar intent, but that view is based on a
mistranslation of the verb eisphoitaô to mean that young men of a certain
age could not “enter” the gymnasium, whereas the verb is actually a
frequentative that means “attend regular classes at” the gymnasium; the
supposed text of the law in 1.12 (which must be the source for Davidson’s
nonsense about the death penalty) is universally bracketed as spurious.
Davidson rightly argues that Ancient Greece was an “age-class” society,
but goes too far in implying that the Greeks did not count years: Solon fr.
27W proves that they did. The same fragment also shows that the Greeks did
not consider 18 a particularly important dividing line, so much as 14 (the
onset of puberty) and 21 (full physical maturity); see also Aristotle, Pol.
1336b37–37a1. Davidson’s view that the Greeks must have experienced
puberty at 18.5 contradicts not only what Solon tells us, but virtually
every other ancient source until late Roman times. [[3]] Davidson’s
argument is based on accounts of puberty from the 18th century and
anthropological estimates drawn from very early civilizations unconnected
with Greece, but surely Aristotle and the ancient medical writers are
better witnesses. Davidson also misses the mark when positing that the term
meirakion refers only to 18–19 year olds; Hippocrates (ap. Philo, Opif.
Mundi 36.105) and Aristophanes of Byzantium (frr. 42–54 Slater) both say
that the term covered the entire range 14–21. Both associate pais as a
technical term not with under-18s, as Davidson does, but with children in
the 7–14 range. Although Davidson is right to point out that pais is
often used in a more generic sense, he strains credulity in claiming that
any use connecting that word with sexual activity must refer to 18–19
year olds.
Given this degree of philological carelessness at the outset, most of what
Davidson says about age throughout his book should be dismissed. However,
he does stray into Truth when speculating that sexual relations among
classmates may have been more common than literary sources reflect. As he
notes, the art historian Charles Hupperts estimates that as many as
one-third of the erotic scenes in red-figure painting involve age-equal
youths.
The second major section of the book, consisting of Chapters 4–6, looks
at the history of modern scholarship on Greek homosexuality, with
particular focus on the intellectual influences that shaped Sir Kenneth
Dover’s and Michel Foucault’s views of it. While some readers may be
put off by the ad hominem (e.g. snide remarks about Foucault’s
anti-Semitism or Dover’s self-pleasuring habits), this is arguably the
strongest part of the book. He traces Dover’s preoccupation with physical
sex and the shamefulness of being sexually passive to the influence of his
collaboration with the notoriously homophobic ethno-psychoanalyst Georges
Devereux, who labelled the Greek practice “pseudo-homosexuality”—all
a matter of acts rather than perverted orientation, and thus in
Devereux’s clinical view less pathological. While I agree with the basic
thrust of Davidson’s critique of Dover, he goes too far when he claims
that the Greeks did not at all share the modern concept of penetration as a
form of aggression: Aristophanes, Knights 364–5 and the so-called
“Eurymedon vase” (Fig. 3.5 in Lear and Cantarella) make it clear that
they did, particularly when it involves two adult males. However, I think
Davidson is right to interpret the conventions of Greek pederasty outside
of this framework and to emphasize that it is not “all about sex.”
Chapter 6 turns its attention toward Foucault, whose intellectual genealogy
is traced through the influence of the Boas–Sapir–Benedict–Mead
school of cultural anthropology on the one hand, and on the other that of
the French classicist Paul Veyne, obsessed with what he saw as
“Mediterranean sexuality.” The real target here is the doctrine of
“social constructionism,” a term Davidson avoids, but one is left
wondering, what does he propose in its place? A return to essentialism and
its transhistorical categories of identity? Davidson never makes it
altogether clear just where he stands in this debate.
The third section of the book, consisting of Chapters 7–9, aims to
connect Greek Love with “Greek Religions,” conveniently playing up to
those who wish to integrate gay sexuality into contemporary religion.
However, these chapters actually have very little to say about religious
ritual or belief; they instead treat various myths which are literary in
nature and have no connection with cult observance. On the one myth that
actually may have had ritual connections, that of Hyacinthus, he is unaware
of the fundamental work of Michael Petersson, Cults of Apollo at Sparta
(Stockholm, 1992); he is also ignorant of the relevant epigraphic evidence
(e.g. SEG 28.404) about “Hyacinthian” love in ancient Laconian ritual.
One finds throughout a lack of familiarity with even the most basic
principles of myth interpretation. He ignores the diachronic evolution of
literary and artistic variants, conflating together details from sources
that are centuries apart (see, for example, p. 170). He confuses separate
characters, like the Cephalus (son of Hermes) loved by the Dawn and the
Cephalus (son of Deion) married to Procris; the two are distinct until Ovid
conflates them. As if all of this were not enough, he subjects us to an
utterly incomprehensible and irrelevant theory about the position of the
constellation Auriga in the sky, when seen from the Erechtheum, as an
explanation for why Poseidon is involved in Pindar’s version of the myth
of Pelops.
Just as Section Three pandered to the religious gays, Section Four
addresses the militarist gays. Chapter 10 surveys homoerotic elements in
warrior myth, especially those of Achilles and Heracles. Davidson is
convinced that homosexual love was present in 8th-century Greece (despite a
void of independent evidence) and is thus at the heart of epic tradition,
even though nowhere explicitly mentioned. He believes that the contemporary
audience of the Iliad could not but have read the emotional bond of
Achilles and Patroclus in homosexual terms, even though the language of
Eros and lovemaking, so common in heterosexual contexts within epic, is
nowhere applied to them. He seems not to notice that even the four
appearances of the Ganymede story in epic tradition say nothing about Eros
as a motivating factor. He is so eager to read homosexuality into myths
that he even tries to reconstruct the lost Aethiopis to feature Antilochus
as a new beloved of Achilles (pp. 271–8), based on little more than
Achilles increasing his prize in Iliad.
Chapter 11 looks at the historical evidence concerning pederastic relations
in Crete and Sparta. Davidson credits the 4th-century historian Ephorus’
account of a special abduction ritual the Cretans practiced with noble
youths; not all would agree with his description of Isocrates’ pupil (p.
301 “by all accounts, a pretty good historian”). He appears to be
unaware that some sceptics have argued that this unusual ritual is
Ephorus’ entertaining concoction of different practices designed to
appeal to contemporary Athenian tastes. [[4]] Davidson’s attempt to
integrate Ephorus’ evidence with that of later sources like Aelian and
Maximus of Tyre is interesting, but it is unclear whether the Cretan
practices they describe are the same one; Crete was the “land of 100
cities,” each with its own customs and laws. Moreover, he proposes that
the abduction ceremony was a “wedding ritual,” which implies a
permanent relationship between the man and boy, something none of our texts
suggest. Even he so much as admits that his reconstruction of a Spartan
male wedding ritual (pp. 331–4) is pure fantasy. He does make the
interesting suggestion, albeit based on thin evidence, that the
contradictions among sources as to the chasteness of Spartan pederasty may
be explained by the peculiar nature of Spartan intercourse, intercrural
through clothing (pp. 326–31).
Chapter 12 turns its attention to some other parts of Greece that less
often form part of the discussion concerning Greek love. The chapter begins
with speculation about Elis, largely based on an enigmatic vase (his Figure
33) depicting a scene of anal intercourse that no one has ever understood,
but nothing specifically connects this piece with Elis. More intriguing are
his ideas about Thessaly and Macedonia, which he believes were societies
that did not follow the same age-structured protocols we reconstruct for
Athenian pederasty. In treating erotic anecdotes about Alexander the Great,
Davidson shows the appropriate scepticism toward our sources that he
elsewhere lacks; indeed, he even doubts that Hephaestion was actually the
beloved of Alexander, but thinks he was a politically serious character of
some importance. Davidson credits accounts of the Sacred Band of Thebes as
an elite corps of lovers and even treats it as the model for similar
military groups in Elis and Macedon; he is aware that David Leitao has
recently challenged this assumption even in relation to Thebes, but refuses
to engage with Leitao’s arguments in any serious way. [[5]]
The short Chapter 13 is a complete mystery to me, but Chapter 14 turns its
attention to the Aeolic and Ionian lyric poets of the 7th and 6th
centuries. Little new interpretation is offered. He appears to be unaware
(p. 398) that the late Thomas Rosenmeyer long ago debunked the canard that
elegy is sung to the accompaniment of a double-flute. [[6]]
Chapter 15 focuses on Athens: like many other critics, Davidson makes the
mistake of using Pausanias’ speech in Plato’s Symposium as reliable
evidence for Athenian social history, ignoring the ideological tendencies
engendered by Pausanias’ need to defend his own rather deviant form of
love for the intelligent, beautiful, grown-up, albeit effeminate Agathon.
Davidson is troubled that the usual interpretation of Athenian vase
painting yields such a different picture from the one he finds in
Pausanias’ speech, so he concludes that we must have been interpreting
the vases wrongly. In his view, all these scenes of men or youths fondling
or having intercrural intercourse with boys were really meant to be
condemnatory illustrations of the “improper.” This theory is both naive
and bizarre: these vases were meant for use at often wild drinking parties
(those in both Plato’s and Xenophon’s Symposium were exceptional in
their sobriety), where well-to-do men of the world would hardly be in the
mood to receive moral lectures on dignified behavior from the artisans who
painted their drinking ware. Symposia themselves are frequently the
subject-matter of vase painting and seem anything but dignified and
moralistic. No experienced critic of ancient vase iconography would
interpret visual details with Davidson’s eye: it is incredible that he
can describe the vigorous, hairy-chested man on the Brygos Painter’s cup,
of which he does not give us a picture (but Lear and Cantarella do, as
Figure 1.13), as “a kinaidos, sex pest” (p. 443) and “a Senior even,
with his pectoral muscles having drooped to mid-chest” (p. 444). He again
reveals himself unaware or unwilling to engage with the work of major
scholars, even in reference to the specific artifacts he discusses: both
the Brygos cup and the Getty psykter (a wrap-around scene of four courting
couples), to which he devotes a silly discussion on pp. 439–43, have been
discussed far more perceptively by Alan Shapiro. [[7]]
The thesis of Chapter 16 is that the 4th century BCE is the time when
“homo-whorishness” arrives in Athens in the form of “sex slaves who
might serve their masters as live-in lovers; handsome cithara-boys … and
mercenary politicians” (p. 446). What he fails to take into account is
that this impression is merely the accident of which sources happen to
survive from which periods: the kind of documents where we would hear about
these types of characters (Comedy and forensic oratory) are only extant
from the last quarter of the 5th century forward, not because comedies and
speeches in court did not occur earlier, but because it was only with the
growth of more widespread literacy and a developing book trade that it
became worthwhile for people to preserve these “lower” genres in
written form.
Davidson argues that there was never any negative public attitude toward
elite pederastic practices because both Timarchus’ defenders and
Aeschines speak of pederasty respectfully in orations aimed at the general
public of the jury (pp. 459–60). He seems unaware that the portion of the
speech in which Aeschines speaks favorably of an ideal, Platonic pederasty
was almost certainly added later only in the written version of the speech,
directed at a much more elite audience. [[8]] And Timarchus’ defenders
praise traditional pederasty with literary and historical examples
precisely to defend his undeniable homoerotic relationships before a public
which might be suspicious of the practice. Davidson is surely aware of my
“Popular Perceptions of Elite Homosexuality in Classical Athens,” [[9]]
but he nowhere mentions it or engages seriously with its arguments, just as
he ignores other scholars whose findings are inconvenient for his scenario.
The 51-page Conclusion, which rather self-importantly advertises itself as
“A Map of Greek Love,” complements Davidson’s previous pandering to
the “gays in the military” and the “gays in the church” crowds by
again addressing the gay-marriage fetishists. “The fact of pairing and
the identities of any particular pair must have been known to the
authorities; by some signal means or another, each same-sex relationship
must have been concretized as a public and archaeologicable fact” (p.
476). He ultimately traces these weddings back to Mycenaean chariot-pairs
and even Indo-European ritual (pp. 512–16). As with so many other grand
statements, his evidence is thin: the figures dancing around pairs having
intercrural sex in black-figure vase iconography cannot be, as he supposes,
witnesses or celebrants in a public ceremony of union. They are either
rival suitors or servants bringing gifts; as Lear and Cantarella’s book
shows, scenes in vase iconography should not be interpreted as photographic
documentation of what went on simultaneously so much as symbolic
juxtapositions.
* * *
In contrast to Davidson’s sensationalism, this book offers a more subtle
and less tendentious analysis in much shorter compass. Cantarella’s
contribution is limited to a 23-page survey of the literary material, which
unfortunately shares many of Davidson’s faults, pressing thin evidence to
make sweeping claims. Whereas Davidson errs in denying sex to boys under
18, Cantarella makes the opposite mistake of positing a uniform “social
code” in which the beloved was never over 18 and the lover under 20, even
though evidence suggests that both the Stoics (Athenaeus 13.563e) and the
Spartans (see Plutarch, Lycurgus 25.1) loved youths in their late 20s.
Strato’s epigram AP 12.4 (from the 2nd century CE) on his preferred ages
should hardly be used as evidence for practices 600 years earlier, which
were likely not uniform throughout Greece anyway. Like Davidson, Cantarella
assumes that pederastic myths necessarily derive from early ritual origins,
rather than arising as literary inflections of previously non-pederastic
stories. She also makes the mistake of reading highly colored literary
passages from authors like Aristophanes, Aeschines and Plato as if they
constituted evidence of universal attitudes.
However, the heart of this book is the iconographic survey offered by Lear,
from which both novice and experienced scholars can learn much. Lear warns
us that we should not treat Attic vase painting as a naturalistic
transcription of lived experience. Instead, it operates within the context
of aesthetic preferences and idealizing conventions: for example, genitals
are usually rendered in smaller proportions than is natural, suggesting
moderation and restraint, but are represented as larger than natural in
orgies or scenes featuring satyrs (fantasy projections of man’s
unrestrained, bestial side). The presence or absence of erections in scenes
of intimate interaction should not be construed as evidence of who is or is
not receiving pleasure, but must be interpreted within the framework of the
general idealization of small, boyish members. Similarly, the ubiquitous
presence of oil flasks or strigils (scrapers used to wipe dust and oil off
athletes’ bodies) in the hands of boys or on the wall in the background
of red-figure scenes should be construed as a kind of synecdochic shorthand
for the gymnasium as the most frequent setting of pederastic courtship.
Chapters 1 and 2 survey various types of courtship scenes, gifts and
associated gestures, showing particular sensitivity to the way different
phases of courtship and the varying responses to it are rendered through
details of body position, clothing and gaze. In addition to the familiar
settings of the gymnasium and symposium, Lear shows that even war may be a
context for the display of pederastic eros, as we see beautiful young
warriors arming themselves in front of admirers; I find this discussion
novel and interesting, but am surprised that no reference is made to J.-P.
Vernant’s famous essays on the topos of “beautiful death” in archaic
poetry. [[10]] While Lear does not see all courtship gifts as directly
pedagogical in nature, he does believe that they at least associate the
interaction of men and boys with realms of activity that are often
pedagogical: e.g. music, hunting and athletics. I think he may be overly
conservative in not acknowledging cockfighting among these: as unpleasant
as we find such gratuitous animal cruelty, Greek men did regard it as a
useful way of hardening boys and instilling a spirit of ruthless
competitiveness. Another not infrequent gift that Lear does not discuss at
all, despite its interesting implications (i.e. sacrifice, butchering,
providing for one’s family), is a large piece of meat.
One of Lear’s most interesting findings is that the iconography does not
distinguish between sacks of money and other gifts, as if to belie the
“sacred boundary between the eromenos and the prostitute” (p. 80).
However, I think Lear is not correct in believing that our ancient textual
sources create such a clear boundary. This is largely a fiction of modern
scholarship. Aristophanes’ Wealth (149–59) notes precisely how little
difference there is between receiving generous gifts and receiving money,
implying that those who would distinguish the two (like the naive
Chremylus) fail to recognize their essential sameness. Aeschines’
prosecution of his political rival Timarchus for having “prostituted
himself” as a youth is based on precisely the same definitional
indistinction: Aeschines never offers evidence that Timarchus actually
received bags of money from his many lovers, but suggests that the mere
fact of Timarchus living with them and enjoying lavish entertainment
without himself paying for it was tantamount to the same thing as being a
prostitute.
Chapter 3 looks at the more explicit material, showing scenes of actual
consummation as well as the various forms of physical foreplay. Lear shows
that the familiar figuration of intercrural intercourse, where the lover
crouches down into a rather awkward posture so as to rub his penis between
a shorter boy’s thighs, actually shows him in an inferior position,
allowing his beloved to “overtop” and “overlook” him (p. 114).
Similarly, the so-called “up-gesture,” in which a lover touches the
chin of the beloved, is correctly interpreted as a pose of supplication.
However, I think that the corresponding “down-gesture,” in which the
lover fondles the testicles of the beloved, is not just a “request for
trust” asking “a boy to surrender control over his most vulnerable
parts,” but like the focused gaze of many lovers upon the boy’s
genitals, suggests a fetishization of the developing pubescent member as a
visible and tangible sign of development into sexual maturity and manhood.
As Lear notes, we do not find explicit anal sex depicted in pederastic
contexts, but it does at least twice appear in scenes involving youths of
the same age or, on Tyrrhenian amphorae, among drunken adults; other scenes
may hint at the lover’s desire for it or the beloved’s offer of it. An
interesting section of this chapter compares the courtship conventions on
vases featuring courtesans with those involving boys: on the whole, they
are quite similar, but courtesans do tend to show more initiative. A final
section examines slave boys, whom he argues to be neither courted nor
forced, but I am not certain that we can always tell who is a slave boy and
who is not: it is quite possible that the boys who serve at feasts were in
some cases freeborn boys who learned the rules of feasting by first
attending upon the banqueters. [[11]]
Chapter 4 examines pederastic scenes involving the gods. Here alone do we
see evidence of a lover forcing himself upon a boy, as if to imply that
mere humans are subject to a code of propriety and restraint. Zeus and
Ganymede are only depicted in red-figure painting of the 5th century, Lear
suggests, as a more acceptable way to treat the theme after the explicit
scenes of mortal consummation become rare. However, I think he is wrong in
suggesting that the eagle sitting on Zeus’ scepter in Figure 4.3 alludes
to the means of Ganymede’s abduction; the eagle is first introduced into
the Ganymede myth in the 4th century, probably modeled on Apollo’s
seduction of Hyacinthus in the form of a swan (of which we do have solid
5th-century illustrations). Similarly, I think Lear’s interpretation of
Apollo as an eromenos in Figures 4.1 and 4.2 is clearly incorrect: the
former depicts him about to battle Idas for the romantic favor of Marpessa,
and the latter shows him providing epiphanic inspiration to a contemplative
muse. That Apollo himself looks like a beautiful youth is not in question,
but myth typically depicts him as an active (if rather ineffective) lover.
The second half of this chapter constitutes an interesting discussion of
the god Eros as a character on pederastic vases. Figured as a beautiful
youth himself, Eros is usually indistinguishable in age from the youth he
pursues, penetrates, crowns or brings a gift to. As with the
representations of Zeus and Ganymede, Lear argues that his presence is a
more coded way of representing pederastic eros in a period when more
explicit depictions had ceased. To this I would add the observation that
his equality in age to the beloved youth yielded an intonation of
adolescent frolic that was less offensive to late-5th and early-4th century
tastes than the older scenes of highly age-differential courtship.
Chapter 5 deals briefly, but very ably with the so-called “kalos-”
found on many vases, even many without pederastic subject matter, declaring
that either a specific named boy or the generic “boy” is
“beautiful” (kalos). Lear dismisses the theory that the vases were
themselves meant as gifts, instead more plausibly explaining these
inscriptions as toasts. He notes that some of these vases have the less
appreciative word katapygon (“bugger”) scratched into them by a later
hand, although he does not speculate whether the motive was cynicism or
moralistic indignation.
Chapter 6 treats the question of chronological development even more
briefly. As many have previously noted, the familiar scenes of pederastic
courtship and consummation largely disappear after the 470s BCE, but the
same is also true of explicit heterosexual sex. Lear correctly points out
that this does not mean that pederasty disappears as a representational
focus, only that it changes: later in the 5th century, we see more scenes
involving gods, symposia and “youths in conversation.” The
homoeroticism is either displaced into the realm of myth or it becomes more
implicit and coded. He attributes this change not to any variation in the
social status of pederasty, but to “a general trend toward prudery” (p.
175). However, I am not sure these two developments can be so neatly
segregated: more prudish societies are generally less tolerant of minority
sexual practices. Lear does not examine what factors contribute to this
growing prudishness in the mid-5th century. I have elsewhere argued that
pederasty was mainly an elite practice in Athens, and the rising political
dominance of what one might call the “middle class” within Athenian
democracy led to a privileging of middle-class taste, as reflected in the
anti-elite posture of comedy, the simplified diction of Euripidean tragedy,
the decline of erotically based pedagogy, and the marginalization of
explicit sexuality in art. I would qualify that view now only with the
observation that as the general living-standard of the urban populace grew
at the height of the Athenian empire, painted vases ceased to be a luxury
product, but became commonplace even in many non-elite households; this
explains the inferior workmanship we see in the late 5th century, as
painted vases came to be mass-produced, and the luxury market turned to
silver vessels, which have almost all been melted down and have thus
disappeared from our archaeological record.
One of the most valuable features of this book is the long appendix at the
end, based on the work of the late Keith DeVries, listing over 700 vases
with pederastic content, broken down by period, with descriptions of each
side’s decoration. This supersedes the similar (and ideologically
filtered) list at the end of Sir Kenneth Dover’s Greek Homosexuality
(1978). This list will be of fundamental reference value to future
researchers.
I have two complaints about the format and organization of this book, both
related to the illustrations. Although over 100 vases are pictured within
the book, the illustrations are so small that one often cannot see the
details discussed in the text. For a book this expensive, we should expect
larger photos, including, where appropriate, detail shots. My second
complaint is that dating should be discussed throughout the text, rather
than confined to one short chapter and DeVries’ appendix at the end.
Every illustration should feature an approximate date as part of its
caption, so that readers can judge for themselves the lines of
chronological development and perhaps note some tendencies that may have
escaped the authors’ notice.
THOMAS K. HUBBARD
University of Texas, Austin
[[1]] See F. Lasserre, “Ornements érotiques dans la poésie lyrique
archaïque,” in J.H. Heller and J.K Newman, eds., Serta Turyniana
(Urbana, 1974).
[[2]] See D.G. Kyle, “Solon and Athletics,” Ancient World 9 (1984)
91–105.
[[3]] See E. Eyben, “Antiquity’s View of Puberty,” Latomus 31 (1972)
677–97, an article of which, like so many others, Davidson is unaware.
[[4]] E.g. David Dodd, “Athenian Ideas about Cretan Pederasty,” in my
Greek Love Reconsidered (New York, 2000) 33–41.
[[5]] D. Leitao, “The Legend of the Sacred Band,” in M. Nussbaum and J.
Sihvola, eds., The Sleep of Reason (Chicago, 2002) 143–69.
[[6]] T.G. Rosenmeyer, “Elegiac and Elegos,” CSCA 1 (1968) 217–31.
[[[7]] A. Shapiro, “Leagros and Euphronios: Painting Pederasty in
Athens,” in T.K. Hubbard, ed., Greek Love Reconsidered (New York, 2000)
12–32, especially Figures 13–14.
[[8]] See T.K. Hubbard, “Getting the Last Word: Publication of Political
Oratory as an Instrument of Historical Revisionism,” in E. A. Mackay,
ed., Orality, Literacy, Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman World
(Leiden, 2008) 185–202.
[[9]] Arion ser. 3, 6.2 (1998) 48–78.
[[10]] J.-P. Vernant, Mortals and Immortals (Princeton, 1991) pp. 50–91.
[[11]] See J. Bremmer, “Adolescents, Symposion, and Pederasty,” in O.
Murray, ed., Sympotica (Oxford, 1990) 135–48.
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