Meta: Ins and Outs of Sex in Greece and Rome

[catwalksalone]

MJ Panel Mod: Libitina

Discussion space - the floor is yours...

Comments

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

I'm more on the literature side of classics than the sociological side, but one thing I find interesting about the Roman attitude to sex and orientation is that they make the crucial distinction not between hetero- and homosexual, but between penetrator and penetrated. So, a high-status Roman male could do whoever he liked (my high-school Latin class, when we got hold of a complete Catullus: 'Mrs X! You never told us Catullus was bisexual!') as long as he was on top/being blown. Which is a difficulty for equality in m/m relationships - possibly that explains why I tend to prefer non-explicit fic. There's a bit more leeway in Greek and Hellenised culture, but not much.

(And, just because I never get sick of it: the Warren Cup (http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/ixbin/goto?id=OBJ5831). Also, textbooks never seem to mention f/f relationships in classical culture outside a coy allusion to Sappho, but I saw a lovely f/f Greek black-figure vase painting exhibited alongside the Warren Cup.)

[libitina]

YAY! We were trying to think of the name of the cup with buttsex, but I had no idea. Thank you so much for linking it up!

My best riffs on roman lesbians comes from my beloved professor, T. Corey Brennan, former drummer for The Lemonheads:

So check out his article - "The Poets Julia Balbilla and Damo at the Colossus of Memnon", in Classical World 91.5 (1998). Here you have the wife of Hadrian, who had been bopping around the Roman empire putting up statues to his boy toy - Antinous, having her own little romance with one of the women of the royal entourage as they traveled in Egypt - and then the graffito with a love poem between the two women.

And then there was the whole class lecture spent on the Trouble with Tribads. (for a scholarly/philological discussion of this, see his review and this response of Bernadette Brooten's awesome book (which I did not take to the con because of its lack of butt sex)

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YAY! We were trying to think of the name of the cup with buttsex, but I had no idea. Thank you so much for linking it up!

My best riffs on roman lesbians comes from my beloved professor, <a href="http://classics.rutgers.edu/faculty/tcb/tcb.html">T. Corey</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Corey_Brennan">Brennan</a>, <a href="http://www.evandando.co.uk/interviews/coreyinterview0305.htm">former drummer</a> for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lemonheads">The Lemonheads</a>:

So check out his article - "The Poets Julia Balbilla and Damo at the Colossus of Memnon", in Classical World 91.5 (1998). Here you have the wife of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian">Hadrian</a>, who had been bopping around the Roman empire putting up statues to his boy toy - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous">Antinous</a>, having her own little romance with one of the women of the royal entourage as they traveled in Egypt - and then the graffito with a love poem between the two women.

And then there was the whole class lecture spent on the Trouble with Tribads. (for a scholarly/philological discussion of this, see <a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1997/97.05.07.html">his review</a> and <a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1997/97.12.03.html">this response</a> of Bernadette Brooten's awesome book (which I did not take to the con because of its lack of butt sex) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Love-Between-Women-Christian-Homoeroticism/dp/0226075923/ref=sr_1_1/002-6685105-0566410?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175644559&sr=8-1"><a Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism</a>, and href="http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/mailing_lists/CLA-L/2002/04/0455.php">this thread</a> from 2002). So, yeah, there's your roman lesbianism with there.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you for that! Those links look awesome. I managed to be in London when they were showing the Warren Cup mini-exhibition at the British Museum, which was a bit of luck to cancel out all my usual bad travel timing. They also had a little clay lamp with some improbably athletic Roman lesbians, which was fun.