Philosophy and Sex [Musonius Rufus fr. XVI]

2007

What this volume is about: Terms, contexts and topics Much time has passed since scholars were afraid that their papers and lectures about, or pedagogical discussions of, aspects of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality could be seen as inappropriate or even offensive. Nowadays, a Cambridge Dean, unlike the one mentioned in E.M. Forster's novel, Maurice, would never ask a student to omit "a reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks", i.e. pederasty. 1 Despite the study of gender and sexuality in the classical world being a relatively new field of enquiry, which has really only developed over the last thirty-five years, there is a booming interdisciplinary bibliography discussing as many as possible of the myriad particulars of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality and gender. What is still relatively understudied in classical scholarship, a battleground where many claims are still contested, is sex and sexual practices themselves. This volume aims to revisit, further explore and, through updated interdisciplinary approaches, shed more light on the textual and non-textual sources that help us reconstruct a clearer, more coherent and precise overarching picture of sex and all the practices related to it in Greco-Roman antiquity. Let us start with an attempt to explain the use, in this volume, of terminology. There is a term in the subtitle of the volume which is of fundamental importance for marking the purposes and (the limits of) the content of the present book, which should be given a semantic clarification: sexuality. Sexuality remains a contested notion that cannot be unanimously defined. M. Foucault, D. Halperin and J. Butler, among other cultural constructionists, point out that it is a modern concept, being the product of acculturation that differs from time to time and from culture to culture, and that any theory about its application in the ancient world is permeated by modern sensibilities. 2 For Halperin, sexuality is a cultural construction and an object of cultural interpretation that is attached to specific

American Journal of Philology, 2003

Hypatia, 2006

Journal of Sex Research, 2009

The most striking distinction between the erotic life of antiquity and our own . . . [is] that the ancients laid the stress upon the instinct itself, whereas we emphasize its object. The ancients glorified the instinct and were prepared on its account to honour even an inferior object; while we despise the instinctual activity in itself, and find excuses for it only in the merits of the object.

Annual Review of Sex Research, 1997

Sex and the Ancient City

What this volume is about: Terms, contexts and topics Much time has passed since scholars were afraid that their papers and lectures about, or pedagogical discussions of, aspects of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality could be seen as inappropriate or even offensive. Nowadays, a Cambridge Dean, unlike the one mentioned in E.M. Forster's novel, Maurice, would never ask a student to omit "a reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks", i.e. pederasty. 1 Despite the study of gender and sexuality in the classical world being a relatively new field of enquiry, which has really only developed over the last thirty-five years, there is a booming interdisciplinary bibliography discussing as many as possible of the myriad particulars of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality and gender. What is still relatively understudied in classical scholarship, a battleground where many claims are still contested, is sex and sexual practices themselves. This volume aims to revisit, further explore and, through updated interdisciplinary approaches, shed more light on the textual and non-textual sources that help us reconstruct a clearer, more coherent and precise overarching picture of sex and all the practices related to it in Greco-Roman antiquity. Let us start with an attempt to explain the use, in this volume, of terminology. There is a term in the subtitle of the volume which is of fundamental importance for marking the purposes and (the limits of) the content of the present book, which should be given a semantic clarification: sexuality. Sexuality remains a contested notion that cannot be unanimously defined. M. Foucault, D. Halperin and J. Butler, among other cultural constructionists, point out that it is a modern concept, being the product of acculturation that differs from time to time and from culture to culture, and that any theory about its application in the ancient world is permeated by modern sensibilities. 2 For Halperin, sexuality is a cultural construction and an object of cultural interpretation that is attached to specific