Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:06:16.127Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Androgynous and Bisexuality in Ancient Legal Codes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Eva Cantarella
Eva Cantarella*
Affiliation:
Milan University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The word ‘bisexuality’, unknown to the ancients, is used here in two senses to indicate an individual with male and female sex organs or who copulates with people of both sexes. The phenomenon of bisexuality is then analysed with reference to the Greek myth of Hermaphrodite, a ‘bisexual’ being, born of a nymph's love for a young man of divine descent: in the guise of a fable, the myth recounts the birth of a ‘monster’, who raises a question-mark over the fundamental rule of the division between the sexes. As regards behaviour, the paper then shows that in both Greece and Rome bisexual behaviour was the rule for men. The concept of ‘homosexuality’, in contrast to heterosexuality, was not introduced till the Christian era, and then not without difficulty. Condemnation of the practice as ‘against nature’ began with the emperor Justinian in the 6th century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , November 2005 , pp. 5 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

References

Bayet, J. (1971) Croyances et rites dans la Rome antique. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Brisson, L. (1973) ‘Bisexualité et mediation en Grèce ancienne’ Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse no. 7 (Bisexualité et difference des sexes), pp. 27ff.Google Scholar
Brisson, L. (1978) ‘Aspects politiques de la bisexualité. L'histoire de Polycrite’, in Hommages à M. J. Vermaseren, I, pp. 80ff. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brisson, L. (1986) ‘Neutrum utrumque. La bisexualité dans l'Antiquité gréco-romaine’, in L'Androgyne (Cahier de l' Hermetisme), pp. 27ff. Paris: Albin Michel.Google Scholar
Calame, C. (1996) Eros dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Belin.Google Scholar
Cantarella, E. (2000a) Les Peines de mort en Grèce et à Rome. Origines et fonctions des supplices capitaux dans l'Antiquité classique. Paris: Albin Michel.Google Scholar
Cantarella, E. (2000b) ‘L'Hermaphrodite. Mythe et réalité’, in Cantarella, E. (ed.) Pompéi. Les visages de l'amour, pp. 96–7. Paris: Albin Michel.Google Scholar
Cantarella, E. (2002) Bisexuality in the Ancient World. CT: Yale University Press (1st edn 1992).Google Scholar
Cantarella, E. (2003) ‘Persone e famiglia’, in Schiavone, A. (ed.) Diritto privato romano. Un profilo storico, ch. 2. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Catullus, (1988) Carmina, in Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Veneris, trans. Cornish, F. W., rev. Goold, G. P.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library).Google Scholar
Cohen, D. (1991a) Law, Sexuality and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, D. (1991b) ‘Sexuality, Violence and the Athenian Law of Hybris’, Greece and Rome 38: 171–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dover, K. J. (1978) Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1985) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Halperin, D., Winkler, J. and Zeitlin, F. (1990) The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Horace, (1991) Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, trans. H. R. Fairclough. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library).Google Scholar
Horace, (1997) The Complete Odes and Epodes, trans. D. West. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hubbard, T. K. (2004) Homosexuality in Greece and Rome. A Sourcebook of Basic Documents. Berkeley: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar
Lucretius, (1992) On the Nature of Things, trans. W. H. D. Rouse, rev. M. F. Smith. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library).Google Scholar
Veyne, Paul (1968) ‘La famille et l'amour sous le Haut-Empire’, Annales E.S.C.33, p. 36f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veyne, Paul (1987) Section on the Roman Empire, in Ariès, P. and Duby, G. (eds) A History of Private Life, Vol. 1: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, C. (1999) Roman Homosexualities. Ideology of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Winkler, J. (1990) The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar