Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire (56 page)

14
Leviticus 18:23, 20:15–16. See also Olyan, “And with a Male,” 21–29.

15
Leviticus 15:16–18; 18:6–18, 23–28; 20:11–12, 15–16; Leviticus 18:6–18, 20:11–12; see also Wenham,
Book of Leviticus
, 253–56; Mohrmann, “Making Sense,” 68–70; Tannahill,
Sex in History
, 74; Stengers and van Neck,
Masturbation
, 21–22; Jackson,
Essays
, 60–61.

16
Brundage,
Law, Sex, and Christian Society
, 56; Deuteronomy 22:28–29; Exodus 22:16–17; Frymer-Kensky, “Virginity in the Bible,” 91–93; Numbers 5:12–32.

17
Olyan, “And with a Male,” 199–202.

18
Douglas,
Leviticus
, 236.

19
Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Olyan, “And with a Male,” 193–94, 199–202; Douglas,
Leviticus
, 236; Norton, “Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah”; Tannahill,
Sex in History
, 154–55. Lot may have been saved from the fire and brimstone that wrecked his city, but the story still turns out badly for him and for his family. His wife, famously, turns into a pillar of salt when she looks back on the burning cities. Lot’s daughters then follow him to a cave where they make their home, but soon decide that they have had enough of virginity. On two successive nights, they get their father drunk and have sex with him. See Genesis 19:30–38.

According to Philo of Alexandria, writing in the first century AD: “Not only in their mad lust for women did the Sodomites violate the marriages of their neighbours, but also men mounted males without respect for the sex nature which the active partner shares with the passive; and so when they tried to beget children they were discovered to be incapable of any but a sterile seed . . . little by little they accustomed those who were by nature men to submit to play the part of women.” Later references to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah reinforce this canard, and expand the definition of sodomy. See Brundage,
Law, Sex, and Christian Society
, 122, 532–33; Jordan, I
nvention of Sodomy
, 163 (“From the beginning, ‘Sodomy’ has meant whatever anyone wanted it to mean.”); Ruggiero,
Boundaries of Eros
, 111, 140, 189; Hull,
Sexuality
, 67; Blackstone,
Commentaries
, 215–16;
Parris v. State
, 190 So.2d 564, at 565 (Ala. Ct. App., 1966); see also
People v. Santiago Vasquez
, 95 P.R.R. 581, at 584–85 (P.R. Sup. Ct., 1967);
State v. Stokes
, 163 S.E.2d 771, at 774 (N.C. Sup. Ct., 1968).

HONOR AMONG (MOSTLY) MEN: CASES FROM ANCIENT GREECE

1
See, generally, Antiphon,
Against the Stepmother
; Hamel,
Trying Neaira
, 5, 151–52; Demosthenes,
Against Neaera
, 21–22; Allen, “Punishment in Ancient Athens.”

2
Kapparis,
Apollodoros
, 14; Aline Rousselle,
Porneia
, 30. Some religious practices tried to help men in the reproductive process by, for example, having women eat pastries shaped like genitalia, called
phalli
and
cunni
; see Kraemer,
Her Share
, 27. There is also some evidence that women did not always share the view that men were entirely responsible for conception. In a fascinating essay, historian John J. Winkler examines religious ceremonies in which Greek women jeered at wilted penile symbols. This laughter, in his view, was expressive of women’s contempt of their men’s mistaken sense of omnipotence in the reproductive process; see Winkler,
Constraints
, 205; Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 149–50, 156; Kapparis,
Apollodoros
, 16, outlines a number of outdoor duties for many Athenian wives; Plutarch,
Life of Alcibiades
; Pomeroy,
Goddesses
, 65, 90.

3
Hamel,
Trying Neaira
, 10. “Flute girls” were often auctioned off for sex at the end of symposia, when the accumulated drink and seductions of the evening guaranteed that the men would be ready to spend money. Lysias,
On a Wound by Premeditation
; see also Stephen Todd,
Commentary on Lysias
. Slaves were only permitted to give testimony in Athenian courts under torture. See Thür, “Role of the Witness,” 151. See also Antiphon,
Against the Stepmother
, 10 (for the torture of slaves as the only way to “make even those prepared to lie confine their charges to the truth”).

4
Cohen,
Law, Sexuality
, 80–81, 141; Thucydides,
Peloponnesian War
, 2.40; Carson,
Putting Her in Her Place
, 156; Thür, “Role of the Witness,” 151; Demosthenes,
Apollodorus Against Stephanus
2, 46.16; see also Isaeus,
On the Estate of Menecles
, 20; Pomeroy,
Goddesses
, 86.

5
MacDowell,
Law in Classical Athens
, 124–25; Lysias,
On the Murder of Eratosthenes
; Keuls,
Reign of the Phallus
, 5; Demosthenes,
Against Neaera
, 87: “When he has caught the adulterer, it shall not be lawful for the one who has caught him to continue living with his wife, and if he does so, he shall lose his civic rights and it shall not be lawful for the woman who is taken in adultery to attend public sacrifices; and if she does attend them, she may be made to suffer any punishment whatsoever, short of death, and that with impunity.” Note that in Crete, women caught in adultery were far better off than their sisters in Athens; see Arnaoutoglou,
Ancient Greek Laws
, 24–25; Cantarella, “Gender, Sexuality and the Law,” 240; Cohen,
Law, Sexuality
, 124.

6
Cary, “Return of the Radish”; see also Hamel,
Trying Neaira
, 68–70; Aristophanes,
Clouds
, 1079–85. Spartan law penalized those citizens who failed to produce children, and rewarded those who produced many. Men who did not marry were excluded from attending certain summer athletic games and, curiously, were paraded nude in winter around the agora and forced to chant a song saying they were being justly treated for disobeying the law. See Plutarch,
Life of Lycurgus
. Aristotle reported that men who produced three sons were exempted from military service; those with four sons were also exempted from taxation (Aristotle,
Politics
, 1270b 1–4). See also MacDowell,
Spartan Law
, 76; Pomeroy,
Goddesses
, 36.

7
Lawrence v. Texas
, 539 U.S. 558 (2003); Plato,
Symposium
, 182(a), 189(c)–(e), 190(b), 191(b), 192; Mythologies merging male and female and providing a religious basis for multiple sexual inclinations are found in other Greek cults of bisexual divinities. Best known is the story of Hermaphroditus, the child of Hermes and Aphrodite. Hermes was, among other things, the god of boundaries and travelers. Boundaries throughout Athens were marked with herms-statues whose most distinctive feature was a large, erect phallus. Aphrodite was the goddess most closely aligned with love, lust, and sex. Hermaphroditus was a handsome boy, raised by nymphs, who caught the fancy of Salmacis the naiad. He rejected her, but she refused to give up, and wrapped herself around him and called on the gods to merge their two bodies so they would never part. Her request was heard, and they became one intersex being. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, IV, 317–88; Oscar Wilde trial transcript in Blasius and Phelan,
We Are Everywhere
, 111.

8
Cohen,
Law, Sexuality
, 193, citing Aristotle; Cantarella,
Bisexuality
, 4–7, 33; Jan Bremmer, “Greek Pederasty,” 4; according to Plutarch, “The [adult] lovers shared the boys’ reputations, both good and bad. It is said that on one occasion, when a boy in fighting let out an ignoble squeal, his lover was punished by the men in charge.” Plutarch,
Life of Lycurgus
, 18.8; Brongersma, “Thera Inscriptions”; Aeschines,
Against Timarchus
, 12, 139; Cohen,
Law, Sexuality
, 176. Approximately eighteen hundred years after the Athenian rules barring men from schools, Renaissance Venice also enacted a law that barred adult access to schoolboys, but that rule was intended to prevent all male-male sexual encounters, not merely to stop the wrong ones from taking place. See Ruggiero,
Boundaries of Eros
, 138.

9
Aeschines,
Against Timarchus; Winkler
, “Laying Down the Law,” 225; Sissa, “Sexual Bodybuilding,” 156.

10
Plato, Symposium, 183e–185c; Cohen,
Law, Sexuality
, 183–84, 197–200; the Greeks often viewed one man’s gain of sexual honor as another’s loss of same: “People do not find it pleasant to give honour to someone else, for they suppose that they themselves are being deprived of something.” Winkler, “Laying Down the Law,” 178, n.15 (quoting from anonymous Greek source); Cantarella,
Bisexuality
, 2, 213; Bremmer,
Greek Pederasty
, 9; Keuls,
Reign of the Phallus
, 291–92.

11
Aeschines,
Against Timarchus
, 133; Burg,
Gay Warriors
, 5; Plutarch,
Life of Pelopidas
.

12
Demosthenes,
Against Neaera
, 122; Exposure of unwanted infants, especially girls, was common throughout Greece. Abandoned babies automatically had slave status unless someone could prove they were freeborn. See Pomeroy,
Goddesses
, 140–41; Philentairos,
Huntress
, referenced in Hamel,
Trying Neaira
, 71–72; Keuls,
Reign of the Phallus
, 195–96; Kapparis,
Apollodoros
, 7; Isaeus,
On the Estate of Philoktemon
, 21.

13
Demosthenes,
Against Neaera
, 18, 21–22, 30–33, 54, 67–69. The historian Debra Hamel speculates that two men who bought Neaera from Nikarete got a better deal selling Neaera her own freedom rather than just turning her over to a brothel. A slightly past-her-prime prostitute would have had to service thousands of generous men to generate the kind of money they were demanding from Neaera, not counting her upkeep. A savvy brothel owner, therefore, would almost certainly have offered less than the two thousand drachmae. Hamel,
Trying Neaira
, 34.

14
There is some dispute as to whether Pericles met and fell in love with Aspasia before or after his divorce. See Pomeroy,
Goddesses
, 90; Kebric, Greek People, 150; Henry,
Prisoner of History
, 60; Plutarch,
Life of Pericles
, 24, 32; Lysias,
Against Simon
, 6; Waithe,
History of Women Philosophers
, 60, 75, 80; Aristophanes,
Acharnians
, 524–34; Bauman,
Political Trials
, 38.

15
Pomeroy,
Goddesses
, 66, 127–29 (quoting contract); Plutarch,
Life of Pericles
, 37.

IMPERIAL BEDROOMS: SEX AND THE STATE IN ANCIENT ROME

1
Livy,
History of Rome
, bk. 39, sec. 8 (accessed at
www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/romrelig2.asp
). See also Gruen,
Studies
, 40–51, 72; Burkert,
Ancient Mystery Cults
, 52; Walsh, “Making a Drama,” 191; Kraemer,
Her Share
, 42. Neither Dionysus nor his relations were strangers to the Romans. Anatomically ambitious depictions of Dionysus’s son by Aphrodite, the permanently erect Priapus, stood everywhere in Roman lands. One statue of Priapus from Pompeii depicts him weighing his enormous member against a substantial quantity of gold. See also Robinson,
Penal Practice
, 29; Takács,
Vestal Virgins
, 97, 306.

2
Livy,
History of Rome
, bk. 39, sec. 6, 42–44 (accessed at
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy39.html
); Kraemer,
Her Share
, 55–56; see also Pomeroy,
Goddesses
, 150–51, 177–79.

3
Valerius Maximus, “Women’s Life”; see also Langlands,
Sexual Morality
, 11.

4
Juvenal,
Sixth Satire
; Ariadne Staples,
Good Goddess
, 59, 103; Valerius Maximus, “Women’s Life;” Langlands,
Sexual Morality
, 97ff.; Livy,
History of Rome
, bk. 1, sec. 58 (accessed at
www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Liv.+ 3+58&fromdoc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0153
; Livy,
History of Rome
, bk. 3, sec. 48 (accessed at
www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Liv.+3+48&fromdoc= Perseus:text:1999.02.0153
); Tacitus,
Annals
, 3.34; Parker, “Vestals,” 589.

5
Parker, “Vestals,” 568; Pomeroy,
Goddesses
, 211; Plutarch,
Roman Questions
, 96; Plutarch,
Life of Numa
, 10. It seems that many vestals stayed longer than the required three decades, as many had bad luck in marriage after laying down their sacred offices. See also Wildfang,
Vestal Virgins
, 6–60. See also Dionysus of Halicarnassus,
Roman Antiquities
, bk. II, ch. 66: “And they regard the fire as consecrated to Vesta because that goddess, being the earth and occupying the central place in the universe, kindles the celestial fires from herself.” The Vestals were involved in other rituals that seem incompatible with virginity, such as agricultural and fertility ceremonies. These included the Fordicidia rites, in which a Vestal burned a fetus torn from a pregnant cow; her chastity throughout their childbearing years gave them “stored up, potential procreative power.” See also Beard, “Sexual Status,” 13; Robinson,
Ancient Rome
, 124; Livy,
History of Rome
, bk. 2, sec. 42 (accessed at
www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=liv.%202.42&lang=original
); Cassius Dio,
Roman History
, bk. 26, sec. 87.