A lot of what I read is about gender issues, sexuality and similar, and an email exchange off-blog recently made me think about why these are valuable beyond simply the information they contain. Studying these areas provides a continual reminder that other cultures, other times, other people don't see the world in the same way you do and make you realise the unthinking assumptions that underlie anyone's world view.
Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art 100BC - AD 250, by John R Clarke certainly does that. It examines artistic representations of sex in Roman art, rejecting in general a reliance on texts, invariably written by elite males, and tries to use the details in the art, its nature and distribution, to get at an understanding of how other Roman groups saw sex.
One possible reaction was laughter, although a very different laughter to the embarrassed titters of a modern school group when sex-ed comes around.
So the famous Pompeii Priapus has an apotropaic function at the entrance to the passageway into the house, to ward off the Evil Eye. Since a small penis was considered beautiful, a large penis, as with a dark skin, blonde hair, deformities and other departures from the Roman ideal, was a cause for mocking, powerful laughter.
For the Romans compassion for difference or disability was not an admirable characteristic. ""Art from both the Hellenic and Roman period frequently represented dwarfs, hunchbacks, or people with enlarged heads; such use of malformations in art for the sake of comedy is quite common". (p. 238)
Talking about a similar figure from the Timgad Northwest Baths, of a macrophallic Ethiopian: "Levi points out that in antiquity people believed that atopia or unbecomingness dispelled the Evil Eye, ... as well as normal beings represented in indecent attitudes, making vulgar gestures or noises ... Laughter is the opposite pole of the anguish produced by the dark forces of evil". (p. 131)
Priapus is also seen often, for the same reason, at crossroads.
So that was perhaps the main reason for "unbecoming" depictions of lovemaking, a category that would not correspond in any way to our classifications, or indeed, as Clarke points out, our ideas of "explicitness" or "soft-core/hard-core". Priapus was "nothing core".
.jpg?t=20120209092158)
Article comments
1 - Eric Berlin
Interesting topic, interesting review, Natalie.
Fascinating that "the worst possible insult" from man-to-man hasn't changed much since ancient days (see: hip hop).
2 - Natalie
Thanks, all compliments gratefully received! :-)
And in fact the stigmatisation has got worse, in that both parties to the interaction are now affected, whereas before it was only one.
3 - HW Saxton
Really well written & interesting post.
Now you really have me wondering about
what sort of a role that sexuality may
have played in regards to the gladiator.
Maybe you could blog on that some time
in the future?
Eric B. brought up a good point too, in
regards to the giving of oral sex and it
being the ultimate insult. To this day,
on playgrounds the world over,it's still
the biggest insult for one male to tell
another male to " S**k My D**k ".
"The more things change, the more they
stay the same" huh?
4 - Sweet
I too would be interested to know what sort of role sexuality would have had on a gladiator.
I new post on that would be an interesting read.
2000 years later and not much seems to have changed at all on this front.
This has got me thinking.
I may research the gladiator thing and if you like maybe I could do a guest post on it.
Thanks Natalie :D