#crazy gay sex in the roman army tents......

[catominor]

crazy gay sex in the roman army tent s

[qqueenofhades]

Queer History Friday: Inverting the paradigm of ‘progress’

Right, so. You can thank @extasiswings for the fact that this is definitely a Thing; I don’t know for how long, but it’s definitely a Thing, thus spake Zarathustra. Anyway, one of the things we’re going to talk about today is the ‘myth of progress,’ which you have probably come across before. It posits that history and human existence are structured teleologically, or that rather, they function in a system that moves toward an end or goal, and that in the case of history, it only ever moves from “less enlightened (tm)” to “more enlightened (tm)” ways of doing things. We are smarter than the people in the past, simply by nature of living after them, and whatever they did or believed, it’s inferior to our way of doing/believing things in the present.

/extended fart noise from offstage

Yeah. We’re gonna put that one in the “Nosirree Bob” bin.

Anyway, last week, one of the things I talked about was the original Latin in the passage about one of Richard the Lionheart’s rebukes for unorthodox sexuality being Hella Gay. Well, I am now back to talk about (among other things) more Gay Latin, this time in the case of the etymology of the word “contubernium.” In its original essence, the word means the basic unit of the Roman army, a group of ten men. “Contubernales” shared a tent in the field, or barracks when at home, and ten groups of contubernales made a “century,” or a hundred men, from which we get the word “centurion” for its commander.

However, the other meanings of the word “contubernium” in classic Latin texts are a little more interesting, and you will see a bit of it in the links above. But in short, aside from “[male] military companionship” (since the Roman military, like the Roman world, was exclusively and culturally male), it also means “marriage, concubinage, slave marriage, lower-status marriage” and generally has connotations of on-the-DL sexual behavior. But it moreover means those bound by intimate ties of friendship, close romantic association, or the like; someone with whom you are living (and bedding) together within all senses of the word.

This seems like the opportune moment to mention that Roman culture, literature, and society was... Really Hella Gay.

Roman society almost unanimously assumed that adult males would be capable of, if not interested in, sexual relations with both sexes. It is extremely difficult to convey to the modern audiences the absolute indifference of most Latin authors as to the question of gender. Catullus writes of two male friends enamored of a Veronese brother and sister: “Caelius is crazy about Aufilenus and Quintius about Aufilena, the flower of Veronese youths -- the former for the brother, the latter for the sister.” [...] Many homosexual relationships were permanent and exclusive. Among the lower classes informal unions like those of Giton and Encolpius may have predominated, but marriages between males or between females were legal and familiar among the upper classes. Even under the Republic, Cicero regarded Curio’s relationship with another man as a marriage, and by the time of the early Empire references to gay marriage had become commonplace. [...]

Nero married two men in succession, both in public ceremonies with the rituals appropriate to legal marriage. At least one of these unions was recognized by Greeks and Romans, and the spouse was accorded the honors of an empress. (Suetonius reports a popular joke of the day to the effect that if Nero’s father had married that sort of wife, the world would be a happier place.) (pp. 73-74)

This is from Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality by John Boswell, which is still a landmark book in the field and has been since it was published in 1980. It’s difficult to overstate how completely radical this book was (and in some ways, still is). Boswell was only 33 when he published it, a distinguished Yale professor of history, and it is a massive piece of work that involved him personally consulting and extensively translating sources in Persian, Greek, Latin, French, and more. He was also writing a comprehensive history of ancient and medieval homosexuality at a time where he had to defend using the word “gay” in a scholarly publication, and spend extensive time refuting the “homosexuality is completely unnatural and perverted” thesis. 1980 was also the beginning of awareness of the AIDS crisis, and Boswell himself died of AIDS at the age of 47 in 1994. Today, when LGBT rights are, if not universally accepted, at least a mainstream and high-visibility political position, it’s difficult to overstate the level of fear and loathing that existed just 30-odd years ago. This is basically equivalent to Boswell saying that terrorists and plague-mongers had always existed in history, furthermore were not wrong to do so, and that they had a right to live their lives as much as anyone else.

You may have heard of Ruth Coker Burks, the “cemetery angel” of Arkansas in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS epidemic, when it was still called GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency). If not, read her story. Fair warning: you will cry. A lot.

The point is this: one only has to compare the attitude toward homosexuality in ancient Rome, and the attitude toward homosexuality in 1980s America (and hell, 2000s America), to think that the progress theory starts sounding awfully suspect. Of course, like any society, Rome had its own weird mores, hypocrisies, and hangups about sexuality (it was especially focused on the distinction between passive/active and free/slave, rather than gender) and of course, one of the reasons homosexuality was so accepted was because women had comparatively no social prestige, agency, or public respect at all. (You should also check out Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, published in 1996.) Ancient Rome was a world entirely structured around men, and the right of men to have whatever kind of public or private (Roman-cultural, Roman-legal) existence they pleased, and the prevalence of homosexuality is in part a response to that.

Nonetheless, let us take that notion of “progress,” the idea that humanity only ever moves from “less enlightened” to “more enlightened,” and let us once more fart at it for good measure. Let us also recognize that queerness, its expression, and construction has -- as noted -- existed since the beginning of human history, that Rome’s successors were much less tolerant of it than it was, and it’s the successors’ particular tradition which has, unfortunately, shaped a lot of ours.