Searching for the Cinaedus in Ancient Rome, ed. Tommasso Gazzari and Jesse Weiner, Brill 2023
Review by James Jope ©James Jope
The word cinaedus was used in Roman literature as a slur referring to a sex/gender variant of an imprecise kind, principally adult males who desired to be penetrated anally and/or who were effeminate. The contributors to this volume have differing views on the subject, and also on the model of ancient sexuality elaborated by Foucault. For example, they differ on whether cinaedi also had sex with women; Kirk Ormand (“Did (Imaginary) Cinaedi Have Sex with Women?”) argues that the ‘womanizing cinaedus’ is a product of modern scholars misinterpreting the evidence; but other contributors still use that concept. However, most of them seem to agree that the “war”, as the introduction calls it, among classicists over Foucault is over and it is time to turn to more empirical studies of the ancient evidence.
The introduction is an excellent one. The editors first explain the issues: Kinaidos had ambivalent meanings already in Greece, but this volume focuses on Latin usage. The authors look for contextual clues, diachronic changes, etc. They investigate issues such as whether cinaedi were a real type of men in Roman society or only a ‘scare figure of the Roman imaginary’.i A good summary of the respective papers follows, then a brief discussion of modern reception (e.g., the suggestion that Oscar Wilde modeled his own image after the Roman concept). As this is the only treatment of modern reception, some readers may consider it inadequate; but its value is to suggest areas for further research. Indeed, the entire volume may be regarded as (re-)opening (new) areas for research, as is evidenced precisely by contributors’ opposing views.
In studying the ancient evidence, some contributors utilize theoretical tools from other modern sources besides Foucault. Thus John R. Clarke (“Representing the Cinaedus in Roman Visual Culture: Seeing, Speaking, Touching”) updates his previous work on artii. After explaining how works regarded as obscene were wrenched out of their context in early modern museums, he seeks to reconstruct Roman viewers’ probable reactions in context, using concepts like the ‘mirror-neuron system’.
Important elements of the Greek background are provided by Tom Sapsford (“Cleomachus: A Study in ‘Cinaedic’Associations”) and Jesse Weiner (“The Kinaidos Comes to Rome: Plautus’ Cinaedi”).
Sapsford studies the ‘intersectional’ relations of sex, gender, and poetry in the story of Cleomachus, a boxer who turned feminine, as told by Strabo and Tertullian. Both authors suggest that cinaedic traits could be infectious. He also discusses the association of cinaedi with poetry; they were known for a particular meter called Sotadean verse. Sapsford provides an admirably detailed account of the relevant prosody and how it suited the twerking cinaedic dance, a subject rather neglected by other contributors, which may be important for understanding how the different valences of the word developed.
Also important in this connection is Plautus. Weiner finds the word in Plautus several times, always in jokes. His audience knew it as an insult, but the jokes 'intersectionally' implicate class, gender and ethnicity. The concept is still more about dance than sex: all of the characters who dance are cinaedi. There are few direct references to passive anal intercourse, and in contrast to the later stereotype, it is always involuntary.
These two essays, together with Mark Masterson’s Byzantine study, suggest a framework for a diachronic study. However, instead of placing one of them first, the editors chose Giulia Sissa’s “Κιναίδων Βίος: Ethics, Lifestyle, and Sensuality in Ancient Greek Erotic Culture”, apparently regarding it as more important to circumscribe the role of Foucault.
Actually, Sissa aims to modify the foucaultian paradigm: the critical polarity in ancient sexuality was not just penetrator v penetrated, but active v passive in response to pleasure, so that even an erastes (the ‘top’ man sexually) who could not control himself could be blamed as being ‘soft’ (malakos). Her argument is culled from various texts, but particularly Plato and Aristotle; and although she endeavours to sift out the general values of Greek society from the sometimes hostile interests of her sources, her theory applies convincingly only to philosophers. Although the lyric corpus is replete with the woes of erastai who could not resist eros, none, as far as I know, is described as ‘soft’. Plato and later philosophers with the exception of some Roman Stoics were seldom fully in line with conventional sexual valuesiii.
Unfortunately, to enlist Foucault’s “authority” for her position, Sissa digresses into what reads like a theological interpretation of holy scripture, quoting the Master both in translation and in the original French, favourably interpreting his apparent inconsistencies, and expecting respect for his wisdom.
Roman sumptuary conventions attached status and social/moral values to colours of clothing, and they apparently associated a certain yellow-green hue with cinaedi. Tommasso Gazzari (“Cinaedus Galbinatus: Cultural Perception of the Color ‘Green’ and Its Gender Association with Pathici in Rome”), after trying to identify the exact hue and its social significance, sounds a cautious note of essentialism: If men chose deliberately to wear a colour identified as feminine not only by norms of fashion but even by medical theory, they may have been flaunting a feminine identity.
In fact, flaunting seems to have been a characteristic of cinaedi which differentiated them from other pathici (bottom men).
Judith P. Hallett and Donald Lateiner (“Connotation and ‘Com-motion’: Putting the Kinesis into the Roman Cinaedus”) focus on the mobility of cinaedi, which gives them greater agency than ordinary bottom mens’. Surprisingly, there is little discussion here of dance. They compare texts from Petronius and Catullus. Petronius definitely supports their contention of cinaedi’s mobility, but their interpretation of Catullus is forced; the woman described as cinaediorem in Catullus 10:24 exhibits mobility because “her mind and mouth move fast”.
Barbara K. Gold (“Can a Woman Be a Cinaedus? Interrogating Catullus 10 and Roman Social Norms”) attempts to understand this unique use of the feminine comparative adjectiveiv. After reviewing the multiple meanings of the word, she argues that its use here is not about sex but about class and gender.
Flaunting is a striking feature also in Apuleius. Benjamin Eldon Stevens (“The ‘Chorus Cinaedorum’ in Apuleius’ Golden Ass”) calls attention to the work of Bloodv and others trying to learn about non-dominant minority communities (such as Apuleius’ cinaedic priests) from hostile majority sources. But the traits of the priests are the opposite of Lucius’ values, they are a foil for him. Yet in spite of its disputable relevance to Apuleius, Stevens is right to note the importance of such work. All of the usual sources are hostile.
As a closing piece of diachronic research, Masterson (“Kinaidos: The Afterlife of a Term in the Byzantine Empire”) explores the word in lexicographers and texts in late antiquity up to the eleventh-century Michael Psellos. He finds much the same confusion between sex and gender found by modern scholarship. Byzantine Christians condemned both participants in male-male intercourse as ‘wanton’ aselges, even though they regarded such activity as a temptation to which any man could succumb.
These essays are an important contribution to the study of ancient sexuality. The scholarship is impressive. However, it would have been desirable to include some group discussion of disputed issues (after all, the book originated as a panel discussion), or at least more cross references. Some solutions might also be yielded by a full diachronic study. Of course, this would have to give equal attention to Greek and Latin sources. Even this volume, in spite of the stated intention to focus on the Romans, inevitably includes Greek material. ‘Cinaedus’, after all, is a loan word, which educated Romans would automatically associate with some traces of its Greek background.
i While some contributors point out that a scare-figure need not necessarily lack a real correspondent, I would go further. A scare figure is effective only if there is some reality. McCarthyism used communists as a scare figure, and psychologists attribute homophobia to insecurity about one’s own orientation. But the virulence of both biases was derived from the corresponding social reality.
ii Clarke, J.R. “Representations of the Cinaedus in Roman Art: Evidence of ‘Gay’ Subculture?” JHomosex 39 (2005): 271–298.
ii Aristotle sought to understand the function of conventional values (sozein ta phainomena). As Sissa correctly argues, he articulated the Greek belief that habitual characters were more important than particular actions.
iv Masterson’s paper reveals that this feminine adjectival comparative form occurred also in late antiquity, so that technically, at least, it is not a hapax.
v Blood, H.C. “Apuleius’s Book of Trans Formations.”Eidolon, 15 June 2015. https://eidolon.pub/apuleius‑s‑book‑of‑trans‑formations‑b98140d11482 and Blood, H.C. “Sed illae puellae: Transgender Studies and Apuleius’s The Golden Ass.” Helios 46.2 (2019): 163–188.
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