- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Note to the Reader
- Abbreviations
- [UNTITLED]
- Introduction
- I Women in Classical Athens—Their Social Space: Ideal and Reality<sup>†</sup>
- 2 Ideology and “the Status of Women” in Ancient Greece<sup>†</sup>
- 3 The Athenian Woman
- 4 The Sociology of Prostitution in Antiquity in the Context of Pagan and Christian Writings
- 5 Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behaviour
- 6 The Social Body and the Sexual Body<sup>†</sup>
- 7 Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens<sup>†</sup>
- 8 Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault's History of Sexuality<sup>†</sup>
- 9 The Cultural Construct of the Female Body in Classical Greek Science<sup>†</sup>
- 10 Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools<sup>†</sup>
- 11 Representations of Male-to-Female Lovemaking<sup>†</sup>
- 12 Women's Life in Oriental Seclusion? On the History and Use of a Topos<sup>†</sup>
- 13 The Attitudes of the Polis to Childbirth: Putting Women into the Grid<sup>†</sup>
- 14 Archaeology and Gender Ideologies in Early Archaic Greece<sup>†</sup>
- 15 Concealing/Revealing: Gender and the Play of Meaning in the Monuments of Augustan Rome<sup>†</sup>
- 16 Satyrs in the Women's Quarters<sup>†</sup>
- 17 A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory<sup>†</sup>
- 18 The Asexuality of Dionysus<sup>†</sup>
- 19 “Vested Interests” in Plautus' Casina: Cross-Dressing in Roman Comedy<sup>†</sup>
- 20 The Hippocratic “Airs, Waters, Places” on Cross-Dressing Eunuchs: “Natural” yet also “Divine”<sup>†</sup>
- Intellectual Chronology
- Further Reading
- Bibliography
- Index
Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens†
Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens†
- Chapter:
- 7 Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens†
- Source:
- Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome
- Author(s):
David Cohen
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
Recent scholarship has succeeded in greatly advancing our understanding of ‘Greek homosexuality’. Kenneth Dover and Michel Foucault have argued that the modern dichotomisation of sexuality as heterosexuality/homosexuality does not apply to the ancient world, and they have shown how distinctions between active and passive roles in male sexuality defined the contours of the permissible and impermissible in pederastic courtship and other forms of homoerotic behaviour. Among the Greeks, active homosexuality was regarded as perfectly natural (sexual desire was not distinguished according to its object). There was, however, a prohibition against males of any age adopting a submissive role that was unworthy of a free citizen. This chapter explores law, society and homosexuality in classical Athens, and argues that Athenian homoeroticism must be understood in the context of a theory of social practice that emphasises the centrality of cultural contradiction and ambivalence.
Keywords: Athens, law, society, homosexuality, Kenneth Dover, Michel Foucault, homoeroticism, sexuality
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Note to the Reader
- Abbreviations
- [UNTITLED]
- Introduction
- I Women in Classical Athens—Their Social Space: Ideal and Reality<sup>†</sup>
- 2 Ideology and “the Status of Women” in Ancient Greece<sup>†</sup>
- 3 The Athenian Woman
- 4 The Sociology of Prostitution in Antiquity in the Context of Pagan and Christian Writings
- 5 Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behaviour
- 6 The Social Body and the Sexual Body<sup>†</sup>
- 7 Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens<sup>†</sup>
- 8 Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault's History of Sexuality<sup>†</sup>
- 9 The Cultural Construct of the Female Body in Classical Greek Science<sup>†</sup>
- 10 Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools<sup>†</sup>
- 11 Representations of Male-to-Female Lovemaking<sup>†</sup>
- 12 Women's Life in Oriental Seclusion? On the History and Use of a Topos<sup>†</sup>
- 13 The Attitudes of the Polis to Childbirth: Putting Women into the Grid<sup>†</sup>
- 14 Archaeology and Gender Ideologies in Early Archaic Greece<sup>†</sup>
- 15 Concealing/Revealing: Gender and the Play of Meaning in the Monuments of Augustan Rome<sup>†</sup>
- 16 Satyrs in the Women's Quarters<sup>†</sup>
- 17 A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory<sup>†</sup>
- 18 The Asexuality of Dionysus<sup>†</sup>
- 19 “Vested Interests” in Plautus' Casina: Cross-Dressing in Roman Comedy<sup>†</sup>
- 20 The Hippocratic “Airs, Waters, Places” on Cross-Dressing Eunuchs: “Natural” yet also “Divine”<sup>†</sup>
- Intellectual Chronology
- Further Reading
- Bibliography
- Index
