ABSTRACT

This Companion covers a range of receptions of ancient Greek and Roman gender and sexuality. It explores ancient representations of these concepts as we define them today, as well as recent perspectives that have been projected back onto antiquity.

Beginning in antiquity, the chapters examine how the ancient Greeks and Romans regarded concepts of what we would today call "gender" and "sexuality" based on the evidence available to us, and chart the varied interpretations and receptions of these concepts across time to the present day. In exploring how different cultures have "received" the classical past, the volume investigates these cultures’ different interpretations of Greek and Roman sexualities, and what these interpretations can reveal about their own attitudes. Through the contributions in this book, the reader gains a deeper understanding of this essential part of human existence, derived from influential sources. From ancient to modern and postmodern perspectives, from cinematic productions to TikTok videos, receptions of ancient gender and sexuality abound.

This volume is of interest to students and scholars of ancient history, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, and ancient societies, as well as those working on popular culture and gender studies more broadly.

chapter

Introduction

part I|313 pages

Legacies of the Ancient Greeks

chapter 1|19 pages

“Never Bury My Bones Apart From Yours”

Iliad Reception in Xena: Warrior Princess

chapter 3|17 pages

#Patrochilles

Find the Phallus 1

chapter 4|26 pages

Of Late I Dream of Lesbos

Renée Vivien's Queer Utopias in the Aeolian Mode 1

chapter 5|18 pages

A ‘Hollywood-Bowl Tiresias'

Antiquity and Trans- Identity in Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge and Myron

chapter 6|27 pages

Panic in the Oikos

Female Bodies, [re]Productive Anxiety and Wasted Landscapes in Greek Myth and Dystopian SF

chapter 7|21 pages

“Je Sentis Tout Mon Corps et Transir et Brûler”

Sublimating Ancient Sexuality in Jean Racine's Phèdre et Hippolyte 1

chapter 10|17 pages

The Sexuality of the Argeads

chapter 12|10 pages

Patterns of Force

Receptions of Agesilaus II, Disability, and Greek Sexuality

chapter 14|14 pages

Those Infamous Females

The (Ancient) Reception of the Sexuality of Hellenistic Queens

part II|142 pages

Romanocentric Receptions

chapter 16|40 pages

Two Case Studies on Receptions of Sex and Power

Lucretia and Verginia

chapter 18|14 pages

Women's Virgil

Reception as Re-imagination

chapter 19|17 pages

The Poet, the Puella, and the Penis

Impotence and Elegiac Failure in Maximianus and Ovid

part III|150 pages

Greek and Roman Afterlives

chapter 23|14 pages

Perfumes for Men, Perfumes for Women

The Uses of Scents and the Prejudice of Corruption in the Graeco-Roman World

chapter 24|16 pages

“Thirteen Days Were Devoted to Serving Her Passion”

Amazon Queen Thalestris as a Sexual Male Fantasy in Roman Historiography and Medieval Epic 1

chapter 27|33 pages

Graeco-Roman Worship of the Beloved

The Ancient and Modern Cults of Antinous

chapter 28|14 pages

Transgender Saints

Perpetua's Legacy

chapter 29|21 pages

A Prehistory of Intersex, or

The Lives and Afterlives of the “Hermaphrodite”