I R I S The Newsletter of the Lambda Classical Caucus winter 2008

Rehak & Winkler Prize Winners LCC Panel 2008 Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos of Florida This year’s LCC panel, “Cults and Queer Atlantic University was awarded the Lambda Identities in Classsical Antiquity,” was Classical Caucus’ annual Paul Rehak Award organized by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos for his article “Beyond Sex: The Poetics and and John P. Wood. The panel featured the Politics of Pederasty in 1.4,” Phoenix following papers: Aristoula Georgiadou’s 61 (2007): 1-20. The Rehak Award honors the “‘Reconstructing’ a Cult of Eros: Rites of best article or book chapter pertaining to the Passage at the Festival of the Erotidaea”; LCC mission published within the past three Lauri Reitzammer’s “Stairway to Heaven: years. Women on Ladders at the Adonia”; Marsha McCoy’s “The Cult of Priapus and Queer Identities in ’ Satyrica”; and Mark Masterson’s “Queer Spaces in Third- and Fourth-Century CE Traditional Religious Practice.” Anthony P. Corbeill was the respondent.

LCC/WCC Grad Cocktail Hour This year marked the first joint LCC/WCC graduate student cocktail hour, organized by Sarah Levin-Richardson (Graduate Student Representative of the LCC) and Alexander Dressler (Graduate Student Representative of the WCC). A smashing success, the event drew a large crowd and attracted nine new student members (welcome!). Based on graduate student feedback, Sarah and Konstantinos hope to organize a graduate student/faculty roundtable for next year’s APA/AIA on “Queer Theory in Classics.”

Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos Lambda Classical Caucus Officers

The John J. Winkler Memorial Prize is granted each year to “the best undergraduate or Co-Chairs graduate essay in any risky or marginal field of Bryan Burns, [email protected] Kristina Milnor, [email protected] classical studies.” This year’s winners were Alexander Dressler, a Ph.D. candidate at the Treasurer University of Washington, for his paper Ruby Blondell, [email protected] entitled “The Sophist and the Swarm: Graduate Student Representative Platonism and Feminism in Achilles Tatius”; Sarah Levin-Richardson, [email protected] and Michael Pelch, a Greek and major Newsletter Editor at Oberlin, for his paper “The Danger of Deborah Kamen, [email protected] Drag in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousae.”

1 LCC/WCC Party In conjunction with the LCC panel, the theme for this year’s LCC/WCC party was “Cult Figures Ancient and Modern.” Check it out! (photos thanks to Ruby Blondell)

Wonder Woman

Sigfried & Roy

Warren Jeffs family Mithras devotee

2 The short but dynamic volume even manages to combine the consensus that ’s Fasti is an integral, complexly yet coherently shaped work with a new emphasis on the use of discontinuity and brokenness in the text to critique Roman male homosocial relationships and even Roman male identity. The , according to K., is Ovid’s great, book-long, Lacanian “screen,” the apparently traditional interest of an elite citizen from behind which Ovid can safely comment on shifting power among Roman males and even on the state of the cosmos. The reviewer confesses that she expected to have to “put up with” a lot of Lacanian jargon to get to what she, in her stick-in-the-mud way, considered “the good King Tut parts,” which, in her view, ought to contain a lot of rocks and mathematical tables. Chapter One starts right out as a tour de force with rocks (photograph from Degrassi of the Fasti Amiterni) in a short, amazingly clear, yet complete explanation for the more typical reader of this volume of Roman calendars as inevitable sites of religious and political competition. The reviewer (an epigrapher and political historian) would predictably like to have seen more of the late Republic in that chapter, since K. emphasizes the competitive aspect of male homosocial behavior in , and the competition for time as well as space Jim Jones did not start with the empire nor even with Julius , who gets a paragraph here. The Big Men of the late Republic had been newly Book Review armed with Hellenistic kingly practices and Richard J. King, Desiring Rome: Male contacts, so that some of the imperial-era Subjectivity and Reading Ovid’s Fasti. competition which follows draws from Greek Columbus: Ohio State University, 2006 culture as well as Roman and is even more far reaching in ambition and cultural impact than Phyllis Culham K. projects. (Mitylene, for instance, had

already named a month after Pompey.) K.’s Desiring Rome manages to stand with a Sedgwick and homosociality come into foot on each of two ladders and to hold the their own in Chapter Two on “Ovid, pose elegantly. On the one side is the Germanicus, and Homosocial Desire.” discourse of cultural studies with rungs or Aspects of homosociality here include stages consisting of Bourdieu through Lacan patronage, friendship, and competition. on poetry and film to Eve Sedgwick on male Vocabulary aside, the reviewer was feeling homosocial relations. On the other side are right at home in well-conceived political ancient texts including, obviously, Ovid’s history. K. makes an excellent case that Ovid Fasti, as well as the Tristia and the Epistulae, accepts a “‘feminine’ (trafficked) position” in plus, to the reviewer’s delight, epigraphical relationship to Germanicus as patron, albeit fasti and the traces of the Augustan horologium. via language reflecting the submission of

3 soldiers and gladiators. The reviewer transmission of imperial cognomina), but some appreciates this literary light on political and pretty abstruse material on, literally, marking social history but misses excursions into time is well handled, just as the technical context again: this time into intertextuality. material of Chapter One was. Although Germanicus pervades the book, the Chapter Six copes with fathers and reviewer could find no spot at which K. patrimony in politically important stories like highlights for the literarily minded that that of the Fabii against Veii as well as the Germanicus later translated Aratus who famous Lucretia legend, and at last we get underlies much of the Fasti, perhaps in some contextualizing intertexuality with ’s translation. It is surely important someone else trying to work through the information that the relationship between meaning of in time: . Not to be Ovid and Germanicus is not simply missed is the crucial Epilogue, the final asymmetric in power but also symmetric in elegant demonstration of the brokenness of mutual gazing at constellations. It may be that the Fasti and of Ovid. K. understandably does not want to import The reader will have noted by now that much of Gee’s Ovid, Aratus, and Augustus, the reviewer never wished the book shorter whose remarkable successes he assumes; yet, (well, except in the “fantasy” sections) but if we want to speak of penetration, filling, and instead wanted more. (She wonders if K. will male fertility, then this other “‘homo-textual’ be pleasantly surprised or disquieted that his literary encounter” is vital context. And text was so interesting to an epigraphically behind Germanicus, as it were, is Julius trained political historian.) That “more” Caesar’s own De Astris. It surely complicates could have included potential intertextuality interpretation of Ovid’s feminine pose that he with Manilius, who seems to have been locked is languishing on turf perhaps staked out by outside with . If we are to speak of Caesar. the Roman male gaze, and Roman Chapter Three deals with Janus, a homosociality as opposed to Ovid’s personal favorite of the reviewer who thoroughly insecurities and reactions to threats, surely we enjoyed the frank look at a deity with, as K. would want to have recourse to similar texts notes, two mouths but no anus. The reviewer to compare our readings of certain themes. found herself more out of sorts with Chapter Lucretius and Manilius should have been Four and its greater emphasis on the “fantasy allowed in, since their omission reduces the screen,” terminology which seemed to block scope and impact of some of K.’s well-taken light rather than cast it. More light might observations. and Pompey have been brought to bear with an excursion already believed that they could embed into potential Ovidian intertextuality with themselves or at least be reflected in the Lucretius, given the multiple sub-chapters on cosmic order itself. One cannot sufficiently Venus. Ovid seems to the reviewer almost a emphasize the ambition and scale of Roman rejoinder to Lucretius’ initial invocation of male competition. Perhaps such omissions Venus, in a chronological inversion in which made it easier for K. to maintain his perch on “modernity” precedes, and the younger the two ladders, a feat he performed with real author reverts to antiquarianism. Surely, to grace. repeat, intertextuality is a sort of penetration Unfortunately, K. has not been well- and a mixing of substance which leads to a served by copy editing at the Press, because new being. the book is replete with odd and disruptive Chapter Five and Augustus’ commas apparently resulting from the editor’s reorganization of time as well as space conviction that commas precede all produce an amazingly compact yet lucid conjunctions. At one point, Sedgwick herself summary for the literary reader of Augustus’ is reduced to speaking of “homsociality.” efforts to reign over absolutely everything in This technical sloppiness sits oddly with the all four dimensions and to make an end to very useful detailing of the index locorum. competition. The political historian may gripe Clearly the Press’ heart is in the right place, that fine points are sometimes off (e.g., and it only needs to follow through.

4 Book Review also what he calls the “subelite,” which Matthew B. Roller, Dining Posture in Ancient encompasses less-prominent Roman families Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status. Princeton: and also freedmen and freedwomen. Roller argues well that these images are primarily Princeton University, 2006 intended to demonstrate the status of their TammyJo Eckhart subjects to those visiting either the burial

place or the home of the owner. Matthew Roller challenges the standard Roller further believes that the interpretation and presentation, found in traditional model of dining postures has many introductory texts and handbooks about ignored the link between elite practices and Roman culture and society, of how Romans social values. When “subelites” portray sat or reclined when they ate. In Dining Posture themselves dining in the same manner as in : Bodies, Values, and Status, he elites, they are claiming a social value similar criticizes the traditional image of men to that of elite Romans—regardless of the reclining and good or proper women sitting as amount or quality of food or the condition of based on limited evidence and a lack of the dining room. Part of the meaning of the questioning about the social values underlying convivium, Roller argues, is to connect the ideas this evidence. Instead, using more literary and of social status, economic status, and otium: physical evidence, Roller reveals a complex the ideal elite dining posture indicates a period social meaning behind convivial practices, of freedom from duty and work, a time to where reclining indicates a superior status and relax that marked one’s economic and social sitting or standing shows inferior status, based standing. Thus, both the elegant dining room not only on gender roles but also on the and the humble home might show the male social/economic position that one either held head of household reclining in order to or wished to hold in the eyes of others. demonstrate his ability simply to relax and Roller identifies three reasons why the enjoy the fruit of his labors. traditional model of men reclining and good But Roller does not look merely at women sitting does not reveal a true image of men. He examines men, women, children, how Romans dined. He goes beyond merely and even slaves in relation to dining practices. identifying these reasons to correct them in The order of who is most likely to recline to his own study. First he states that the dine (and thus signal superiority over others) traditional image of dining practices is based is what we might expect. Men are most likely on a very limited number of texts, when in to recline, and their sitting or standing signals fact there are hundreds of texts we could a social inferiority relative to their host. examine. While Roller does not discuss all of Women, however, are often shown reclining, these texts individually in his study, he does especially if they are the subjects of their own discuss, quote, and translate the words of 48 funerary monuments. Children’s posture is authors from 200 BC to AD 200. The texts more related to age and status; younger he uses range from drama to history, poetry to children are almost always sitting but they prose, offering a very good overview of what recline when they outrank others in the many different Romans may have believed immediate group. Roller mingles slaves and practiced. The Index Locorum provides a throughout the chapters primarily as good guide to the texts Roller uses and thus a workers—standing and moving, far from the good guide to further reading on the subject. ideal of relaxing for a meal—or occasionally The second reason Roller believes that reclining either for sexual practices or when the traditional model of dining posture is they are dining only among their peers. Roller lacking is that it uses only written evidence argues convincingly that posture, then, is a and not visual evidence. Roller looks at signal to self and others of what type of funerary monuments, funerary urns, altars, experience this meal is—work or leisure, house plans, and murals from the same four among peers or among people of varied centuries that he investigates in the literary status. evidence. He includes not only the elite but

5 The discussion of sexual practices humble given that he is drawing upon far throughout this study is the weakest more evidence than those scholars he initially component of Roller’s argument. The criticizes. Roller ends his book with a brief identification of who is free and who is slave discussion of the difference between a cena or is tenuous in the case of women, because convivium dining experience and a comissatio or Roller offers no clear criteria for identifying drinking party. This appendix takes us away them. Is it a matter of looks, dress, jewelry, or from the discussion of dining position and its physical position of the women shown or social meaning into another example of how discussed? Similarly, children’s status as slave the traditional view of Roman practices is or free is unclear, especially on women’s skewed. funerary monuments, where Roller assumes Roller’s deep investigation and use of the children are slaves but does not suppose a wide range of evidence bolster his claims they have the same sexual function as do that the standard image of men reclining and slaves on comparable men’s monuments. good women sitting is far more an elite ideal While we should not simply assume that slave than a reflection of actual practice. children were the objects of sexual desire, we Furthermore, by looking at several economic should also not assume they were not so and social classes Roller demonstrates that considered by some people. Likewise, Roller non-elites were more interested in mimicking assumes on a few occasions that male slaves actual elite behavior than ideal elite behavior, are sexual objects but does not offer clear and strongly suggesting that our literary sources direct evidence for this association beyond the are portraying not a common expectation but ideal of youthful long-haired male slaves in the opinions of a few elite men. Drawing literature. upon both written and visual evidence, Roller Women may often be sexual objects offers us a more realistic view of how Romans in both literary and visual representations of dined and the value of dining posture in dining practices in Rome, but Roller’s chapter helping to create and promote one’s image. on women strongly argues that this is not While Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, simply a matter of women as inferior and men Values, and Status is not as readily accessible to as superior. The visuals he examines are a student or lay audience, it offers historians particularly convincing here, as he draws our and classicists a good foundation from which attention to mutual touching and glances to explore the topic of dining and social without a clear indication of social status. Of values. course, this examination also demonstrates the difficulty of distinguishing between free and slave and between upper and lower classes, if those portrayed are not standing New Books of Interest during the meal. I think that comparison with James Davidson, The Greeks and frescoes from brothels might have offered a Greek Love: A New Appraisal of Homosexuality in way to compare clothing or practices, but that Ancient Greece. London: Weidenfeld and would have required moving away from the Nicolson, 2007. private dining experience into the commercial realm. Caroline Vout, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Throughout his study, Roller Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University compares written and visual evidence in a Press, 2007. complex way, looking not only at the positions of each body but also at the composition of the room, furniture, food, and drinks in order to evaluate the meaning the artist or author was trying to communicate. Yet Roller never offers his interpretation as If you have any news or would like to review a book, the definitive one, only as a generalization please email the Newsletter Editor, Deborah Kamen from particular evidence. This is particularly ([email protected]).

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