Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

4 results

  • 8 - From the Pervert, Back to the Beloved: Homosexuality and Ottoman Literary History, 1453–1923
  • from Part II - Renaissance and Early Modern
  • Edited by E. L. McCallum, Michigan State University, Mikko Tuhkanen, Texas A & M University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature
  • Published online: 18 December 2014
  • Print publication: 17 November 2014, pp 145-163
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The extent of Greek influence on the Roman practice of homosexuality during the period has been a matter of controversy, with some historians asserting its pervasiveness and others emphasizing indigenous Roman traditions. The comedies of T. Maccius Plautus provide earliest literary references to homosexual relations, but none of the plots of his twenty-one extant plays are primarily about erotic relations among men. Modern readers of the varied poetic corpus of G. Valerius Catullus are often struck by the free employment of sexually explicit language pertaining to both homosexual and heterosexual acts. It is in the poetry of the Augustan Golden Age that one come close to the bisexual indifference characteristic of much Greek erotic poetry. Juvenal's satiric world is populated by a similar menagerie of freaks and oddities. The second century CE, the period of the so-called Pax Romana, was a time of relative political stability and the apogee of Roman prosperity and power.