Daniel Libatique
CLAS 199 01 - Intro to Greco-Roman Gender and Sexuality
Final Essay
Spring 2020
Corporeal Inviolability in Ancient and Modern Militaries
… Walters asserts that “the Roman soldier, symbol of all that is manly in Roman society, is dangerously like the slave, that ever-present, unmanly inferior and outsider” (1997, 40). …
… Palinurus, a slave, explains which identities are sexually off-limits for viri in Roman society: “So long as you stay away from brides, widows, unmarried women, (male) youths and free boys, love whom you like” (Plautus Curculio 31-38). …
… Roman sexuality was based on a zero-sum game of penetration: “Roman assumptions about masculine identity rested … on a binary opposition: men, the penetrators, as opposed to everyone else, the penetrated. The penetrated other included women, boys, and slaves; adult Roman men who displayed a desire to be penetrated were consequently labeled deviants and anomalies” (Williams 1999, 7). …
… Catullus casts aspersions on Mamurra’s masculinity because of his lack of self-control: “Who can look at this, who is able to suffer it, / unless he is unchaste and voracious and a gambler? / Mamurra has what Gallic Comata used to have, / and has what farthest Britain had” (Catullus 29). …
Catullus 29 (p. 266 in Ormand).
Plautus Curculio 31-38 (p. 188 in Ormand).
Walters, Jonathan. 1997. “Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought.” In Roman Sexualities, edited by Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner, 29-43. Princeton.
Williams, Craig. 1999. Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. New York and Oxford.