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International Pronouns Day Special · Lambda: the LGBT in Antiquity Podcast

• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everybody, and welcome to Lambda, the LGBT and Antiquity Podcast, the show all about the queer experience in Greek and Roman antiquity.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Today is our International Pronouns Day special where we're going to discuss the ways ancient Romans described queer people in Latin.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's become something of a running joke on this podcast that words like homosexual, bisexual, or transgender weren't in the Oxford English Dictionary during Greek and Roman antiquity, so therefore there must not have been any queer people living in Greek and Roman Antiquity.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: The point, of course, is that these words reflect the identities of the people who use them, and that the identity existed long before the specific word came into common usage.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Language itself is pliable and always changes with time, even generation to generation.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: To use myself as an example, when I was a child, the word queer was unequivocally an insult.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was used all throughout my youth to insult me and make me feel like I was less than other people.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even before I, or anyone else in my class for that matter, actually understood what ideals like homosexual or lesbian actually reflected, everyone knew it was a word you could use to deride certain behavior and certain physical characteristics.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, using the word queer took a long time before I was comfortable to use it myself.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It wound up being a term that reminded me of particularly unpleasant memories, so I was not really able to use the word as it had been reclaimed.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I found myself trapped between people opposed to the incorporation of queer people entirely and people who had appropriated the term as if every gay, lesbian, or trans person approved of its use.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: This has obviously changed, but it does demonstrate how in just a few years, phrases have taken on whole new meanings from what they meant not so very long ago.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just one example of one word that we've reclaimed.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond this, the joke actually reflects something fairly old in the study of antiquity.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Scholars make this type of argument as a dog whistle to disguise their own bias.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: They try to disguise words like, I don't believe you people existed, in something that feels more academic without actually being any more academic.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Scholars can continue to other eyes queer voices by simply arguing that what we're doing is wholly unreasonable.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is followed by a reference to Facult, the one queer scholar from the entire 20th century that everyone had to listen to, and they pull one specific quote, which on the surface seems to imply that all we can do is project modern identity onto the past.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: As so often happens with this type of quotation, the wider context is much more nuanced, arguing it's not just gays and lesbians, but rather everybody, including heterosexuals, who projects something more akin to their own understandings of sexuality onto a past where it wasn't necessarily the same.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: That men and women are mutually opposed binary opposites is not found in antiquity.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: We actually did a whole episode in how unstable these categories actually are, yet scholars have no trouble using these as if our understanding is pertinent when talking about the Romans.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Romans didn't really have biochemistry or sexual chromosomes, and they certainly didn't understand the actual anatomical apparatuses required to produce children.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: To imagine that they did is nothing short of projecting onto the past.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: To imagine that marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman is a projection onto the past.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone who studies the history of gender and sexuality, the institutions of gender, all of women's studies, the entire study of the great and powerful heterosexual men of Rome, everybody who studies through any of these lenses is necessarily projecting a little onto the past.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: To put this another way, a Greek-Roman would likely raise an eyebrow if you asked him about the institutions of homosexuality, but would be equally befuddled if you asked him about the institutions of heterosexuality.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not how people described sexuality in antiquity.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we usually try to focus on this as if it's an analytic tool where the goal is broadening interpretive possibilities.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The wider point, of course, is that nobody gets all up in arms when someone uses women's studies or projects heteronormativity.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: It really is a special niche carved out for queer people trying to understand the queer experience in antiquity.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the point today is not to refute this discussion.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you really want more on that, we did a whole episode a few weeks ago that was all about the importance of using our own terms to describe our own heritage.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Today, the focus is actually going to be on exploring a few of the terms that the Romans did use in their own language to describe their own understandings of queer identities.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to focus on sexualities instead of genders because generally speaking, the Romans viewed anything that wasn't within their definitions of manliness and femininity as monstrous.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: This could include intersex conditions, transgenderdom, and just men who weren't quite manly enough.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: One of our very first episodes was titled In the Beginning, and it described an obscure fable about Prometheus creating the archetypes for all humanity.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: As he was attaching humans' genitals, Dionysus appeared and the two went to dinner.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: When Prometheus stupors home, blind slobbering wine faced, he swapped the various genitals, creating a total of four gendered combinations.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: There were men with penises, thus masculine men.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: There were women with vaginas, thus feminine females.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: There were also men with vaginas, the masculine female, and there were women with penises, the feminine male.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the men with vaginas were called trebades, and the women with penises are called moles mares, and we're going to discuss these terms today.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Trebades may be the closest approximation to modern lesbian.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: The word tribas actually means rub, and when conjugated this way means something like rubbin women, or women who rub.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: The word is derived from the Greek trebados, though curiously the very first use of the word is in this fable.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: In any case, rubbing women can carry a double meaning, both homosexuality and masturbation.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: To put it another way, rubbing women includes a variety of sexual activities outside of Roman heteronormative sexual expectations.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Another word closely associated with Trebades is the word lesbian, which actually means to act in the way of the women of lesbos.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: A not insignificant amount of scholarly effort has gone into discussing this word, far too much to get into here.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Suffice it to say that many academics have spent a lot of time arguing that lesbian simply does not mean lesbian.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Some have even tried to derive the word as obscene woman, implying the masterworks of the tenth Muse Sappho were not even seen as art at all, which I would heartily dispute, and so would many commenters and poets in antiquity.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is important for our purposes is that lesbian took on the meaning of oral sex, whether performed by or on a male or a female.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Similarly, the word moles mares is somewhat more than it may seem.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: The word moles could actually describe men who were feeble, or men who were overly sensitive, or men who were peaceful, and men who were kind.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: When we understand the word this way, it's about one's lack of traditional Roman manliness.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: This could reflect homosexuality, as it does here in this fable, but it does not have to mean that in every context.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: However, it's important to bear in mind that none of the usages of the word would be considered desirable for proper Roman men, living in the Roman world.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: A word related to molis is malakos in Greek or malacus in Latin.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: The word denotes soft, pliable, or delicate men.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Soft men carried many meanings in terms of soft living, as in men who were attracted to fine luxury, young men who were rendered soft by their inexperience of life, and soft-hearted men who might be feeble or cowardly.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: This last definition actually comes into our discussion of homosexuality.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Men who lacked self-control could often be counted soft and therefore more likely to engage in risque sex.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually why men were homosexual to the Romans, not because Prometheus and Dionysus programmed their bodies differently, but because they lacked self-control.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the word malacus can be used to describe homosexuality specifically because of its effeminate connotations.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So men who were malacus lacked self-control across the board.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: They focused on the finer, softer pleasures of life and were thus considered more like Roman women, who naturally have no self-control and lust over expensive trinkets.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So again we see in Malacus a phrase that denotes a softer, more feminine lifestyle, with homosexuality.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Another phrase to consider is pathicus or pathica, another phrase that carries a variety of meanings in many situations.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Pathicus can mean prostitutes, male or female, depending upon the way the word is conjugated.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Though prostitutes were relatively low in the social hierarchies of ancient times, there's a rich subgenre of poetry devoted to these broad descriptions of love and affection for their prostitutes.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Roman world was a harsh and cold one.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was full of people desperate for human connections, and many of them found that connection with their paid loves.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the word also came to be associated with lasciviousness or excessive desire for sexual activity.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: After a time the word became associated with anybody, male or female, who willingly submitted to another's desires.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So Pathicus or Pathica could be homosexual or heterosexual lovers, going either direction, depending upon the context.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, we've discussed the word kinetus a few times on the show.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Originally the word probably meant male dancer, especially foreign-born male dancers who performed at Rome.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But in time a host of activity gathered around the term.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: A kinetus could be a man who put too much time into his own grooming, such as men who focused on their appearances in an excessive way.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: This could mean men who spent too much time or money in foreign parts, buying foreign luxury goods, or simply cared too much about the wrong kinds of personal appearances.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Roman men were expected to have clean shaven faces for most of Roman history, but for one to go about plucking the hairs from all over their body was considered unseemly conduct beholden to a Canadus.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was under this definition that men like Julius Caesar were called Kennethus.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: The word itself could also mean womanizer, association of a perverted type of hypermasculine hypersexuality.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: But most of the time the word was used to describe male homosexuals.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: More so than any other word on this list, Kennados is actually first and foremost an insult.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Kannados is a host of unseemly, effeminate conduct that no Roman man should ever partake in.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Needless to say, it's not a positive term or a term of endearment for anybody.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I don't know of one instance where the word kinadus is used to describe oneself or one's lover.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's always used to insult somebody else.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if we were to translate the word kinadus most accurately, it would probably derive as faggot.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: By this point, I hope you're seeing two key pieces that we always have to be aware of when discussing homosexuality in its own terms in antiquity.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: First is that practically every word that comes down to us contains a plethora of meanings.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: We always have to remember that Latin was spoken for over a millennium, and that means that meaning and usage patterns change substantially with time.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: For a modern counterpart, the phrase gay originally meant to be cheerful or carefree, then adopted meanings like morally loose or sexual licentious in the later 19th century.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Before in the early 20th century, it adopted the meaning of homosexuality, which is what it almost entirely goes by today.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond this, gay became an umbrella term for any sexual or gender nine conformity.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the word gay from the early 20th century was actually more of an umbrella term, much closer in meaning to the word queer from today.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just changing in meanings over the last two centuries.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is all true with Latin over a much larger period of time.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Second, there is often an association of lifestyle choices, personal preferences, and sexual desires which may or may not actually be related to homosexuality.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: It can be very hard to differentiate lifestyle and sexuality across different contexts.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Petico is kind of a cute word.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It can mean passive male partner in homosexuality, but unlike the previous terms, there isn't a universally negative moralizing connotation to this term.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: This word is often used by an older male to his younger male lover as an ideal image of youthful homosexuality.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: For example, the figure of Ganymedes, the young man who is Zeus' cupbearer, is called pelico.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: There are some times when the word is used to describe male homosexuality in a general sense, but it generally does mean lover.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: A pelico might be best understood as the object of affection for a poet or author.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: If we were to translate the word most accurately, it would probably be boyfriend, and that actually brings us to a very closely related word catamitos, which is how the name of Ganymedes is spelled in Latin.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: This word carries the same connotation as pelico, relating to young male lover.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: In time, catamitas would be used to describe any homosexual activity.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: The phrase commonly denotes the younger passive male partner, but beyond this, the phrase is used by homosexual poets to describe the object of their affection and their boyfriends as well.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Eunuchs who might be employed at the brothels, private residences, or free people interested in casual intercourse, could also be called catamitos.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Catamitas is used in poetry by comparing a lover's beauty to that of Ganymedes.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps more than any other word we've discussed today, these two, pedico and catamitos, were used by gays to describe their loves.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So many of the other phrases are not widely ascribed to one's own lover, but are used by those outside of queer communities, often rendering a comment on our conduct.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: But far more than any of these umbrella terms, Roman queer authors use their lovers' names or even personal pet names.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about this, that actually makes a lot of sense.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: How often do we use our partners' names or nicknames when we refer to them?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is my lesbian girlfriend is the kind of phrase you might see more on a poorly written sitcom than actually spoken by a human being.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout this podcast, I've tried to focus on the meanings of ideas instead of on the meanings of words.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Occasionally I'll throw an original Greek or Latin phrase or keyword with a little explanation, but the point is generally to get across the wider queer dynamic at play, not to interpret the individual phrases used in the source language.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's not to say we're not engaging with the Greek and Roman source material itself, it's just that we're doing it a little differently.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, many of the times when we are describing a particular source and I don't give a translation or translate horror in the comments section, those are passages I've actually put together myself for this occasion.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: The reasons are myriad.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're referencing an obscure work which hasn't been translated in decades and is somewhat out of date.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the author's heteronormative bias really shines through in the way they choose to interpret certain words.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes modern scholars will just assume that there's moral condemnation in a discussion of homosexuality when that's just one way to interpret the Latin or Greek text itself.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because so many scholars interpret it that way, I feel very few of them explore the possibility that's actually more neutral.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I'm just enjoying playing around with words and the way we could translate these things, especially when it's a Homeric hymn or one of the Orphic hymns.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are simultaneously tons of translations of the Homeric hymns, and really just two good translations of the Orphic hymns, so it's a chance for me to play around with these things.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: I really do try to upplay the way we can interpret the words outside of what the dictionary or lexicon might indicate.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's always important to remember that these lexicons were written decades or even centuries ago in the case of the little Scott and Jones.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: The biases of these authors and the biases of the editors and the biases of different editions mean that we are somewhat limited in the way we can interpret the words which have come down to us.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Classics, like all of history and archaeology, has been hampered by the fact that so much of our work has been done by heteronormative scholars in institutions which have very few places available for queer people.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you have enjoyed this discussion.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to hear more of this kind of breakdown of specific Greek and Latin terms, let me know and we'll try to incorporate more of these episodes in the future.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I hope everyone's having a good International Pronouns Day and a fabulous LGBT History Month.