Bisexuality in the Ancient World by Eva Cantarella; Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin

Review by: Amy Richlin

The American Historical Review, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 205-206
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2166197 .
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 Ancient 205

the past and today, are of central importance. Grimal the twilight of pharaonic Egypt. Certainly the love of
gently reminds the reader that French scholarship is sport was not a Greek preserve but the institutional-
not to be ignored, but he does not exaggerate its role. ization of regular athletic festivals with prizes and
That, and his sense of personal culture, lend a value specialized facilities and equipment still belongs to the
to his contribution that transcends the routine. Greeks.
KARL W. BUTZER Allen Guttmann dutifully translates Decker's criti-
Universityof Texas, cism of the "modernist"Eichberg-Guttmann-Mandell
Austin school of sport historians. Applying a concept of
'extension of the preexistent," Decker argues that
eighteenth-dynasty kings went beyond ritual to ex-
WOLFGANG DECKER. Sportsand Gamesof AncientEgypt.
press a notion of record by competing against their
Translated by ALLEN GuTTMANN. New Haven: Yale
predecessors, themselves, and their successors.
University Press. 1992. Pp. xi, 212. $40.00. Decker cannot deny, however, that the hyperbolic
claims of pharaonic sources differ significantly from
In this unrevised translation of his important 1987
the standardized conditions and empirical recording
German work, Wolfgang Decker, the dean of the
of modern sport.
modern, disciplined study of ancient Egyptian sport,
Disagreements aside, historians of Egypt and an-
shows that the abundant and diverse sporting life of
cient sport gratefully acclaim Decker's achievement
pharaonic Egypt has been underappreciated. For and welcome his future publication plans for an
Decker, "sport,"a modern word with no exact Egyp- extensive and specialized handbook on Egyptian
tian equivalent, includes physical games and activities sport.
ranging from children's and board games to wres- DONALD G. KYLE
tling, stick fighting, acrobatics, hunting, and more. Universityof Texas,
With 132 black-and-white illustrations, and with ex- Arlington
tensive discussions of the testimonia and historiogra-
phy, Decker authoritatively demonstrates that Egypt
had recreational sport, military physical training, and EVA CANTARELLA. Bisexuality in the Ancient World.
ritual royal performances. Less convincingly, Decker Translated by CORMAC 0. CUILLEANAIN. New Haven:
further argues that Egypt also had athletics (that is, Yale University Press. 1992. Pp. xii, 284. $27.50.
organized contests with prizes) and a sense of athletic
records. This study, first published in Italian in 1988, stands as
Without claiming that sport originated in Egypt, the only survey to cover both Greek and Roman
Decker says that Egypt offers the oldest evidence of cultures and both male and female same-sex rela-
sport. A pharaonic ritual "run" in the Sed or jubilee tions. Eva Cantarella works through a range of evi-
festival is attested from the third millennium on, and dence-graffiti, laws, medical writings, philosophical
Decker sees turn-posts from the pyramid complex of works, and literary texts-from archaic Greece to the
Djoser as "the world's oldest sports facility" (p. 29); early Byzantine empire, also including some biblical
but, as he explains, the run involved no other com- and Christian texts.
petitors and "only a hint of physical exertion" (p. 32). The book is divided into a section on Greece
From the Sed run to the depictions of wrestlers in the (chapters on the preclassical period; the fifth and
tombs at Beni Hasan to a love of hunting and fishing, fourth centuries B.C.; philosophy and literature from
Egyptian sport shows continuity until the Hyksos' the fifth century B.C. to the second century A.D.; and
introduction of war chariots and composite bows led "Women and Homosexuality") and one on Rome
eighteenth-dynasty pharaohs to present themselves as (chapters on the archaic period and the republic; the
robust warrior-hunters for military credibility. Vari- late republic and the principate; the empire, jumping
ous New Kingdom pharaohs clearly were "athletic"in from Julius Caesar and Augustus to a discussion of
that they trained to acquire physical fitness and the law codes of the dominate; and the Judeo-Chris-
military skills and they gave ceremonial demonstra- tian tradition and its relation to pagan moral codes).
tions of chariot driving and archery; but to argue that Roman women's homosexuality is relegated to a short
Amenophis II had a "'sports career' that was un- section in chapter 7. A brief conclusion sums up the
equalled-and not just in relation to Egyptian mon- book's main points.
archs" (p. 42), Decker accepts the Sphinx Stela's The book's strengths are numerous. Readable and
claims that the king was a perfect shot even from a well illustrated with translated material, it sets out the
moving chariot, that his arrows all passed through issues and presents some original arguments. Cantar-
copper ingot targets a hand's breadth thick. Decker ella explicitly sets the book in the context of her
feels the seventh-century account on the "Running earlier work on women in antiquity, and she poses a
Stela of Taharqa" of a Nubian pharaoh running and question rarely asked: what was the impact of male
giving prizes provides us "for the first time with sexual norms in antiquity on ancient women (pp. vii,
irrefutable evidence of an Egyptian running contest" 88-91, 171-72)? She also asks good questions about
(p. 65), but this exceptional document comes from the impact of these norms on men themselves and on

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW FEBRUARY 1994

206 Reviews of Books
the ways they would have affected different classes of
men. Her inclusion of female along with male same-
sex relations is practical for modern readers (and can
be paralleled in antiquity). She at least allows for the
subjectivity of marginal groups like male prostitutes
(p. 48) and female prostitutes (p. 87). And the book
includes some gems, like the discussion of late-medi-
eval stories of Aristotle ridden by a woman (p. 67), or
the overview of Roman graffiti (p. 147), which brings
in some rarely seen material.
The book also has substantial problems. Some stem
from its publication history. The Italian publication
falls between the appearance of the last volumes of
Michel Foucault's Historyof Sexuality(1984) and the
publication of major works in the field in English.
The latter include works by David Cohen, Page
duBois, David Halperin, and John J. Winkler on
Greek sexuality; Maria Wyke on elegy; Judith Hallett
on Roman lesbians; and Catharine Edwards on Ro-
man moral legislation. The English version has in-
serted some of these more recent works in the bibli-
ography and, patchily, in the notes, but in the end this
survey gives the reader a misleading sense of the state
of the question.
Cantarella does critique Foucault, but only briefly
(p. 215). Instead, she beats several dead horses, as
when she argues against Kelsen's description in 1933
of Plato as "a sexual deviant" (p. 54). The discussion
of Latin love poetry (pp. 120-41) belongs to an
old-style biographical criticism (contrast recent work
by Maria Wyke, Marilyn Skinner, MicaelaJanan, and
Barbara Gold). The book adduces little new evidence,
mostly going over texts dealt with previously by other
authors, and sometimes (as in the discussion of Ar-
temidorus) giving no indication that there have been
previous major treatments.
The periodization suggested for Roman male ho-
mosexuality has serious flaws: the argument posits
three consecutive periods, but then juggles evidence
between them. Assertions are made about Roman
sexual norms before 200 B.C., a period for which
there is no direct evidence. The late republic is said to
be a time when a citizen could engage in pederasty
with ingenui and "nobody would say a word against
him" (p. 141); copious evidence to the contrary is
pushed into other chapters or left out. The discussion
of Roman legal penalties for male passive sexuality
makes no mention of the process of infamia, a large
omission. The long reconstruction of the date, con-
tent, and penalties for the lex Scantinia,while inven-
tive, does not in my opinion solve this longstanding
mystery.
Most important, arguments for the "spread" of
passive male sexuality in Rome, as well as in Greece at
the time of Aristophanes (pp. 45, 64), give undue
credulity to invective sources and often amount to
unsupported assertion (pp. 153-55, 163, 220); a
general tendency here is to look for trends and
watershed moments despite lack of evidence, as in the
use of words like "increasingly"(p. 120). The trans-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
lation uses "men" misleadingly of Roman pederastic
objects (pp. 128, 136, 139, 150) and "homosexuality"
throughout despite Cantarella's recognition of the
problems in using this term to describe ancient sexu-
ality. Cantarella shows little familiarity with theory of
any kind, most noticeably with feminist work on
ancient philosophy (pp. 58-59), Sappho (p. 79), and
the early church (pp. 191-202).
Overall, the book provides a useful introductory
overview but is already outdated; it needs to be used
along with more specialized studies.
AMY RICHLIN
Universityof SouthernCalifornia
JOHN MAXWELL O'BRIEN. Alexander the Great: The
InvisibleEnemy;A Biography.New York: Routledge.
1992. Pp. xx, 336. $29.95.
Because the sources for his life are so complex and
contradictory, we must always observe Alexander the
Great through a glass, darkly. In this new biography
of the king, John Maxwell O'Brien fills that glass with
the undiluted wine of the ancient Macedonians.
Through its murky depths, we are invited to see an
Alexander more haunted than heroic, an insecure
youth driven to his own destruction by Dionysus, the
Greek god of inebriation. O'Brien's vision of an
alcoholic Alexander was quite provocative when first
presented in a series of articles a dozen years ago, and
this book seems destined to arouse another round of
spirited debate.
Even those who prefer a moderate Alexander of
Victorian virtue must agree that O'Brien's narrative is
brisk, generally balanced, and based on considerable
research. The notes are copious, and the bibliography
alone exceeds forty-four pages. Concentrating more
on the king's personality than on political or military
affairs, O'Brien accurately relates the main events of
Alexander's life. Ancient and modern authorities are
quoted throughout the book's five chapters, although
clearly O'Brien follows the lead of Ernst Badian and
A. B. Bosworth on most controversial matters.
To heighten the drama and highlight his theme of
Dionysiac retribution, O'Brien relies on several un-
usual storytelling techniques. For example, he adds a
"chorus"by breaking the narrative over 200 times (in
230 pages) with evocative quotations from Homer's
Iliad and Euripides's Bacchae. Similarly in the pro-
logue and epilogue, O'Brien casts Alexander in the
tragic role of Pentheus, a king driven mad by an angry
Dionysus in Euripides's drama. Finally, O'Brien ex-
ploits every opportunity, no matter how gratuitous, to
associate the vengeful wine god with some event in
Alexander's life (for example, pp. 48, 82, 182, and
224). These innovations distract the scholar but will
probably endear the work to the general public.
Serious readers will expect more argument and anal-
ysis than this biography provides. Since other schol-
ars, such as N. G. L. Hammond and J. R. Hamilton,
FEBRUARY 1994