Rome: Sex & Freedom Peter Brown by Kyle Harper Harvard University 34 pp. $3395 ‘One of the most lasting delights and challenges ofthe stody of the ancient world, dof the Roman Empire in Particular, isthe tension between fa hilarity and strangeness that char facterizes our many approaches 10H. Tee like a great building. visible from far away. atthe end of a sraght rad thatcuts across what seems to Be a level plain. Only when we draw near are we brought up sharp. on the edge of @ great canyon, imaible trom the rosd. that cute ite way between us and the ‘monument we sec We realize that we fre Tooking at this world from across sheer, silent drop of two thousand year. ‘Antiquity is always stranger than ws think: Nowhere docs prove to be Simed that twas most familiar to ‘Wealways knew thatthe Romans had a ‘ders, they probahly had a Tot more than was ite good for them, We also had am acute sense of sn. We tend to think that they had a lot more sense ‘of sin than they should have had. Oth ferwise they were very like auricles. Until recent. studies of sex in Rome and of Christianity i the Roman world were wrapped in cocoon of false ‘Only in the lst generation have we realized the sheet tingling. drop the canyon thal les between Us and a ‘work that we had previously tended take for grated 4 directly available to our mn categories of understand ing’ "Revealing Antiguity.” the Har. ‘ard University Press sercs edited by Glen Blowersock, has played ite part tn instilling in us all Healthy sense 0 dizziness as we peer over the edge into ‘fascinating but deeply strange world Kyle Harpers book From Sjeme Sin: The Christion TransforNerion of Senual Morality in Late Antiquity i 8 Scinillating contribution to ths sexes Not only docs it measure the exact na ture ofthe tension between the famiar fad the Jceply unfariar that Hes be tied our ienage ofthe sual morality ‘of Greeks and Romane of the Roman Empire of the classical period. It also sgocs.on to evoke the sheer, unexpected Strangeness ofthe very diffrent sexual ‘cade elaborated in eatly Christian si ‘les, ad ts sudden largely unforeseen undermining of a very ancient social ‘equim in the two centuries th followed the conversion of Constan tine to Christianity in 312. As Harper mates plain on the fist page of his ene and vivid book, “Few periods of [remodcin history have witnessed sich brisk, and. consequential. ideological change Sex was atthe centr of sal Woy was nin s7 1a guetion tat tas often been hein ec te, ‘Whar onal in Harpers bok Bi approche the quinn, nd the trenchancy with which he provides an answer, This answer i based onan ap Preciation of the real if socal struc Tires of the clasical Roman Empire and of the irrevocable changes in the Public sphere brought about through The acces o power of «hitherto alien ated and perfectionist Christan minor. ity m the lst centuries of the empire But before we examine Harpers answer im detail, worthwhile to ‘conjure up some previous attempts to measure the drop othe canyon that cuts iteway between vs and fale familiarity With the ancient word. Scholars in the Held bepan to appreciate the strange ness of the Romans in matters of ex 4519 0 much ele, sartng in the Ite {ede To take one smal but revealing cxample, i 1968 the Cambridge his torian and sociologist Keith Hopkins showed with zest that Roman women ‘wore married off athe age of thir {een Iwasa age of marriage as ow 25 that current among girls in modern India. Ata stroke the chasm between ‘ourselves “andthe ancient” Romans Seemed to be as great asthe one tha, im the uneasy imagination of West ét countees, appeared, inthe 1960s, to exit between themsclves and the ‘underdeveloped countriesof ibe thi wot ‘Sinilar vigor was displayed ia France. Here the sense of intimacy With the ancient world had heen fos tered by a tense of continuity between Roman civilization and the Catholic Church, scen as the natural successor ofall that had been reat and. good in Rome. Scholars looked back 1 the Roman Empite of the second century CEtotracea Pracparaio Evangelica ‘8 "Preparation forthe Gospel I was reac from te Hous ofthe Centurion, Pompei fist century BCE on” could te seen at work in the rise of compan tomate marrige im the cites of Pliny and Plstarch in the spread of notions Of universal’ henewolence. associated believed that this “prep Seth Stove teaching, and even ima fom hesitant stepr toward the “humanica tion” of slavery. H was claimed that Christianity ineited and made more widespread these moral advances, Ta the 1970s, this comforting. pan cama was subjected to searching crit ‘iam, In great book writen in 197, ‘Le Pain et le cirque, Paul Veyne tid hare the exotic dtosyncrasy of the s tem of public benevolence the Creek and Roman world that earlier studies had acclaimed as the forerunner of Christian almsgiving" In 1988, Michel Foucaul’s Le Souct de st insisted on the utter specicty of the moral codes fof the elites of the high Roman Ex pire. In neither work was Christian My tm sight. The reassuringly straight road that seemed to lead from Rome to Catholic Europe ended ina vertiginous