![]() Yet, although many people have studied such "strategic deployment of Greek models" by later homosexuals, Dr Ingleheart argued that the equally important impact of Rome has been largely neglected. That has led to a long-standing contrast between "Greek virtue" and "Roman vice".ĭr Ingleheart's own paper explored how the "early gay apologists and activists" who forged a "modern homosexual identity" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries "used Hellenism to give a legitimating aura to their own desires", while they "simultaneously either censored or censured Roman examples of homosexual acts because of their perceived obscenity". The sex is much more upfront," said Jennifer Ingleheart, the conference's organiser and lecturer in Classics at Durham University. While we sometimes think of ancient Greek sexuality in high-minded, "Platonic" terms, the "reputation of Rome is rather filthy. ![]() Credit: Alamy Forum play: did gay sex in the Eternal City deserve its infamous reputation?Īncient drag queens, Carry On Cleo, early advocates for gay rights, even the strange figure of the gallus - "the self-castrated eunuch often depicted as a dancing, frenzied transvestite" - all came up for discussion at a conference in Durham earlier this week entitled Romosexuality: The Reception of Rome and the Construction of Western Homosexual Identities.
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