In ancient and medieval Europe, learned scholars expressed men’s ardent love for women. Shrewd, career-striving scholars now tend to claim that men hate women and always have. Misunderstanding diversity and inclusion seems to have driven this expressive flip from love to hate. Writing in the middle of the first century BGC, the eminent philosopher and poet Philodemos exemplifies the more reasonable, more loving understanding of diversity and inclusion.
Philodemos profoundly, passionately, and personally appreciated diversity and inclusion in love for women. Philodemos loved a woman named Flora, a name superficially associated with rusticity and simplicity. His epigram in love for Flora shows great literary learning. It’s also intensely, personally expressive:
Oh foot, oh calve, oh (I’m rightly done for)
those thighs! Oh buttocks, oh vulva, oh flanks,
oh shoulders, oh breasts, oh slender neck!
Oh hands, oh eyes (I’m going mad),
oh most lascivious postures, oh outstanding
tonguings, oh (slay me) her exclamations!
If she’s an Oscan and a Flora and doesn’t sing Sappho’s songs —
well, even Perseus fell in love with Indian Andromeda.{ ὢ ποδός, ὢ κνήμης, ὢ τῶν (ἀπόλωλα δικαίως)
μηρῶν, ὢ γλουτῶν, ὢ κτενός, ὢ λαγόνων,
ὢ ὤμοιν, ὢ μαστῶν, ὢ τοῦ ῥαδινοῖο τραχήλου,
ὢ χειρῶν, ὢ τῶν (μαίνομαι) ὀμματίων,
ὢ κακοτεχνοτάτου κινήματος, ὢ περιάλλων
γλωττισμῶν, ὢ τῶν (θῦέ με) φωναρίων·
εἰ δ’ Ὀπικὴ καὶ Φλῶρα καὶ οὐκ ᾄδουσα τὰ Σαπφοῦς,
καὶ Περσεὺς Ἰνδῆς ἠράσατ’ Ἀνδρομέδης. }[1]
Philodemos sees the diversity in a Flora’s body parts, and each different part thrills him. She isn’t an immobile object, but a living woman apparently dancing naked. She’s turning so that he can see the beauty of her front (vulva, breasts, mouth, eyes) and back (calves, buttocks). She isn’t silent like a man being berated for his toxic masculinity — she exclaims, adding her voice to her beauty. Contrary to the modern demonic myth of the male gaze, men desire to see a woman’s face. Philodemos sees Flora’s face. In his passionate love for her, he also appreciates her across the diversity of her personal qualities.
In addition to Flora’s personal diversity, Philodemos loves Flora across gender, race, culture, and class. Philodemos is a man. Flora is a woman. Despite that gender difference, he loves her. Moreover, Flora was a dark-skinned woman like the Indian / Ethiopian princess Andromeda. Philodemos loves persons who are both women and black:
Didyme captured me with her eye. Oh, I but
melt like wax by a fire when I see her beauty.
If she’s black — so what? Coals are too, but when we
heat them, they glow like rosebuds.{ Τὠφθαλμῷ Διδύμη με συνήρπασεν· ὤμοι, ἐγὼ δὲ
τήκομαι ὡς κηρὸς πὰρ πυρὶ κάλλος ὁρῶν.
εἰ δὲ μέλαινα, τί τοῦτο; καὶ ἄνθρακες· ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε κείνους
θάλψωμεν, λάμπουσ᾽ ὡς ῥόδεαι κάλυκες. }[2]
Further categorical differences exist. Flora is an Oscan, meaning she belongs to the Italian-speaking ethnicity of the Compania region in southern Italy. The Romans considered the Oscans to be culturally unsophisticated. The highest status culture and language on the Italian peninsula was Greek. Among the most esteemed representatives of Greek culture was the famous Greek woman poet Sappho, particularly notable for her gender-defying lover for her brothers. Like most persons today, Flora couldn’t perform from memory Sappho’s poetry. Thus even more than the love of the Greek hero Perseus for the Indian princess Andromeda, Philodemos’s love for Flora encompassed what learned scholars today call “intersectionality.”
More sophisticated intersectionality theory recognizes that persons are not only multi-characteristic, but also dynamic. Unlearned persons might say, “I prefer blondes,” or “I prefer raven-haired lovelies.” An intersectionality theorist would then intersect hair-color categories with race, gender, colonial status, etc. But categories of exclusion and oppression, which are socially constructed through time, should be recognized as contingent, ambiguous, and fluid. A poet closely associated with Philodemos lovingly explained to a woman:
Whether I see you with shining black hair,
lady-lord, whether another time with blond,
from both equal charm gleams. Very truly so
Eros will dwell in your hair even when it’s gray.{ Εἴτε σε κυανέῃσιν ἀποστίλβουσαν ἐθείραις,
εἴτε πάλιν ξανθαῖς εἶδον, ἄνασσα, κόμαις,
ἴση ἀπ’ ἀμφοτέρων λάμπει χάρις. ἦ ῥά γε ταύταις
θριξὶ συνοικήσει καὶ πολιῇσιν ῎Ερως. }[3]
Loving across identity categories is a loving form of diversity and inclusion.
Philodemos didn’t understand diversity and inclusion to exclude him loving his wife in a special way. Philodemos lived with his wife Xantho. They had a servant woman named Philainis. Philodemos excluded Philainis from witnesses him having sex with his wife:
Philainis, with dewy oil soak the lamp,
silent confidant of not-to-be-spoken intercourse,
then leave! Sexual desire doesn’t welcome a living
witness. And close the door tight, Philainis.
Now you, Xantho, come to me — and you, O lover-loving wife,
learn the rest the Love goddess has for us.{ τὸν σιγῶντα, Φιλαινί, συνίστορα τῶν ἀλαλήτων
λύχνον ἐλαιηρῆς ἐκμεθύσασα δρόσου,
ἔξιθι: μαρτυρίην γὰρ Ἔρως μόνος οὐκ ἐφίλησεν
ἔμπνουν καὶ πηκτὴν κλεῖε, Φιλαινί, θύρην.
καὶ σύ, φίλη Ξανθώ, με — σὺ δ᾽, ὦ φιλεράστρια κοίτη,
ἤδη τῆς Παφίης ἴσθι τὰ λειπόμενα. }[4]
Sometimes excluding a person is appropriate even if in general one strongly supports diversity and inclusion.
Philodemos’s support for diversity and inclusion in love encompassed sex workers. He respectfully engaged with women sex workers. He embraced mutuality while recognized the different interests of sex worker and client in their fair-dealing commercial transaction. That’s evident in his conversation with a sex worker:
“Hello.” — “And hello to you.” — “What should I call you?” — “And me, you?” — “Not
yet. You’re too eager for intimate friendship.” — “You, too.” — “Do you have anyone?” —
“Always do. The one who loves me.” — “Would you dine with me
today?” — “If you wish.” — “Excellent! How much for your company?” —
“Don’t pay me anything in advance.” — “That’s strange.” — “Instead, pay what
you think right once you’ve slept with me.” — “That’s fair.
Where will you be? I’ll send for you.” …{ Χαῖρε σύ. — καὶ σύ γε χαῖρε. — τί δεῖ σε καλεῖν — σὲ δέ — μήπω
τοῦτο· φιλόσπουδος. — μηδὲ σύ. — μή τιν᾽ ἔχεις —
αἰεί· τὸν φιλέοντα. — θέλεις ἅμα σήμερον ἡμῖν
δειπνεῖν — εἰ σὺ θέλεις. — εὖ γε· πόσου παρέσῃ —
μηδέν μοι προδίδου. — τοῦτο ξένον. — ἀλλ᾽ ὅσον ἄν σοι
κοιμηθέντι δοκῇ, τοῦτο δός. — οὐκ ἀδικεῖς.
ποῦ γίνῃ; πέμψω. … }[5]
A modern commonplace is that the best exemplar of delusion is the man who believes that a whore loves him. Nonetheless, the sex worker Philainion credibly loved Philodemos:
Philainion is small and dark, but her hair is
more curled than celery, her skin more tender than down,
her voice more magical than the enchanting girdle, and she gives
all of herself and often refrains from asking for anything.
May I love such a Philainion until I find,
O golden Love goddess, another who is more perfect.{ Μικκὴ καὶ μελανεῦσα Φιλαίνιον, ἀλλὰ σελίνων
οὐλοτέρη καὶ μνοῦ χρῶτα τερεινοτέρη
καὶ κεστοῦ φωνεῦσα μαγώτερα, καὶ παρέχουσα
πάντα καὶ αἰτῆσαι πολλάκι φειδομένη.
τοιαύτην στέργοιμι Φιλαίνιον ἄχρις ἂν εὕρω
ἄλλην, ὦ χρυσέη Κύπρι, τελειοτέρην. }[6]
Philodemos wasn’t a bird-brain or nonsensical person in thinking about men’s relationships with women sex workers. He expressed intemperate outrage at one man’s sexual foolishness:
Mr. X gives five gold coins to Mrs. Y for one go,
and he fucks shivering with fear and by god, she’s not even pretty.
I give Lysianassa five silver coins for twelve sessions,
and I not only fuck a better woman, but openly besides.
Either I am completely out of my mind, or after such stupidity,
one should remove that man’s testicles with an axe.{ πέντε δίδωσιν ἑνὸς τῇ δει̃να ὁ δει̃να τάλαντα,
καὶ βινει̃ φρίσσων καὶ, μὰ τὸν, οὐδὲ καλὴν·
πέντε δ᾽ ἐγὼ δραχμὰς τω̃ν δώδεκα Λυσιανάσσῃ,
καὶ βινω̃ πρὸς τῳ̃ κρείσσονα καὶ φανερω̃ς.
πάντως ἤτοι ἐγὼ φρένας οὐκ ἔχω ἢ τό γε λοιπὸν
τοὺς κείνου πελέκει δει̃ διδύμους ἀφελει̃ν. }[7]
Terribly entrenched in European civilization, castration culture must be recognized as always wrong. No circumstances justify destroying the source of human seminal blessing.[8] Despite Philodemos’s vigorous action in support of diversity and inclusion, he wasn’t a morally perfect person. None of us are.
Philodemos’s epigram celebrating Flora embraces a beautiful and ardently loving understanding of diversity and inclusion. That understanding was fruitful in the ancient Roman world. A scholar aptly summarized:
Philodemus’ epigram concerns the poet’s infatuation with a dancer who has an Oscan/Latin name, Flora, and who cannot sing the Greek poetry of Sappho, a surely particularly grating feature for a poet who, according to his treatise On Poems, valued poetry where sound was firmly wedded to ideas. But despite this touch of Hellenic condescension, Philodemus’ epigram reveals a poet interacting with the linguistic and cultural diversity of Campanian society in the late Roman Republic. … as Philodemus’ Flora offers an inclusive, generous view of Campanian multiculturalism, so Flora in Ovid’s Fasti offers not a univocal view of Augustan identity and culture but a generous and capacious one, which Martial builds upon in his imperial expansion of epigram. Philodemus’ Oscan Flora thus provided the invitation for later Roman crosscultural and crosslinguistic play in a Rome that, like Republican Campania, was a new melting pot of cross cultural contact and experiment. [9]
Christian scholars working within the relatively broad-minded, tolerant, and intellectually developed medieval European world valued, copied, and circulated Philodemos’s epigrams. Those epigrams are a precious gift to our more narrow-minded, bigoted, and intellectually stunted age. Without appreciating Philodemos’s brilliant understanding of diversity and inclusion in love, advocates of diversity and inclusion would at best lead us to an irrational and hateful future.
* * * * *
Read more:
- Serlo of Wilton shows medieval men’s love ambition
- Iambe / Baubo with obscenity cheered despondent goddess Demeter
- Priapus against dildos and men being sexually objectified
Notes:
[1] Greek Anthology {Anthologia Graeca} / Palatine Anthology {Anthologia Palatina} 5.132, Philodemos (Philodemus) of Gadara {Φιλόδημος ὁ Γαδαρεύς}, epigram, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Paton & Tueller (2014). This epigram is number 12 (Sider 12) in Sider (1997). Subsequent epigrams from the Greek Anthology are similarly sourced.
An ancient editor misleadingly entitled this epigram, “On the same Xanthippe; a surprising poem, full of madness {εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν Ξανθίππην· μανίας μεστὸν καὶ θαυμαστικόν}.” This epigram is clearly about Flora, not Xanthippe.
In this epigram, Sider translated the interjection “ὢ κτενός” as “O bush.” The ancient Greek word κτείς means “comb.” It also has a metaphorical meaning:
a woman’s comb, that is to speak euphemistically and mystically, a woman’s genital part
{ κτεὶς γυναικεῖος, ὅς ἐστιν, εὐφήμως καὶ μυστικῶς εἰπεῖν, μόριον γυναικεῖον }.
Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks / Protrepticus {Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας} 2.18, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Butterworth (1919). Metaphorically extending the shape of a hair comb, κτείς means protruding, jagged parts associated with the external appearance of the prepuce, clitoris, and labia majora for many but not all women. Similar metaphorical thinking apparently generated a rooster’s “comb.” Nearly contemporaneous Latin literature also supports such an understanding:
The skillful masseur presses his fingers on her “crest”
and causes a shriek from the top of his lady-lord’s thigh.{ callidus et cristae digitos inpressit aliptes
ac summum dominae femur exclamare coegit. }
Juvenal, Satires 6.443-4, Latin text and English translation (modified) from Braund (2004). Translating κτείς as “bush,” which emphasizes hair, is thus misleading in Philodemos’s epigram.
Relevant context for interpreting difficult words in Philodemos’s epigram on Flora comes from Automedon’s epigram praising a woman dancer from Asia:
The dancer from Asia who moves through lascivious
postures, quivering from her tender fingertips,
I praise, not because she expresses all passions,
not because she moves her tender hands tenderly this way and that,
but because she knows how to dance around my worn-out rod
and doesn’t run away from an old man’s wrinkles.
She tongues, she tickles, she hugs. And when she kicks up her leg,
she can bring back my staff from the dead.{ Τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀσίης ὀρχηστρίδα, τὴν κακοτέχνοις
σχήμασιν ἐξ ἁπαλῶν κινυμένην ὀνύχων,
αἰνέω, οὐχ ὅτι πάντα παθαίνεται οὐδ’ ὅτι βάλλει
τὰς ἁπαλὰς ἁπαλῶς ὧδε καὶ ὧδε χέρας,
ἀλλ’ ὅτι καὶ τρίβακον περὶ πάσσαλον ὀρχήσασθαι
οἶδε καὶ οὐ wεύγει γηραλέας ῥυτίδας.
γλωττίζει, κνίζει, περιλαμβάνει⋅ ἢν δ’ ἐπιρίψῃ
τὸ σκέλος, ἐξ ᾅδου τὴν κορύνην ἀνάγει. }
Greek Anthology 5.129, Automedon {Αὐτομέδων}. The editorial heading is “On a prostitute dancer {εἰς πόρνην ὀρχηστρίδα}.” The epigram itself clearly specifies a woman dancing. “Rod” and “staff” are euphemisms for Audomedon’s penis. Men’s penises can comfort women. The alternate translation for κορύνη, “club,” falls within the despicable literary tradition of brutalizing men’s penises. The concluding verse’s reference to Automedon’s staff returning from the dead plausibly alludes ironically to Persephone’s returning from Hades. Höschele (2006).
Both Automedon’s epigram and Philodemos’s epigram embrace ethnic diversity in love for women with their appreciation for an Asian dancer and the Oscan Flora, respectively. Automedon’s epigram shares with Philodemos’s epigram a reference to “lascivious postures {κακότεχνα σχήματα}.” That shared description suggests that Philodemos’s Flora was a dancer. It also suggests that Philodemos’s interjection “oh outstanding tonguings {ὢ περιάλλων γλωττισμῶν}” refers to Flora’s skill in providing oral sex. Booth (2011) pp. 58-60. Such skill was important to Automedon, who suffered from the epic disaster of men’s impotence. See Greek Anthology 11.29. For Philodemos’s epigram, Sider’s translation, “O fabulous kisses,” failed to recognize this important context and is clearly inferior. Sider (1997) pp. 104, 107-8.
The name Flora is rooted in ancient Latin and Oscan and transliterated into ancient Greek as Φλῶρα. Romans typically regarded Oscans as “rustics who were closely connected with the rude and lewd Atellan farces.” Newlands (2016) p. 116 (para. 7). However, Flora was a “major indigenous agricultural deity” in both Latin-speaking and Oscan-speaking areas of the Roman Republic. Id. pp. 118-9 (paras. 11-2). The name Flora has long been associated with flowers and beauty. In medieval Latin literature, Flora often was a name for a beautiful, beloved young woman. The Roman statesman and general Pompey the Great (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus) as a youth consorted with a high-class courtesan named Flora. Id. p. 117 (para. 9). Newlands insightfully stated:
The Oscan girl’s naming as “Flora” therefore is pivotal in Philodemus’ poem, for the name bridges the cultural divide between Oscan and Roman, between courtesan and goddess, and between the physical world of erotic dance and the polished text. The name Flora beautifully encapsulates the dynamic trilingualism of late Republican Campania.
Id. p. 120 (para. 14). Flora is no “mere Flora.” Id. p. 120 (para. 13), criticizing Sider’s “mere Flora” translation. For an example of interplay between Latin and Oscan in the elite poetry of Catullus, Hawkins (2012).
The final two verses of Philodemos’s Flora epigram present motifs that can be traced from Theocritus through Ovid. Those motifs are 1) foreign woman, 2) with dark complexion, 3) like Perseus and Andromeda, and 4) in relation to Sappho. Courtney (1990). Ancient Greco-Roman authors commonly conflated India and Ethiopia / Africa. Suggesting the relative insignificance of skin color in men’s love for women, European painters rarely depicted Andromeda having darker skin than Perseus. Eddimedes Murphes in a modern adaptation of Aristophanes’s Parliament of Women bluntly expressed men’s embrace of diversity in love for women, with a minor exception.
Philodemos’s description of Flora’s diverse attributes proceeds upwards along her body (ascending bottom to top). As a literary motif, the “description of a young woman {descriptio puellae}” typically proceeds downwards (descending top to bottom), such as in Ovid, Amores 1.5.17-26. This ancient descriptive practice reached the height of its literary sophistication in medieval Europe.
The descriptio puellae degenerated after the end of the Middle Ages. For example, sixteenth-century French literature produced the blason anatomique. That literary form typically involves continual praise of a particular feminine body part. In 1535 under the patronage of Duchess Renée de France and her circle, the poet Clément Marot composed the leading work: an epigram called “Le beau tétin {The beautiful breast}.” Other poets quickly recognized the value of such poetry. Blasons anatomiques du corps féminin, published in 1543, shows the rapid dissemination of the form. A mirror poetic form, contreblasons, soon arose. It disparaged a feminine body part. Marot’s contreblason, “Le laid tétin {The ugly breast},” caused a huge uproar in which Marot was harshly condemned. Patterson (2015). For an anti-meninist analysis of the blason anatomique within the high anxiety that anti-meninism generates, Persels (2002).
Automedon’s and Philodemos’s epigrams, and many other epigrams in the Greek Anthology, represent learned, sophisticated poetry. Nonetheless, a scholar recently characterized these epigrams as “a lower and more debased class of poetry” and suggested that Horace alluded to:
the common circulation of that text, with its lewd content, to an uncritical and coarse public. … In the form in which Automedon’s closely contemporary epigram was circulating in Horace’s time, the physical artefact presented to readers was anything but a lepidum novum libellum (Catull. 1.1) – a curated, polished edition; rather, the epigram seems to have been preserved as a carelessly copied product that might be compared, in modern terms, to a badly edited, throwaway paperback published for consumption by an idle, undiscriminating audience seeking raunchy entertainment.
Werner (2023) p. 17, n. 31; p. 18. Such a claim indicates astonishing ignorance of the literary tradition of Hellenistic epigrams.
Philodemos, also spelled Philodemus in the Latin tradition, was born about 110 BGC in the city of Gadara in present-day Jordan. Probably because of battles between Greek and Jewish armies, Philodemos left Gadara and went to Athens. There he studied with Zenon of Sidon, then the head of the Epicurean school of philosophy. By 55 BGC, Philodemos lived in Rome and was well-known as a close friend of the Epicurean philosopher L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, father-in-law of Julius Caesar. Fain (2010) pp. 184-7.
Along with other leading Roman writers, Philodemos resided near the Bay of Naples, probably between the 60s and 40s BGC. Many of his writings were discovered preserved in the ashes of the Villa dei Papyri at Herculaneum. Philodemos’s friend and patron Piso probably owned that villa. Philodemos apparently knew Virgil and probably Cicero. He influenced many important Latin writers, including Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and even the great early medieval Latin poet Maximianus. Fielding (2016). On Philodemos’s influence on Horace, Propertius, and Ovid, Keith (2021).
[2] Greek Anthology 5.210, which attributes the epigram to Asclepiades {Ἀσκληπιάδης}. This epigram is editorially entitled, “On Didyme {εἰς Δίδυμην}.” On Asclepiades’s support for diversity and inclusion in this epigram, Snowden (1991).
[3] Greek Anthology 5.26. This anonymous epigram follows an epigram of Philodemos and seems closely associated with Philodemos’s epigrams. It’s not attributed to Philodemos in Sider (1997). Its editorial title is “On a beautiful young woman {εἰς κόρην εὔμορφον}.” Here’s an alternate English translation. Philodemos wrote a highly sophisticated epigram in praise of the sixty-year-old courtesan Charito. Greek Anthology 5.13 (Sider 9), “On Charito, a courtesan, in wonder {εἰς ἑταίραν τινὰ Χαριτὼ θαυμάσιον}.”
[4] Greek Anthology 5.4 (Sider 7), an epigram by Philodemos. It’s editorially titled “On the younger Philaenis {εἰς Φιλαινίδα τὴν νεωτέραν}.” The epigram is actually primarily about Xantho / Xanthippe, who is Philodemos’s wife. A woman named Xanthippe was Socrates’s wife.
Showing his sexual desire for his wife Xanthippe and his concern for her sexual consent, Philodemos wrote:
I am an apple. The one who sends me loves you. Nod your consent,
Xanthippe. Both you and I are wasting away.{ Μῆλον ἐγώ· πέμπει με φιλῶν σέ τις. ἀλλ᾽ ἐπίνευσον,
Ξανθίππη· κἀγὼ καὶ σὺ μαραινόμεθα. }
Greek Anthology 5.80 (Sider 2). Apples have long been regarded as love charms. Sider attributes seven epigrams (Sider 1 to 7) to Philodemos concerning his wife Xantho / Xanthippe.
[5] Greek Anthology 5.46 (Sider 20), an epigram by Philodemos. It’s editorially titled “A conversation with a courtesan, proceeding by question and answer {πρὸς ἑταίραν· κατὰ πεῦσιν καὶ ἀπόκρισιν}.”
[6] Greek Anthology 5.121 (Sider 17), an epigram by Philodemos. It’s editorially titled “Surprising praise for Philainion, a courtesan {εἰς Φιλαίνιον ἑταίραν ἔπαινος θαυμάσιος}.” Philaenis (Philainion) of Samos was thought to have lived in the fourth century BGC and to be the author of an ancient sex manual. On Philaenis, Agnolon (2013).
[7] Greek Anthology 5.126 (Sider 22), an epigram by Philodemos. It’s editorially titled “A mocking poem on a spent lover who still pays dearly for courtesans {τωθαστικὸν ἐπί τινι ἐρῶντι σαπρῷ καὶ πολλὰ παρεχομένῳ ταῖς ἑταίραις}.” A modern editor noted, “The lemmatist misreads the poem; the indications are rather that the first lover has sex with a married woman.” Paton & Tueller (2014) note 1. Those categories aren’t disjunctive. A man might have sex with a married woman who’s also a courtesan.
Horace documented Philodemos’s respectful but no-nonsense approach to women sex-workers:
“A little later,” “yet more gifts,” “if my husband has left” —
a woman who speaks like this is for Galli, so says Philodemos, who for himself
asks for a woman who is neither high-priced nor slow to come when bidden.{ illam “post paulo,” “sed pluris,” “si exierit vir,”
Gallis, hanc Philodemus ait sibi, quae neque magno
stet pretio neque cunctetur cum est iussa venire. }1.2.120-2.
Horace, Satires 1.2.120-2, Latin text and English translation (modified) from Fairclough (1926).
[8] In Greek Anthology 5.126, Philodemos associated castration with a courtesan acting as a dominating lady-lord. That figure echoes the figure of Cybele, the Dindymenean mother whom castrated priests (Galli) served. Catullus picked up this figure in Catullus 63, It’s a structuring figure throughout Catullus’s poems. A scholar explained:
Therefore on its face value the pun is obvious — it underscores, especially from the point of view of a Gallus, that aspect of Cybele’s worship that is most bizarre, her demand for castration; she has all power and ownership over one’s testicles. The pun is likewise clear and powerful, if we read the poem not in literal terms, but as an allegory of Catullus’ own emasculation before Lesbia and the Roman state: Catullus’ manhood and virility are no longer his own, but possessed by others. Both in the sexual and social realm he is a slave.
Holmes (2012) pp. 279-80. Classicists generally have failed to take sufficient notice of the oppressive effects of castration culture.
[9] Newlands (2016) p. 113 (para. 2).
[images] (1) Pompeii Yakshi. Small ivory sculpture of beautiful, naked woman-goddess made in India and brought to Pompeii about two thousand years ago. Philodemos lived about the Bay of Naples between the 60s and 40s BGC and thus lived near Pompeii. Source image by Dan Diffendale. A modified version is presented above under the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Wikimedia Commons includes many photographs of this sculpture. It’s preserved as inventory # 149425 in Naples National Archaeological Museum (Naples, Campania, Italy).
The Pompeii Yakshi was earlier called the Pompeii Lakshmi according to the belief that the statuette represented the goddess Lakshmi. The most widely accepted scholarly judgment currently is that the statuette represents a Yakshi, also called a Yakshini, which is a female nature spirit in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain cultures.
Made in India, the Pompeii Yakshi was preserved in Pompeii when Pompeii was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 GC. From about 300 BGC to 700 GC, the western Indian Ocean was a major trading zone. Seland (2014). In Roman culture, India was associated with luxuries:
India emerges as an origin of choice: it would be no exaggeration to say, in general, that Indian origins of any particular item, whether real or imagined, added value to it in Roman eyes.
Parker (2002) p. 55.
(2) Greek hero Perseus attacks the monster Cetus {Κῆτος,} while the Indian princess Andromeda watches. Corinthian black-figure amphora from Cerveteri, Italy. Painted between 575 BGC and 550 BGC. Preserved as inventory # F 1652 in Antikensammlung Berlin, Altes Museum. Source image via Wikimedia Commons. Here are many more images of Andromeda.
(3) Aphrodite Pandemos (goddess of love for all the people) riding a goat as her son Eros flies away. A satyr holding a torch pulls on the goat by its beard. Goats have long been associated with ardent sexual desire. Oil on canvas painted by Charles Gleyre in 1852. Image via Wikimedia Commons. More information about this painting.
(4) Greek hero Perseus rescues Indian princess Andromeda from the monster Cetus. Oil on panel painting (cropped slightly) painted by Piero di Cosimo about 1510-1515. Preserved as accession # 1536 in the Uffizi Gallery (Florence, Italy). Perseus is shown flying through the air (top righ), slaying the monster Cetus (center), and celebrating his marriage to Andromeda (bottom right). The partially nude, enchained Andromeda is a well-established motif. Source image via Wikimedia Commons.
(5) Greek hero Perseus, with the help of Eros / Cupid, rescues the enchained Indian princess Andromeda. Engraving made about 1655 following the design of Abraham van Diepenbeeck. From Marolles (1655), between pp. 306-7. Source image via Wikimedia Commons.
References:
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