¹ Scroggs, Robin, The New Testament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 115.Google Scholar

² Ibid., 114.

³ Ibid., 117; emphasis in the original.

⁴ For example, Richard B. Hays notes that the use of κατ ϕύσιν (“according to nature”)/παρ ϕύσιν (“contrary to nature”) concerning same-sex acts “can be traced back at least as far as Plato (Leg. 1.636C).” (“Relations Natural and Unnatural: A Response to John Boswell's Exegesis of Romans 1,” JRE 14 [1986] 193).Google Scholar James B. De Yong also goes back to this passage in the Laws in “The Meaning of ‘Nature’ in Romans 1 and Its Implications for Biblical Proscriptions of Homosexual Behavior,” JETS 31 (1988) 431Google Scholar; see also 435.

⁵ Unless otherwise noted, the translations are mine.

⁶ Here ϕύσις is synonymous with γένεσις; see Koester, Helmut, “ϕύσις κτλ.,” TDNT 9 (1974) 252.Google Scholar

⁷ DeYong (“Meaning of ‘Nature’,” 439) is clearly wrong when he claims that “Plato... [had] no transcendent Creator.”

⁸ I have capitalized the God who is the creator of the universe, in contrast to the generated gods, a distinction of importance in the Timaeus.

⁹ Dover, Kenneth J., Greek Homosexuality (2d ed.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1989) 167.Google Scholar Plato's aversion to δονή belongs to his body/soul dualism, first developed in the Phaedo. See Claus, David B., Toward the Soul (Yale Classical Monographs 2; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).Google Scholar For the development of Plato's view of δονή from the earliest dialogues to the Laws, see Stalley, Richard F., An Introduction to Plato's Laws (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983) 59–70.Google Scholar

¹⁰ On this speech, see Taylor, Alfred Edward, A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928) 247–55.Google Scholar

¹¹ Compare Tim. 69c.

¹² Later Plato refers to this speech with these words, “For remembering the injunction of their Father when he enjoined them to make the mortal kind as good as they possibly could, they who constructed us. “(Tim. 71d).

¹³ See also ibid., 42b. This, at least, is the plain meaning of the text, as Taylor has noted. Taylor (Commentary, 260–61) also notes Plato's own inconsistency, since if all men who lived well went to their stars while the others came back in the second generation as women, whom would the women marry? This is, of course, no more inconsistent than the creation story in Genesis where the son of the original couple went to the land of Nod and married a wife (Gen. 4:17). From where did she come?

¹⁴ Tim. 90e. That Plato was counting four living creatures is clear in Tim. 92b, where he speaks of fish as the fourth kind (τ τέταρτον γένος).

¹⁵ Ibid., 90e. This account is anticipated in 42a-b, where Plato says that the human nature (νθρωπίνη ϕύσις) is twofold, and the superior he calls “man” (νήρ). The man who failed to master his body with its desires would assume the nature of the woman (εἰς γυναικς ϕύσιν) at the second γένεσις.

¹⁶ In the context of the debate over the age of the god Eros from the early theogonies to Plato's Symposium, Taylor states, “Since the whole point of the emphatic κατ᾽ κειᵔνον τν χρόνον [after that time] is to contradict the theogonies by insisting that Eros was made by ‘the gods’ when the first generation of men had passed away, and not before, T[imaeus] is plainly not in accord with Empedocles when it comes to theogony.” (Commentary, 637).

¹⁷ Tim. 91a.

¹⁸ Ibid., 91a. I put “penis” in quotation marks because the text does not make it clear whether, before the boring of the passage, the egress for drink of the first men was phallusshaped. Perhaps in addition to the boring, there was, so to speak, plastic surgery.

¹⁹ Ibid., 91b.

²⁰ Ibid., 91c.

²¹ Halperin, David M., “Why is Diotima a Woman?” in idem, Winkler, John J. and Zeitlin, Froma I., eds., Before Sexuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) 270.Google Scholar

²² Most scholars who deal with the question of ϕύσις as it relates to same-sex acts in Plato ignore the Timaeus. Dover (Greek Homosexuality) has no references to the Timaeus. But Michel Foucault does link Leg. 636c to the Timaeus with reference to excess of pleasure and pain (The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality [New York: Vintage, 1985] 44–45).Google Scholar The description of the nature of the genitals is foreshadowed in Symp. 207c-d, where Diotima says, “The mortal nature (θνητ ϕύσις) seeks as best as possible to be immortal. This is only possible in procreation (τηᵔ γενέσει).”

²³ Θηᵔλυς comes from the root θη, “to suck.” Θηλή means “nipple,” θηλάζω means “to suckle” (whether humans or animals), θηαστήριον is an establishment of wet nurses. See LSJ; Frisk, Hjalmar, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (2d ed.; Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1973).Google Scholar

²⁴ Tim. 91d.

²⁵ Halperin, David M., One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, and other Essays of Greek Love (London: Routledge, 1990) 30.Google Scholar

²⁶ Winkler, John J., The Constraints of Desire (London: Routledge, 1990) 18.Google Scholar Athenian male citizens enjoyed the pleasures of prostitutes, slaves, and other men.

²⁷ Leg. 835d.

²⁸ Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 1: “Greek culture differed from ours in its readiness to recognize the alternation of homosexual and heterosexual preferences in the same individual, its implicit denial that such alternation or coexistence created peculiar problems for the individual or for society. “Scroggs also acknowledges that “Greek male culture was basically bisexual in character” (New Testament, 149), although this acknowledgement does not play a great role in his treatment of same-sex acts.

²⁹ Leg. 838c.

³⁰ Tim. 91a-c.

³¹ Leg. 838e-839a; cf. 841d. When speaking of intercourse, Plato uses θήλεια, not γυναικεία.

³² Ibid., 839a.

³³ Ibid., 840c. Anne Carson distinguishes the “work” (πόνος) of intercourse and the “play” of unprocreative intercourse (“Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt, and Desire,” in Halperin, et al., Before Sexuality, 149–50). Plato eliminated the “play.” Eva Cantarella correctly states: “in Plato's opinion, any relationship (whether homosexual or heterosexual) is ‘against nature’ if it is not directed toward procreation” (Bisexuality in the Ancient World [New Haven: Yale University, 1992] 61).Google Scholar But Cantarella does not connect this observation with the Timaeus.

³⁴ Leg. 841d.

³⁵ Dover (Greek Homosexuality, 163), comments on this passage in the Phaedrus, “Here heterosexual eros is treated on the same basis as homosexual copulation, a pursuit of bodily pleasure which leads no further.” It is worth noting that later Plutarch, in Erōtikos 751d-e, would misread Phaedr. 250e–251a as referring to same-sex acts. Plato spoke of the active man who attempts to “mount and [thus] sow children” (βαίνειν πιχειρειᵔ κα παιδοσπορειᵔν). Plutarch has turned the verbs into passives, βαίνεσθαι and παιδοσπορειᵔσθαι, which makes no sense. Παιδοσπορειᵔν means to sow children, a male active function in Greek. I cannot find other examples of παιδοσπορειᵔν in the passive applied to a male. Dale B. Martin, in citing Plutarch, fails to note Plutarch's mistake (“Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans 1:18–32,” Biblical Interpretation 3 [1995] 346).Google Scholar

³⁶ Tim. 69d.

³⁷ Ibid., 41c.

³⁸ Margaret Davies does see procreation as the dividing issue, correlating procreational intercourse as “natural” and unreproductive intercourse as “unnatural,” but she bases this on Plato's reference in the Leg. 836c about the behavior of animals. She does not refer to the Timaeus (“New Testament Ethics and Ours: Homosexuality and Sexuality in Romans 1:26–27,” Biblical Interpretation 3 [1995] 319–20).Google Scholar Plato's erroneous assumption about animal behavior may also rest on Timaeus 91d, where he speaks of the coming into existence of the whole female sex (τ θηᵔλυ παᵔν), which would apply also to the three other categories of mortal, living beings: the birds, the other land animals, and the fish.

³⁹ In these matters Plato had other followers, including Aristotle, Musonius Rufus, Dio Chrysostom, and Plutarch. Here, however, I am looking for a tradition that enters Jewish sources prior to or contemporaneously with Paul.

⁴⁰ Philo Abr. 135. On the use of law of nature, see Koester, Helmut, “ΝΟΜΟΣ ΦϒΣΕΩΣ: The Concept of Natural Law in Greek Thought,” in Neusner, Jacob, ed., Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough (Studies in the History of Religion 14; Leiden: Brill, 1968) 521–41Google Scholar; esp. for Philo's use (530–40).

⁴¹ Ocheia ordinarily refers to animals; Adams, James Noel, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) 205, 207.Google Scholar

⁴² This does not sound like traditional pederasty since it should be the passive, adult men who should be ashamed. See Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 67–68, 103; Winkler: Constraints of Desire, 45–54.

⁴³ Scroggs (New Testament, 91) does not mention the desire for women when citing this passage from Philo. P. W. van der Horst leaves out the reference to desire for women when quoting this passage (The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides With Introduction and Commentary [Leiden: Brill, 1978] 238).Google Scholar Stanley K. Stowers also does not mention the desire for women (A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994] 52).Google Scholar Victor Paul Furnish acknowledges, however, that Philo speaks of “the Sodomite's sexual intercourse with men as if it were one form of their ‘mad lust for women’” (The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selective Issues [2d ed.; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1985] 65).Google Scholar Furnish correctly recognizes that the ancients “were operating without the vaguest conception of what we have learned to call ‘sexual orientation.’”

⁴⁴ Koester, ϕύσις, 266.

⁴⁵ In Abr. 248–49, Sarah, the old and barren wife of Abraham, says to him that Nature arranged the intercourse (κοινωνία) of man and wife, but there is for them no generation of children (τέκνων γένεσις). She proposes another woman for a mother, confident that Abraham will not take a woman for irrational desire (πιθυμίαν ἄλογον), but to fulfill the necessary law of nature (νόμον ϕύσεως).

In Jos. 43, Joseph tells Potiphar's wife that before lawful union we know no intercourse with other women, and that the end (τέλος) of marriage is not δονή but the begetting of legitimate children (γνησίων παίδων). Later Josephus will say essentially the same thing in Ap. 2.199—the intercourse (μίξις) which is according to nature (κατ ϕύσιν) is only for the procreation of children.

⁴⁶ It is first in the LXX but not in the Hebrew.

⁴⁷ See Manila, Sharon Lea, “Wisdom, Sense Perception, Nature, and Philo's Gender Gradient,” HTR 89 (1996) 114–16.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Spec. leg. 3.9.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 3.32.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 3.33.

⁵¹ Ibid., 3.34. Richard A. Baer, Jr., commenting on this passage and the passage at 3.113, states, “It is clear… that Philo views the sexual relationship as justified only when there is the hope of legitimate offspring” (Philo's Use of the Categories Male and Female [Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Judentums 3; Leiden: Brill, 1970] 94).Google Scholar

⁵² Spec. leg. 3.36.

⁵³ Ibid., 3.37.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 3.37–38. See also Spec. leg. 1.325–26, which bans several classes of people from the assemblies: males who are afflicted with the female disease (whom he also calls androgynes); female prostitutes; and their children who do not know the identity of their real fathers.

⁵⁵ Stowers is certainly correct to underscore Philo's objection to gender role reversals in this text, but Stowers's reading of the text is forced: “The active partner should be killed, first of all, because instead of training his partner in strength and robustness he encourages softness and unmanliness (Spec. leg. 3.39) and, second, because the activity does not produce children” (Rereading of Romans, 51 [my emphasis]).

⁵⁶ Spec. leg. 3.43. Philo considers this unlawful, citing the mixing of kinds in Lev 19:19. Unlike the biblical reference, however, Philo believed that it was mad erotic desires that led men and women to have intercourse with animals. This he considered contrary to nature (παρ ϕύσιν) (3.47). They should be killed because they have gone beyond the limits of the lack of self control (κρασία), inventing disgusting pleasures (δονάς) (3.49).

⁵⁷ Female prostitutes engaging in homoerotic behavior among themselves occurs in Alciphron Letters of Courtesans letters 13 and 14; Lucian Dialogues of the Courtesans 5.

⁵⁸ Spec. leg. 3.112.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 3.113.

⁶⁰ Ward, Roy Bowen, “The Use of the Bible in the Abortion Debate,” Saint Louis University Public Law Review 13 (1993) 406.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Runia, David T., Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Philosophia Antiqua 44; Leiden: Brill, 1986).Google Scholar

⁶² See Baer's discussion of δονή in Philo (Philo's Use of the Categories, 92–93).

⁶³ Philo Op. mund. 152. Compare Plato Tim. 69d.

⁶⁴ Runia, Philo of Alexandria, 346.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 345–46.

⁶⁶ The change from immortal to mortal is explicitly stated at the end of Op. mund. 152, but at the beginning of 151 Philo speaks of man being among the things mortal (τ θνητά); on this, see Baer, Philo's Use of the Categories, 87–88.

⁶⁷ Gen 2:17; 3:3. See Speiser, Ephraim A., Genesis (AB 1; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964) 17.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ von Rad, Gerhard, Genesis: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972) 85.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Westermann, Claus, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984) 233.Google Scholar See also Furnish, Victor Paul, “The Bible and Homosexuality: Reading the Texts in Context,” in Siker, Jeffrey S., ed., Homosexuality in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 22.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Words meaning “cleave” or “join” were common euphemisms for erotic acts, whether procreative or not (Adams, Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 179–82). There is no reason in the text to assume that the “cleaving” was penile-vaginal intercourse, nor can we know that the man had a penis until the mention of child-bearing in Gen 3:16 (after the disobedience) and the naming of the woman havvah in Gen 3:21. Anatomical changes feature explicitly in the Yahwist story; for example, the original human became two humans, and the serpent after his curse had to crawl on his belly.

Note that ἄρσην and θηᵔλυς do not appear in the LXX of the Yahwist creation story. They do appear in the priestly account (Gen 1:27), preceding the procreational command to be fruitful and multiply.

⁷¹ Trible, Phyllis, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978) 144–65Google Scholar, esp. 162. In commenting on the Yahwist account in Gen 2:24, Trible states that “no procreative purpose characterizes this sexual union; children are not mentioned. Hence, the man does not leave one family to start another; rather he abandons ('zb ) familial identity for the one flesh of sexuality” (ibid., 104).

⁷² Ward, Roy Bowen, “PORNEIA and Paul,” Proceedings of the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society and Midwestern Society of Biblical Literature 6 (1986) 219–28.Google Scholar

⁷³ Runia, Philo of Alexandria, 346.

⁷⁴ Op. mund. 157.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 158.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 161.

⁷⁷ ”[T]he most probable date would seem to be somewhere between, say, 30 B.C. and 40 A.D.” (Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 82).

⁷⁸ Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 115; compare 105.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 228.

⁸⁰ Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 3.

⁸¹ Many people in the time of Augustus and afterward chose to remain unmarried. See Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 227; Ward, Roy Bowen, “Musonius and Paul on Marriage,” NTS 36 (1990) 281–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the literature cited there.

⁸² Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 175–76.

⁸³ Ibid., 177–89.

⁸⁴ Plato Phaedr. 250e–251a.

⁸⁵ Philo Spec. leg. 3.9, 32–36. Van der Horst lists six possible meanings: cunnilingus or fellatio; during menstruation; all kinds of “variations” in intercourse; extramarital intercourse; violating a woman (γυνή as woman, not wife); and intercourse that is not for procreation. Accordingly, he considers the correct interpretation to be uncertain (Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 237).

⁸⁶ Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 190–91.

⁸⁷ Van der Horst correctly refers to the animal evidence as a “zoological error” (Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 239).

⁸⁸ Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 192.

⁸⁹ Bernadette J. Brooten, noting the use of “males” and “females,” “rather than the more usual terms, ‘men’ and ‘women,’” suggests that the author extended the prohibition of Lev 18:22 to include females based on the LXX use of ἄρσην in that text (Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996] 64Google Scholar; see also 299). But Brooten fails to note that the difference between θηᵔλυς and γυνή is more than the difference between “usual” and “unusual”; see above, p. 267 and n. 23.

⁹⁰ Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 193–94.

⁹¹ Van der Horst's concordance lists no entry for δονή (Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 281–88).

⁹² See also the similarities in opposing desire (πιθυμία, ρεξις).

⁹³ An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in Strasbourg in August 1996. In that version I did not argue on the basis of the meaning of θηᵔλυς but I am indebted to an interlocutor who reminded me that θηᵔλυς and cognates are often explicitly associated with procreation.

⁹⁴ Sanday, William and Headlam, Arthur C., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ICC; 5th ed.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902) 51–52Google Scholar; Dodd, Charles H., The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (MNTC; New York: Harper, 1932) 27Google Scholar; Cranfield, C. E. B., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ICC; 2 vols.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975) 1.Google Scholar 141; Furnish, Moral Teaching of Paul, 74–77; Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 92; Brooten, Love Between Women, 231, 262, 294–98.

⁹⁵ Saul M. Olyan has argued that Lev 18.22 and 20:13 prohibited anal intercourse, but not other male same-sex acts: “‘And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying Down of a Woman’: On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1994/1995) 179–206.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ James E. Miller does not think that Rom. 1:26 refers to intercourse between women, but rather to “unnatural (non-coital) heterosexual intercourse” (“The Practices of Romans 1:26: Homosexual or Heterosexual?” NovT 37 [1995] 11).Google Scholar Miller does not discuss Plato, but does mention Pseudo-Phocylides. I think that he misjudges the extent of sexual activity between women in the time of Paul. Brooten (Love Between Women) offers the most extensive evidence in print on the prevalence of female same-sex relations to date. See her critique of Miller (248, n. 99). The fact that there were women loving women in the ancient Graeco-Roman world should no longer be in question.

⁹⁷ Räisänen, Heikki, Paul and the Law (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 97–109Google Scholar; Sanders, E. P., Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 123–35Google Scholar; Gaston, Lloyd, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987) 119–22Google Scholar; Porter, Calvin L., “Romans 1.18–32: Its Role in the Developing Argument,” NTS 40 (1994) 210–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar But see Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 83–85.

⁹⁸ To my mind, this is a serious question, similar to the question of whether 1 Cor 7:1b is Paul's voice or that of some of the Corinthians. Both questions, however, are beyond the scope of this study.

⁹⁹ Brooten, Love Between Women, 247, 299.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 216. A similar position is taken by Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 94–95, and by Martin, “Heterosexism,” 347–49.

¹⁰¹ Brooten, Love Between Women, 116.

¹⁰² Ibid., 301.

¹⁰³ Sullivan, J. P., “Martial's Sexual Attitudes,” Philologus 123 (1979) 296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Eva Cantarella wrote of the “emancipation of Roman women” who “practiced birth control and abortion, formed freely chosen amorous bands, lived outside of matrimony, and enjoyed a new liberty that had been absolutely unthinkable—sexual freedom” (Pandora's Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity [Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987] 140–41).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Livy Ab urbe condita 34.1.2–8.3

¹⁰⁵ Gardner, Jane F., Women in Roman Law & Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cantarella, Pandora's Daughters, 136–37.

¹⁰⁶ Bauman, Richard A., Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Cassius Dio 58.2.5.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 57.12. Tacitus adds to this picture of Livia by noting that she dedicated a statue to the deified Augustus near the theater of Marcellus and placed her name above the name of Tiberius (Annals 3.64).

¹⁰⁹ A scola tomb is a semicircular stone bench with a back. Popular from the time of Augustus, the ones found at Pompeii are for rather important public figures.

¹¹⁰ See Roy Bowen Ward, “The Public Priestesses of Pompeii,” in Abraham J. Malherbe, ed., The Early Church in Its Context (NovTSup; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

¹¹¹ Ward, Roy Bowen, “Women in Roman Baths,” HTR 85 (1992) 125–47.Google Scholar

¹¹² Brooten, Love Between Women, 81–89.

¹¹³ Brooten, for example, states, “Since Stoic philosophy enjoyed broad appeal, knowledge of it extended beyond the limits of the philosophically trained.” (Love Between Women, 219).

¹¹⁴ MacMullen, Ramsay, “What Difference Did Christianity Make?” Historia 35 (1986) 323–30.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Winkler, Constraints of Desire, 44. As long as scholars of early Christianity remain intent on focusing on philosophers and philosophically influenced documents, including those of Hellenistic Judaism, almost all of which were preserved by Christian scribes, the Roman world will be skewed toward the philosophically developed morality of the later church fathers. See Ward, “Musonius and Paul.”

¹¹⁶ Macrobius Sat. 2.5.1–9; Juvenal Satires 6.115–35; Tacitus Annals 2.85. On women's use of sexuality in the context of the increasing political role of women, see Bauman, Women and Politics.

¹¹⁷ Sallust The War with Catiline 24.3–25.5, 40.5–6. See Bauman, Women and Politics, 10, 67–68. “Masculine daring” would be an apt description of many politically active women from Verginia (early third century BCE) on.

¹¹⁸ Something similar might have been said about Clodia; see Fantham, Elaine et al., eds., Women in the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) 281–84Google Scholar; Bauman, Women and Politics, 69–73.

¹¹⁹ Ovid Ars Amatoria 2.679.

¹²⁰ Myerwitz, Molly, “The Domestication of Desire: Ovid's Parva Tabella and the Theater of Love,” in Richlin, Amy, ed., Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 144.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Ibid., 151–53.

¹²² Jacobelli, Luciana, Le pitture erotiche delle Terme Suburbane di Pompei (Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompei, Monografie 10; Rome: “L'Erma” di Bretschneider, 1995).Google Scholar Idem., “Vicende edilizie ed interventi pittorici nelle Terme Suburbane a Pompei,” Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 54 (1995) 154–66.Google Scholar

¹²³ My numbering of these scenes is not arbitrary. I have described them in the ascending order of the Roman numerals painted on the wall beneath them.

¹²⁴ With regard to the seventh scene, Brooten raises the question of “whether the representation of the men as erect with their faces toward the viewer and the women as crouched below them with their faces away from the viewer has a cultural valence.” (Love Between Women, 60). On the whole, there is no direct correlation in these pictures between maleness and being erect in posture/facing the viewer.

¹²⁵ The first scene has the woman erect on top of a reclining man (whose face is hidden) engaged in intercourse. In the second scene it is the woman who is reclining and the man, standing, approaches her from the back. In the third scene, the man sits erect and the woman, on her knees, performs fellatio. In the fourth scene, the woman sits erect and the man, on his knees, performs cunnilingus. In the fifth scene the man is standing and the woman with her legs entwined around him is partially reclining—although her head is nearly as high in the picture as his and her face is more toward the viewer than is his. The sixth scene depicts one man penetrating another man, while one of the men is also engaging in intercourse with a woman. The seventh scene, more than any other, illustrates that the active/passive roles of men and women are thrown to the winds. A man is penetrating a man, the penetrated man is receiving fellatio from a woman, and that woman is receiving cunnilingus from another woman. The eighth and final scene shows a lone nude man with enormous testicles, standing next to the bed and reading something. Other evidence from Pompeii shows that women's pleasure by cunnilingus was available from male prostitutes. See CIL 4.8939.

¹²⁶ These eight scenes appear to be the work of a single artist, not only because of the common elements but also because of the well-ordered composition proceeding from scene one to scene eight.

¹²⁷ Jacobelli argues that this bath complex was used by both women and men (Le pitture 92–97).

¹²⁸ Ibid., 60.

¹²⁹ Brooten, Love Between Women, 265.

¹³⁰ CIL 4.4091.

¹³¹ Ibid., 4.1173, 3199, 3200d, 4659, 4663, 5186, 5272, 6782, 9202. See Varone, Antonio, Erotica Pompeiana: Iscrizioni d'amore sui muri di Pompei (Studia Archaeologica 71; Roma: “L'Erma” di Bretschneider, 1994) 60Google Scholar and n. 81.