In The Gayncients, Out.com traces the Hollywood portrayal of homosexuality in ancient Greece. As a preface, ancient Greece conceived of sexuality much differently than that of the modern Western—to be sure, it is perhaps inaccurate to even apply our term “sexuality,” and I only do so to help us understand what we’re exploring here. That said, an aspect of one’s coming-to-manhood in ancient Greece was the expectation that he would entertain the sexual advances and desires of older, more distinguished men. Sexual practices were evaluated not on the subject of desire, but instead on the object of pleasure; it was not on whom the act was performed but the act itself that was susceptible to judgment.
Yet the manner in which the article manages itself is problematic. For one, the article is framed by this question: “we ask just how gay were the real ancients?” This frame clearly misses the subject of desire-object of pleasure distinction: sexual encounters between two men where not evaluated on this fact, but on the acts themselves which were expected to exhibit a sort of moderation. Next, with regard to Spartacus, the group of slaves that fought their way out of gladiator school, the article draws attention to the “very gay” TV series, and the historical account which does not acknowledge “gayness.” Again, what does the insertion of the modern conception of “gay” into a society which did not make such considerations do to the society in question? The examples above, which are not anomalous to the article, but recurrent, are informed by the conception of sexuality as static across time and space. It is thus portrayed as external to the individual, to groups, and by implication, to the power relations which create and shape each.
It is interesting to observe at least a somewhat mainstream cultural publication, Out, attempt to wade through the mainstream popularization/problematization of Greek sexuality; even in its attempt to demystify the nature of “gayness” in ancient Greece, the article misses an important piece of analysis provided by Michel Foucault in the second volume of his The History of Sexuality. In his analysis of sexuality in ancient Greece, Foucault is clear of the fundamentally different notion it entailed: “The Greeks did not see love for one’s own sex and love for the other sex as opposites, as two exclusive choices, two radically different types of behavior. The dividing lines did not follow that kind of boundary” (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, p. 187). A final example crystallizes the article’s disconnect in a series of ambiguous statements about the sexuality of Thebans and Alexander the Great: the Thebans are depicted as “one hundred-fifty homo couples, idolized by society, heroes to all, sworn to fight to the death to protect their love and homeland.” And this is followed by the dubious description of Alexander as the “…soon to be ‘the Great’ and very likely ‘the Gay’.” Further, noting a relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion, a general and great companion, the article concludes “the boy was very, very bi.” This final example is especially noteworthy for the image it produces: the figure of the warrior is not one modernity typically casts as gay. Foucault speaks to such analysis: “we can talk about their ‘bisexuality,’ thinking of the free choice they allowed themselves between the two sexes, but for them this option [did] not referred to a dual, ambivalent, and ‘bisexual’ structure of desire. To their way of thinking, what made it possible to desire a man or woman was simply the appetite that nature had implanted in man’s heart for ‘beautiful’ human beings, whatever their sex might be” (ibid, p. 188).
Accordingly, while the article attempts a clarification between the popularizes portrayal of gayness in ancient Greece and that of history, by failing to recognize the fluidity of sexuality across time and space the article instead contributes to the cultural spectacle that reinforces this very perspective; by embedding its analysis in modernity, it merely punctuates the conception of sexuality as outside of the subject, and thus out of control and static.
