Sex before Stigma: Making Sense of the Absence of Stigmatization in the Spiritual Aspect of Sacred Prostitution in the Ethical Systems of the Ancient World (original) (raw)
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Sex before Stigma: Sacred Temple Prostitution
Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 2022
This paper discusses the most controversial subject of sex within a spiritual setting, as the holy yoke presented itself among fertility cults of ancient pagan cultures. It presents a fine treatment of the subject with findings rarely traced in modern scholarship.
2002
From the first to the fourth century AD, male perceptions of female sexuality underwent a radical change with the advent of Christianity. This thesis is an investigation into classical male and Christian male perceptions of female sexuality, to determine the manner and extent to which this change in perceptions took place. The investigation will be twofold , studying both the laws that established these perceptions, as well as representations of female sexuality within specific, subjective male-authored texts. A study of the marriage legislation of Augustus and a male writer of the early Empire, Apuleius, shows an underlying pattern of thought, or paradigm, of female sexuality among classical males. Female sexuality was perceived as existing for the sole purpose of procreation, and males in positions of authority thought that it needed to be under male control in order to ensure acceptable sexual behaviour. They believed this would be best achieved by situating it under the authority of the family. With the advent of Christianity, however, a new competing paradigm on female sexuality emerged, which challenged the perceptions of men of the classical era. The church fathers spurned the classical view of female sexuality by instead advocating lifelong celibacy. They too, believed female sexuality had to be controlled, but they placed it under the authority of the church, and outside the family. Since the basis of the classical and Christian patterns of thought differed so markedly, especially when the Christian paradigm was first being formulated in the second century, it was inevitable that they would come into " conflict. Advocates of the classical paradigm tried to suppress Christianity by persecuting its supporters. Some Christian women became victims of this conflict. This thesis will also include an example of this conflict-the martyrdom of the female Christian Perpetua, who left a record of her persecution in the form of a diary. The conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in the fourth century brought about the end of the conflict ana a victory for the Christian paradigm. The church fathers suggest that the shift from classical to Christian was total and complete. However, closer examination of Constantine's legislation and the work of the influential church father Jerome shows that while this shift was complete in theory, it did not extend very far into social and legal practice.
Sex and the Ancient City: Sex and Sexual Practices in Greco-Roman Antiquity
Trends in Classics, vol. 126, 2022
This volume aims to revisit, further explore and tease out the textual, but also non-textual sources in an attempt to reconstruct a clearer picture of a particular aspect of sexuality, i.e. sexual practices, in Greco-Roman antiquity. Sexual practices refers to a part of the overarching notion of sexuality: specifically, the acts of sexual intercourse, the erogenous capacities and genital functions of male and female body, and any other physical or biological actions that define one’s sexual identity or orientation. This volume aims to approach not simply the acts of sexual intercourse themselves, but also their legal, social, political, religious, medical, cultural/moral and interdisciplinary (e.g. emotional, performative) perspectives, as manifested in a range of both textual and non-textual evidence (i.e. architecture, iconography, epigraphy, etc.). The insights taken from the contributions to this volume would enable researchers across a range of disciplines – e.g. sex/gender studies, comparative literature, psychology and cognitive neuroscience – to use theoretical perspectives, methodologies and conceptual tools to frame the sprawling examination of aspects of sexuality in broad terms, or sexual practices in particular.
What this volume is about: Terms, contexts and topics Much time has passed since scholars were afraid that their papers and lectures about, or pedagogical discussions of, aspects of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality could be seen as inappropriate or even offensive. Nowadays, a Cambridge Dean, unlike the one mentioned in E.M. Forster's novel, Maurice, would never ask a student to omit "a reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks", i.e. pederasty. 1 Despite the study of gender and sexuality in the classical world being a relatively new field of enquiry, which has really only developed over the last thirty-five years, there is a booming interdisciplinary bibliography discussing as many as possible of the myriad particulars of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality and gender. What is still relatively understudied in classical scholarship, a battleground where many claims are still contested, is sex and sexual practices themselves. This volume aims to revisit, further explore and, through updated interdisciplinary approaches, shed more light on the textual and non-textual sources that help us reconstruct a clearer, more coherent and precise overarching picture of sex and all the practices related to it in Greco-Roman antiquity. Let us start with an attempt to explain the use, in this volume, of terminology. There is a term in the subtitle of the volume which is of fundamental importance for marking the purposes and (the limits of) the content of the present book, which should be given a semantic clarification: sexuality. Sexuality remains a contested notion that cannot be unanimously defined. M. Foucault, D. Halperin and J. Butler, among other cultural constructionists, point out that it is a modern concept, being the product of acculturation that differs from time to time and from culture to culture, and that any theory about its application in the ancient world is permeated by modern sensibilities. 2 For Halperin, sexuality is a cultural construction and an object of cultural interpretation that is attached to specific