Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (review)

Caroline Vout asks "why it is worth thinking about the sex lives of emperors," and identifies her topic as "not the sex or sexual attraction but the implications of their description," declaring that although "'sex is power' is not the subject of this book, it is the tool of its analysis" (7). Ultimately, as Vout argues, display of the emperor's sexual desires reinforces "existing hierarchies" (25), and allows people across the empire to contemplate the emperor's private eros. She selects a Hellenizing prism for her specific subjects: "Greekness is a binding factor in my selection of stories" (15). The four main chapters study artistic and literary depictions of Antinous; the eunuchs Sporus (Nero) and Earinus (Domitius); and Panthea, mistress of the emperor Lucius Verus. These beloveds cannot provide legitimate, or any, children (213), and thus exemplify the emperor's actual sexual desire, as opposed to his obligatory procreation.

Vout rightly notes that, although few people in antiquity could have read Suetonius, a great many spent time looking at statuary (8), and she is particularly strong on visual representations of the objects of imperial desire, on display throughout the empire. Her longest chapter studies Antinous. Except for Augustus and Hadrian, Vout comments, without citation, "we are told that more portrait sculptures of Antinous survive than of any other figure for classical antiquity" (53). In this chapter, Vout studies the remarkable spread of Antinous' cult throughout the empire, in the form of coinage, statuary, temples, games held in his honor for more than 170 years after his death. Of Sporus and Earinus, she proposes that the imperial eunuch functions as "a metaphor for the poet's own situation in having potentially to prostitute his principles and write to please his patron," and also in reminding the poet that he is never free of his "infectious literary heritage" (169). She draws on cultural studies as well as classical scholarship, most notably by Marilyn Skinner, in studying the castrated male in Latin poetry, to argue that this damaged male body is a sign of deficiency, pain, loss, diminished masculinity, and wasted potential, in a way that even the beautiful dead young Antinous cannot be. In turning to study briefly a female love object, Vout draws on Maria Wyke to link Panthea to the elegiac puella: Greek, beautiful, intelligent, learned, but "still a prostitute" (232). Panthea offers "an important interface between a provincial [writer] and his readers," for considering how they see themselves under Roman rule. Vout concludes by arguing that the evidence on these four love objects should be "reintegrated into mainstream historical evidence" because they effectively stood for Roman imperial power (242).

In general, Vout writes well, and draws on a wide range of ancient sources and modern scholarship. There are minor signs of carelessness: she cites, at 161n.1, Craig Williams 1995 rather than Williams 1999; she describes "Alcestis making" a simulacrum of her "loved one" (10), when it is Admetus who promises to make a statue of Alcestis; and she mentions an article by "Shardi," rather than Shadi, Bartsch (156). Surprisingly casual, even peculiar, expressions appear throughout: "History reels with warnings" (170); "sexploits" (8); "Nero and Sporus input a different key for understanding" (168); "Amy Richlin rails" (52, a needless overstatement). Excessive casualness does not age well, and is confusing on more than one occasion, as when Vout claims that "[i]n Egypt, people were clamouring to call their own offspring Antinous until well into the third century C.E." (108). Citing only a list of mummies with the name (131n.160), she does not specify how we know of this apparent naming competition. Elagabalus is described as virtually competing ("[n]ot to be outdone") with Nero, some 170 years later, in the endeavor to marry an exotic Eastern eunuch (137). Such distractions make it easy for readers to lose track of Vout's argument, and risk causing that argument to seem tenuous.

Overall, this study will be of interest to scholars...