The Sin of Sodom in Late Antiquity

Wht did God destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone? Since the High Middle Ages, there has been a clear and popular answer to that question: for the sin of male-male sexual congress. As a number of groundbreaking studies have demonstrated, however, the homosexual reading of the sin of Sodom was an addition of later commentators to the biblical narrative.¹ The book of Genesis itself does not imply same-sex relations. In early Christian writings, too, the emphasis was not upon the sexual deviance of the Sodomites but upon their pride or their violation of guest rights.² The reading of the Sodom narrative as a punishment for homosexual sin only began to develop in later centuries—this would culminate in the invention of a new word, "sodomy," to refer to homosexual sin.³

Many scholars identify the writings of Augustine, the celebrated bishop of Hippo, as a particular turning point in the evolution of the image of Sodom's sin. In book 16 of De ciuitate Dei (The City of God), composed in 420 CE, Augustine states that the reason God punished the citizens of Sodom was because of their sin, identified as "illicit sexual intercourse with men" (stupra in masculos).⁴ Historians have seen this statement as the first attempt in Latin Christian literature to explicitly link the sin of Sodom with homosexual sin.⁵ J. A. Loader believes that Augustine's depiction set the tone for future discourse: "From this time on neither the social awareness of the Old Testament Sodom traditions nor that of the Jewish reception of these traditions is to be found in the centre of the Sodom and Gomorrah theme. A new motif has come to the fore, where it has stayed ever since—'sodomy.'"⁶ From where did Augustine draw this image of Sodom? Loader surmises that he might have been influenced by knowledge of Jewish Talmudic tradition, but this does not seem the most likely explanation. More recently, Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides has argued that Augustine's take on the sin of Sodom was influenced by Stoic philosophy, but while this does account for Augustine's general outlook on sexual deviance, particularly homosexuality, it does not explain why he came to associate the Sodom narrative with homosexual sin.⁷

In fact, Augustine's comment in De ciuitate Dei is not the first to equate the sin of Sodom with male-male sex. This article will draw attention to two earlier texts that associate Sodom with homosexual sin: the Tractatus (Tractates) of Gaudentius of Brescia and the Historiarum adversum paganos libri septem (Seven Books of History against the Pagans) of Orosius. I will demonstrate that these texts make a crucial connection between the Sodom narrative and Saint Paul's comments about male-male sex in the Epistle to the Romans (Romans 1:27)—a connection that is sustained first by Augustine and later by the author of the Latin Visio sancti Pauli (Vision of Saint Paul). This fifth-century convention of linking Romans 1:27 with Sodom is, I argue, the catalyst for later traditions in which the sin of Sodom is presented as specifically homosexual in nature.

Sexual Excess in Classical Thought

Greek and Roman sexual morals were deeply influenced by ideas about nature and natural behaviors. The just person should attempt to live according to "natural law." The height of immorality, according to many ancient schools of thought, was to put things to a use for which nature provided no precedent: such activities were framed as being against or in excess of nature (phusis/natura).⁸ Those influenced by Stoicism—the Greek philosophical movement that enjoyed widespread influence in the Roman world during the first few centuries CE—were particularly keen on this point,⁹ but the idea had traction in wider circles as well. Excessive decadence (luxuria) in all its forms was decried by Roman moralists.¹⁰ As the first-century philosopher Seneca put it, luxuria "At first began to covet what was, according to nature, superfluous, later what was in opposition to...