Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome (review)

Kirk Ormand’s Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome is a welcome addition to the growing body of materials available for students and teachers of ancient sex and gender. Based on the most up-to-date scholarship, this accessible introduction to the complex topic of ancient sexuality presents an impressive amount of information in a concise and nuanced manner.

Geared toward an audience with little familiarity with the ancient world, the book investigates the question of whether or not the Greeks and Romans had a category of thought that we can legitimately call “sexuality” (7). The introduction lays out its central thesis that heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality are modern categories that ancient Greeks and Romans would not have recognized. This thesis is based on four observations:

1. 1. Virtually every man is assumed to be interested in sex with boys;

2. 2. This desire for boys is not assumed, normally, to exclude an equally strong desire for women;

3. 3. With rare exceptions (if any), the desire is depicted as that of an adult man for a so-called boy below the age of 20 or so, rather than a reciprocal desire between equals;

4. 4. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans have a word, or seem to have a category, for individuals who prefer sex with one gender rather than another (14).

Ormand argues instead that gender identity (i.e. one’s degree of conformity to gender expectations) was the primary focus of social scrutiny and that masculinity and femininity were principally defined by the capacity for self-control.

Organized chronologically, the book begins with Homer and ends with Rome in the 2nd century CE. A brief epilogue discusses the ancient novel, Christianity, and later antiquity. Each chapter focuses on select works within a specific genre and time period. After providing relevant contextual information, Ormand conducts a series of close readings, summarizing each passage, setting it within its narrative context, interrogating its internal logic, and suggesting what information about ancient sexuality can and cannot be gleaned. Readers are also encouraged to pay as much attention to generic conventions and audience expectations as to representations of sexual behavior within the texts themselves. For students with little experience analyzing classical texts, Ormand’s methodical approach models the steps necessary to achieve more sophisticated levels of interpretation. For example, pseudo-Demosthenes’ Erotic Essay, in which a youth is praised for his self-discipline and courage, is first analyzed as source material for ancient masculine ideals, then as a rhetorical artifact, in which praise becomes a covert tool of seduction.

In the second half of the book, Ormand takes care to point out explicitly where Greek and Roman attitudes overlap and where they diverge. His main argument here is that despite some differences in sexual protocols (e.g. regarding sexual relations with citizen youths) both Greeks and Romans viewed control over others as well as one’s own impulses as the primary index of masculinity. That is, a citizen youth in Greece demonstrated self-control by not submitting to the advance of every suitor, whereas in Rome he did so by not subordinating his body to anyone’s sexual pleasure ever.

Among Ormand’s more valuable contributions is his explication of ancient passages that seem to echo modern condemnations of homosexuality. His careful analyses demonstrate that these critiques are directed, more precisely, at the transgression of gender norms rather than at homoeroticism itself. One difficulty, however, is Ormand’s reliance on the phrase “gender deviant” to describe the cinaedus and the tribas. The term “deviant” does have pejorative connotations that render it a more appropriate translation than the relatively neutral “gender non-conforming.” However, because of its frequency in modern anti-gay rhetoric, use of the term “deviant” risks reinforcing students’ tendencies to read such passages as evidence of ancient homophobia and thereby conflate sexual orientation with gender—an outcome that would reify modern sexual categories and undermine the book’s thesis.

Overall, Controlling Desires is an excellent introduction...