Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality, and Authority in Late Roman Manhood by Mark Masterson (review)

Man to Man presents us with a wonderfully subtle and sensibly nuanced reading of the dynamics between desire, homosociality (a term from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick), and authority in late ancient Roman masculinities. The book specifically investigates the nature of male same-sex desire within the broader scheme of homosociality and how this contributed to the fashioning of masculine authority in late antiquity. Three important assumptions are delineated in the Introduction. First, homosociality played a central part in late Roman paideia—in fact, paideia is what enabled men to function successfully in the homosocial spaces of the late empire, whether it was by means of friendship or even rivalry. Second, “demonstration of knowledge of the physical realities of male same-sex desire and pleasure makes authority more credible . . . [it] has cognizance of these forbidden things” (19). Thus, the criminalization of same-sex passion is at the same time its epistemological confirmation. This assumption is related to Foucault’s point that the repression of certain sexual expressions also affirms their putting into discourse. The late Roman criminalization of same-sex passion (e.g. Collatio 5.3 and C.Th. 9.7.6), as Masterson proves, was all but the silencing thereof. Third, same-sex desire provided men with a language, a metaphor, for speaking about each other’s auctoritas/axiōma and admirability. Masterson states his case with three literary examples.

The first case study looks at Julian’s depiction of Marcus Aurelius in his Caesares. Reading Julian alongside the Neoplatonists, specifically Iamblichus and Plotinus, Masterson carefully shows how Julian portrays Marcus Aurelius in terms of same-sex sexual attractiveness by means of Platonic, that is, transcendent, intertexts. Despite the taboo of same-sex passion, Julian successfully parades Marcus Aurelius’s masculine glamour through paradox: “celestialization and same-sex desire inflect and interact with one another, and the corporeal liveliness of the latter makes the former shine more brightly through the power of paradox” (88). Issues like earthbound honor and shame, activity and passivity, do not inform Julian’s portrait of Marcus Aurelius. Julian, whom Masterson views as a creative mythmaker, like the Neoplatonists, believed that there was a transcendent place that existed prior to and beyond earthly moral evaluations and structures. Thus, same-sex desire informs and structures, paradoxically, the empyreal auctoritas of Marcus Aurelius, without any fear of shame or moral contradiction.

The second case study is curious and quite surprising—namely Athanasius’s Vita Antonii. While we have a positive application of same-sex desire in Julian, in Athanasius Masterson points out the opposite. Unlike Julian, Athanasius believes that the heavenly moral order projects itself (or must be projected) onto the earthly corporeal reality. Anthony’s sexuality is normalized, being tempted only by women and young boys. In so doing, the literature of the desert avoids the metaphorization of auctoritas by the grammars of same-sex desire. But despite Athanasius’s abhorrence for anything resembling same-sex passion, his knowledge of the forbidden acquired through paideia may be manifest in a few homosocial slips, specifically in Anthony’s wrestling match with the devil in the Vita Antonii 5. So although Athanasius avoids using same-sex desire to order masculine grandeur, the knowledge and accompanying danger of homoeroticism still lurk between the lines of the Vita. Masterson does struggle in this chapter to figure same-sex passion in the Vita, but he successfully juxtaposes Athanasius with Julian and proves his point in the end.

The final case study visits Ammianus Marcellinus’s Res Gestae. If Julian managed to apply same-sex desire to glorify Marcus Aurelius, and if Athanasius avoided it to the best of his abilities, Ammianus is more conflicted about same-sex admirability. Constantius II is portrayed as being perhaps too transcendent and glorious, while Julian is more approachable—but not spectacular enough. It is the conflict between transcendence and civility, and Ammianus wanted both. Constantius’s lack of civilitas...