by Heather Elizabeth Peterson
The other day I picked up a scholarly book on Greek and Roman homosexuality and found in it a passage that appears, in various forms, in hundreds of books that are being published these days on the history of homosexuality. The passage was as follows:
In a recent study of this topic, some passages from Homer have been highlighted which would make it very difficult to think of the relationship between the two heroes as a simple friendship between comrades in arms. When his friend is dead, as I have already pointed out, Achilles no longer has any reason for living: over and over he wishes that he had never been born, declares that his only desire now is to die, and seems to threaten suicide. And he does not confine himself to expressing his sorrow by groaning and covering his head with clay, as is normal for Homeric heroes. At the beginning of the nineteenth book, Thetis finds him ‘stretched out on top of Patroclus’, desperately embracing his corpse, in an attitude which is not at all in keeping with most displays of mourning in Homer. So it is not difficult to read the story of a love affair behind Homer’s words. [Eva Cantarella: Bisexuality in the Ancient World]
I had to put down the book then, because a new book had arrived, on Greek and Roman incest. There I found myself perusing a passage that read as follows:
In a recent study of this topic, some passages from Virgil have been highlighted which would make it very difficult to think of the relationship between the two heroes as a simple father-son relationship. When Anchises declares he will allow the invaders of Troy to kill him, as I have already pointed out, Aeneas no longer has any reason for living: over and over he sobs to his father, declares that his only desire now is to die, and seems to threaten suicide. And he does not confine himself to expressing his love by weeping, as is normal for Virgilian heroes. At the end of the second book, Aeneas actually carries Anchises on his shoulders from the burning city, an action that results in the death of Aeneas’ wife. In no other case do we see such a display of love in Virgil. So it is not difficult to read the story of a love affair behind Virgil’s words.
In this post-Freudian world, I very much fear that the second passage (which is, of course, my own creation) will seem quite sensible to some of my readers. I suspect, though, that most readers, upon encountering such a passage, will say, "Wait a minute. All of these activities you mention weeping, threatening to kill oneself, taking on extraordinary action are the type of behavior that might be undertaken by a son grieving for the imminent death of his beloved father. Why do you propose that there is necessarily something sexual in nature taking place?”
Alas, this is a question that is rarely asked in the field of scholarship on the history of homosexuality. It has become de rigueur to assume that any reference to love between males must be a reference to "homoeroticism" a word that in theory means "sexual love between males or between females," though in practice it is being used by many scholars to mean "strong emotions between males."
Why, then, the double standard? Why is it that, when scholars encounter a historical passage that describes strong feelings between a parent and child, they assume that the passage refers to platonic love, but when they encounter a historical passage that describes strong feelings between two unrelated males, they argue that the passage refers to sexual love? Why has the search for homoeroticism (sexual love between males) become a search for "homoeroticism" (strong emotions between males)?
Part of the reason, I think, can be attributed to bad scholarship of the past. As we all know, Victorian and Edwardian scholars made valiant efforts to explain away clear historical references to homosexuality. Their embarrassment about such references is aptly summarized by a passage in E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice, in which a university instructor tells a student who is translating Plato’s Symposium, "Omit: a reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks." Other Victorian scholars would show even less integrity than the tutor, translating the passages so that the classical authors appeared to be speaking about platonic friendship.
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