Volume 39, Number 17 · October 22, 1992
The Love that Dared to Speak its Name
By Jasper Griffin
Bisexuality in the Ancient World
by Eva Cantarella, translated by Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin
Yale University Press, 284 pp., $27.50
Books pour from the presses on the sexuality of the ancient world. What exactly did they do, and what are the implications for our own sexual attitudes? In particular, what did they think and do about homosexual behavior? As with books about the sexual behavior of animals ('Chimpanzees regularly do x, and so…'), these works tend to have a strong flavor of propaganda. In particular, we hear a good deal nowadays on the question—by no means as simple as it might appear—whether the Greeks regarded homosexuality as 'against nature.' Or rather, since some of them undeniably said so, whether they can be shown to have meant something else.
Review, 2939 words
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