SOURCE: "Homosexuality in the Satyricon," Classica et Mediaevalia, Vol. XXXV, No. 1984, pp. 105-27.

[In the following excerpt, Richardson states that "the Satyricon provides one of the most comprehensive accounts of homosexual activity in Roman times," stressing that Petronius used homosexual elements in his writing for their comic possibilities and that he did not view homosexuality as perverse.]

Classical homosexuality has its bibliography, but the subject has lacked the methodical analysis that one expects of scholarship. This is particularly true of the Satyricon, whose homosexual incident has not received, to my knowledge, a separate consideration. The scattered references to the topic in wider studies either neutralize it by treating it as a part of the ancient sexual smorgasbord, or else find in Petronius satirical and even moralizing tendencies consistent with a stance of disapproval and suspiciously modern. Neither position is capable of doing justice to the sexual ambience of the work.¹

One may quickly ponder the possible reasons for this deficiency. Perhaps most scholars have not found the subject absorbing or germane, or perhaps they have distrusted their ability to deal with it impartially. For when homosexuality has been broached there has been a failure to recognize distinctions and typologies that are a common feature in present sociological research;² consequently inferences have been too general. At fault I believe is a two-thousand-year Christian tradition which has united with the Western legal system to obliterate the distinction between homosexual desire, homosexual acts, and the condition of homosexuality. Christianity in extreme form teaches that a sinful thought is the same as a sinful act, and the law in its application has not (until recently, at any rate) encouraged society to differentiate homosexual behaviour.

The literary implications of vagueness on the topic of homosexuality in the Satyricon are not inconsiderable. Since it is unlikely that Petronius designed the work to be a "possession for all time" his treatment of homosexual incident will reflect the norms and incorporate the attitudes and assumptions of first-century Roman society, as identifiable by that segment of society which makes up the writer's public. The writer's personal views are harder to recover, and I am not going to attempt to do so with any precision. Yet because there is a convenant between author and audience it is safe to assume that Petronius is seeking the comprehension and reaction of his public, and it will in turn respond in the only ways available to it—in the case of the Satyricon chiefly with laughter. It is a measure of the work's cleverness that it has been found fresh and entertaining throughout the centuries down to our own, but the modern response can be misleading, for Petronius' timeless humour tempts one into assuming that he holds up views on sexuality similar to the spectrum of our own. In the case of homosexuality, given the differences in conditioning, this seems unlikely, and the inability of scholars to agree on the ultimate thrust of the work is one of the results.

There are severe shortcomings in extracting information on homosexuality from the Satyricon and using it as a sort of sociological document. Views on homosexuality in Greek and Roman literature are rarely explicit but are almost always implied in the most unself-conscious manner. Moreover, the quality of the evidence is likely to vary according to the reliability of the particular literary genre as an expression of realism.³ Nothing like raw data is available. Yet it is probably a fair statement that the Satyricon provides one of the most comprehensive accounts of homosexual activity in Roman times. For if one subtracts it from Roman literature our information on the subject will certainly be far sparser. Thus a commitment to evaluating the homosexual material exists, and it would be submitting unduly to scholarly pessimism or fastidiousness to avoid discerning possible social attitudes behind treatment of homosexuality and pointing to literary conclusions that may or may not follow.

There is little doubt that in homosexuality in the modern era, contrary to classical times, one is faced with a phenomenon that has gone underground. Proof of this lies in the vocabulary of discrimination. It is surely significant that the Greeks would have found the concept of 'a homosexual' (for which they had no word) hard to comprehend. For them homosexual desire coexisted peacefully with heterosexual, and such is also true of the activity which the desire generated⁴ (although it was more appropriate at some stages in life than in others, as shall be seen). There is, according to Dover, no evidence in the Greek sources that such desire itself was morally bad or 'contrary to nature', and the acts themselves met with that designation rarely and in a narrower sense than that used today.⁵ The average Greek could develop homosexual interests but maintain a heterosexual orientation and was thus not today's 'homosexual'—who is defined in the careful language of sociology as "a person whose erotic concerns are quite persistently and predominantly directed towards members of [his] own sex".⁶ Unusually intense or protracted homosexual enthusiasm may have been a matter of comment, but was not greatly disapproved.⁷

It has been assumed that in the Satyricon Encolpius, Ascyltus, Giton, Eumolpus and others practise their homosexuality within a Greek mould.⁸ We should test this proposition and its implications for interpretation of the work. If in fact it appears to be true, is the author depicting unRoman phenomena to go with the Graeca urbs of the setting, or is there no essential difference between Greek and Roman perceptions in the practical application of homosexuality?

For purposes of comparison one may recapitulate Dover's findings on Greek homosexuality: it operated under numerous rules and constraints, and seems far more likely to have been indulged in by the wealthy, leisured class, for erotic dalliance and emotional involvement with desirable young citizen males involved an investment of time for hanging about gymnasia and money for courting gifts.⁹ Typically, it concerned a relationship between a senior partner who might be a youth or an older man, and a junior who might be a boy or youth before the beard was grown. The older partner or erastes occupied the role of pursuer, and the younger or eromenos that of pursued.¹⁰ Rigid convention within the homosexual ethos prescribed modes of behaviour for every aspect of this relationship from the spiritual to the carnal, with reward for conformity being the continued support of an important segment of public opinion.¹¹ Erastes initiated the relationship, in which admiration and love for the younger male could express itself in forms of sexual release. The eromenos, who stood to gain from his own and society's contemplation of the devotion of his older friend, conceived his role as a granter of favours (if the relationship was to continue), and could never in the convention initiate sexual contact or show sexual enjoyment. On the sexual plane the relationship was ostensibly entirely selfish, and eromenos had to suppress genital tension and channel it into the concept of service.¹² One is entitled to some disbelief in the practical maintenance of this code, but the literary evidence takes one no further.¹³ It seems that the best way to perpetuate this relationship was not to hold up to society the contradiction inherent in the approval of homosexual pursuit and ridicule of homosexual submission.¹⁴

The reasons for development and maintenance of this type of homosexuality among the Greeks are still a matter for speculation.¹⁵ The outward manifestations of it, as described, in the classical and postclassical periods, when it was already perhaps two hundred years old,¹⁶ have led researchers to seek its origins in mutually reinforcing psychological and sociological causations: the apparently inadequate performance of the Greek father in counselling his son,¹⁷ and the idealization of adolescence and desire to perpetuate it.¹⁸ The Greek father preferred to counsel another man's son and developed an erotic interest in him, while the boy modelled himself on this surrogate father/erastes. As for adolescehce, Devereux perceives the Greeks as exploiting the undifferentiated sexuality of males in pubescence, and channelling it in all its representations, from fantasy to physical well-being, into homosexual modes.¹⁹ The evidence from art and literature reveals in relationships between eromenos and erastes a strongly phallic-centered interest, suggesting that homosexual behaviour of the Greeks was rooted in sexual immaturity.²⁰ It was not therefore a psychiatric perversion or pathology but a psychological and affective state satisfying a cultural demand for such behaviour, artificially prolonged into adulthood. The Greek attitude to women is perhaps germane: Dover suggests that a general devaluation of their intellectual and emotional qualities in a society that depended more on male attributes for survival tended to foster male grouping and damage relations between husband and wife or (unexpectedly) father and son.²¹

These interpretations are not without difficulties. The view, something of a commonplace and based on good evidence, that homosexual activity declined or ceased after marriage, is hard to reconcile with the theory of displaced fathering. If "pursuit of eromenoi was characteristic of the years before marriage"²² fathers would not routinely be part of it, and one cannot see how relations between husband and wife would be affected. Further, the quality of the evidence raises a chronic difficulty in that it is fullest (while not being prolix) several hundred years after the inception of homosexual practice. Nevertheless, Devereux's main point that Greek homosexual behaviour reflected actually a pseudo-homosexual condition and that consequently the Greeks were not a nation of borderline psychotics should stand, and is directly applicable to our concern in the Satyricon.²³

Schmeling, perhaps reflecting a generally-held impression, makes the provocative remark that Encolpius, Ascyltus and Giton were brought up in the Greek tradition of sexuality, but, contrary to "the pre-Platonic homosexuals of ancient Greece who regularly developed into heterosexuals", are "psychiatrically perverts" (a term borrowed from Devereux).²⁴ This view, not elaborated but presumably based on perceptions of the behaviour and attitudes expressed by the Satyricon protagonists, invites an inspection of the evidence and a testing against the criteria for psychiatrical perversion adduced by Devereux. In view of the above description of the Greek tradition and Devereux's explanation of it, one wonders if there may be a contradiction in being so brought up but perverted. One wonders, further, if this is purely a modern judgment, or whether the author has his characters exhibiting abnormal patterns with conscious intent.

The ability to reflect a Greek tradition in the Satyricon implies awareness of the unchanged nature of a homosexual ethos through half a millennium of Greek culture and an intact transference into a more-or-less Roman landscape. A good case for uniformity may be made. On the Greek side Dover finds a promising illustration of the prospects of continuity of homosexual culture in the enduring incidence of graffiti, especially kalos-graffiti, reflecting unchanging sentiment of artist, customer or general public.²⁵ Although there is evidence in Hellenistic poetry to suggest a shift in taste in eromenoi over a couple of centuries from the muscular athlete of the fifth-century palaestra towards a more effeminate style,²⁶ the ethos appears unaffected and survives to be treated with obvious comprehension by Plutarch in Roman times. As part of the nostalgic, antiquarian movement Plutarch actually provides better evidence for the homosexual ethos of the Greek classical and postclassical periods, but his great interest in the affairs of historical erastai and eromenoi, together with a remark about a contemporary attitude of utter contempt for men who enjoy playing the passive role,²⁷ which is identical with the classical view,²⁸ suggest a cultural continuum despite a greatly changed world and presumably a modification of the sociological conditions that brought the homosexual ethos into being.

Further, the celebrated borrowings by the Romans of Greek literature and art from the third century B.C. on that make it possible to treat the classical world as a "Greco-Roman cultural amalgam"²⁹ appear to have brought knowledge of sexual styles also—a knowledge which seems to have fused solid with Roman hegemony of the classical world. The most remarkable product of this apparent fusion that distinguishes the classical world from our own is the admissibility of homosexual desire. In Greece erotic response in a male to another's physical beauty was, as I have mentioned, normal and natural, for it is the inescapable assumption lying behind many types of literary evidence, from the discussions on love in Plato and Xenophon to the argumentation of Aeschines, from the crude humour of Aristophanes to the equally crude gusto of Theocritus. The acceptance of the bisexual character of desire must of course have given an important degree of sanction to its practical expression in homosexual acts, as at the very least a method of releasing sexual tension akin to sexual relations with women without procreation as the object. Sexual acts of either sort could and did meet with disapproval and constraint on moral grounds, but chiefly insofar as the practitioner exhibited a lack of self-control that made him a bad risk in other areas.³⁰

As for what 'a homosexual' is, and for what produced this condition in the male and when, which is the arena for modern debate on the subject in the clinical literature and popular press, it was something of a nonissue. This was, I think, firstly because clinical psychiatry was an uninvented science and Greek public opinion was incapable of recognizing a genetically determined basis for homosexuality; and secondly because Greek law seems to have taken almost no account of circumstances outside the individual's control.³¹ Aristotle goes a little of the way when distinguishing between the roles of nature and habituation in making passive homosexuality pleasurable—a rare attempt at exonerating those subject to the first influence if not the second even if it be produced by outrage in boyhood!³²

In Rome the proof of fusion of sexual attitudes may be found in the Latin poets, particularly those with links to satire. Lucil. 8.325 in describing a womanly ideal, quod gracila est, per nix, quod pectore puro, quodpuero similis, demonstrates a clear parallel in Roman taste for fondness for the human form in its state of non-differentiation. One compares Lucr. 4.1053-4 sive puer membris muliebribus hunc iaculatur,/ seu mulier toto iactans e corpore amorem with the often-observed Greek tendency to lump together young males indiscriminately with women as sexual prizes (For the implied response of the two classes, the boy passive, the woman loving and passionate, cf. above, n.21.). A final example from a near-contemporary of Petronius establishes a well-marked pattern of the bisexuality of desire in males of first-century Rome.³³ Mart. 2.28 is a poem which for the poet's purposes covers all fields of sexual endeavour—apparently five: the three things that may be presumed to have the respect of the poet or his persona (in descending order?) are what Sextillus is not. He is not apedico, nor afututor, nor an irrumator. The two things that remain are passed over in mock-silence and rumour may take its pick: Sextillus is either a fellator or a cinaedus. The poem clearly implies the acceptability of the boy as a sex-object on a level with women, and the social disapproval of male roles considered demeaning as non-masculine. These attitudes differ in no important respect from those of classical Greece, as established by Aristophanes. For despite differences in genre and audience the two embody the sexual prejudices of their day.

As for any debate in Rome between heredity, conditioning or mere licentiousness governing the adoption of homosexual life styles, Aristotle's extenuating attitude based on the dictates of nature has its Roman reflexion from a surprising quarter: Juv. 2.15-17 verius ergo/et magis ingenue Peribomius; hunc ego fatis/inputo, qui vultu morbum incessuque fatetur. On the distinction between desire and practice I think it would be safe to say that Rome on the whole must have found homosexual attachment harder to approve on cultural grounds. There is a comparative dearth of literature with homosexual themes. The social conditions in the Roman family appear to have been different, and women of citizen-status are argued to have occupied a higher position.³⁴ The educational benefits of these relationships in Greece which seem to have fanned homosexual sentiment were rather attenuated in a Roman ethos developing under different political influences. Finally, the austere bent of Roman society from its outset affected the availability of the leisure time and luxury disposables that were so much a part of the Greek homosexual scene.

One concludes, then, that the Romans lacked a homegrown homosexual ethos, but probably under Greek influence were capable of acknowledging the validity of bisexual desire—the only necessary precondition for the admission of homosexual acts. Yet the general tenor of public opinion, if we find its at least partial and consistent echo in Cicero, Livy, Juvenal, Pliny and Suetonius, was not favourable.³⁵ The homosexual attachment was harder to justify in this Roman milieu, but it could be contemplated, as I shall argue that the Satyricon proves; and the Romans who dared pursued their homosexual pleasures with a typically practical bent. Expanding opportunities for sensual gratification with either sex were the perquisites of growing luxury and world conquest. Master-slave relationships proliferated and must have set squarely in the Roman consciousness a manifest destiny, expressed so nobly by Vergil, governing rights of conquered over subject, exploiter over exploited.³⁶ Yet insofar as this was expressed sexually, the difference in Roman society saw to it that only pederasty had anything of a following, and other types of homosexual expression met with the incomprehension that they do nowadays, though not necessarily for the same reasons. The argument that they were contrary to natural or divine or moral law was not so fully developed.³⁷ Homosexuality as viewed in Rome appears from the external evidence to fulfill a number of Greek requirements. We may now turn to the Satyricon for possible confirmation of these modes.

Encolpius, Ascyltus and Giton. The plot of the novel concerns the adventures of three young friends. The principal character, Encolpius, a sexually-mature youth (adulescens, 3.1), has had an amicitia with Ascyltus, a contemporary. The early history of the relationship is compromised by the state of the text, but it is clear from the type of bickering that erupts in c.9 that sexual togetherness was a feature of it, and that this had made the pals, in the current idiom, fratres. In the quarrel Encolpius accuses Ascyltus of attempting to rape his later-acquired frater, Giton, a somewhat younger youth. The pair had enjoyed a vetustissima consuetudo (80.6), now threatened by the robust courtship of the more powerful (fortiorem, 91.8) Ascyltus. In the triangle that is formed the two older youths become rivals—Encolpius self-pityingly and Ascyltus arrogantly—for the affections of Giton, and appear to lose the sexual interest in each other that had commenced with the 'seduction' of Ascyltus "in the park" (9.10) before our Satyricon commences. A truce is declared so as not to threaten an invitation to dinner—after which, Ascyltus declares, he will move out and seek another frater (10.6). Encolpius cheats on the terms by sneaking in to have a cuddle with his love, and receives a thrashing for not sharing. Other adventures take the trio's minds off sexual jealousies for a time: the recovery of their cloak, the ordeal at Quartilla's, and the long intermezzo of dinner with Trimalchio. Immediately after, Ascyltus gets into Giton's bed. This treachery and dissension, it is decided, cannot go on: Giton is to be allowed to choose his preferred 'mate'. He chooses Ascyltus, and the new couple leave Encolpius to a suicidal despair. Some time later Encolpius spots Giton in a bath-house, apparently down in the dumps. He hurries him off and resumes his old standing. Ascyltus comes round to reclaim his prize, but a search fails to turn him up and he departs, never to be heard from again.

Within this framework it is possible to discern two types of homosexual grouping. The attachment of the twentyish coevals Encolpius and Ascyltus, and their separate attachment to a youth a few years their junior and still in the late stages of boyhood. Both types of relationship conform, therefore, to two central varieties of Greek homosexual coupling for which the vase paintings cited by Dover provide such extraordinarily clear visual evidence in their respective depiction of sexual acts between youthful coevals, and different ones between an older and a younger male.³⁸ Dover notes, however, that in the Greek evidence the reciprocal desire of partners belonging to the same age category is virtually unknown.³⁹ If this be accepted one must interpret the obviously reciprocal sexual acts between contemporaries as expressions of an attachment that existed outside the erastes/eromenos relationship—an attachment largely if not totally of a sexual kind that found it convenient to seek sexual release in homosexual ways and with a degree of mutuality denied to the more formal affair. With Encolpius and Ascyltus the division between erastes and eromenos is equally obscure, and their amicitia meets practical needs more than sentimental and emotional ones.⁴⁰ Their sexual needs are fulfilled in other ways also, for it is clear from a taunt of Ascyltus that relationships of a heterosexual nature were not excluded—surely an important consideration in a review of the sexuality of the pair: 'ne tum quidem, cum fortiter faceres, cumpura muliere pugnasti' (9.9). The slur holds two implications: firstly, that Encolpius performed better with disreputable women (the wife of Lichas? 106.2), and his later failures with a "decent" woman, Circe, support this; secondly, his present impotence is known to Ascyltus—a matter of interest because for all Encolpius' effeteness he was the sexual initiator in their own relationship (9.10).

In addition both friends have sexual encounters with other males. That Lichas' liaison was sexual is clear by his method of destroying Encolpius' disguise: continuo ad inguina mea admovit officiosam manum et 'salve' inquit 'Encolpi' (105.9). Later he tries to put the relationship back on its old footing (109.8). However, there is some evidence that Encolpius is moving out of the sexual object or eromenos stage:⁴¹tam frugi erat [Eumolpus] ut Mi etiam ego puer viderer (140.5). It took an inveterate sexual opportunist like Eumolpus to think of Encolpius as a boy, and he confirms personally "with both hands" the young man's recovery (140.13). Ascyltus too is in demand in brothel and baths, among allegedly respectable old gentlemen, for the size of his genitals. The roles these two young cocksmen played is not clear, but one assumes they were not choosy in trading their bodies for the tangibles of life.⁴²

The second grouping in the plot is that of Encolpius and Giton. Dover's visual evidence⁴³ establishes that physically these two fulfill the Greek requirements for the typical erastes/eromenos relationship, described above. The senior partner is a youth, beardless or lightly-bearded, and the junior is a boy, immature and about a head shorter. Giton is "about sixteen" (97.2) and mollis, that is, possessing undifferentiated secondary sexual characteristics.⁴⁴ Lest anyone think that a Mediterranean boy of his age should have reached full sexual growth, Petronius signals his status conclusively to his audience in the Quartilla scene: he has a "novice tool" (vasculo tam rudi, 24.7) that will do for an hors d'oeuvre and a lusum puerilem (26.4). He is thus entering the years of the growing spurt of such erotic appeal to the ancient male for its combining of physical appeal with mental receptivity.

As for mental attributes, what kept the homosexual relationship functioning was the ability of the older male to exploit adolescent fantasies of service, loyalty and hero-worship, and develop the liaison into a fully-fledged emotional affair. The couple were, in different ways, "in love" and enjoyed a sentimental and sexual relationship that had its own justification and did not suggest or mimic heterosexual practice. The Encolpius/Giton affair is loaded with resemblances to such a multifaceted Greek homosexual relationship, and it is this relationship which is reproduced by Petronius with all the physical and emotional paraphemalia—ironically, as we shall see.⁴⁵

Giton's physical beauty is such that it captivates Encolpius, moves Ascyltus to lust, and attracts all other males (Eumolpus, the sailors on Lichas' ship) and females (Quartilla, Tryphaena). This is fully in keeping with the eromenoi of Greek literature who are similarly appealing.⁴⁶ Yet alongside these physical requirements Petronius portrays him as possessing (or, more accurately, portrays Encolpius as perceiving him to possess, for the portrait is not free from irony) a character in its main lines appropriate and desirable in a sex-object. The old-fashioned ideal in classical Greece abhorred flirtatiousness in a beautiful boy and encouraged passivity.⁴⁷ Giton apparently reflects this ideal, for Encolpius perceives him to be demure (verecundissimus, 25.3), tender-hearted (thus receptive to a lover—mitissimus, 93.4) and tactful (in a quarrel with Eumolpus he leaves the room so that Encolpius' anger may cool, 94.4). He has spirit (he lets out a giggle here and there) but is not overtly provocative and, rather, uses his innate shrewdness (pectus sapientiae plenum, 91.9) to exploit the typical opportunities presented to an eromenos to torment his erastes with doubt and jealousy. Eumolpus too is smitten with this special erotic combination (raram … mixturam cum sapientia forma, 94.1) which matches Encolpius' perception (moderationis verecundiaeque verba, quae formam eius egregie decebant, 93.4).⁴⁸ He is the perfect minion, in contrast to the rivals whom Encolpius fends off, who are all the opposite—libidinosi (Ascyltus, 10.7; Quartilla, 24.7; Tryphaena, 113.3; Eumolpus, 94.5).⁴⁹

The sexual aspects of the relationship are treated in the veiled Greek manner to which Dover alerts us. Certainly there is no overt expectation by Encolpius of reciprocated sexual desire in the scenes of physical union. The Greek eromenos got the satisfaction of being desired and admired, and this evidently seems enough for Giton: postquam se amari sensit, supercilium altius sustulit (91.7). For consummation of Encolpius' desire Petronius employs language romantic and vague but nonetheless suggestive of approaching (intercrural) orgasm: alligo artissimis complexibus puerum fruorque votis usque ad invidiam felicibus. nec adhuc omnia erant facta, 'cum… (11.1-2). This tallies with the Greek evidence, which shrinks from portraying or hinting at anal copulation in cross-age affairs.⁵⁰ The intercrural method is possibly confirmed when Socrates compares Kritias' desire for Euthydemos as no better than a pig's wanting to scratch himself against a stone.⁵¹ It seems fair to conclude that in relations between senior and junior partner, where fear of exploitation was present, anal copulation with a male could symbolize respective positions of dominance and submissiveness that might damage the emotional balance of the relationship.⁵²

Giton's passivity is a byword. He apparently froze so well when Ascyltus got into bed with him that his acquiescence could be mistaken for sleep (79.9) In his sexual role he certainly could not initiate, but two other options remained: he could be repugnans or non repugnans. No small element of Petronius' humour derives from the lover's bedevilment over which of the two he is on a given occasion. He is led off unprotesting by the virguncula (20.8), and is fondled unresisting by Tryphaena. He displays alarming sympathies for Eumolpus, and leaves with Ascyltus right after spinning a yam of rejection. Later, he swears ambiguously that nullam vim factam (133.2).

Where romantic passion exists, intrigue, jealousy and violence are present, whether the context be heterosexual or homosexual, and the latter has its own tradition in Greek history of lurid goings-on. That homosexual lovers' quarrels were a cliche is perceived from X. Smp. 8.4, where Socrates mimics an eromenos, "I beg you Antisthenes, please don't beat me up!" In my view it is this very tradition that Petronius exploits for humorous effect with Ascyltus' violent progress and intimidating behaviour (drawing his sword, 9.4-5; whipping, 11.4; suggesting cutting Giton in half, 79.9f.).

The finishing touch to this melodrama, this fabula inter amantes, is supplied by an attempted suicide. Encolpius decides to end it all by hanging himself. Giton bursts in, savours the scene and resolves as a gesture of his love to die first: 'erras' inquit 'Encolpi, si putas contingere posse ut ante moriaris' (94.10). He grabs a razor, slashes at his throat and falls to the ground. Encolpius picks up the instrument and prepares to die alongside him, when he notes that it is a blunt one for practising: it was a mimica mors.

Dover refers to suicide's "conspicuous role" in the numerous homosexual love stories recounted by Plutarch.⁵³ Moreover, everyone in Petronius' audience would be familiar with the cliche of the readiness of erastes and eromenos to endure pain and death to prove their devotion, the most inspirational example being the conduct of The Sacred Band at Chaeronea.⁵⁴ Yet despite the immediacy of these examples and their appropriateness to the context of the present affair scholars have perceived the roots of the Satyricon in essentially heterosexual genres of epic (as travesty of it) and Greek Romance (parody of it), with admixtures of the Milesian tale, mime, Menippean and Lucilian satire, and farce.⁵⁵ It seems that an important ingredient has been left out of the stew, for the mockery inherent in the blanket substitution of a homosexual plot for the heterosexual ones appears to hold up to criticism homosexuality per se, whereas the use of themes perceived as homosexual achieves a more subtle humour that invites the audience to laugh at the indignities imposed on the young of intemperate love of any sort. I think this may answer the question of why it is so difficult to see unambiguous disapproval of homosexual conduct in the Satyricon.

This is not to say, however, that people have not tried.⁵⁶ Smith believes that Petronius is making a special parodic or even moral point at the expense of Encolpius and Trimalchio merely when they admire the physical qualities of boys;⁵⁷ and Coffey, in his acceptance (though with reservations) of the Satyricon as a parody of Greek romance ("there is a homosexual couple, Encolpius a cowardly braggart, a thief and a trickster, and Giton, effeminate sharing most of the traits of a Greek heroine,") implies the recognition of homosexuals as a class and an invitation to contemplate the ridiculousness of homosexuality itself.⁵⁸ None of these views would be tenable in a first-century world familiar with the Greco-Roman bisexual ethos and free from the guilt attached to homosexual eros because there was no need to repress it. Petronius' careful depiction, con amore, of a familiar homosexual style in the Roman world must have provoked appreciation, laughter, and perhaps even nostalgia in his own audience.

The sustained parody (if that is not too strong a word) in the Encolpius/Giton affair is that of a homosexual and not of a heterosexual relationship gone awry. That is to say, Petronius' knowledgeable audience sees in Giton not the attributes of a Greek heroine but those of a passive little eromenos in the Greek mould played to the hilt and undercut by the Roman boy's special brand of slyness. Encolpius for his part behaves like a mooning erastes only more so, trying to juggle a homosexual emotionalism with a hearty appetite for all sexual diversions, and his activity has come to a standstill on all fronts: nequepuero neque puellae bona sua vendere potest (134.8). His plight was, I suspect, a familiar one. For psychological reasons sexually mature women would always present more of a challenge in that satisfaction will be sought in return, and pressure to perform would be far greater than with an immature boy who could not permit himself to have sexual demands.⁵⁹ Such are the normal problems of classical youth. Petronius' special achievement is in investing the affair with sympathetic humour. A past genius of comedy, Aristophanes, could only raise a laugh by reducing the homosexual ethos to its crudest physical aspects.⁶⁰ The author of the Satyricon adopts a more subtle method.

Eumolpus. Eumolpus the seedy poet is not a lad or a youth, but represents the third class of man: the mature male. Indeed, he is rather old, a senex canus (83.7). Yet apparently despite his advanced years he is sexually active and has a particular enthusiasm for boys at what one could call the ideal eromenos stage. Encolpius finds this out as soon as the two meet, for Eumolpus launches into an account of a sexual bout in Pergamum with the young son of a local dignitary—a lad as capable as Giton of playing the erastes/eromenos game.⁶¹ For the moment Encolpius is cheered, but typically fails to see the danger signals, and when Giton returns contritely the old man takes a prompt fancy to the boy. Furthermore, he makes it plain what he has in mind: laudo Ganymedem (92.3). Things go from bad to worse when Giton displays a sympathy for him in contrast to Encolpius' contempt for his poetry, and the compliments flow (94.1).

The scene is now set for another round of elaborate sexual humour. Sexuality, even homosexuality, I have argued was condoned by Roman society in the young man, Petronius' point being the comicality not of the acts themselves but of an exaggerated emotionalism under its influence. But the same acts in the unemotional elderly receive no such acceptance and may be viewed as a fit subject for some friendly 'ribbing'. As an older man Eumolpus cannot claim merely to be in love and having his head turned. He must stalk his prey with cunning and cynicism for more immediate and practical ends, and the writer has him play the strongest suit available to his years: he must pass for that old Greek cliche the personal guide and educator responsible for the young boy's morals. Thus while accepting hospitality at Pergamum, whenever the subject of pederasty (usus formosorum, 85.3) comes up he rails convincingly and looks grim, with the result that he is soon made teacher and chaperone of the host's comely son. Later, with Giton he makes the same but rather less convincing offer of paedagogus et custos (94.2).⁶² The trick is as familiar to Encolpius ('tu libidinosus') as to Petronius' audience: the wolf offers to guard the sheep.

The subterfuges to which Eumolpus must resort to achieve his ends reflect society's attitude to his pastime, and our knowing author gives him a hypocritical stance to (pretend to) salve a guilty conscience: si quis vitiorum omnium inimicus rectum iter viae coepit insistere, primum propter morum differentiam odium habet; quis enim potest probare diversa? (84.1).⁶³ True enough, but the delicious irony of Petronius' point is that here society may be justified in that Eumolpus differs by being more 'immoral' than most. Yet by his recognition of the old man's plight the author does not let go of sympathy for him. Eumolpus and the other elderly gentlemen are consigned to pursuing their homosexual habits with extreme caution, approximating the situation in classical Greece where a mature man was expected to put aside such eros. Naturally the ambivalence of sexual desire continued, but the acts were not countenanced. This is a standard which Petronius may have thought too rigid, for I see the essence of his comedy in making the audience laugh at the rigidities of the structures of man. There is a veiled plea for more flexibility.

Eumolpus as an older man, and an intelligent one, needed not only to exercise discretion but also to be able to justify (or to make a show of justifying) his presence around boys. Petronius, in what I believe to be one of his most masterly comic touches, has him do so by appealing to the homosexual ideals of ancient Greece and setting a familiarity with the eternally ambiguous nature of love constantly to his own advantage. Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus and Xenophon's Symposium are the loci classici for discussion (in homosexual metaphor) in which participants explore the benefits mutual to eromenos and erastes in a 'love' relationship, taking into proper account that sexual activity in such a relationship can be stimulated either by eros, the complex and laudable longing of the soul to partake of beauty, or else by mere bodily craving. Nobly expressed, this "compound of an educational with a genital relationship"⁶⁴ allowed the senior partner to train the eromenos by his good example, and the junior granted the erastes his body as reward and encouragement.⁶⁵ Paraphrased in blunt language the ethos provided that the "acceptance of the teacher's thrusting penis between [the boy's] thighs or in his anus is the fee which the pupil pays for good teaching, or alternatively, a gift from a younger person to an older person whom he has come to love and admire."⁶⁶ It is this ethos that Eumolpus seeks to exploit, and with a hypocrisy, irony and cynicism that must have appeared to the audience as highly amusing. As we have seen, he poses as educator for the Pergamene Boy and Giton, and is able to provide for the children of Philomela an actual bonitas (140.2) corresponding to the Greek agathos. I would even go further, and suggest that behind Petronius' pun of Eumolpus' "upright nature" there lurks a familiarity with the apparent ancient Greek notion that the communication of semen from penis to anus is an act of symbolic educational transference.⁶⁷ Although the pigiciaca sacra in the scene is problematic,⁶⁸ it appears from the activity which follows that Eumolpus has chosen the girl's anus—for its greater accessibility over her brother's—while Encolpius is allowed to try his luck with yet another doctissimus puer (140.11). In Eumolpus, therefore, we have more corroboration that Petronius holds up a product, no less than the young trio, of the Greek and Roman cultural amalgam. In the old sexual adventurer the author's target shifts, but his antecedents are similar and his comic aim is just as sure.

Other Characters. The equally elderly Trimalchio, rather under the weather as the evening progresses, kisses a pretty boy too soundly (74.8), and his wife appeals for fair treatment. An ugly scene ensues. Trimalchio becomes defensive, making the stock excuse that he was rewarding the boy's ways and not his looks, but the viciousness of his counter-attack reveals that Fortunata has struck home: as an old man and in mixed company he could not give such evidence of homosexual desire.⁶⁹ He had been indiscreet. Society constrained him as it did the patresfamiliae and Lichas. The double standard which cursed elderly males by permitting bisexual desire while curbing behaviour provokes enjoyment in the audience of the discomfort it produces. One might compare the potential for gossip nowadays in any extramarital sexual habits of respectable mature figures.⁷⁰

The cinaedi are a case apart, and would appear to be fair game for a laugh of a different sort for their ridiculous, campy appearance and unabashed sexual antics which their physical circumstances seem to have given them leave to pursue with special vigour. It is clear from the language which Encolpius uses what he thinks of this class who are capable of arousal and orgasm (as modern medicine confirms) although confined by surgery to active pursuit of passive postures: immundissimo me basio conspuit (23.4). Encolpius may have been crippled emotionally, but he was a cut above them. As usual it is unclear what Petronius thinks, and we cannot be sure of any invitation to the reader. The novelist of all ages is permitted this ambiguity. Certainly Encolpius' violent reaction does not necessarily do him credit. Yet one can be sure that his utter disgust delineates the humour in the situation without criticizing the activity itself. Is the reader invited to convict Encolpius of hypocrisy? I think not, for this circus side-show is too separate from Encolpius' own affair, and the audience could not accept the assault of the cinaedi as a dose of his own medicine as easily perhaps as we can today.

Finally we may consider the view expressed by Schmeling (n. 24) that Encolpius, Ascyltus and Giton are "psychiatrically perverts". From the setting of the remark it appears intended as a modern judgment on the basis of modern clinical knowledge, and not something of which the writer himself is aware. The basis for it, one recalls, is that the trio appear to have no hope of shedding their homosexuality and developing exclusively heterosexual habits in maturity. The first response to this is that there is no way of telling, since the protagonists are still youths at the end of the story. Actually, there appears, to me at any rate, to be no evidence of their preoccupation's future permanence. It is not, one remembers, viewed by Petronius as a 'perversion'. If their homosexuality conforms to the Greek type, as Schmeling seems to suggest, and as I hope to have demonstrated, there is on the contrary strong prima facie support for arguing that the youths' present frenetic sexual adventurism in general and homosexual habits in particular will cease when they get older. Petronius' compositional method may be said to foreshadow this, for Encolpius the narrator of his own youthful misadventures is already capable of viewing them with an ironic detachment as he draws the audience into having a laugh at his own expense. Further, it is possible to follow him in a kind of progression from neurotic impotence, through attempts to prove himself sexually with a mature and 'decent' woman, to the triumph of his 'restoration' at the end: dii maiores sunt qui me restituerunt in integrum (140.12). I think a good deal of the comic point is lost for Petronius' own audience if it is being asked to accept the present homosexual habits of the trio as permanent.

Petronius is thus unaware of their 'perversion'. Insofar as this may be a modern reading we may apply the criteria of Devereux.⁷¹ For perversion in a psychiatric sense to be present three conditions are suggested: it must be stable (permanent), compulsive (uncontrollable) and anti-hedonistic. Devereux acquits routine Greek homosexuality of the first count on the basis that it was a culturally-standardized stage of evolution towards heterosexuality (particularly, one adds, in certain phases of youth). Encolpius goes free, as seen, on the same grounds. The role of compulsion is very much diminished because homosexuality was not denied to Encolpius and did not produce guilt. Thus the anxiety or panic accompanying denial could not be present. Furthermore, as seen, Encolpius sought balancing remedies that controlled his urge with Giton. Denial of satisfaction for Encolpius came not from society but from impotence, producing anxiety of a different sort. The data we possess, however, shows that he has functioned heterosexually in the past and hopes to do so again. For homosexuality to follow the third condition, anti-hedonism, it must be accompanied by fear of loss of control, and must be channelled into non-sexual, aggressive drives. Functioning as a 'normal' successful homosexual erastes Encolpius would exhibit no externalized hostility as the product of self-hatred or anti-hedonism. One concludes, then, that he and his friends were no more genuine perverts than the average Greek.

The Roman attitude to this homosexuality, if not precisely that of the Greeks, was far closer to the Greek ethos than to our own. The author is thus not, in my view, applying an artificial Greek standard to go with the Graeca urbs, but is employing a wider type of realism in his novel. The audience is capable of recognizing and identifying with the conditions under which the characters function, and is amused and titillated by the responsive chord which they strike. Our own literary understanding and appreciation of the Satyricon should be based on Petronius' relatively limited and contemporary vision of his subject—which is not to disparage him but to recognize the full literary and cultural mainsprings of his humour. We may credit the author by not adopting analyses supposing attitudes to homosexuality more in keeping with the orthodoxies of the present day.

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was given at the annual conference of the Classical Association of Canada, Saskatoon, June 1979.

¹ On the Greek side K. J. Dover has greatly improved the situation with two studies, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford 1974) and Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, Mass. 1978), cited hereinafter as GPM and GH. The bibliography in the latter is, despite a disclaimer, a good guide to literature on homosexuality ancient and modern. See particularly G. Devereux, Greek Pseudo-Homosexuality and the 'Greek Miracle', SO 42 (1967) 69-92. For the Satyricon see J. P. Sullivan, The 'Satyricon' of Petronius: a Literary Study (London 1968), esp. 234-236, M. Smith (ed.), Petronius: Ceuia Trimalchionis (Oxford 1975) ad he, M. Coffey, Romnan Satire (London 1976) 178-203, P. G. Walsh, The Roman Novel (Cambridge 1970), esp. 82-83, J. Fisher, Metaphore et interdit dans le discours &rotique de Petrone, CEA 5 (1976) 5-15, G. Schmeling, The 'Exclusus Amator' Motif in Petronius, in Fons Perennis: Saggi critici in onore del Vittorio d'Agostino (Turin 1971) 333-357.

² For example see A. Bell and M. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York 1978).

³ On the quality of evidence from different types of literature see Dover GPM 8-22 and GH 11-14.

⁴ See Dover GH 1, 12, 23, 61-62, 65, 201.

⁵ See Dover GH 165-170.

⁶ D. J. West, Homosexuality Re-Examined (Minneapolis 1977) 1.

⁷ See Dover GH 23, 73.

⁸ See Schmeling (above, n. 1) 346.

⁹ See Dover GH 54-55, 92, 150.

¹⁰ See Dover GH 85, 164.

¹¹ See Dover GH 107.

¹² See Dover GH 44, 91, 163.

¹³ See Dover GH 103.

¹⁴ On the 'complicated' attitude of Greek society see Dover GH 185, 190-191. Comedy expresses a greater hostility than philosophy to boys who play the role of eromenoi (Dover GH 146). Approval of the relationship required the muting of the tendency to see sexual acts between males in terms of dominant and subordinate roles (see Dover GH 101-106, 140).

¹⁵ Here Dover is cautious and brief. See his remarks in GPM 213-216 and GH 201-203. Devereux, art. cit. (n. 1) is the major source for theories on psychological and sociological origins of Greek homosexuality.

¹⁶ On the difficulty of the earliest literary evidence for the Greek homosexual ethic see Dover GH 194-201.

¹⁷ Devereux 78.

¹⁸ Devereux 80. Cf. Dover GH 135 on "youthening" in art.

¹⁹ Cf. Devereux 75-76.

²⁰ For "phallos-centeredness" see Devereux 74. For representations of the penis in art and their significance see Dover GH 124-135. For emotions inspired by the sight of a boy's penis see Dover GH 124, 137, 156. n.6.

²¹ Dover GH 202. The low opinion among Greek males of the intellect and self-control of women (Dover GH 12, 67, 201) is perhaps connected with the well-known Greek view of their hypersexuality (Dover GH 36 n. 18, 96, 102, 170). In other words, giving in to sexual desire and enjoyment was the result of emotional weakness inherent in women. The belief in greater feminine pleasure out of sex goes back at least to Hes. Fr. 275: Teiresias, who has been both male and female, says women get nine-tenths of it (see Dover GPM 101). I should like to associate the possibly true reason for this apparent observation with a suggestion by Devereux in another context that "the Greek woman was psychosexually mature at an earlier age than the Greek man" (Devereux 74). The homosexual ethos postponed the boy's sense of sexual identity and discouraged overt enjoyment, while the girl's was completed earlier. Greater maturity produced heightened sexual intensity with no fear of loss of control. See also Devereux 72.

²² Dover GH 171; cf. GPM 213.

²³ Devereux 80.

²⁴ Schmeling, art. cit. (n.1) 346 n.18.

²⁵ Dover GH 112-115.

²⁶ Dover GH 79.

²⁷ Plu. Mor. 768a. See Dover GH 4, 103 n.87.

²⁸ In Greek comedy all homosexual submission is contemptible (Dover GH 142-148). In Theoc. 5.116-119 the slur is that Lakon enjoyed playing the woman's role. Dover GH 104. For contempt for cinaedi see Mart. 2.53, 71, 73, etc.

²⁹ Dover GH 4.

³⁰ Dover GH 30. Homosexuality appears not to have been singled out for special criticism until PI. Lg. 838e-839g, where the Athenian advocates abstaining from males in order to follow nature and avoid erotic fury and insanity (Dover GH 166). For eros as a 'sickness' and a 'madness' see Dover GPM 210-211.

³¹ See Dover GH 108-109.

³² Arist. EN 1148gl5-9a20. Quoted by Dover GH 168.

³³ For other examples see Sullivan (op. cit., n. 1) 235 n.1.

³⁴ See on this S. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves (New York 1975) 149f.

³⁵ E.g. Cic. Catil. 2.23, Plin. Epist. 9.17, Juv. 2, Suet. Cal. 36.

³⁶ M. Cary and H. H. Scullard, A History of Rome (London 1975³) 173 and 606 n. 10 quotes Cic. Verr. 2.3.12 for the rationale of provincial taxes as a war indemnity levied upon conquered people, or alternatively, because provinces and revenues are the property, as it were, of the Roman people (Verr. 2.2.7).

³⁷ But see Juv. 2.132f. on homosexual marriage.

³⁸ For homosexual acts between coevals see R200, R223 (anal), R243 (anal), R954; between a senior and a junior partner: BI 14, B250, B486, R502, R573 (none anal).

³⁹ Dover GH 16.

⁴⁰ Encolpius is, however, sentimental enough to have viewed Ascyltus as carissimum sibi commilitonem fortunaeque etiam similitudine (80.8). Ascyltus is the unemotional type, yet acknowledges a mutual commitment: 'sic dividere cum fratre nolito' (11.4).

⁴¹ In the Greek ethos this passage is well marked. See Dover GH 58, 68 for "female characteristics" of boys; 86: "once the beard was grown, a young male was supposed to be passing out of the eromenos stage"; 171.

⁴² In the brothel, 8.3; at the baths, 92.10, with an eques Romanus ut aiebant infamis. In better days Encolpius was a veritable sexual Achilles (129.1).

⁴³ Dover GH R27, R59, R196, R547, R637, R651, R851.

⁴⁴ The Greek literary evidence behaves sometimes as if the terms for the junior partner, pais and neaniskos, are interchangeable, sometimes as if they represent two distinct phases (see Dover GH 85-6); there is a similar ambivalence in the Satyricon with puer and ephebus. In the Greek ethos accosting a boy too young to judge one's character was illegal (Dover GH 48-49). At what age this should be, and in whose opinion, are questions asked by Dover but not answered.

⁴⁵ Perhaps at variance with this view is Walsh, op. cit. (n.1) 83: "The whole relationship between Encolpius and Giton is a comedy of manners without satirical intent". My belief is that there is so much irony that parodic point is inescapable.

⁴⁶ See Dover GH 172 for citations: the paidika of Jason of Pherai; the soft beauty of Dionysus in Eur. Bacchae.

⁴⁷ See Dover GH 28, 84-85.

⁴⁸ For this sentiment cf. Verg. Aen. 5.344 gratior pulchro veniens in corpore virtus (of the comely Euryalus).

⁴⁹ Encolpius in his black despair after the departure of Ascyltus with Giton recants and even accuses Giton of libido, of behaving like a kept woman (mulier secutuleia) and of performing opus muliebre in jail (80.3-6). If this be true we must recall that Giton was a slave and not a citizen and did not practise vice, like Encolpius, despite being free (stupro liber, stupro ingenuus). At this low point in his life Encolpius' perception of himself and Giton in the idealized erastes/eromenos love-affair is severely shaken.

⁵⁰ See above, n. 38.

⁵¹ See Dover GH 123 n. 38, 159. For Roman observation of this habit cf. Lucil. 9.356 scaberat ut porcus contritis arbore costis.

⁵² Anal copulation with women is depicted not infrequently. See Dover GH B51, B634, R543, R545, R577. One should avoid, with Dover, seeing 'political' significance in this. E. Segal, in a review of Dover and using his evidence, New York Times Book Review April 8, 1979, 36: "this rare sexual proclivity only emphasized the male attitude toward the female: she must be dominated and debased", makes an inference which Dover is not prepared to do. Contempt for the anally-penetrated male does not prove contempt for the anally-penetrated female, as Segal argues. Another possible reason for this practice is less invidious: "hetairai may commonly have insisted on anal intercourse as a simple contraceptive measure" (Dover GH. 101). There are dangers in interpreting mute visual evidence sociologically, for we have no way of telling at whose instigation the acts proceeded, and why.

⁵³ Dover GH 51-52.

⁵⁴ See Dover GH 192.

⁵⁵ E.g. M. Smith, op. cit (n. 1) xv-xviii.

⁵⁶ E.g. J. Fisher, art. cit. (n. 1) 14: "… I'homosexuel est, dans tout le roman, exception faite des relations Encolpe-Giton-Ascylte, constamment decrie."

⁵⁷ Smith 55, 97.

⁵⁸ M. Coffey, op. cit. (n. 1) 184.

⁵⁹ See above, n. 21.

⁶⁰ See Dover GH US.

⁶¹ I differ with R. Beck, Eumolpus poeta, Eumolpus fabulator: A Study of Characterization in the "Satyricon", Phoenix 33,3 (1979) 249, in that I do not believe that Petronius presents the view of the boy's "insatiable sexuality" (to contrast with the model of innocence seduced). The boy's desires are meretricious and not sexual, and he is more conniving and mock-affectionate (86.7 cervicem meam iunxit amplexu) than passionate. This venal ephebus plenae maturitatis has boasted to his friends of the wealth of his lover (87.4), and he will lose face if Eumolpus does not "pay up" in a manner befitting the boy's beauty. He allows (male repugnans) the affair to be renewed for this reason, and not voluptatis causa (although Eumolpus flatters himself with thinking 'ille non indelectata nequitia mea'). The tables are turned: the exploiter is exploited. For the Greek view, that "the attentions of the erastes, assuring a boy that he is not ugly, are welcome to him for that reason alone", see Dover GH 89, quoting the famous scene in PI. Smp. 219g when Socrates did not try to seduce Alcibiades.

⁶² Giton plays right along with him: 'pater carissime (ironically), in tua sumus custodia' (99.8). He is well aware of how to inflame the old lecher.

⁶³ For a similar sentiment cf. Ov. Am. 3.4.17 nitimur in vetitum semper cupimusque negata.

⁶⁴ Dover GH 202.

⁶⁵ See Dover GH 91, quoting PI. Smp. 184c (points made by Pausanias): the erastes subordinates himself in any way to an eromenos who has granted him favours, and the eromenos performs any service for one who makes him [sophos] and [agathos]. Such is the proper setting for "favours". Cf. Dover GH 190.

⁶⁶ Dover GH 91.

⁶⁷ On this see E. Bethe, Die dorische Knabenliebe, RhM N. F. 62 (1907) 465-474; T. Vanggaard, Phallos (New York 1972) 32-33; Devereux, art. cit. (n. 1) 80; Dover GH 202-203. For knowledge as the 'fruit' of this union see Dover GH 164. For other instances of the sexual signification of bona cf. (of Encolpius) neque puero neque puellae bona sua vendere potest (134.8); (of Tryphaena) in odium bona sua venissent (104.11). For bonae artes as sexual seduction see Ov. Ars. 1.459. See on this N. P. Gross, CJ 74,4 (1979) 305.

⁶⁸ For a restatement of the possibilities see B. Baldwin, "Pigiciaca Sacra". A Fundamental Problem in Petronius?, Maia 29 (1977) 119-121. For possible parody of a religious rite see Schmeling art. cit. (n. 1) 24-25. Add a Spartan custom, according to Hagnon of Tarsus ap. Ath. 602d, "before marriage it is customary for the Spartans to associate with virgin girls as with paidika," (tr. Dover GH 188). For anal copulation with women see above, n.52.

⁶⁹ The freedmen are on the whole rather asexual. They gossip about one of their number who was pullarius and adhuc salax at over seventy (43.7f.). They appear to have little interest in the young men at dinner, and even when provoked do not seem conscious of the relationship of Giton and Encolpius. The worst thing Giton is called is a cepa cirrata (58.2). Smith op.cit. (n. 1) 68 believes that certain details depict Trimalchio as effeminate. This may be so, but I doubt if it should be linked with any inference of passive homosexuality—despite the symbolism of his slave-boy Croesus riding on his back!

⁷⁰ See L. Humphreys, Tearoom Trade. Impersonal Sex in Public Places (Chicago 1970) for modern homosexual analogues.

⁷¹ Devereux, art. cit. (n.1) 72-73.