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Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome

2008; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 52; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mou.0.0051

1913-5416

Bill Gladhill,

Classical Antiquity Studies

Reviewed by: Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome Bill Gladhill Caroline Vout . Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp xiv+285; 52 black-and-white figures. $99.00 US. ISBN 978-0-521-86739-9 (cloth). What began life as a dissertation under the direction of Mary Beard, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome has become an important study of a broad range of issues connected to Roman imperial power and sex, a point most vividly expressed by Vout herself, "'[S]ex' provides the vocabulary with [End Page 94] which to interrogate the relationships which shape it: between emperor and subject, gods and mortals, centre and periphery, East and West" (xiii). Although Vout's explicit claim is that "sex is a way to talk about imperium" (5), the real thrust and creativity of this book is displayed in the seamless balance between visual and literary culture, between object and text, that together create a complex nexus of erotic stimuli that can be utilized by scholars to reconstruct the perspective(s) of ancient viewers of imperial sculpture and literature. This finely produced book, beautifully printed on glossy white paper, includes 52 black and white photographs of busts, sculptures, drawings, and reliefs. Each chapter concludes with endnotes containing copious bibliographical information, further discussion on finer points of detail, and translations of Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian sources. The choice of chapter ending notes typifies Vout's overall organization of the book; while the sex lives of emperors is the common thread that unifies the book, each chapter can be read in isolation as an individual and discrete case study. Greek and Latin passages that are particularly relevant to her argument are quoted in full and followed by a translation. These long citations of ancient languages may have the effect of distancing non-specialist readers from the text. The book contains six chapters, a useful list of illustrations, a bibliography, an index nominum and an index of passages cited. Chapter 1, "The erotics of imperium," moves through a wide range of material and establishes the analytical foundations upon which much of her later discussion is built. The implications of Antinous' divine status on scholarly interpretations of the imperial cult is the focus of the second chapter, "Romancing the stone: The story of Hadrian and Antinous." The third chapter, "Compromising traditions: The case of Nero and Sporus," attempts to unravel the ideological underpinnings of male-male marriage in imperial Rome. The penultimate case study, "A match made in heaven: Earinus and the emperor," argues that Martial and Statius map upon the castrated body of Earinus what is at stake in becoming a member of the imperial court of Domitian. The final chapter, "A dialogue with Panthea," approaches the themes of sex and imperium from the perspective of Lucian's literary construction of Panthea, the Greek mistress of the emperor Verus. Central to her argument is that Panthea becomes a metaphor for the disunity and fragmentation of Greek culture Lucian experienced under Roman rule. The book ends with a brief conclusion that restates her general argument. I will begin by discussing the content and merits of each chapter and then end the review with a few minor points of criticism. The book begins with two parallel episodes in Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars, in which Roman wives and their husbands are paraded before Augustus and Caligula [End Page 95] like a procession of prostitutes. The reader experiences these narratives through a complex interplay of focalization that allows one to become the emperor, the woman of the emperor's delight, or the other wives and their husbands. Vout's central point in this analysis is that the gossip of the sex lives of emperors should be used as evidence for exploring the matrices of sex and power. These narratives—regardless of their truth value—open a window into the cultural patterns and assumptions that grant gossip its valence and meaning. She then sets her initial discussion within broader argumentative models that will accompany the reader for the remainder of the book. While the common thread of her book is that "sex is a way to talk about imperium," Vout...