WEBVTT 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:36.079 Hello, everybody, and welcome to the fourth episode of Lambda, the LGBT and Antiquity Podcast, your home for all things LGBT in the ancient world. 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:41.039 I'm your host, Dominica Raven, episode 4, In the Beginning. 00:00:41.359 --> 00:00:47.359 Aesop, the famous fable writer, was once asked, Why are gays and lesbians? 00:00:47.679 --> 00:00:50.880 Unsurprisingly, he replied with a moralizing fable. 00:00:51.359 --> 00:00:57.200 Prometheus, the god of forethought, once created human beings by the will of Zeus. 00:00:57.439 --> 00:01:07.200 He molded our bodies with earthen clay and salty tears, creating the most excellent form of life, humanity. 00:01:07.599 --> 00:01:16.480 Once he had the general body structure, resembling something like a bunch of genderless, smooth dolls, he started to add genitals. 00:01:16.719 --> 00:01:26.719 While Prometheus was working on his task, along came Bacchus with a little trick to prevent the creation of an absolute gender and sexual binary. 00:01:27.040 --> 00:01:33.439 Bacchus invited Prometheus to dinner, and the two got blind, slobbering winefaced. 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:44.159 So Prometheus stoopered home late and drowsy, and rather than going to bed, he completed his work, attaching genitals to the clay dolls. 00:01:44.799 --> 00:02:00.159 But because of the intervention of Bacchus, Prometheus started attaching female parts to male bodies and put male members on some female bodies, and that is where gays and lesbians come from. 00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:07.439 Many modern people think that sexuality was a thing added to the innate way human beings were meant to be. 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:21.919 Humans were created in an absolute heteronormative binary, but those evil sodomites rebelled against the natural, divine law and created unnatural and unholy homosexuality. 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:31.439 Or humans were judged by the laws of natural selection, which requires a heteronormative binary to ensure genetics are passed appropriately. 00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:41.599 Either way, many people would argue that heteronormativity is the universal default, and everybody else is just doing something queer. 00:02:42.319 --> 00:02:47.199 But that is not what's going on when the Greek gods produced humanity. 00:02:47.439 --> 00:02:50.639 Human sexuality could not have been something simple. 00:02:50.879 --> 00:02:59.039 From the very beginning, humans could never have been one man and one woman in a heteronormative monogamistic model. 00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:08.879 Now, the fact that all types of people have a proper origin story does not necessarily show social acceptance for such people. 00:03:09.199 --> 00:03:15.360 So the question is, what exactly did Dionysus and Prometheus create in the dawn of time? 00:03:15.599 --> 00:03:18.800 Let's start with the terms used in the story itself. 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:31.199 The fable uses the words trebada, literally rubbing women, or women who rub, and moles mares, literally soft men. 00:03:31.439 --> 00:03:35.599 Trabadas is derived from tribe, which means rubbing. 00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:41.439 The word is used for literal rubbing, but also for wearing away or wear and tear. 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:49.120 Additionally, it can be used metaphorically as one who is rubbed by anxiety or rubbed by love. 00:03:49.360 --> 00:03:54.400 For this reason, the phrase sometimes is used to mean abandoned wretch. 00:03:54.639 --> 00:03:59.280 But I think it's pretty clear none of these definitions are what this story intends. 00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:14.240 The phrase women who rub is particularly tricky because it can imply homoeroticism when women are rubbing together, but it can also imply masturbation, which may or may not be homoerotic at all. 00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:24.480 As for the word moles, well that means yielding or pliable, but more neutrally soft, gentle, or even just pleasant. 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:34.000 In general, it's acceptable as an adjective for Roman women or for eunuchs, but not generally acceptable for masculine Roman men. 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:45.439 The word is sometimes used in conjunction with another Latin phrase called pathicus, which means submitting to lust when used for either men or for women. 00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:58.959 As for the word mares, well that's an inflected form of the word man, which denotes human male or masculinity, and is not generally used as an umbrella term for something like mankind. 00:04:59.279 --> 00:05:03.519 So from the words themselves we gain an image of gender nonconformity. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:10.319 Women lewdly pursuing desires and men submitting to others' desires. 00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:16.879 But from the context of the story, it's also clear that gender nonconformity is critical. 00:05:17.199 --> 00:05:23.279 So, how do we interpret the type of homoeroticism indicated by this narrative? 00:05:23.519 --> 00:05:39.839 Like so many terms from antiquity, these words appear to reflect a pattern of behavior, a collection of character traits, or from the perspective of heteronormative society, character flaws, only some of which are actually directed to sexuality. 00:05:40.160 --> 00:05:50.639 Much like Quinaidos from the other week, a soft man might be one who enjoys just a soft lifestyle without much physical exertion or active work. 00:05:50.959 --> 00:06:01.920 This is someone who prefers the creature comforts of palatial or urban life, and perhaps indulges in exotic goods like silken robes or gemstone rings. 00:06:02.079 --> 00:06:07.120 In this light, a soft man is a metrosexual. 00:06:07.279 --> 00:06:12.160 But the phrase also refers to people who would prefer male companionship. 00:06:12.399 --> 00:06:21.920 Meanwhile, the word rubbing women can be used to describe homoeroticism, but is also used in some contexts to describe a vagrant or beggar woman. 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:36.959 Adding to the difficulty, this story, written in Latin in the first century, is one of the very first documented usages of the term triba, so it's really difficult to interpret which definition is intended. 00:06:37.199 --> 00:06:44.639 Despite the potential pitfalls of the language itself, I think it's pretty clear that this story intends to explain human sexuality. 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:47.920 The last line makes this obvious. 00:06:48.160 --> 00:07:10.240 After Prometheus had finished adding the mismatched genitals, the narrative voice says, Thus modern desires delight in such, not straight, joys, implying both that this desire was prevalent and that these people who engaged in it were viewed somewhat differently than the standard heterosexual encounters. 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:16.480 Additionally, sexuality and gendered expressions are directly related to one another from the very beginning. 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:25.199 This passage describes the creation of gender nonconformity while simultaneously creating and conflating it with homosexuality. 00:07:25.439 --> 00:07:29.759 This is something we'll have to keep returning to across different types of sources. 00:07:30.079 --> 00:07:42.160 Ancient authors generally frame homosexual interactions within the context of gender nonconformity precisely because their sexual interests do not conform to expectations. 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:53.040 Many lesbians, even Sappho herself, were called mannish, while even Roman emperors who favored male companionship were called effeminate. 00:07:53.439 --> 00:08:04.639 Many ancient commenters strongly associate gender nonconformity as an outward manifestation of the social deviance of internal desires. 00:08:05.120 --> 00:08:13.120 So the language and the context of the story clearly indicates homoeroticism, but we haven't actually answered the question yet. 00:08:13.439 --> 00:08:16.800 What did Dionysus and Prometheus create? 00:08:17.040 --> 00:08:23.360 There are two ways of thinking on this matter, drawn from scholarly interpretations of the text's ambiguities. 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:34.240 This is particularly tricky because the narrative itself does not explicitly state which key terms are correlated with which bodily anatomy. 00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:38.720 The first way of thinking is that there's a sexual metaphor at work in the language. 00:08:38.879 --> 00:08:44.639 Some scholars read the story's mismatched parts as a reference to forms of penetration. 00:08:45.120 --> 00:08:53.919 Essentially, there are men who enjoyed being penetrated, and these men have metaphorical vaginas, so they can yield to others' desires. 00:08:54.159 --> 00:09:01.759 Meanwhile, a woman who is, quote, endowed with a monstrous clitoris has been masculinized. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:05.039 So these women have metaphorical penises. 00:09:05.919 --> 00:09:16.639 So, this first way to think about the fable is that the rubbing women are describing gay men, and soft men are actually describing gay women. 00:09:16.879 --> 00:09:26.080 Scholars who adopt this way of thinking associate the physical bodily manifestations of homoeroticism as the source of their sexual deviance. 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:35.039 This is not an invalid way to think about the story, but it suffers from a conflation of homoeroticism with disorders of sexual differentiation. 00:09:35.279 --> 00:09:46.480 For my part, I believe it's a little too convenient that many scholars believe there are discrete bodily traits which define a male or female homosexual body. 00:09:46.720 --> 00:10:00.000 Outsiders today have completely arbitrary yet visibly obvious criterion to describe what they perceive as a gay or lesbian body, regardless of what they would describe themselves as. 00:10:00.320 --> 00:10:10.320 So the fact that an ancient observer might also have this arbitrary set of criteria, even though it's a little different, is no surprise. 00:10:10.720 --> 00:10:18.399 The second way that scholars assemble these elements is in terms of the sexual roles played by either individual. 00:10:18.639 --> 00:10:28.879 A man who plays dominant sexual roles is obviously the proper male, and the female who plays the proper submissive roles is the normal female. 00:10:29.440 --> 00:10:37.120 But men who played submissive roles were soft men, and women who played dominant roles were the rubbers. 00:10:37.759 --> 00:10:48.799 So Prometheus actually changed the sex of the individuals in the story, and the result is that people have different desires based on their internal gender. 00:10:49.039 --> 00:10:59.120 These people's queer desires come from the disconnect between their inner male libido with their outward female-looking bodies, or the other way around. 00:10:59.360 --> 00:11:06.799 These people were queer because their bodies failed to live up to gendered expectations in the ancient world. 00:11:07.120 --> 00:11:14.559 So, this way to think about the story is that the rubbing women are gay women and soft men are the gay men. 00:11:14.799 --> 00:11:17.360 For my part, I find this more convincing. 00:11:17.519 --> 00:11:22.960 I think that the order of the word implies the order we should interpret it. 00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:31.360 The story asks why did Prometheus create trebada and moles mares in that order? 00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:40.720 Later, the narrative voice describes putting female parts on male bodies and male members on female bodies in that order. 00:11:40.960 --> 00:11:53.759 Overall, the word order does tend to matter in this type of story, where lists show the directionality, and we should be considering them as the intended meaning of the text itself. 00:11:54.000 --> 00:12:04.480 If we read the story with the first interpretation, the order gets reversed halfway through, whereas the second interpretation maintains the word order throughout. 00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:10.960 Beyond word order, this interpretation seems to fit better with the ancient construction of homosexuality. 00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:16.559 The homoerotic is necessarily a function of the heteronormative. 00:12:16.879 --> 00:12:29.759 The abstract concept that two men might come together and what they do does not mirror the heterosexual world was a wholly foreign concept for many in the ancient world. 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:40.399 And what luck! The idea of two men coming together and not mirroring heteronormative expectations is still a foreign concept for many living today. 00:12:40.799 --> 00:12:48.960 As such, an overgeneralization based around ancient and modern discussions gets projected onto relationships. 00:12:49.200 --> 00:12:57.440 Just for the record, I don't like this oversimplification, especially when the ancient sources we're using are clearly condemnatry. 00:12:57.679 --> 00:13:12.240 When we see poets or authors actually engaging in homosexuality themselves, they generally describe deep, meaningful connections with their partners and never really a set of penetrable body parts they're entitled to. 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:25.360 Even if people did describe their desires this way, the model where two men or two women come together could have included all manner of activities beyond simple heteronormative analogies. 00:13:25.600 --> 00:13:40.320 Despite ancient authors making speculative comments and occasionally even raising criminal trials related to gay men who play the wrong roles in bed, how on earth could they have even policed that? 00:13:40.720 --> 00:13:49.279 It makes more sense to me that homoerotic relationships in the ancient world, as in the modern world, took on a myriad of shapes and forms. 00:13:49.519 --> 00:14:01.919 A singular heteronormative analogy is generally inadequate, as the same individual might well find themselves in numerous sexual roles in different contexts at different points in their lives. 00:14:02.159 --> 00:14:13.440 But whether this is an effective model for ancient sexuality or not, the story does seem to fit into the model presented by heteronormative scholars pretty well. 00:14:13.840 --> 00:14:21.600 Women with men's sexual desires are trebadas, and men with women's desires are moles mares. 00:14:22.159 --> 00:14:28.559 In both cases, bodily creation at the dawn of time is the source of their sexuality. 00:14:29.039 --> 00:14:34.080 There is nothing wrong with a male man who desires to penetrate his partner. 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:41.840 Whether that partner is male or female is besides the point, he is performing his socially prescribed sexual role. 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:50.000 The female woman who is penetrated by a man or a woman again poses no risk to that sexual order. 00:14:50.240 --> 00:14:55.360 The problem emerges when there's a mismatch of desire and sexual role. 00:14:55.600 --> 00:15:01.919 When a woman does the penetrating, or a man is penetrated, a queer interaction has occurred. 00:15:02.080 --> 00:15:11.919 In this model, we have a scenario where if a man yields to a woman's desires, both partners are actually doing something wrong. 00:15:12.240 --> 00:15:17.679 The result is just not heteronormative enough for ancient society. 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:26.080 Regardless of the sexes of the partners, the desire itself must fit within heteronormative expectations. 00:15:26.559 --> 00:15:34.480 So, in the beginning, Prometheus and Dionysus created men who are masculine and women who are feminine. 00:15:34.720 --> 00:15:43.440 These are normal, regular heteronormative people who played the socially acceptable heteronormative roles all throughout their lives. 00:15:43.840 --> 00:15:51.759 But then Prometheus also created those whose lives were outside of normal heteronormative expectations. 00:15:52.159 --> 00:16:03.519 These soft men and rubbing women whose bodies and lives could not adhere to those requirements were treated differently in ancient society. 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:13.519 The fable implies that gender nonconformity was at least enough a part of ancient life that it merited a comment and a proper mythical origin story. 00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:19.279 The fable inexorably connects gender nonconformity with sexual characteristics. 00:16:19.600 --> 00:16:26.000 Sexuality is not an intrusion, but part of the plan from the very beginning. 00:16:26.320 --> 00:16:30.559 I would also like to draw your attention to Dionysus' role in the story. 00:16:30.799 --> 00:16:37.120 Bacchus facilitates the creation of gender nonconformity at the very dawn of humanity. 00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:43.600 All humans who acted in these ways are representative of those original archetypes. 00:16:43.919 --> 00:16:48.399 Interestingly, Dionysus manages each of these directly. 00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:58.080 The bearded Dionysus from early and classical Athens, as well as the father Liber from the Roman world, are both masculine men. 00:16:58.399 --> 00:17:05.599 The embodiment of fruit trees, known as Pomona, and the female Libera are both feminine women. 00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:14.319 The god of the mysteries, Iakos, and that classical beardless, effeminate Dionysus, those are the feminine males. 00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:22.880 And then the goddess of initiation, Misa, and the boyish nymph raised by Rea, those are the masculine females. 00:17:23.680 --> 00:17:31.440 All of these are different masks or faces Dionysus puts on in different ritual contexts. 00:17:31.759 --> 00:17:42.480 So Dionysus not only helps create all four types of gender, but later Dionysus manifests all four types of gender. 00:17:42.640 --> 00:17:46.240 Yet Dionysus never settles on any one of them. 00:17:46.559 --> 00:17:56.079 Even here, at the very birth of sexuality and gender, Dionysus, the androgynous one, sits above all four. 00:17:56.319 --> 00:18:05.119 They may take part in any one of the four possible options, but never stays on any one. 00:18:05.519 --> 00:18:12.000 We will return to Dionysus as an archetypal manifestation of gender nonconformity. 00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:20.400 Next week we're going to start moving through the mythology of the ancient world, finding deities and narratives which represent queer loves. 00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:24.079 We're going to start with Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. 00:18:24.319 --> 00:18:35.359 Though she was known to have close and intimate connections with her nymphs and dryads, there were some heroines for whom her love burned more intensely than others. 00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:39.839 In some stories, Artemis was in love with other women. 00:18:40.319 --> 00:18:49.200 After Artemis is Ganymedes, the archetypal homosexual lover, and Apollo, whose bisexual experiences are mythical. 00:18:49.920 --> 00:18:51.440 Stick around for the fun. 00:19:14.880 --> 00:19:24.400 As for Phaedrus himself, we don't know much about him except that he was a freedman living during the reign of Augustus and Tiberius in the first century. 00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:30.960 The story we use today comes from Book 4, number 16, or Fable No. 00:19:31.119 --> 00:19:34.720 516, depending upon the version you're looking at. 00:19:35.039 --> 00:19:42.880 As so often happens with Greek and Roman mythology, we have many stories of Prometheus creating human beings to work with. 00:19:43.119 --> 00:19:55.119 The one presented here is the one version of the creation of humanity which clearly demonstrates the creation of homosexuality and heterosexuality too at the dawn of time. 00:19:55.359 --> 00:20:12.000 The difficulties with interpreting the word trebada, especially as it is one of the very first usages ever recorded of the term, comes from Sandra Boringer, Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome, translated by Anna Prager in 2021. 00:20:12.400 --> 00:20:16.960 The original edition was actually published in 2007 in French. 00:20:17.200 --> 00:20:26.559 The translation of the final line of the fable, Thus Modern Desires Delight in Not Straight Joys, is my own. 00:20:26.799 --> 00:20:32.880 Many translators, even to this day, interpret this line as a moral condemnation. 00:20:33.119 --> 00:20:53.440 For example, Gibbs, 2002, in the Oxford Classical Edition says, quote, This is why modern lust revels in perverted pleasures, or Perry, 1965, in the Loeb Classical Library edition, hence, lust now gratifies itself with a perverted pleasure. 00:20:53.839 --> 00:21:07.039 Finally, Williams, 1999, in Roman Homosexuality, Ideologies of Masculinity, says, and so it is that lust now enjoys its depraved pleasure. 00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:14.160 All of these versions inject modern interpretation and sensibility onto the ancient documents. 00:21:14.480 --> 00:21:25.680 My attempt here was to translate it as literally as possible to give you a clear idea of what the Latin is actually trying to say, without moral judgment. 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:38.160 The sentiment that the story reflects social deviance and societal degradation is actually shared with many older legacy translations of Phaedrus. 00:21:38.319 --> 00:21:57.519 Many of them actually omit the story entirely, such as Taylor and Walton's translation in 1845, and Simpkin and Marshall's translation in 1847, or else leave it stand in Latin without any translation at all, such as the Riley and Smart edition of 1887. 00:21:57.680 --> 00:21:59.839 It kind of stretches the definition of a translation. 00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:14.640 Translation, if you're omitting certain parts or letting it stand in Latin, but they were clearly trying to shelter their readers by providing censorship for such obvious depravity that the story represents. 00:22:15.359 --> 00:22:33.119 Much of the discussion conflating homoeroticism with disorders of sexual differentiation is drawn from Holt Parker's The Tetratogenic Grid, page 59, in the book Roman Sexualities, edited by Hallett and Skinner, 1998. 00:22:33.440 --> 00:22:43.920 The phrase, women endowed with a monstrous clitoris, remains high on the list of phrases you never thought you'd hear in the annals of classical scholarship. 00:22:44.160 --> 00:22:54.400 The discussion of word order finds its origin in Sandra Boringer's Female Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, page 246 through 247. 00:22:54.640 --> 00:22:59.759 Her interpretation meshed well with my own interpretation of the story. 00:23:00.079 --> 00:23:01.039 That's all for now. 00:23:01.200 --> 00:23:02.880 We'll see you next week.