Ancient History

Egyptian History

Parkinson, R. B.

"'Homosexual' Desire and Middle Kingdom Literature", Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 81, Egypt Exploration Society, 1995, pp. 57-76. Survey of attitudes to homosexuality in Egypt.

Reeder, Greg

"United for eternity", KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, 4, 1 (1993), 22.

Reeder, Greg

"Same-sex desire, conjugal constructs, and the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep", in Queer Archaeologies, ed. Thomas A. Dowson, a special edition of World Archaeology, vol. 32, no. 2 (October 2000), pp. 193-208. Has eleven illustrations.

Greek and Roman History

Africa, Thomas

"Homosexuality in Greek history", Journal of Psychohistory, 9 (1982): 401-420.

Aldrich, Robert

The Seduction of the Mediterranean. London, 1993.

Athenaeus

The Deipnosophists, vol. VI, trans. C. B. Gulick, Loeb Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. Ancient source containing a wealth of data about classical homosexuals.

Barkan, L.

Transuming Passion: Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism. 1991.

Barrett, D. S.

"The friendship of Achilles and Patroclus", Classical Bulletin, 57 (1981): 87-92.

Bremmer, J. N.

"An enigmatic Indo-European rite: paederasty", Arethusa, 13 (1980), pp. 279-98.

Bremmer, J. N.

"Adolescents, Symposion, and pederasty", in Oswyn Murray (ed.), Sumpotica: A Symposium on the Symposion (Oxford, 1990), pp. 135-48.

Brisson, Luc

Sexual Ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Berkeley, 2002.

Buffière, Félix

Eros adolescent: la pédérastie dans la Grèce antique, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980.

Cantarella, Eve

Bisexuality in the Ancient World. Yale University Press, 1993. Despite the title, focusses almost entirely on same-sex practices.

Cartledge, Paul

"The politics of Spartan pederasty", Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 207 (1981): 17-36.

Clarke, W. M.

"Achilles and Patroclus in love", Hermes, 106 (1978): 381-96.

Courouve, Claude

Tableau synoptique de references a l'amour masculin: auteurs grecs et latins. Paris: C. Courouve, 1986.

Dalla, Danilo

'Ubi Venus mutatur': omosessualità e diritto nel mondo romano. Milan: A. Giuffrè', 1987.

Davidson, James

"Dover, Foucault and Greek Homosexuality. Penetration and the Truth of Sex", Past & Present, 170 (February 2001), pp. 3-51. Awarded the Mosse Prize for the best essay in gay and lesbian history during the years 2000/2001.

Davidson, James

The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007.

Dover, K. J.

Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978.

Dover, K. J.

"Greek hmosexuality and initiation", in The Greeks and Their Legacy: Collected Papers II (Oxford, 1988), pp. 115-34.

Dynes, Wayne (ed.)

Homosexuality in the Ancient World. 1992. Collection of articles.

Eglinton, J. Z. (pseud. Walter Breen)

Greek Love. London: Neville Spearman, 1971.

Fitzgerald, John T.

Greco-Roman Perspectives on Friendship. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997.

Goldhill, S.

Foucault's Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality. Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1995.

Gray-Fow, Michael

"Pederasty, the Scantinian Law, and the Roman Army", Journal of Psychohistory, 13 (1986): 449-60.

Halperin, David M.

"Sex before sexuality: Pederasty, politics, and power in classical Athens", in Duberman et al., Hidden from History (1989), pp. 37-53.

Halperin, David; Winkler, John; and Zeitlin, Froma (eds)

Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. John Boswell said of this: "Halperin criticises _Cristianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality_ harshly and at great length from a constructionist perspective while incorporating many of its findings almost verbatim . . . and not credited".

Halperin, David

One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love. New York: Routledge, 1990. Bryn Mawr review by Amy Richlin, pointing out its many fallacies, e.g. 'The book is predicated on the Foucauldian belief that "homosexuality and heterosexuality ... are modern, Western, bourgeois productions. Nothing resembling them can be found in classical antiquity" (7). This is simply untrue, and can only be maintained by deliberately ignoring ample ancient evidence – which, however, both Foucault and his followers are quite willing to do.'

Hindley, Clifford

"Xenophon on male love", Classical Quarterly, 49.1 (1999): 74-99.

Hubbard, Thomas K., ed.

Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents in Translation. 2003. First two chapters online

Hupperts, Charles

"Greek love: Homosexuality or paederasty? Greeklove in black figure vase-painting", in J. Christiansen and T. Melander (eds), Proceedings of the 3rd Symposium on Ancient Greek and Related Pottery (Copenhagen, 1988), pp. 255-68.

Keifer, Otto

Sexual Life in Ancient Rome. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1953.

Koch-Harnack, Gundel

Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke: ihre Bedeutung im päderastischen Erziehungsystem Athens. 1983.

Konstan, David

Friendship in the Classical World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Lambert, Royston

Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous. New York: Viking, 1984.

Lear, Andrew and Cantarella, Eva

Images of Pederasty: Boys Were Their Gods, London/New York: Routledge, 2008. Review

Leitao, David

"The legend of the Sacred Band", in Martha Nussbaum and Julie Sihvola (eds), The Sleep of Reason (Chicago, 2002), pp. 143-69.

Licht, Hans (pseudonym of Paul Brand)

Sexual Life in Ancient Greece. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1953. Several modern reprints.

Lilja, Saara

Homosexuality in Republican and Augustan Rome. Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 1983.

Meier, M.-H.-E.

"Päderastie", in J. S. Ersch and J. G. Gruber (eds), Allgemeine Encyclopädieder Wissenschafter und Künste", Section 3, Bd. 9 (Leipzig, 1837), pp. 149-88.

Ogden, Daniel

"Homosexuality and warfare in Ancient Greece", in A. B. Lloyd (ed.), Battle in Antiquity (London, 1996), pp. 107-68.

Percy, William Armstrong, III

Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Price, A. W.

Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, Oxford, 1989.

Puterbaugh, Geoff

The Crucifixion of Hyacinth: Jews, Christians, and Homosexuals from Classical Greece to Late Antiquity, iUniverse.com, 2000. Review with excerpts.

Rapp, Claudia

"Ritual brotherhood in Byzantium", Traditio, 52 (1997): 285-326.

Richlin, Amy

The Garden of Priapus: Sexualitiy and Aggression in Roman Humor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Richlin, Amy

"Not before homosexuality: The materiality of the cinaedus and the Roman law against love between men", Journal of the History of Sexuality, 3 (1993): 523-73. (An important critique of the work of David Halperin)

Scanlon, Thomas F.

Eros and Greek Athletics, New York, 2002.

Sergent, Bernard

Homosexuality in Greek Myth, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. (Bernard Sergent, L'Homosexualite initiatique dans l'Europe ancienne, Paris: Payot, 1986).

Sichtermann, Hellmut

Ganymed: Mythos und Gstalt in der antiken Kunst, Berlin, 2953.

Sullivan, J. P.

"Martial's sexual attitudes", Philologus, 123 (1979): 288-302.

Symonds, John Addington

A Problem in Greek Ethics, London, 1901.

Thornton, Bruce S.

Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality. Westview Press, US, 1997.

Verstraete, Beert C.

"Slavery and the social dynamics of male homosexual relations in ancient Rome", Journal of Homosexuality, 5 (1980): 227-36.

Veyne, Paul

"Témoignage hétérosexuelle d'unhistorien sur l'homosexualité", in "Arcadie" (ed.), Actes du Congrès International: Le Regard des autres (Paris, 1979), pp. 17-24.

Veyne, Paul

"Homosexuality in Ancient Rome", in Philippe Ariès and André Béjin (eds), Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times (Oxford, 1985), pp. 26-35.

Williams, Craig A.

Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity Ideologies of Desire Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Williamson, Margaret

Sappho's Immortal Daughters, Cambridge, MA, 1995.

Winkler, John

The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Biblical

Dion, Paul E.

"Did cultic prostitution fall into oblivion during the postexilic era? Some evidence from chronicles and the Septuagint", Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 43 (1981): 41-8.

Loader, J. A.

A Tale of Two Cities: Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, Early Jewish, and Early Christian Traditions. Kampen, The Netherlands: J. H. Kok, 1990.

Nissinen, Martti

Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective by Martti Nissinen (Fortress, 1998; Augsburg: Fortress Publishers, 2004)

Olyan, Saul M.

"'And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying down of a Woman': On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13", Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 5, No. 2, University of Texas Press, 1994, pp. 179-206.

Go to Medieval History
Go to Early Modern History
Return to Bibliography of Gay and Lesbian History