"Dining Deviants in Roman Political Invective." Roman Sexualities. Ed. M. Skinner and J. Hallett. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997. 99-128. FOUR DINING DEVIANTS IN ROMAN POLITICAL INVECTIVE Anthony Corbeil/ O VEREATING, naked dancing, telling jokes-three activities guaranteed to curtail any young Roman's political aspirations. The connection between moral profligacy and extravagant feasting constitutes a stock charge in invective texts from the late Republic. In this essay I explore the foreboding environment of the banquet room to examine those features recurring most frequently in Roman representations of perverted feasters. The discussion will of necessity be schematic, and the conclusions will apply only to a particular area within this type of invective: many elements inform the illicit character of convivial excess, and a single explanation for all these elements would necessarily oversimplify. I shall not, therefore, consider the standard explanation for the danger represented by excessive banqueting, namely that banquets reflect a Greek or Eastern way of life that will slowly infiltrate and destroy Roman gravitas. Without doubt, this explanation contributes much to understanding why banqueting themes are so prevalent in moral critiques written by Roman authors from the late Republic. 1 In fact, Greek loan words dominate the very vocabulary of the banquet, thus creating the impression of "a way of life imported as a package."2 Yet these alleged origins fail to explain fully the Romans' perverse fascination with banqueting practices. The power in the rhetoric of banqueting invective lies not simply in a clever manipulation of xenophobia, but in Roman concerns about the nature of the masculine self. The effeminate male actively participates in the banquet's debauchery. In political invective directed at the feast, the Roman orator consistently fastens upon specific, externally visible traits to indicate to his audience This essay is condensed from the fourth chapter of my book Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), in which I examine the role public humor plays in simultaneously defining and enforcing social norms. All translations from Latin and Greek authors are my own. 100 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS the effeminate character of an opponent. These external signs serve a double function: physical traits or affectations of a person not only reveal past involvement in an immoderate feast, but also presage future affiliation with a convivial setting. An analysis of these external indicators reveals their distinctly Roman significance: the stigma of convivial excess stems from anxiety over what constitutes-and what deconstitutesRoman masculinity. The effeminate banqueter does not inhabit only rhetorical invective; the combination of food, dance, and effeminate or sexually submissive behavior occurs in comedy and epigram as well.3 The generic character of these effeminate feasters tempts modern readers to attribute to them a purely literary existence, one that the Romans have simply borrowed from Greek antecedents. This scholarly tendency, originating from a compulsion to rid Roman society of the slightest traces of male homoeroticism, is best exemplified by certain modern attitudes toward the homoerotic poems of Catullus and Horace: their expressions of love for young boys derive not from real affection, some scholars claim, but from literary influence.4 Such assertions promise to be replaced by more balanced assessments; rather than reflecting a debt to literary ancestors, the poets seem instead to be responding to the very real Hellenization of their society. 5 Indeed, villas discovered outside the city of Rome have revealed owners who emulated Greek luxury almost to the exclusion of Roman elements. 6 And the possibility that life imitates art, at least in part, should not be ignored out of hand. Recent research into the role of spectacle in Roman society demonstrates that the Romans tended to blur, rather than highlight, this distinction between life and art.7 Such practices strengthen the possibility that the invective topos of deviant dining, a topos that has been traced back to Babylonian wisdom literature, helped shape the identity of an already existing subculture. 8 Hence a process of cultural transmission is operative here that is more complex than a simple matter of literary influence. The effeminate banqueter represents not simply a literary inheritance, but the hybrid product of social realities and imaginative forebodings. A further consideration encourages us to use invective texts as a gauge of actual Roman behavior. Orators use invective to construct an ideology that necessarily entails a certain level of complicity on the hearers' part. In the particular process of defining and enforcing the importance of masculinity, public speakers found an easy target for their insecurities in the person of the effeminate male. 9 Since the effectiveness of an orator's persuasive ability depended in large part upon his credibility, one would expect the orator to form in his invective as coherent and realistic a picture as possible. Thus we would be extremely credulous to believe that a Roman audience would allow constant references to practices entirely alien to its experience, especially when these practices are mentioned only ANTHONY CO RB EILL 101 to be censured. Hence the rhetorical power of invective against banquets and effeminacy, a power attested to by its frequency-if by nothing elsevirtually ensures that some reality supports these hostile accusations. Recent scholarship has begun to clarify the relationship at Rome between political ideology and actual sexual practices, confronting the evidence at face value rather than simply explaining it away.IO If this approach is applied to the effeminate banqueter, he is found to occupy a liminal world between literature and reality: his literary aspect allows the orator to employ caricature, thereby ensuring that an audience will recognize the figure he describes, while the element of reality allows the real threat of this figure to be felt. In the following discussion, I recreate a context within which this particular mode of invective alternately appealed to and appalled its hearers. I begin by bracketing questions of historicity, focusing instead on how the banquet and its attendant vices are constituted in our extant texts as a reality directly opposed to proper Roman behavior. These observations will then allow me to concentrate on why this counterreality was construed as an already present threat to society. Finally, the qualities associated with the effeminate male lead to a consideration of the nature of male homoerotic behavior at Rome. Extant evidence strongly supports the notion that our constructed effeminate male constitutes a real category of person to whom distinguishing and distinctive codes of behavior can be ascribed. Feasting Words On both a moral and a semantic level, Romans linked gluttony with i.neffective self-management. The popular vocabulary of bankruptcy and financial profligacy derives from words that describe excessive indulgence in food and drink: a person who squanders wealth "devours" it (comedo, devoro); to declare oneself bankrupt is to "overcook" or "boil away" (decoquo), and so a b.ankrupt person is an "overcooker" (decoctor).11 It is not difficult to discover the relationship between the financial and convivial domains: wasting away time and money in the sensual pleasures of food prevents a person from maintaining control of an estate. This equivalence provides a paradigm for humorous invective. The elder Cato, for example, exploited the similar semantics of gluttony and financial mismanagement. Macrobius preserves one instance (Sat. 2.2.4): sacrificium apud veteres fuit quod vocabatur propter viam. in eo mos erat ut, siquid ex epulis superfuisset, igne consumeretur. hinc Catonis iocus est. namque Albidium quendam, qui bona sua comedisset et novissime domum quae ei reliqua erat incendio perdidisset, propter viam fecisse dicebat: "quod com_esse non potuerit, id combussisse." 102 F O UR : D IN I N G D EV I AN T S Among the ancients there was a sacrifice called "beside the road." In this type of sacrifice it was the custom to consume by fire anything left over from feasting. From this practice comes Cato's joke. vVhen a certain Albidius had squandered his own goods and had recently lost in a fire his only remaining house, Cato said Albidius had conducted a "sacrifice beside the road": what he couldn't squander/devour (comedo), he burned up. Cato literalizes the bankruptcy metaphor: since Albidius cannot "eat away" his whole estate, he conducts the sacrifice appropriate for one setting out on a journey (Festus p. 229 [Mueller])-what cannot be eaten is set on fire. A similar connection between the glutton and the spendthrift underlies a joke of Cato preserved by Plutarch (Cato Mai. 8.7): 'tOV OE 7tE1tpCXKO'tCX wui; 1tmpc(ioui; aypoui; 7tCXpCXAtoU<; OV'tCX<; E7tt0etKVUµEvoi; 1tpoarnotd't0 8cxuµcx1;,EtV roi; iaxup6-repov -rf\i; 8cxM-m1i;, "& yap EKEtVT) µ6At<; EKAUCTEV, oil-roi;," E<pT), "pq:o{ffi<; Kcx'tCX1t£1tffiKEv." Pointing to a man who had sold the seaside estates of his ancestors, [Cato] pretended to marvel that the man was stronger than the sea. "For what the sea washed away with difficulty," he said, "this man has easily drunk down." Katapino ("drink down") presumably translates the Latin verb ebibo, another word from the domain of the feast that the Romans metaphorically applied to financial profligacy.12 These two remarks of Cato do not represent merely cheap jokes. In fact, the attribution to Cato attests to their profoundly Roman character. 13 Another pair of anecdotes preserved by Plutarch conveys his feelings about preserving patrimony: he once remarked that one of his three regrets in life was to have been intestate for an entire day (Plut. Cato Mai. 9.6); on another occasion he notes that to lessen patrimony befits not a man but a widowed woman, whereas to increase patrimony reveals a godlike paragon (Plut. Cato Mai. 21.8). The importance Cato placed on the proper management of finances helps to explain his humorous abuse of gluttonous spendthrifts. 14 Cato's conceptual matrix of gluttony, financial profligacy, and the proper role of a man (as opposed to a woman) reemerges in the time of Cicero with explicitly political connotations. The activities of the immoderate feaster come to occupy a position opposed to that of a proper Roman statesman. In his speech Pro Sestio, the orator highlights the questionable morality of the former consul Gabinius by referring to his penchant for feasting and sex (Sest. 26): me ipsum ut contempsit helluo patriae! nam quid ego patrimoni dicam, quod ille tum cum quaestum faceret amisit. How this consumer of the fatherland (patriae) spurned even me! For why should I say [consumer] of his "father's land" (patrimom), something he lost when he was out selling his favors (quaestmn faceret)? ANT H O NY C O RB E I L L 103 The abuse reveals an interesting thought progression. After alluding to Gabinius's inability to govern the state (helluo patriae), Cicero segues into remarks on the inability to control financial affairs. The relationship becomes more concrete through the etymological link Cicero exploits with his pun on patriae and patrinzoni. Abandoning the fatherland and squandering a father's estate expose similar faults of character. Catullus's lampoon of Mamurra in poem 29 depends on similar associations. Mamurra's treatment of his inheritance anticipated his exploits as governor: "First his father's property was ripped to shreds" (29.17). After enumerating Mamurra's plundering of the provinces, Catullus encapsulates all these exploits in one phrase: "What can this man do other than devour a well-oiled patrimony?" (aut quid hie potest I nisi uncta devorare patrinzonia? 29.21-22). Like Gabinius, Mamurra recapitulates in a corrupt public career his incapacity in private affairs. These short outbursts by Cicero and Catullus against their political opponents reveal a close correspondence between representations of the public and the private, a concern one finds reflected in legal texts that treat financial prodigality. 15 As has been noted, Cicero translates the charge of gluttony into a danger to the state (helluo patriae); Catullus uses the corresponding verb form to characterize Mamurra's actions (helluatus est, 29.16). A similar association between Gabinius's immoderate private life and his neglect of state matters occurs elsewhere. Cicero describes him in In Pisonenz as "that whirlpool and glutton, born for his belly, not for praise and glory"-praise and glory constituting, of course, traditional goals of the Roman aristocrat. 16 The passage from Pro Sestio also shows the orator ridiculing Gabinius for wage-earning, an activity deemed beneath the dignity of a statesman.17 The phrase he uses, however, contains a double entendre and thereby adds another dimension to the complex of charges levied: quaestzmz facere (literally, "to profit") can stand as an abbreviated form of quaestunz [cmpore] facere ("to profit from one's body"). Cicero implies not only that Gabinius had to support himself financially but that he did so through prostitution.1 8 The connection in invective between financial and sexual profligacy also occurs in Catullus's attack (29.7, 13-14, 16). One may trace this motif in Roman political discourse back to at least the middle of the second century.19 Yet another element of Cicero's attack here will recur in the invective connected with feasting: Gabinius's reputation as a catamite points to the sex of his clientele, thereby further degrading the former consul as being something less than a man. 20 All these charges characteristic of political invective-gluttony, financial mismanagement, political ineptitude, and sexual profligacy (especially between men)-intersect in the dark and mysterious arena of the banquet. It is often difficult to distinguish among the precise activities to which the spe"aker could refer in his invective against the feast. The description 104 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS of the activities is often as obscure as the shadowy settings in which these activities allegedly occur. 21 The confusion stems in part from the orator's stance as an upright man (vir bonus): were he able to describe in detail what happens at these private feasts, he could potentially implicate himself in the activity. The obscurity resulting from this necessary ignorance increases the efficacy of the motif: the allusiveness of many of these descriptions titillates the listeners' imagination and encourages them to envision the precise details of the occasion that the orator presents in bare outline. In this way the speaker allows his audience to play the voyeur, to satisfy its fascination with the forbidden: "The speaker should manipulate the description of reality so that the audience imagines more than it sees."22 Nevertheless, in spite of this mannered ambiguity, certain themes emerge with consistency. Five areas of activity commonly surface in association with the immoderate feast: excessive eating, drunkenness, the telling of jokes, dancing and singing (including poetry recitation), and various forms of sexual intercourse. 23 Constructed as vices, these activities frequently occur in combination: Cicero describes his enemy Gabinius in a largely asyndetic series as "done in by wine, eating-houses, pimping, and adultery" (vino ganeis lenociniis adulteriisque confectzmz, Sest. 20). Often the practices are alluded to even more elliptically: Piso's teachers of philosophy-who also arrange his banquets (conditores instntctoresque convivi)-instruct their student that every part of the body should always be involved in some sort of pleasure or sensual stimulation (Cic. Red. Sen. 14--15). Vague lists of intertwining vices abound in invective of this type. Yet despite the frequency of these sorts of allegation, any attempt to differentiate between the activities of the feast proves not only impossible but misguided, since their confusion and conflation are precisely the point. The rhetorical handbooks instruct that if an opponent can be shown to be guilty of one vice, it is then possible to implicate him in any others. 24 Therefore, rather than attempting to distinguish between these activities artificially, I shall be considering their common features. In particular, I shall concentrate on the most prominent guest figured in the Ciceronian representation of the feast: the dancing, effeminate, male. The Dancer Is the Dance The dance characterizes the feast so well that it is mentioned in Roman invective only in a banqueting context. Yet the abuse directed at dancing feasters could not be wielded simply at random. The orator needed to provide a substantial and verifiable foundation for his accusations. To be effective in accusing an opponent of connections with the immoderate ANT H O NY C O R B E IL L 105 feast, the speaker had to present evidence visible to his audience. Believing requires seeing. In the midst of a typical account of the breakdown of morality in the Republic, Cicero in De legibus attributes moral decline in part to the seductive tendencies of music and dancing (Leg. 2 .3 9): illud quidem video, quae solebant quondam compleri severitate iucunda Livianis et Naevianis modis, nunc ut eadem exultent et cervices oculosque pariter cum modorum flexionibus torqueant. graviter olim ista vindicabat vetus illa Graecia, longe providens quam sensim pernicies inlapsa in civium animos malis studiis malisque doctrinis repente totas civitates everteret. I do see one thing in particular: that those same people who at one time were accustomed to be filled up with a pleasurable feeling of austerity at the measures of Livius and Naevius are nowadays jumping around and twisting their necks and eyes in time with the changing measures. In the past, ancient Greece punished severely that kind of behavior, for it foresaw well in advance how this source of destruction, gradually creeping into the minds of citizens, would suddenly overturn entire states through its evil pursuits and teachings. As Roman civilization declined from the period when its oldest poets were writing, Cicero recognizes in dancing a vice that conspires with other base activities for the potential destruction of the state. This moralizing opinion of dance also informs invective from the century preceding Cicero. In a fragmentary piece of invective written by the second-century B.C.E. satirist Lucilius, dancing and effeminacy appear to be associated: "Like a fool you went dancing with the cinaedi" (Lucil. 33 [W"armington]). A later grammarian, commenting on this passage from Lucilius, remarks that "among the ancients, dancers or pantomimes were called cinaedi" (Non. p. 5 [Mercerus]). Indeed, this grammarian's statement is confirmed by a contemporary of Lucilius, Scipio Aemilianus. Scipio complained how the freeborn young Romans of his day "are learning to sing, something our ancestors wanted to be considered disgraceful to the freeborn; they go, I say, to dancing school, freeborn girls and boys among the cinaedi" (Macrob. Sat. 3.14.7 = ORF 21.30). Part of the stigma of the dance derives from its associations with the passive role in male-male sexual encounters since, in ancient Greece and Rome, male-male homoerotic behavior was figured as nonreciprocal, involving a virile penetrator and a passive, penetrated partner. 25 Cinaedus, in fact, eventually became a standard word to describe the penetrated partner in such a relationship. 26 The dance, it seems, indicated commitment to a specific, predetermined lifestyle. It is not surprising, therefore, to encounter the charge of dancing in public invective. In a speech accusing Murena of electoral corruption in 106 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS 63 n.c.E., the younger Cato alleged that the defendant was a dancer (saltator). In defending Murena from this accusation, Cicero maintains that dancing constitutes a vice incapable of existing in isolation, "for almost no one dances while sober-unless perhaps he is insane-neither while alone nor in a moderate and honorable banquet. The dance is the final accompaniment to an early banquet, a pleasant locale, and many luxurious activities" (Mur. 13). 27 Cato has not accused Murena of any of dancing's attendant vices. Therefore, Cicero maintains, the accuser can only be incorrect in calling Murena a dancer. Cicero's rhetorical strategy here reveals his audience's assumptions. Both orators presume their audience will agree that associating Murena with dancing will implicate him in the attendant vices Cicero later listsdisgraceful banqueting, sex, revelry, lust, and excessive expenditure. And if Cato can succeed in establishing his opponent's associations with the feast, he will all the more easily prove Murena guilty of electoral corruption, as this charge will be construed as consistent with Murena's immoral character. Such a belief in the association between personal immorality and political corruption informs the historian Sallust's famous description of the conspirator Sempronia: her skills in the dance, poetry, and witty conversation clearly foreshadow her eventual disservice to the state (Sall. Cat. 25). Yet the younger Cato's single accusation of dancing does not suffice here. The dance presupposes a broader context of corruption, a context that Cato has failed to delineate. To be sure, in his own invective Cicero also relies upon the multiple negative associations the dance conjures up in his audience's mind.ZS Yet the orator is not simply hypocritically or opportunistically using a weapon he himself has condemned. Rather, his own use of the charge is quite different from Cato's attack, as Cicero represents it in his speech Pro Murena. In his second oration against Catiline, Cicero muses on the military efficacy of the more luxuriant members of Catiline's group of revolutionaries (Cat. 2.23): quo autem pacto illi Appeninum atque illas pruinas ac nives perferent? nisi idcirco se facilius hiemem toleraturos putant, quod nudi in conviviis saltare didicerunt. But how will they stand that frost and snow in the Appenines? Maybe they think they'll tolerate winter more easily since they've learned to dance naked at banquets. Earlier in the speech, Cicero had invested a great amount of energy in proving that Catiline's men, when not stirring up political unrest, devote their lives to feasting (see especially Cat. 2.22, cited below). Dancing, then, serves to cap an already well-delineated characterization. The naked ANT H O NY C O R B E I L L 107 dancing of the Catilinarians, an activity conspiring to overthrow Roman morality, has been falsely construed by the rebels, Cicero humorously conjectures, as a type of training designed to overthrow the Roman military. In light of Cicero's own use of the charge of dancing in the Catilinarian orations, the inadequacy of the attack on Murena becomes clear. Cato has not verified his accusations of dancing, as Cicero does, by pointing to any other signs of Murena's connection with immoderate feasting. Hence Cicero needs simply to question the truth of Cato's charge of dancing to show that it represents slanderous abuse (maledictum ... maledici conviciatoi·is, Mur. 13). Cicero rebuts Cato by indicating the absence of corroborative evidence for his charge. To be effective, the topos of the immoderate feast requires a type of external signal that can indicate, even when the accused is separate from the activity, the implicit probability of involvement. Such a signal would provide a powerful rhetorical tool, for the passages discussed above have demonstrated that proof of involvement in merely one vice can implicate an individual in all the sordid components of the feast. Indeed, these signals were available. They derive from the ways in which the luxurious atmosphere of the banquet was thought to alter the physical appearance and affectations of its male participants. The Conception of the Roman Male Orators of the late Republic conflate the phenomena of the immodest banquet and the effeminate male. Each situation normally suggests the other, and both embody a potential threat to the state. Attendance at a feast, I have noted, anticipates political inefficacy. The Romans speak of effeminacy in similar terms. In late 44, B.c.E., Quintus Cicero writes despairingly to Tiro of the consuls-designate, Hirtius and Pansa: "I know them thoroughly-full of lusting and lounging of the most effeminate nature. If they don't yield the helm, there's the greatest danger of everything being shipwrecked" (Fam. 16.27.1). This picture of the effeminate feaster of the late Republic, a strangely androgynous glutton of food and sex, contributes to the modern reader's despair over whether one can glean any truth from Roman invective. 29 Yet this unstable figure can be used to advantage: the danger it represents contributes to an understanding of Roman masculine self-definition. An effeminate man threatened the Roman male. As suggested earlier, the fear of Hellenic or Eastern influence may explain in part what the Romans of this time were wary of-namely, the infusion of different ways of thinking about government and society. Modes of thinking that the Romans perceived as being at odds with their own became associated 108 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS with Eastern manners and dress. Yet this formulation does not answer why Roman society fixated on the fear of effeminacy. One possible explanation lies in the Roman male's conception of self and of the natural features that he felt separated him from a woman. Medical writers of the second century c.E. reiterate theories of sex differentiation that date back 700 years to the works of Empedocles. According to these writers, conception involved the intermingling of warm male semen and cool female semen.Jo The net temperature resulting from this interaction determined the sex of the child: "Males were those fetuses who had realized their full potential" by amassing the greatest amount of heat while still in the womb; insufficient accumulation of heat, on the other hand, produced a female.31 The theory found support in empirical observation: as a result of her cooler body temperature, a woman has a softer, moister physical makeup than a man. This theory of the differing amount of heat in the sexes seems to have had currency in the late Republic: Varro, for example, affirms in his treatise on agriculture that dry plants are relatively infertile, as opposed to those that are "looser and [therefore] more fertile, as the female is [looser and more fertile] than the male. " 32 The formulation of this assertion, in which the statement that the female is looser (laxiora) than the male is supplied as a given, implies a consensus among Varro's readers concerning what properties constitute the male as opposed to the female. Further evidence for the widespread application of this idea can be found in the rhetorician Quintilian, who conjectures that the voices of young boys are weaker than those of men because boys still retain "dampness" (propter wnorem, Inst. 11.3.28). Aside from the apparent parallelism of thought in Varro and Quintilian, there are additional reasons for supposing that this caloric theory of sex differentiation was part of the collective knowledge of a late Republican Roman. First, Galen was a compiler whose work "summarized all that was worthy in the medical tradition of the classical world."33 That he does not indicate that this theory of sex differentiation had been recently contested may indicate its acceptance in the late Republic. Second, Lucretius's account of conception in book 4 of De rerzmz natura harmonizes with the theory propounded by Galen.34 Finally, the philosophical conception of pleasure (and hence vice) as fluid, whereas virtue is dry and hard, also accords with this split in the characterization of the sexes.35 The warm, dry male and the cool, moist female of Republican invective offered a familiar dichotomy. An interesting consequence arises from the perceived role of heat in a human being's conception: according to Galen, if the heat of a male were to subside at any point during the course of his lifetime, he might risk blurring his sexual identity. "No normal man might actually become a ANTHONY CORBEILL 109 woman; but each man trembled forever on the brink of becoming 'womanish.' "36 These words describing Roman male anxieties during late antiquity apply equally well to the late Republic. For behind the humorous invective of effeminacy there continually lurks the possibility of a man undergoing a behavioral transformation. This potential threat to the socially constructed natural order, whereby the biological male is expected to exhibit specific masculine traits, becomes recapitulated via public humor into a threat to political order. If Galenic theories of sex differentiation had legitimacy for these Romans-and the treatises of Varro and Quintilian indicate channels by which these theories may have found wider and even more practical applications-then invective against effeminacy emerges as something more than mere slander. The orator who accuses an opponent of feminine characteristics-or indeed, alleges that his adversary has actually undergone some form of sexual transformation-now can be construed as not merely degrading a person's social standing. That is, in comparing a man to a woman, the attacker does not simply suggest that his opponent has the social value of a woman. Rather, a preponderance of effeminate qualities in an adversary would allow an opposing speaker to assert that an opponent not only violates the boundaries of social propriety but represents a failure within nature itself. In late Republican oratory, effeminate qualities imply passive homoerotic activity, and this construct came to be represented as a marked failure in a man with political pretensions. The belief that a lapse from the natural order informs the social danger of effeminacy finds direct expression in a text from 142 B.C.E., wherein Scipio Aemilianus inveighs against Publius Sulpicius Gal us (Gell. 6.12 .5 = ORF 21.17): nam qui cotidie unguentatus adversus speculum ornetur, cuius supercilia radantur, qui barba vulsa feminibusque subvulsis ambulet, qui in conviviis adulescentulus cum amatore cum chiridota tunica inferior accubuerit, qui non modo vinosus, sed virosus quoque sit, eumne quisquam dubitet, quin idem fecerit, quod cinaedi facere solent? For if someone, drenched daily in perfumes, adorns himself before a mirror, shaves his eyebrows, walks about with his beard plucked and thigh hairs pulled out; who, as a young boy with his lover, wearing a long-sleeved tunic, was accustomed to lie in the low spot at banquets; who is not only fond of wine, but fond of men also; then would anyone doubt that he has done the same thing that pathics (cinaedt) usually do? Galus openly flaunts effeminate traits; he wears perfumes, depilates face and body, once banqueted with older lovers, and as an adult betrays a fondness for other men. Aemilianus depicts Galus's natural sex struggling 110 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS against the socially constructed norms of Roman masculinity. In Aemilianus's formulation, a proper Roman observer can construe this behavior as nothing other than a perversion of nature. Galus, one must conclude, is pathic. A Man for Every Woman, a Woman for Every Man No man in the late Republic ever actually became a woman-at least so far as we lmow. 37 A man could, however, approach this transformation when certain characteristics commonly identified as feminine began to affect his behavior. In invective, an orator most frequently associates the manifestation of effeminate traits in an opponent with a presumed role as the penetrated male in a homoerotic relationship; the dominant partner does not ever seem to have been the direct object of abuse for playing the active role.3 8 Rhetorical invective against the sexually submissive male finds a parallel in the threats of anal rape (pedicare) and oral rape (irrunzare) that recur in graffiti and invective poetry.39 These two sexual threats serve similar purposes of degradation. At their most basic level, they make the opponent into an object of sexual violence, or at least into the plaything of another's sexual whims, and so expose the opponent as not having control over his own body. This rigid distinction between active and passive roles accounts for part of the expressions of repugnance toward cunnilingus one finds repeatedly in Roman texts. For a Roman, subservience to a woman's desires implies sexual passivity-and even ambiguity-in the male. Accusations of womanish behavior occur in a well-lmown passage from Cicero's Second Philippic. In an earlier speech, now lost, it seems Antonius claimed that Cicero had once been his teacher. Cicero replies that in fact the young Antonius had never availed himself of the orator's instruction (Phil. 2.3): ne tu, si id fecisses, melius famae, melius pudicitiae tuae consuluisses. sed neque fecisti nee, si cuperes, tibi id per C. Curionem facere licuisset. If you had in fact done that, you would have served your reputation and chastity better. But you didn't do it and, even if you were wanting to, Gaius Curio wouldn't have let you. Cicero implies that Antonius's role as Curio's beloved, a role he refers to elsewhere in the speech (Phil. 2.44-45), explains in part his present moral profligacy. Antonius's passive sexual position corresponds to an inability to control his own moral upbringing. This formulation from 43 B.c.E. ex- ANTHONY CORBEILL 111 plains the point of a joke dating from the previous century. Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, had been slandered for having adulterous relations. Her son Gaius defended her from one attack as follows (Plut. C. Gracch. 4.4): end oe om~E~AT]µevO(; ~v di:; µaAaKtav 6 Aot8opri8Et<;, [6 fpayxoi:;] ",iva oe" El7tEV "EXON nappr]crtav cruyKptVEt<; KopVT]Atq, cream6v; £,EKE<; yap wi:; EKEtVT]; Kat µ~v 7t<XV,E<; t<JC(<Jl 'PwµatOl 7tAElOl xp6vov EKEtVT]V an' avopoi:; o?icrav tj cre ,ov &vopa." And when a man was hurling invective who was customarily accused of effeminacy, [Gracchus] replied: "vVhat boldness of speech allows you to compare yourself with Cornelia? Did you give birth as she did? And besides, everyone in Rome lmows that she spends more time in the absence of a man than you do, [although you are] a man." Gracchus's barb implies that his unnamed opponent abandons features of his masculinity by preferring to adopt the female role in his intercourse with men. As a result of this denial of his true nature, he is less worthy of respect than a woman. Other passages from the late Republic also show a speaker relegating an opponent to a subservient status by alluding to his submissive role in sexual situations.40 The invective of effeminacy strives to equate an opponent's status with that of a woman or even, as in the example just cited, with that of a failed woman. The abuse could go still further: humor often arises from depicting the opponent as threatening to become literally transformed into a woman. For example, Cicero portrays the relationship between Antonius and Curio as a kind of marriage wherein Antonius rejects his maleness (Phil. 2.44): sumpsisti virilem, quam statim muliebrem togam reddidisti. primo vulgare scortum; certa flagiti merces nee ea parva; sed cito Curio intervenit, qui te a meretricio quaestu abduxit et, tamquam stolam dedisset, in matrimonio stabili et certo collocavit. You donned the toga of an adult male, which you immediately turned into a woman's. At first [you were] a common whore; there was a fixed price for a trick-and not a small one. But Curio swiftly intervened and took you away from the prostitute's trade, settling you in a calm and stable marriage just as if he'd given you a wedding gown. The ultimate degradation of the passive partner resides in equating not only his behavior but also his sex to that of a woman; later in the same speech, Curio is described as Antonius's husband (vir, Phil. 2.50). Other prominent Romans are described as women on account of their alleged intercourse with men: Bibulus publicly dubbed Julius Caesar the "Bithyn- 112 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS ian queen" for his relations with Nicomedes (Suet. Jul. 49), Cicero called the younger Curio "Curio's little daughter" (filiola Curionis, Att. 1.14.4), and Clodius became "the people's female Appuleius" (ilia populi Appuleia, Att. 4.11.2). Public charges of effeminacy, however, never entirely negate the masculine vices of the accused. This type of invective often charges the opponent with the seemingly oxymoronic combination of passive, effeminate subservience and violent, male lust. The ambiguous halfway point between male and female provides the accuser with the unique opportunity of charging his opponent with the worst vices of both "sexes." In this case, the danger is that the accused's physical makeup confuses distinctions that must remain clear. The effeminate male cannot recognize that the biological and social construction of maleness must coincide. According to Suetonius, the elder Curio wished to show Caesar's reputation for both adultery and sodomy when he described Caesar in a public speech as "a man for all women and a woman for all men" (Suet. Jul. 52.3), a charge that echoes one Cicero had made about Verres (Verr. 2.2.192).41 Parallel examples depict men engaging in both dominant and subservient sexual roles without any notion on the accuser's part that the charge seems to raise logical problems.42 This realm of androgyny does not, however, simply indicate that there is "no consistency" on the part of the accuser.4 3 Rather, the theoretical possibility that a man could lose his gender has opened up a legitimate space for invective. The "androgynous man" does not represent a breach of logic so much as a potential threat always inherent for the male. It now remains to consider how the orator attempted to convey to his audience the truth behind these charges of effeminacy. I mentioned earlier that legitimate invective requires external, visible means of verification. And in fact, extant texts from the Republic and other periods, including those writings outside oratory, reveal an awareness of a consistent set of features that were thought to characterize a dissipating masculinity. The Category of the Effeminate Male Effeminacy does not represent, as may first appear, a charge available at the whim of any accuser. Cicero's corpus contains no evidence that he was himself so charged, nor does the accusation enter the list of Vatinius's many vices. In the case of Piso, it is applied only vaguely, chiefly through his affiliation with Gabinius. Yet in Cicero's treatise on humor in the sec- ANTHONY CORBEILL 113 and book of De oratore, we find a mockery of effeminacy from the midsecond century n.c.E. that at first appears to advise without reservation the use of such abuse (De 01: 2.277): cum Q. Opimius consularis, qui adulescentulus male audisset, festivo homini Egilio, qui videretur mollior nee esset, dixisset "quid tu, Egilia mea? quando ad me venis cum tua colu et lana?" "non pol" inquit "audeo, nam me ad famosas vetuit mater accedere." The former consul Quintus Opimius, a man who'd had a bad reputation as a young boy, once had said to the witty Egilius-since he seemed rather effeminate (mollior) and [yet] was not-"What do you say, Egilia my girl? When are you coming over to my house with your distaff and wool?" Egilius replied, "I don't dare, by Pollux, since my mother has forbidden me to go near women with bad reputations." Cicero relates this episode to demonstrate the attractions of wittily turning a charge back on an opponent. It is significant, however, that the narrator has taken care to provide his reader with background on each of the participants in the anecdote. This background is essential for understanding the rhetorical advice being offered. The anecdote requires that the joke's audience know in advance about Opimius's notorious youth (qui adulescentulus male audisset). The hearers, then, must have some sensitivity to the truth of the charges being brought before them. Hence Opimius does not fail because his remark was not funny-this factor is not relevant to Cicero's discussion. Rather, the humiliation of Opimius offers a clear warning to the potential orator that the substance of a charge must be verifiable. Opimius relied too much upon the signs of Egilius's effeminacy, signs that the joke's introduction reveals to be deceptive: Egilius only seemed effeminate. Egilius, accused by a speaker who lacks a proper regard for visible evidence, can then overcome the insult by referring to Opimius's infamous past. Opimius cannot be faulted for thinking that Egilius's external appearance would incriminate him. In the late Republic, orators repeatedly appeal to specific external indicators-or groups of indicators-to demonstrate a male opponent's internal, effeminate character. For example, Cicero preserves the following "slight play on words" (parva verbi immutatio) that the elder Cato made in response to an anonymous opponent: si tu et adversus et aversus inzpudicus es, "If both from the front and from behind you are a shamelessly effeminate (inzpudicus) male" (De 01: 2.256). With the accusation of being "shameless from behind" (aversus inzpudiClls), Cato mocks his opponent as a submissive partner to male lovers. Adversus ("from the front"), in contrast, is usually taken to refer to the 114 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS adversary's shameless way of speaking.44 A passage from Gellius, however, supplies a more satisfactory explanation-oral penetrability (Gell. 3.5.1-2; cf. Plut. Mor. 126a, 705e): Plutarchus refert Arcesilaum philosophum vehementi verbo usum esse de quodam nimis delicato divite, qui incorruptus tamen et a stupro integer dicebatur, nam cum vocem eius infractam capillumque arte compositum et oculos ludibundos atque inlecebrae voluptatisque plenos videret: "nihil interest," inquit, "quibus membris cinaedi sitis, posterioribus an prioribus." Plutarch relates that the philosopher Arcesilaus used strong language concerning a rich man [who was] exceedingly effeminate, but was said to be untainted and free from vice. For when [Arcesilaus] perceived his broken speech and artfully arranged hair and his playful eyes filled with charm and desire, he said, "It doesn't matter what parts you pathics (cii1aed1) use, those in back or those in front." For Arcesilaus, the reputation of the rich man had no relevance; his exterior betrayed his true nature. The similarity between the witticisms of Cato and Arcesilaus may not be accidental. Other passages from Cato's writings show the censor's familiarity with Greek aphorisms.45 The "front parts" (nzenzbra priom) of the Arcesilaus episode and the "frontal shamelessness" (adversus) of Cato most likely refer, then, to the same feature: the use of the mouth in fellatio. At the same time, however, Cato, like Arcesilaus, must have had to find proof for these charges of effeminate behavior in his opponent's very appearance: the man's exterior indicates to an onlooker his hidden vice. The voice, hair, and eyes of the rich man necessarilY\ mark his effeminacy. This pair of anecdotes teaches an important l~s~on. It does not matter how well immorality lies concealed1 one's true character will inevitably emerge in external signs. A writer from the early Empire offers explicit testimony to a Roman belief in the validity of external indicators. In one of Seneca's Epistulae, the philosopher teaches Lucilius how to distinguish unexamined adulation from true and considered praise. There is a difference, Seneca affirms, between approval gained in the theater and at school. And how to determine the character of a critic? As in all areas of life, a clear estimate of an individual's character arises from external factors (Sen. Ep. 52.12): omnia rerum omnium, si observentur, indicia sunt, et argumentum morum ex minimis quoque licet capere: inpudicum et incessus ostendit et manus mota et unum interdum responsum et relatus ad caput digitus et flexus oculorum; improbum risus, insanum vultus habitusque demonstrat. ilia enim in apertum per notas exeunt. ANTHONY CORBEILL 115 There are all types of indicators for all things, provided they are attended to, and one may obtain evidence for character from even the smallest details: you can tell an effeminate man (inpudicus) from his walk, from [the way] he moves his hands, from sometimes [even] a short reply, from [the way] he brings his finger up to his head, and from his eye movement. Laughter betrays the wicked man, expression and bearing the insane one. For those [qualities] come out into the open through signs. When properly scrutinized, appearances do not deceive. Seneca seems to pass on a lesson he learned from his father, whose Controversiae-in form a handbook by the elder Seneca for his three sons-includes a diatribe against the youth of his day that shares all the same features of the effeminate male, except for the reference to peculiar eye-movement (Sen. Controv. 1, praef. 8-9, 10):46 somnus languorque ac somno et languore turpior malarum rerum industria invasit animos: cantandi saltandique obscena studia effeminatos tenent, [et] capillum frangere et ad muliebres blanditias extenuare vocem, mollitia corporis certare cum feminis et immundissimis se excolere munditiis nostrorum adulescentum specimen est. quis aequalium vestrorum quid dicam satis ingeniosus satis studiosus, immo quis satis vir est? ... ite nunc et in istis vulsis atque expolitis et nusquam nisi in libidine viris quaerite oratores. Sleep and laziness and something more disgraceful than sleep and lazinessa passion for wicked deeds-have attacked their souls: obscene passion for singing and dancing has a hold on these effeminates. The model for our youths is in curling the hair, lightening the voice to the caressing sounds of a woman, competing with women in physical delicacy, and adorning themselves with unrefined finery. Which of your contemporaries is-how shall I say?-talented or studious enough? No; which is man enough? ... Go on, look for orators among those [who are] depilated and smooth, in no way men except in lust. This passage from the moralizing and conservative elder Seneca provides an important link between his son and the invective texts I have been considering. All the features that he describes as associated with effeminacy are found in representations of the late Republican banquet-singing, dancing, curled hair, womanly voices. As I proposed at the outset, late Republican invective against effeminacy tended to be conflated with fears of the immoderate feast. I have argued that the effeminate banqueter is not simply a literary fiction, a composite figure patched together from the groundless anxieties of the orator's audience. Instead I presume that invective's efficacy requires at least some degree of correlation between the charges raised pub- 116 FOUR: DINING DE VIA NT S licly and the realities of contemporary society. It is now time to consider the corollary to this claim: to what extent can the effeminate male be said to constitute a specific category of person? During the past two decades scholars concerned with Greek antiquity have been attempting to clarify Greek attitudes toward male-to-male sexual conduct.47 Recent debate has centered in particular on the distinctions between ancient and modern notions of male-male sexual activity, for, according to prominent researchers on sexuality, especially Michel Foucault, it is only since the late nineteenth century that male homoerotic behavior has played an integral role in the social definition of an individual. The societies of ancient Greece and Rome did not, they argue, attribute the same degree of importance to an individual's sexuality as does modern society. Preference for one type of erotic experience over another was "not a matter of typology involving the individual's very nature, the truth of his desire, or the natural legitimacy of his predilection."48 Hence for the Greeks, at least, it is claimed that activity we in the twentieth century would label "homosexual" was simply a "set of acts" in which the sex of the person penetrated is irrelevant. Thus the sex of one's sexual partner did not occupy the same privileged position that it has in our culture in defining an individual's essence: "It is not immediately evident that differences in sexual preference are by their very nature more revealing about the temperament of individual human beings, more significant determinants of personal identification, than, for example, differences in dietary preference. "49 An individual's choice of sexual partner was not, according to this line of reasoning, considered an integral part of that person's character. Debate continues over the validity of this Foucauldian model for ancient Greece.so For the Roman world, Foucault's treatment is regrettably sparse and difficult to evaluate.5 1 Certainly his assertion that, until recent centuries, the "sodomite" was not defined by "a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul" finds clear refutation in the exegesis of Seneca quoted above, as well as in many of the texts I have cited throughout this section.5 2 For both Seneca's account and invective texts from the late Republic are predicated on the notion that the signs by which an observer may judge another person originate from the subject's internal makeup-the identifiable traits, says Seneca, "come out into the open" (in apertum ... exeunt). The vigor with which oratory constructs a stance diametrically opposed to the activities of the effeminate banqueter strongly suggests the existence of the figure in Roman reality. The gestures, movements, speech, and dress of the effeminate male of late Republican invective cannot, as I have shown, be separated from the banquet and its attendant sexuality. On the contrary, the male beloved is both delimited and delineated by these very characteristics. Effeminacy connotes a specific sexuality. The precision with which the Romans de- ANTHONY CORBEILL 117 fined the sexually passive male may best be shown by returning once again to the letter of Seneca cited above. The polysyndeton of Seneca's formulation (et ... et ... et ... et ... et) makes it clear that he envisages all the different elements of his list as jointly characterizing the effeminate male. Seneca provides a systematic formulation of the different features that cohere in defining the sexually passive male. It is surely no accident that these characteristics correspond to elements found in Ciceronian invective. Of course, it would be misguided to use these outward signs to define the precise nature of this group's sexuality. Yet our inability to do so does not thereby erase the group's existence.53 Similarly, I do not wish to claim that frequent victims of this form of abuse, such as Marcus Antonius or Publius Clodius, were necessarily consciously aligned with a specific group of effeminate men. Yet the rhetorical power of the invective would seem to depend on the theoretical possibility that these people existed as a category of human beings. Once this is accepted, the next step, that there were actual persons who belonged to this category, does not seem so difficult to take. Standards of discretion and a desire for deniability affect the orator's choice of expression. If the orator uses too much detail in describing the sexual escapades of an opponent, he risks losing his own respectability.54 Hence there arose an alternative to the explicit description of homoerotic acts, an alternative that, as we have seen, was already widely accepted in the second century B.c.E.: would anyone doubt but that a man displaying the typical characteristics "has done the same thing that pathics usually do" (Scipio Aemilianus in Gell. 6.12.5)? The speaker has access to a set of signs that allow him to raise specific charges, but to do so indirectly. Reference to these signs does not constitute mindless abuse; rather, the signs provide the audience with recognizable indications of immorality. The use of sexual discourse for political ends does not erase the possibility that the discourse depends on physical and sexual relations. We may never learn what precisely male-male sexual contact meant in Roman society, but unless we simply assume a gullible audience willing to be duped by a skillful orator, we must expect there to be some truth behind these constructions of effeminacy. The Roman orator constructs beliefs not out of whole cloth, but out of prejudices and biases already present in his society. A recognition of this process revives a reader's confidence in the relation between Roman beliefs and the orator's constructed reality, thereby increasing respect for the judgment of the Roman audience. In the remainder of my discussion, I concentrate on public invective texts-texts that refer to real persons-using other texts only to support my conclusions. In these oratorical passages the depictions of the effeminate male are meant to persuade. Are we to believe that an artistic construct entirely divorced from reality could be so convincing? 118 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS Effeminate Signs The indicators of effeminacy that the Roman orator employs fall into three basic categories: dress, adornment, and physical movement and gestures. The categories of course overlap; as I have observed earlier, such fluid boundaries enable the orator to incriminate his opponent in seemingly different vices, while at the same time allowing deniability. Each individual item of visual evidence provides sufficient proof of deviance. The mockery of effeminate dress at Rome has a heritage dating back to our earliest extant texts. In Plautus's Menaechn1i, men who crossdress change their sexual identity together with their clothing. Menaechmus I, for example, addresses himself as Ganymede, Jupiter's boy lover, while wearing a woman's pal/a (Men. 143). Later in the same play, the parasite Peniculus accuses Menaechmus's twin of being the one who had sported woman's clothing. Menaechmus II responds threateningly (Men. 513-15): vae capiti tuo. omnis cinaedos esse censes, tu quia es? tun med indutum fuisse pallam praedicas? Watch what you say. Do you think all men enjoy being penetrated because you do? Do you claim that I put on a woman's cloak? The notion being mocked in this episode-that if a man puts on women's clothing it means he has feminine tendencies in sexual matters-has Greek precedents in both Old Comedy and oratory.ss By the time of the late Republic, although this type of joke still occurs in the ridicule of effeminate men, it depends no longer upon a man wearing women's clothing per se, but upon his wearing a type of clothing not normally worn by a Roman male. Long, flowing tunics, reaching to the ankles (talaris tunica) and wrists (nzanicata tunica), marked the effeminate male. In fact, the state of being "loosely belted" (discinctus) became the metaphorical equivalent to having an effeminate lifestyle.56 As a result of these associations, Horace need merely describe a man as wearing "low-hanging tunics" for his reader to understand the implied sexual connotation.57 In choice of dress, the orator found a readily available-and socially recognized-sign of deviance. Cicero concludes his second oration against Catiline with a list of six different groups of people at Rome from which the conspirator has composed his forces (Cat. 2.17-23). At the bottom of the orator's catalogue resides the lowest form of humanity (Cat. 2.22): ANTHONY CORBEILL 119 postremum autem genus est, non solum numero, verum etiam genere ipso atque vita; quod proprium est Catilinae, de eius dilectu, immo vero de complexu eius ac sinu; quos pexo capillo nitidos aut imberbis aut bene barbatos videtis, manicatis et talaribus tunicis, velis amictos, non togis; quorum omnis industria vitae et vigilandi labor in antelucanis cenis expromitur. And finally there is the group [that is] last not only in my enumeration but also in its very character and way of life. It's Catiline's own group, coming from his levy-or should I say from his close embrace. You see them, glistening with their coiffed hair, either without beards or with long ones, wearing ankle- and wrist-length tunics, and cloaked in sails, not togas. The entire drive of their life and sleepless labor is used up in predawn feasting. The phrase "from his close embrace" (de complexu eius ac sinu), combined with the mention of the long, flowing clothing, alludes to the effeminate tendencies of this last group. These followers of Catiline hardly represent a physically violent threat; it is their way of life that endangers the state.SB The description continues by delineating still further their androgynous character-"In these packs roam ... all adulterers, all the unchaste and pathic. These boys, so sleek and delicate, have learned ... to love and to be loved" (in his gregibus ... onznes adulteri, onmes impuri inzpudicique versantzn: hi pueri tam lepidi ac delicati . . . amare et anzari . . . didicerunt, Cat. 2.23)-and finally concludes with the previously cited joke about their infatuation with dancing. The familiar amalgamation of feasting, assorted sexual activity, and the dance resurfaces. Cicero points explicitly to the visual cues for these vices with the direct address to the audience, "You see" (videtis). Most prominent among these visual markers is clothing. The conspirators wear clothes that can only be compared to something not belonging to a proper wardrobe-a ship's sail. They do not wear the proper mark of the Roman male, the toga. 59 External garb betrays internal intention. Distinction in dress also informs Cicero's ironic rebuttal to Clodius's charge that the orator, being born in Arpinum, is a non-Roman (Jn Clodiuzzz et Curionenz 22): rusticos ei [Clodio] nos videri minus est mirandum, qui manicatam tunicam et mitram et purpureas fascias habere non possumus. I shouldn't be surprised that I seem rustic to Clodius, since I can't wear a tunic that reaches to the wrist and a headband and purple garlands. Cicero turns Clodius's accusation back upon his opponent. The orator claims before the senate that Clodius thinks that to be Roman means to sport exotic and effeminate clothing. 60 Through obvious irony, Cicero implies that anyone with such a skewed notion of appearance represents a less acceptable Roman than a provincial such as himself. 120 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS Cicero's abuse of Clodius's clothing presents a special case on account of the Bona Dea affair of 62, in which the future tribune masqueraded as a woman to penetrate religious rites traditionally restricted to Roman matrons. The disguise allowed Cicero to call into doubt his opponent's masculinity on numerous later occasions: in the speech De Domo sua, Cicero applies a familiar formulation to Clodius, calling him "contrary to what is right, often both a woman among men and a man among women" (contra fas et inter viros saepe mulier et inter mulieres vir, Dom. 139); he was murdered not because Milo had ambushed him but because "a woman had fallen upon men" (Mil. 55). Elsewhere, Cicero jokes that Clodius was acquitted of impiety because the jury had decided a man (vir) had not witnessed the rites (In Clodium et Curionem 4; cf. Schol. Bob. p. 86, 23-27 [Stangl]). By the time of Cicero's later invective, Clodius has become a male prostitute, pimping himself for the most prominent politicians of the day. 61 Effeminacy did not, however, prevent Clodius's still-male physique from practicing the worst manifestations of lust: Cicero's many jokes about Clodius's incestuous cravings for his sister are well known, and the orator twice refers to a double vice of Clodius, who engages in sex with matrons at the Bona Dea rites while dressed as a woman. 62 Clodius's character exposes him to a twofold attack that reveals his double threat. A man's taking on effeminate dress does more than provide an indication of sexual character; it can also, when the occasion demands, create that character.63 Closely allied to dress as an indicator of effeminacy is cosmetic adornment, which can include depilation, the wearing of perfumes, and fastidious concern for the hair. 64 All three features occur in both Scipio's abuse of Galus (cotidie unguentatus . . . supercilia radantur . . . barba vulsa feminibusque subvulsis) and Cicero's description of Catiline's "lowest class of humanity" (pexo capillo, nitidos). Similarly, the elder Seneca rebukes the tendency among the youth of his day "to primp themselves with unrefined finery" (immundissimis se excolere mzmditiis, Controv. 1, praef. 9). The connections between such adornment and the feminization of the male are clear. The descriptions all recall the feast, together legitimating the associated charge of effeminacy. · Adornment of the hair leads to effeminate gesturing. The younger Seneca included among the indications of sexual submissiveness "bringing the finger to the head" (relatus ad caput digitus, Ep. 52.12). Public figures in the late Republic also appeal to this mysterious sign in order to degrade an opponent. Pompey provided an especially attractive target. Plutarch relates that in the year 56 B.c.E. Pompey neglected public affairs to spend time with his new, young wife. His eventual reappearance in the forum prompted Clodius to lead a group of supporters in the following taunt (Plut. Pomp. 48.7): ANTHONY CORBEILL 121 "'t{s; eCT'ttV CXU'tOKplX'tCOp <XKOAacrws;; 'tts; av~p &v8pa ST\'tEt; 'tts; evt OCXK't\JAtp KV<X'tm 't~V KE<paAnv;" ol 0£ [noAAo{], iocrnEp xopos; Eis; aµoipa'ia cruyKEKpO'tT\µEvos;, EKEtVO'\J 't~V 'tl]PEVVOV avacrEiovws; i:cp' EK<XCT'ttp µeya poroV'tEs; <X7tEKptVCXV'tO "IJoµnl]tos;." "Who is the licentious general? What man is looking for a man? Who scratches his head with one finger?" As Clodius pulled up his toga and shook it, the mob, just like a chorus well trained in responsion, answered each time with a loud shout: "Pompey!" Clodius, it seems, prompts the crowd's response by improvising his own drag show: he pulls up his toga to match the stereotypic dress of the effeminate man. The added conceit of scratching the head with one finger enjoyed wide popularity. 65 According to one functionalist interpretation of the gesture, the effeminate man scratches with a single finger so as not to disturb a carefully prepared hairstyle. 66 Other sources support this hypothesis. A letter of Cicero reveals that he, too, had concerns about Pompey adopting a foppish demeanor, and contemporaneous images of the general show his desire to emulate the windblown hairstyle of Alexander the Great. 67 A remark of Cicero further supports this connection between gesture and fastidious appearance. The orator once remarked that he had not thought Julius Caesar capable of overthrowing the Roman state, since he used to see Caesar "having such exquisitely arranged hair and scratching himself with one finger" (Plut. Caes. 4. 9). The same collocation of an effeminate male's nice hairstyle and habit of headscratching occurs in Lucian (Rhetorzmz praeceptor 11). A fastidious concern for the hair harmonizes well with the Roman stereotype of the effeminately adorned male. The womanlike walk constitutes another physical affectation that invited ridicule. A joke of Cicero demonstrates that the Romans associated a certain stride with each sex (Macrob. Sat. 2.3.16): Cicero ... cum Piso gener eius mollius incederet, filia autem concitatius, ait filiae "ambula tamquam vir." Since his son-in-law Piso walked rather daintily, whereas his daughter walked with too much bustle, Cicero said to his daughter "Walk like a man----yo1w man." Women were expected to walk slowly and softly, whereas men should move with quick determination.68 The joke centers on the unexpected force of vir ("husband"); the word's normal meaning, "man," cannot apply to Piso's unvirile delicacy. Other Roman authors explicitly associate effeminate males with a specific manner of movement and carriage of the body that they describe with forms of the verb incedere (Juv. 2.17; Sen. Ep. 52.12; Q}fat. 7.31.2). The long, flowing tunics worn by the alleged ef- 122 F O UR : D IN IN G D EV I AN T S feminate may have forced him to affect a slow, swaying gait in the manner of a woman (see Hor. Sat. 1.2.25), but it is more likely that, as was the case with a person's physical appearance, a womanly stride supplied physiological evidence that a man was undergoing an internal transformation. This transformation, consequently, revealed itself in external traits. One particular passage in which Cicero derides an opponent's walk brings us back to the dance. After mocking Clodius's dress in the invective speech In Clodizmi et Curionem (22, cited above), Cicero continues his abuse as follows (ibid.): tu vero festivus, tu elegans, tu solus urbanus, quern decet muliebris ornatus, quern incessus psaltriae, qui effeminare vultum, attenuare vocem, laevare corpus potes. But you alone are pleasant company, charming and witty. A woman's dress and a music girl's walk become you, a man who can adopt a womanish expression, speak in a high voice, and lift lightly the body. Womanly garb fits Clodius, who puts on a new sex together with his new clothing. The mention of the "music girl" (psaltria) and the phrase "to lift lightly the body" (laevare c01pus) recall dancing, which further implicates the now-effeminate Clodius in immorality by associating him with the immoderate feast.6 9 Gabinius participates in the same figural banquet as Clodius. In the speech In Pisonem, Cicero describes Piso as emerging from a shadowy drinking hall with Gabinius, "that coiffed dancing girl" (cum ilia saltatrice tonsa, Pis. 18).70 I have already presented a number of passages in which Cicero alerts his audience to Gabinius's passion for men; the reference to his love of dancing reaffirms this characterization. The Roman orator could use a number of external indicators to implicate his opponent in effeminacy. Two signs listed by Seneca in his letter to Lucilius remain: the pitch of the voice and eye movement. Voice quality, a sign that betrays the effeminate male in the physiognomic writers as well, receives occasional mentions in the late Republic as a sign of effeminacy.71 In the passage just cited, Clodius's metamorphosis into a dancing girl includes the thinning out of his voice (In Clodizmz et Czl7'ionem 22). The orator Hortensius, in responding to an attack on his own masculinity, alters the tone of his voice as a way of impersonating an effeminate, dancing male (voce molli atque demissa, Gell. 1.5.3). This form of mimesis seems to have been a practice common among other public speakers of the period. Quintilian records how voice inflection played a role in pi-osopopoeia, a rhetorical technique in which the orator impersonates an absent or imaginary speaker (Inst. 11.1.39). Orators undoubtedly employed still more vocal tricks that are difficult, if not impossible, to detect in our written texts. Eye movement, so far as I can discover, is not the subject of mockery in our extant public speeches. Cicero does, however, ANTHONY CORBEILL 123 frequently bid his audience to consider the eyes (oculi) of his opponent, but without specifying what type of eyes signifies what type of character. For this information, one can turn to the writers on physiognomy, whose findings often correspond with the categories of Ciceronian invective.72 The illicit banquets decried in Roman invective provide an effective counterpoint to the activities of a proper Roman citizen. The verisimilitude of these descriptions should not concern us any more than it did the Roman orator. In order not to implicate himself in the very vices he intends to attach to his opponent, the speaker must stand at a safe distance, certain of the banquet's corruption but unclear on any details that may betray personal involvement. This precarious position explains the rhetorical convergence of the effeminate male and convivial excess. The effeminate male displayed an easily defined appearance; his internal character emerged through his dress, adornment, and physical movement. By latching on to these available signs, the speaker conjured up an illicit world within which his opponent operated, a world of fluctuating gender and ambiguous sexuality. The realm of the banquet may escape precise description, but its chief participant, under the scrutiny of a properly informed jury, stands ready to be exposed. Notes 1. See Edwards 1993: 186-88. 2. MacMullen 1982: 486-87. 3. E.g., Plaut. Men. 197-98; Miles gloi·iosus 666-68; Poenulus 1298, 1317-18; Stich. 769-72; Catull. 29.1-5, 47.3-6 (cf. the chart in Richlin 1988: 362). 4. For Horace, G. Williams 1962: 39-42; for Catullus, Arkins 1982: 106-7. 5. Griffin 197 6: 88 offers an excellent survey of how "Roman life, and particularly the life of luxury and pleasure, was so strongly Hellenistic in colouring and material that no simple division into 'Greek' and 'Roman' elements is possible." 6. Zanker 1988: 25-31; cf. Cic. Rab. Post. 26-27. 7. Dupont 1985: 119-23 (theater); Barton 1993: 54-65 (the Roman games); Versnel 1970: 371-97 (the Roman triumph). For modern parallels, see Rogin 1987, especially chap. 1, "Ronald Reagan: The Movie" (1-43), and the further remarks of Greenblatt (1987: 263-72). 8. Weeks 1981 discusses the effects that social representations of homosexuals have had on actual practitioners of homoerotic behavior. Richlin 1993 b analyzes the possibility of a homosexual subculture in ancient Rome. For Babylonian precedents, see Burkert 1991: 12-13. 9. I disagree with the claims of Boswell (1990b: 70-72) that "'se1.'Ual identity' had little to do with expected social roles in the community" (71). This assertion is said to apply broadly to "Mediterranean city-states of the ancient world (ca. 400 B.c.-400 A.D.)" (70). 10. See most recently Richlin 1993b; Cantarella 1992: 120-41. Discussion in 124 FOUR: DINING DEVIANTS MacMullen 1982 covers the "exceptions, contradictions, and tensions" (485) in trying to posit a "Roman attitude" toward male homosexuality, uncovering along the way "various pressures to conform and counter-pressures which obliged people to conceal a part of themselves" (496). 11. Comedo: Plaut. Pseudolus 1107; Catull. 29.14; Cic. Phil. 11.37; Hor. Epist. 1.15.40; Mart. 5.70.5; Thesaurus linguae Latinae 3: 1767.25-72. Devora: Catull. 29.22; Cic. Phil. 2.67; Verr. 2.3.177; [Cic.] Invectiva in Sallustimn 7.20; Quint. Inst. 8.6.25; Macrob. Sat. 3.13.6; Thesaurus linguae Latinae 5.1: 876.21-50. Decoctor: Thesaurus linguae Latinae 5.1: 197.65-198.7; Crook (1967: 375-76) agrees that in situations of debt, decoquei·e must mean "to squander," in spite of the scholiast to Cic. Cat. 2.5 (Scholia Gronoviana p. 281, 7-10 [Stangl]), who claims that a decoctor is one who "cooks away" a debt, as opposed to a patrimony. 12. Ebibo: Plaut. Trinumnms 250; Hor. Sat. 2.3.122; Dig. 5.3. 25.16 (Ulp.). Edwards 1993: 17 5 cites a similar use of effimdo and prnfimdo ("pour out"). 13. The elder Seneca speaks of Cato as an oracle of morality (Contrnv. 1, praef. 9); see further Edwards 1993: 1-2, 139, 177. 14. The connection between gluttony and poverty was also exploited before Cicero's day; see Cic. De 01: 2.265. 15. Edwards 1993: 180-83. 16. Earl 1967: 11-43 discusses the importance of laus and gloria in the late Republic. 17. Cic. Off. 1.150-51 (discussed by Finley 1985: 35-61) is the locus classicus. The Romans did not, however, disdain the accumulation of wealth so much as the means of accumulation: see Off. 1.92, 2.87; D'Arms 1981: 20-24. 18. See further Cic. Red. Sen. 11. For the phrase quaestum face1·e signifying prostitution, see Dig. 23.2.43 (Ulp.); GIL 1. 593.122-23 (Tabula Heracleensis referring to male prostitution); Plaut. Poenulus 1140; Ter. Haut. 640; and perhaps Cic. Quinct. 12. 19. ORF 21.19 =Gell.NA 6.11.9; see also Sall. Cat. 14.2. 20. Cicero also alludes to Gabinius's reputation at Red. Sen. 11-12; Sest. 18; Pis. 20. 21. See, e.g., Cic. Rose. Am. 134; Cat. 2.22; Sest. 20; Pis. 18, 53, 67; Prov. Cons. 8; Cael. 69. It is a proverb that the frequent banqueter is unaccustomed to daylight; see Cic. Fin. 2.23; Otto 1890: n. 1662. 22. Cic. De 01: 2.242; see Barton 1993: 85-106. 23. I do not discuss the following examples: Cic. Ven: 2.5.92-94, 137; Pis. 42; Phil. 2.104-5; Sall. Cat. 13.3; Livy 39.15.9; Suet. Gram. 15. 24. Cic. Inv. Rhet. 2.33; cf. 2.50 and Rhet. He1: 2.5. 25. The ancients generally-and in invective apparently always-perceived of male homoerotics as nonreciprocal: the beloved in a relationship would always play the passive role within that relationship and was portrayed as receiving little or no physical pleasure from the arrangement; see Dover 1978: 16 and 100-109 passim, and more recently Halperin 1990a: 30-38, which compares this polarization of sex roles to the larger social structure in Athens. On Rome, see Veyne 1985: 29-30, 33; Richlin 1992a, esp. 55-56; and Edwards 1993: 74-75, which discusses how "accusations of effeminacy may be seen as diluted threats of rape." For additional moral judgments on dancing from the late Republic, see Macrob. Sat. 3.14.9 = ORF 8.114-15 (the elder Cato); Cic. Off. 1.150, 3.75 (cf. 3.93); Nep. ANTHONY CORBEIL L 125 Epam. 1.2; Sall. H. 2.25 (cf. Val. Max. 9.14.5; Pliny HN 7.55). My discussion of effeminacy concludes with a reconsideration of the invective against dancing. 26. Using archaeological and literary evidence, Colin 1952-53: 329-35 explores the semantic development of cinaedus. See also Winkler 1990: 45-70 (classical Athens); Gleason 1990: 396-99 (second century c.E.). 27. For the opprobrious associations of a banquet held early in the day, see, e.g., Cic. Ven: 2 .3 .62; Catull. 47 .5-6. Catiline's men provide a special case; they begin their feasts before dawn (Cic. Cat. 2.22). 28. In addition to Cat. 2.23, cited in the text, see Cic. Ven: 2.3.23 (Verres' son); Plane. 87 and Pis. 22 (both of Gabinius). 29. See, for example, Syme [1939] 1956: 149-50; Nisbet 1961: 192; Richlin 1992a: 102. 30. For the common belief in female semen during antiquity, see Blayney 1986: 230. 31. The quotation comes from Peter Brown (1988: 9-10), who cites Aretaeus 2.5 in support; cf. also Gal. De usu partium 14.6-7; De semine 2.5. Galen appears to follow Empedocles (Arist. Gen. An. 764al-6; cf. 723a24-25; Aet. 5.7.1). Brown's discussion of sexuality in late antiquity first prompted many of the connections I make in my own argument between male anxiety and invective against effeminacy. 32. Varro Rust. 1.41.4; I understand femina and mas to refer to male and female animals (or human beings) as opposed to plants. A similar dichotomy occurs in Polemo's treatise on physiognomy (1.194.11 [Foerster]). 33. Scarborough 1969: 49. 34. Lucretius does not specifically treat the problem of sex differentiation (R. D. Brown 1987: 322-23). 35. See Edwards 1993: 173-74, which cites in particular Sen. Dial. 7.7.3. 36. P. Brown 1988: 11, citing Gal. De semine. 1.16; Gleason 1990 has a similar discussion of sex types in the second century c.E. (see especially 390-92). Quintilian advises the orator to maintain physical strength (jirmitas corporis), lest "the voice be thinned out to the frailty of a eunuch, woman, or sick person" (Inst. 11. 3.19). Laqueur 1990: 12 6-2 7 describes Renaissance accounts of how a sudden increase in heat could change women into men. 37. Plin. HN 7. 36 does, however, consider cases in which women turned into men, a passage cited with approval by Aulus Gellius (9.4.13-15); see further Hallett 1989a: 221-22 (reprinted in this volume). For a modern discussion, see Bloom's account of female-to-male transsexuals (1994), which contains many fascinating insights into the nature of a person's inherent gender. 38. The only possible exception I !mow of is the obscure pun at Cic. Phil. 2.62. Active lovers can be derided for their excessive preoccupation with boys (although I know of no certain example from the late Republic). For the evidence, see MacMullen 1982, esp. 488,490 n. 21,498; and Richlin 1992a, esp. 220-26 and index s.v. "Pederasty." In this case, however, it does not seem to be the sex of the partner that is faulted, but the lover's enslavement to physical pleasure. 39. See the discussion in Richlin 1981b and 1992a, passim; Adams 1982: 124-30; Parker's contribution to this volume. Krenke! 1980: 77-80 provides a compendilltn of the meanings of irrumatio throughout Roman life. 40. Examples include Cic. De Oi: 2.265; Ven: 2.3.159, 2.4.143; Suet. Jul. 49 (cf. 126 FOUR: DINING DE VI ANTS Aug. 68; Otho 2.2); Plut. Cic. 7.7 = Mai: 204--5. For visual evidence, see Zanker's discussion of Octavian's propaganda campaign against Antonius (1988: 57-65). 41. For the sarcastic use of vii· ("man") in these two passages and its stark contrast with 11nilie1· ("woman"), see Santoro 11hoir 1992: chaps. 1, 2. 42. Cic. Sest. 20 (the pathic Gabinius is a frequent adulterer); Hai: Resp. 42 (Clodius; cf. also Pis. 65; Hai: Resp. 59); Phil. 14.9; [Cic.] I11vectiva in Sallustium 9 (Sallust cannot refrain from men; cf. 15, where all husbands are angry at Sallust's adultery); Catull. 57.1-2, 8-9; Livy 39.15.9 (male celebrants at Bacchanalia); Sen. Controv. 1, praef. 9; and, perhaps, the tantalizingly brief Lucilius 1048 (Warmington): inberbi androgyni, barbati moechoci11aedi. Carson 1990: 154 n. 39 cites comparable Greek examples. Sen. Controv. 2 .1.6 offers an interesting possibility: young men act effeminate to attract women. 43. The quoted phrase is from Richlin 1992a: 98, whose brief but well-documented account of rhetorical invective has been very helpful in shaping my discussion, which I see as refining rather than substantially disagreeing with her own. 44. So Monaco 1968 ad loc., following Turnebus. 45. Astin 1978: 187-88. 46. Eye movement is discussed by Cicero in his rhetorical works as an indicator of temporary, not permanent, character, and seems to be employed that way in his speeches (Omt. 60; De 01: 3.221-23). I find the following links between the remarks of the two Senecas (the relationship within these pairs will be elaborated in the text through parallels from the late Republic): (1) i11cess11s . .. et mam1s nzota (Ep.) = saltmzdi ... studia (Controv.); (2) unum interdum respo11smn (Ep.) = ad 1llztliebres blmzditias extenum·e vocem (Controv. ); (3) relatus ad caput digitus (Ep.) = capillu1ll fmngere and innmmdissimis se excolere 1mmditiis (Controv.). I shall also discuss a fourth element in the elder Seneca's text-depilation (in istis vulsis atque expolitis)-a practice that the son, being concerned only with gesture and movement, does not include in his own list. Quintilian (Inst. 5.9.14) also acknowledges the possibility of appealing to external signs of the effeminate male. He specifically mentions depilation (co1pus vu/sum), a mincing gait (fmctus iizcessus), and feminine dress (vestis muliebris). In the anonymous Latin work De physiog11omo11ia, the signs of the effeminatlls correspond well to the categories mentioned by the younger Seneca (2.75-76 [Foerster]; see also 1.276, 1.415, 2.123; Arist. Phgn. 808a.12-16). 47. Serious consideration of the subject began with Dover 1978. The subsequent wide-ranging survey by Boswell (1980) has received much criticism for its contention that "gay people" have existed throughout the history of Western society; see the bibliography in Halperin 1990a: 161 n. 32 and Boswell's own restatement of his views (1990b). Patzer's 1982 study attempts to trace pederastic behavior to military ritual; see Halperin's critique (1990a: 54--61). 48. Foucault 1985: 190; see his entire discussion at 187-203, and Halperin 1990a: 15-40. 49. Halperin 1990a: 26, following Foucault; cf. Winkler 1990: 4. In a review of Halperin and Winlder, Thornton (1991) argues that their work has "seriously oversimplified Foucault's ideas" (182). Richlin 1993b: 524--28 offers a detailed critique of the positions of Halperin and Winlder. 50. See, e.g., Thorp 1992: 58 (focusing on Plato's Symposium), who is re- ANTHONY CORBEILL 127 sponding to Halperin 1990a: 18-21; also Boswell 1990b: 77; Golden 1991: 338. Even Winkler admits that "ldnaidos was a category of person, not just of acts," at least insofar as the kinaidos displayed deviant behavior (1990: 46). D. Cohen 1991 a: 171-2 02 uses legal and biological texts to qualify Foucault's claims, assessing legal attitudes toward pederasty in the context of the law of hubris (175-82). 51. Richlin 1992a: xv-xvi discusses Foucault's neglect of Roman sources. See also Edwards in this volume. 52. Foucault 1980: 43; cf. 1985: 19, where, after discussing stereotypes of effeminacy in the ancient world, he asserts that it is "completely incorrect to interpret [these traits] as a condemnation of ... what we generally refer to as homosexual relations." His contention that the ancients had no conception of an "interior androgyny" is also belied by Roman attitudes toward female-female sexual behavior (a subject he neglects), to which activity our extant sources "attribute male activities and apparatus" (Hallett 1989a: 221, reprinted in this volume). 53. Starting from the known strictures on reclining at Roman banquets, Booth (1991) conjectures about the extent and nature of male homoerotic activity on these occasions; see esp. 112-13. 54. See the discussion in Richlin 1992a: 13-26. 55. On Aristophanes, see Geffcken 1973: 83-84; for oratory, Dover 1978: 75-76. 56. Discinctus seems to have come to indicate loose morals by contrast with the "well-girt" soldier (praecinctus): see Thesaurus linguae Latinae 5. l: 1316.59-66, Richlin 1992a: 92; 1993b: 542 n. 45. 57. Hor. Sat. l.2.25 (tzmicis demissis) and Rudd 1966: 143. Cicero puns on the effeminate associations of the t1111ica maizicata at Phil. 11.26 (cf. Shacldeton Bailey 1982: 225-26). See also Sen. Ep. 92.35, 114.6 (Maecenas). Quintilian explicitly states that a tunic worn below the lmees is feminine (Inst. 11.3.138). Bremmer 1992: 19 and n. 11 catalogues similar associations in the Greek world. 58. The description of Catiline's band by the historian Sallust contains the same elements of censure. His group includes "whichever pathic, glutton, and gambler had destroyed his patrimony with hand, stomach, or penis" (quicmnque impudicus gaizeo aleator maim ventre pe11e bona patria laceraverat, Sall. Cat. 14.2). 59. For the loose toga as a mark of excessive refinement, see the comments of K. F. Smith (1913) on Tib. 1.6.40, and Tracy 1976: 60. For the converse case of the stern Roman in a scanty toga, see Hor. Epist. 1.18.30, 1.19.15. 60. The wearing of purple occurs as an element of invective at Cic. Clzt. 111; Cat. 2.5; and Cael. 77 (where the prosecution apparently used this charge against Caelius). Tracy 1976: 60 lists other disreputable colors. 61. Cic. Sest. 39, 46, 48, 52; Hai: Resp. I. Skinner 1982: 202-3 discusses these passages in the context of Catull. 79. 62. Cic. Hai: Resp. 8; In Clodium et Curionem 23; Geffcken 1973: 82 discusses at greater length the significance of Clodius's apparel. 63. For legislation curtailing what clothes a Roman man might wear, see Manfredini 1985: 260-71; Dalla 1987: 18-23. The notion that changing dress can alter sexual desire has beeh common throughout the history of Western culture; see Garber 1991, passim.