Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Love (and marriage) between women Cameron, Alan Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Summer 1998; 39, 2; ProQuest pg. 137 Love (and Marriage) between Women Alan Cameron I T USED TO BE THOUGHT that love between women in Greco­ Roman antiquity, though no doubt as common as at most other periods of human history, was a subject the surviving male writers of the times either did not notice or could not bring themselves to mention. But an important book by Bernadette Brooten has revealed that there is more evidence than most of us had supposed. Almost all of it hostile, to be sure, but evidence nonetheless. There can be no question that she has expanded the frontiers of the subject, and that female homoeroticism is at last a viable area for research.l But not content with bringing her subject into the mainstream of modern scholarly study, Brooten went further and claimed that some women sought the public recognition of marriage for their relationships. Notoriously, John Boswell made the same claim about gay men in Roman and mediaeval times in his Same­ Sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe (1994). I have no intention of reopening that debate here, but it has to be said that his ancient evidence was particularly thin.2 At one point Brooten remarks casually that "Iamblichus was one of several second-century authors to write about marriage between women" (51). In fact her case rests essentially on four Greek texts: Lucian, Clement of 1 Bernadette J. Brooten, Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago 1996); see the reviews by Corey Brennan, BMCR 8 (1997) 506-515; Elizabeth Castelli, The Women's Review of Books 14.6 (1997) 15-16. 2See now the complementary articles of Elizabeth Brown, Brent Shaw, and Claudia Rapp in Traditio 52 (1997). Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 39 (1998) 137-156 © 2000 GRBS 137 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 138 LOVE (AND MARRIAGE) BETWEEN WOMEN Alexandria, the romance-writer Iamblichus, and the mathema­ tician and astrologer Ptolemy. Everyone is far more problematic than Brooten allows. The two that seem most explicit are Lucian and Clement of Alex­ andria. Of the Clement passage Brooten writes: "For years I believed that Clement's reference to marriage between women was metaphorical, but I now take Clement seriously as a his­ torical source for woman-woman marriage" (332), mainly (of course) on the basis of the other texts. But the principal objection to pressing both the Clement and Lucian passages as Brooten does is not so much the possibility that yallEtV is being used metaphorically, but whether it implies "marriage" at all. The first section will consider Clement and Lucian; the second some Byzantine scholia on Clement and Lucian; and the third two further passages that seem to refer to marriage between women, together with some remarks about love in the Greek novels. I It is obvious from the fact that the man yallEt nva in the active and the woman yallEl'tal nv! in the passive that in the active the verb represents the male role in marriage.3 It is not therefore surprising that as early as Homer yallEtv is oc­ casionally found of "mere sexual intercourse" (LSJ s.v. 1.2), a usage that became widespread and eventually dominant by the Roman period. The Byzantine Lexicon of E. A. Sophocles de­ fines it as "a euphemism for ~tVf(t),futuo," and in 1955 Phaidon Koukoules cited yallEtV first in a list of "words the Byzantines avoided."4 The third example on his list is this very passage of 3Cf John H. Oakley and Rebecca H. Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens (Madison 1993) 9. 41:a ou aE8ovm fAoxa Kat llpa 'ADwviDOs). Aphrodite's relationship with Anchises was no more long-lived or respectable than any of the others. It is purely for the sake of literary variation that he uses four different verbs: ifYll Jl£V means exactly the same here as II pa, clearly implying a sexual relationship outside marriage. Lastly, Protr. 4.54.6: the Athenians were preparing a ritual marriage between Demetrius and Athena, and Demetrius dishonoured the goddess, 'to ayaAJla YllJlat Jll, DUVaJl£vos.9 No one knows 8For a representative selection, illustrating this very passage of Clement, Robert (supra n.4) 80. Add (e.g.) Longus 4.11.2, Ea9tElV ... Kat lttVEtV ... Kat AaYVEUEtV. 9 Probably as part of the honours offered Demetrius in 304 B.c.: C. Habicht, Gottmenschentum und griechische Stiidte 2 (Murtich 1970) 49. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ALAN CAMERON 141 how a ritual marriage between a man and a goddess was conducted, though it is likely that the goddess was represented during the ceremony by her statue. But it was the absent god­ dess rather than the present statue that the man married. The "dishonour" Demetrius did the goddess must have consisted of taking the implied relationship with her statue literally:lO he evidently said he could not go to bed with a statue. l1 With these passages in mind, we may finally turn to Paedagogus 3.21.3. Clement is describing how sensuality has turned everything upside down: "men suffer womanly things, and women play the male role, getting married and marrying women contrary to nature" (yuva'iK£~ avopi~Ovtal, napa tal £Kac:no~, uno 8£ WUtolV yallEt aut6c;), or in A. M. Harmon's neat Loeb translation, "up to the age of twenty-five each is a wife, and thereafter a husband." The emphasis clearly falls on sexual roles rather than the permanence or public nature of the unions. Now for the second of Brooten's passages, Dialogues of the Courtesans 5.3. Lucian is describing how two rich women, Megilla and Demonassa, hire the flute-girl Leaena to play at a party they are planning. Afterwards they try to persuade her to go to bed with them. First they kiss her and squeeze her breasts, then Megilla takes off her wig, revealing a close-cropped hairstyle like an athlete. The simple-minded Leaena is still bewildered, and Megilla becomes more aggressive: "Don't treat me like a woman (Ka'tae~A:\)VE); my name is Megillos." She then appears to say: "I have been married to Demonassa here for ever so long, and she is my wife" (YEYallllKa np6naAal taUtllv t~V .1.11 Ilrovacrcrav , Kat ecrtlv il EIl~ yuv~). Boswell went even further than Brooten here, regretting that Megilla had neglected to provide" clues about any legal or ceremonial aspects of the relationship" (82). But this sentence cannot be understood out of its context. Indeed in order to get the full sense of yeyall11Ka, it is essential to follow the exchange between Leaena and Megilla right through to the end of the dialogue. Megilla does not love Leaena, who is no more than a prostitute hired for the evening. She just wants to get her in bed. She has failed so far because Leaena is unworldly enough not to understand what is being asked of her. There would be no point in introducing the idea of marriage at this stage of the negotiations. If Leaena cannot grasp the idea of sex between women, she is only going to be further confused by talk of marriage between women. It may well be that we are meant to think of Megilla and Demonassa as devoted lovers who have been living together for years-though Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ALAN CAMERON 143 given their desire for a threesome with Leaena, evidently not in an exclusive, monogamous relationship. But if Megilla is to stand any chance of getting through to Leaena, it is not the permanence of her relationship with Demonassa that needs to be spelled out, but its sexual nature. So she points to De­ manassa with the words ycyallllKa npOnaAal m1Hllv 't~v L1llllwvacrcrav. The point of the active yeyallllKa is to indicate that she has been playing the male role in bed with Demonassa. Following this hint and taking the remark about Megillos literally, but still completely missing the point, Leaena then asks whether Megilla is really a man "just as they say Achilles once hid among the girls./I "Do you have a man's thing ('to av8p£10v eK£tVo) and 'do' Demonassa like a man?" (not£l~ 't~v L11l­ Ilwvacrcrav an£p 01 av8p£~ ).l3 notci~ here is clearly (like facio occasionally in Latin)14 a euphemism for sexual intercourse. That is to say, Megilla's yeyallllKa prompts Leaena to ask whether she has a penis rather than for details of the "legal or ceremonial aspects" of her relationship with Demonassa. Not exactly, replies Megilla. Poor Leaena despairingly tries two further possibilities. Perhaps Megilla is a hermaphrodite? or maybe she has had a sex change? Wasn't there that sooth­ sayer from Thebes called Tiresias? As she admits to the friend she is telling the story to, "I still had no idea what was going on" (En yap iJyvoouv ... 'to npaYlla). It is not till Megilla finally announces (5.4) that she "has something instead of a man's thing" (EXW yap n av'tt 'tou av8pdou )15 that Leaena "fondled her like a man" (wcrn£p av8pa n£pt£Aall~avov) and "she did me (enol£t) and kissed me and panted away and seemed to have a great time." Robert has shown that n£ptAall~av£tV 13The euphemisms in Macleod's Loeb translation fail to bring out the purely sexual focus of Leaena's response. 14TLL VI.1 (1912) 121.40-52; Adams (supra nA) 204. But I have not found other examples of either ]tOtEW or facio governing a direct accusative in this sense, but it is hard to doubt that both verbs were so used (as indeed "do" is in modem English). 15 Presumably a dildo: Brooten 153. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 144 LOVE (AND MARRIAGE) BETWEEN WOMEN frequently bears erotic connotations. 16 "Embrace" and "hug" are too neutral; better "fondle" or "cuddle," intimate and suggestive without being explicit. But the key element in Lucian's phrase is wcr1t£p avopa: "I fondled her as if she were a man." At long last Leaena has understood what she is sup­ posed to do. From start to finish Megilla has been trying to persuade Leaena to go to bed with her and Leaena has been trying to understand why. In a cruder version of the faux na'ivete of Daphnis and Chloe in Longus's novel, Leaena simply cannot grasp either the point or the mechanics of sex between women. Mention of marriage would have hindered rather than helped in the laborious story of her enlightenment. II Now for the Byzantine scholia; by scholia I simply mean comments jotted in the margin of texts of Clement and Lucian by a Byzantine reader. A note against Clement's reference to women "playing the male role" (avopi~ovmt) offers the follow­ ing gloss: "he means the disgusting tribades, whom they also call hetairistriai and Lesbians" ('tae; j • .napae; 'tpt~ao(X(; AEy£t, (Xe; Kat hatptcr'tptae; Kat AEacrtV).20 She also cites yet another scholion which notes, against a reference to the celebrated female pornographer Philainis in the pseudo-Lucianic Erotes 28, that an Athenian called Philocrates "held her up to public lB"Post-classical A€o~l(Xt," CQ N.S. 33 (1983) 296-297; accepted by Brooten 5. 19For a list of his books, P. Lernerle, Le premier humanisme byzantin (Paris 1971) 205-241. 20 Dial.meretr. 5.2; H. Rabe, Scholia in Lucianum (Leipzig 1906) 277; Brooten 5. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 146 LOVE (AND MARRIAGE) BETWEEN WOMEN shame" (ESE1tOIl1tEUO"£v)21 as a batptcr'tpw and 'tpl~a~.22 Here she accepts the standard view that the Philocrates mentioned in this passage was a comic poet, implying a date no later than the beginning of the third century B.C. Brooten cites these three scholia separately. Reasonably enough, it might seem. Why should marginal jottings in different manuscripts of different writers be linked in any way? Yet they are linked and should be studied as a group. For by a re­ markable coincidence all three were written by the same man, Arethas. His Lucian scholia are partly preserved in HarZ. 5694, copied by the same scribe Baanes and annotated in Arethas's own hand, and partly in three later apographs.23 The Harleianus is usually dated a little earlier than the Clement manuscript. Arethas's scholia are opinionated and often polemical, but for the most part they contribute little that is new or im­ portant,24 and these three are no exception. Not one of them preserves any genuine ancient lore. Not even the third, for all that it cites what looks like an otherwise unattested fragment of Attic comedy: "he means the Philaenis that Philo crates the Athenian held up to ridicule as a Lesbian and tribad" ('tm)'tllv 'tllv lAalVt()a lAoKpa'tll~ 0 'Aellvalo~ ESE1t0Il1tEucrEv ffi~ e.mpttAmvi8a ... t'hv ypa\jfaaav EV rcivaKt ta~ yuvatK£ia~ )li~Et~ EK£iva~, 8t' a~ Kat KW)lql8E'itat rcapa tmv EV 'Aef]vm~ ao