CHAPTER  1

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Sexual Slander and Ancient Invective

There are perhaps few characters in Roman history as devious, greedy, and full of lust as Antony and Cleopatra, if we believe the representations of them found in ancient history and biography. Following the battle of Actium, Cassius Dio tells us, Cleopatra tricked Antony into taking his own life. Antony chose to enslave himself to her in life, and he remained her slave in death, demonstrating his servile nature (douloprepeia), even at the end (Cass. Dio 51.10–11, 15.2). Cleopatra, Cassius Dio concludes, had an insatiable appetite for pleasure and material wealth, an appetite that led, ultimately, to both her and Antony’s demise (51.15.4). According to Plutarch, Cleopatra disarmed Antony and made sport of him (Demetr. .3; Antony 10.3; 25.1–28.1). From the perspective of many ancient authors, therefore, “Marcus Antonius was not merely a ruffian and a gladiator, a drunkard and a debauchee—he was effeminate and a coward”¹ and Cleopatra was “the Egyptian whore, a drunkard, and the mistress of eunuchs.”² These representations have left their mark. According to Paul Zanker, Antony must have been utterly captivated by the infamous and beautiful Cleopatra, for how else could he have behaved like an “Oriental” instead of a “soldierly Roman”? “Antony had become totally corrupt, godless, and soft and was bewitched by Cleopatra. What else could explain why a Roman general would award conquered territory to the children of an Egyptian queen and even put in his will that he wanted to be buried in Alexandria beside Cleopatra?”³ In the tradition of ancient biographers and historians before him, Zanker concluded that Antony was truly “a victim of the decadence and debauchery of the East.”⁴

Whether or not Antony was a victim of decadence and debauchery, especially of the “Eastern” type, is for others to decide. Yet, it is worth noticing that the charges lodged against him by some modern and many ancient historians—decadence and debauchery—are standard fare in Roman political discourse. Cicero had accused Catiline of similar crimes:

What mark of family scandal is there not branded upon your life? What deplorable episode in your personal affairs does not help form your reputation? What lust has never shone in your eyes, what crime has never stained your hands, what shameful deed has never fouled your entire body?

(Cat. 1.13–16)⁵

Catiline’s private life was so monstrous, his disgrace so complete, Cicero argues, that it scarcely needs to be mentioned, though Cicero spent a great deal of time doing so. What is one to make of all this? Shall we assume that Catiline was a degenerate, Antony a reprobate, and Cleopatra a conniving seductress?

Catherine Edwards has argued that the vilification of Antony must be placed in the context of the Roman invective tradition.⁶ References to proper “morality” were offered to support claims of legitimacy in the competitive rivalries between elites.⁷ Accusations of corrupt morals were intended to delegitimize these claims. The period between the assassination of Caesar and the battle of Actium was marked by relentless denunciations of Octavian by Antony and Antony by Octavian. Both were accused of adultery, bribery, and luxury. Similarly, in the war of words between Cicero and Piso, Cicero was also accused of indulging in the very things of which he so vociferously accused Piso.⁸ Allegations of moral turpitude made by rival Roman nobles against one another can be read as part of a long rhetorical tradition. Ancient Greek rhetorical theorists emphasized the importance of morality to orators, especially the knowledge of the virtues and their opposites.⁹ Roman rhetorical theorists acknowledged their debt to Greece in this regard, though they did endeavor to differentiate themselves from the Greek tradition.¹⁰ During the Roman period, economic and political crises were represented as crises of morality.¹¹ The virtues were personified, worshiped, celebrated on coins, listed on inscriptions honoring the exemplary virtue of famous Romans from the past.¹² Historians explained historical events “not in terms of social and economic forces but almost entirely in terms of the moral attributes of the characters involved.”¹³ Cicero assumed that evaluations of character are standard subjects in history (De or. 2.63). Suetonius assessed each Caesar by means of a “minute examination of his record in certain areas of moral behavior.”¹⁴ The effects of these competitions in virtue and vice were felt not only in the small circle of the Roman senatorial class, but beyond: “All Romans and non-Romans living within the Empire’s borders … were eventually exposed to the dissemination of the virtutes Romanae, even if only through the odd coin or family epitaph.”¹⁵ It is perhaps naive, therefore, to take at face value the lurid representations offered of Cleopatra, Antony, and others.¹⁶ Nevertheless, these depictions do indicate something about what was considered “good” or “bad” behavior.

This chapter illustrates the importance of claims regarding virtue and vice to the discourse of the imperial period. Sexual slander, ancient and contemporary, is tied to power relations and to knowledge production. Assigning meaning to words, in this case words signaling virtue or vice, is a power-laden process, a site of conflict and contention within which the dynamics of power relations are negotiated. This was no less true for Greeks and Romans than for Christians. Literate Christians, those under consideration here, shared a great deal with other literate people in the ancient Mediterranean world.¹⁷ They were trained in similar rhetorical techniques, informed by popular philosophical arguments, at least to some degree, and exposed to the same coins, inscriptions, legal pronouncements, building projects, and statuary as their neighbors. When Christians employed charges of sexual licentiousness to define themselves over and against others, they relied upon a long-standing discursive strategy that would have been familiar to everyone. Since definitions of sexual impropriety shift, it becomes important to explore the content and significance of these charges, both for Christians and those whom they attacked, to delve into the ancient fascination with virtue and its opposites in order to better situate Christian discourses discussed in later chapters.

SEX TALK AND ANCIENT RHETORICAL THEORY

Success as an orator, Aristotle observed, demands three capabilities: the capacity to reach logical conclusions, the ability to observe closely characters and virtues, and, thirdly, an understanding of the emotions (Rh. 1356a). Logical argument is only one element of an effective speech; sensitivity to the attitudes of the audience and familiarity with the virtues are equally important. This is the case for each of the three types of rhetoric that Aristotle identifies: deliberative forensic and epideictic This threefold categorization was largely maintained in later Greek and Latin rhetorical theory. Virtue was said to be the primary topic of epideictic oratory, speeches that take as their subject praise or blame yet considerations of virtue and character are central to all three. In forensic oratory, rhetoric intended for the law courts, the ability of the orator to rouse the emotions of the jury by demonstrating that he is true and good while the opponent is false and bad was understood to be an essential task (Rh. 1419b). So too, when offering a deliberative speech before the assembly, one must be cognizant of both virtue and emotion. Virtue, Aristotle insisted, is essential to happiness, and happiness is the aim of both city and citizen (Rh. 1360a).¹⁸ Therefore, one needs to be familiar with the virtues when composing any speech, whatever the type of speech or its occasion. Furthermore, the moral character of the orator himself is fundamental to the ability of a given speaker to persuade. A good man makes a good orator (Rh. 1356a).¹⁹

Cicero, writing in Rome several centuries later, agreed in many respects with Aristotle’s assessment of the importance of virtue and emotion to good oratory. The excellence of the orator is demonstrated by his ability to “rouse men’s hearts to anger, hatred, or indignation” or to recall them from these passions, a task that is impossible without an understanding of the human character (De or. 1.12.53). Therefore, though philosophers claim that the discussion of the virtues is their exclusive domain, orators must be able to discuss them with an even greater eloquence (De or. 1.13.56). Additionally, successful persuasion requires that the audience approve of the character, principles, and lifestyle of both the orator and, in the case of forensic oratory, the person whom the orator is defending. Cicero offered advice on how to appear trustworthy and virtuous while describing the upright, modest character of one’s client, if at all possible (De or. 2.43.182–87).

Quintilian went further, arguing that the positive formation of moral character is the most important accomplishment of a proper rhetorical education (Inst. 1.9–10).²⁰ As a result, Quintilian averred, his subject matter (oratory) demanded that he frequently speak of the virtues courage (fortitudo), justice (iustitia), and self-control (temperantia). “In fact,” he wrote, “scarcely a case comes up in which some one of these virtues is not involved” (Inst. 1.12). An anonymous Greek contemporary agreed, claiming that the true purpose of good education is moral excellence and happiness ( [Plutarch] Mor. 5c), yet this author warned against paying attention to the “nonsense of ostentatious public discourse,” the purview of many false orators who know only how to please audiences ([Plutarch], Mor. 6a–d). Rhetorical education has its place but must be given with caution. This advice echoes the earlier concerns of Plato, who persistently argued that the tools of rhetoric are dangerous when placed in the wrong hands (Plato Prt. 318E–319B; Grg. 451D. See also Soph., esp. 232A).²¹

Even this brief survey of the “art of rhetoric” as presented by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian reveals that a comprehensive understanding of virtue, morality, character, and the emotions was viewed as essential to the success of the orator. Orators took this advice to heart; appeals to emotion and character pervade the speeches that have been preserved from this period and beyond.²² Rhetorical appeals to character were remarkably constant, including the terms and behaviors offered as examples of exemplary or reprehensible conduct; indeed, a rather fixed repertoire of virtues and vices said to reveal the good or bad man emerged. Perhaps the repetitive nature of moral categories was the result, in part, of the type of education students of rhetoric received. As part of their rhetorical training, students were expected to master sets of commonplaces designed to describe the character of the person or people they were discussing.²³

COMMONPLACE VIRTUE AND VICE

Standard topics of praise (epainos, laudatio) or blame (psogos, vituperatio) were outlined in Greek rhetorical handbooks (progymnasmata) and in Latin oratorical treatises. In his handbook, Ap(h)thonius recommended that the following topics be addressed: family, nation, ancestors, livelihood, customs, prudence, beauty, manliness, and bodily strength, among other features (Prog. 8).²⁴ In his De inventione rhetorica, Cicero offered an almost identical list. (177–78).²⁵ An anonymous third-century C.E. teacher of rhetoric recommended that cities, emperors, and governors alike be praised, when possible, for their temperance (sōphrosynē), justice (dikaiosynē), and wisdom (phronēsis; Men. Rhet. 364, 375, 380, 384).²⁶ When praising or blaming cities, one should consider the amount of bad behavior (hamartēmata) evident there, especially whether or not citizens often commit adultery (364.1–2). When praising an emperor, one should note that, because of the emperor’s good example, “marriages are chaste, fathers have legitimate offspring, spectacles, festivals and competitions are conducted with proper splendor and due moderation [sōphrosynē]” (376.5).

To Aristotle, a speech of blame (psogos) was intimately related to a speech of praise (epainos), and together they constitute the category epideictic oratory.²⁷ Since vice (kakia) is the opposite of virtue (aretē), when one knows the virtues, one can easily identify the vices.²⁸ Virtues and vices reveal states of character; we can judge character by the relative amount of virtue or vice displayed in the voluntary actions each person undertakes (Eth. Nic.1106a17; 1110a10–1112a11). The rhetorical handbooks largely shared this view and, when discussing the sources of encomium (a speech of praise) or invective (a speech of blame), outlined standard categories, applicable for both. Thus, for example, when offering praise, one could refer to the noble origin of the subject’s family. If, on the contrary, blame was appropriate, one could discuss the servile, lowly origin of the subject and his family.²⁹ According to the first-century C.E. rhetorician Theon, a student should consider the following categories when composing a speech of praise:

I. Exterior Excellences

A. Noble birth (eugeneia)

B. Environment

1. native city

2. fellow citizens

3. excellence of the city’s government

4. ancestors and family

C. Personal advantages

1. education

2. friends

3. fame

4. public service

5. wealth

6. number and beauty of children

7. happy death

II. Bodily Excellences

A. Health

B. Strength

C. Beauty

D. Vitality

III. Spiritual Excellences

A. Virtues

1. wisdom

2. moderation

3. courage

4. justice

5. piety

6. nobility

7. liberality

B. Actions following from the virtues

1. those following from their aims

a. altruistic

b. good

c. acts in the public interest

d. braves dangers

2. the circumstances of the virtuous actions

a. timely

b. original

c. performed alone

d. surpassed others

e. received little help from others

f. acted with wisdom beyond his years

g. persevered against all odds

h. at great personal cost

i. done promptly and efficiently³⁰

A survey of classical and Hellenistic Greek sources yielded the following set of recommended categories for the successful composition of a speech of blame:

(1) former life as a slave or slave ancestry

(2) non-Greek origin

(3) having to work for a living

(4) being a thief or behaving like one

(5) engagement in reprehensible sexual acts

(6) hating one’s family and friends (being a misophilos) or one’s city (being a misopolis)

(7) having a gloomy nature

(8) improper appearance, dress, or behavior

(9) military desertion

(10) bankruptcy.³¹

Note how closely this list follows the recommended outline for a speech of praise, with each of the outlined sections assigned an opposite disadvantage or vice: noble birth or slave origin, association with a noble (Greek) city or non-Greek origin, education and wealth or having to work in a degrading occupation, self-control or reprehensible sexual behavior, beauty and health or improper appearance and dress, courage or military desertion, vitality or gloominess. A summary of Latin invective terminology yielded similar categories, with lowly origin, degrading occupation, improper appearance, criminality, sexual vice, and gluttony emerging as central topics.³²

Clearly, when learning to compose speeches, especially those of the epideictic type, students were offered detailed advice on appropriate commonplaces, including those pertaining to sexual behavior.³³ Accusations regarding improper sexual behavior were one of an arsenal of topics one could use to label an enemy as dangerous, incompetent, treasonous, or corrupt. By contrast, proper sexual behavior could demonstrate the praiseworthiness of a person or a city or even a king, at least according to ancient rhetorical theory. Furthermore, this repertoire of recommended topics was remarkably consistent across Greek and Latin rhetorical treatises, especially those concerning epideictic literature.³⁴ As we shall see, the speeches of Attic Greek orators such as Isocrates and Demosthenes contained many of the standard topics;³⁵ these speeches, in turn, became models for later orators who emulated many of the same themes. In this way, set commonplaces continued to inform moralizing discourse across several centuries.

MODEL ORATORY

Many of the topics and categories recommended by the later handbooks appear in Isocrates’ Panegyricus.³⁶ This was Isocrates’ “greatest speech,”³⁷ composed to convince the Greeks, including Sparta, to unite against the “barbarians” under the leadership of Athens.³⁸ According to Isocrates, the Athenians enjoyed a noble lineage, having sprung from the very soil they currently possess. Athens is characterized by justice, having established laws and a polity (Paneg. 39). She has given philosophy to the world. She remains brave in battle and never shrinks from duty (Paneg. 47, 75). When dealing with other states, the Athenians do not glory in their power but rather promoted self-control (sōphrosynē; Paneg. 81). The Persians, by contrast, are the opposite of these just, temperate, and courageous Athenians. They are excessively rich and therefore “pamper their bodies” (Paneg. 150).³⁹ They are faithless toward their friends and cowardly toward their foes (Paneg. 151). Their style of government produces a servile nature (Paneg. 152). Therefore, the Hellenes must not stand by while all of Hellas is being continually outraged ⁴⁰ by these faithless, cowardly, and corrupt people (Paneg. 181). All of Greece was urged to revolt.

In this speech, the Athenians and the Persians were portrayed in predictable ways: The Athenians possess an exceptionally noble origin. They are wise, having given philosophy to the world. They are temperate (sōphrosynē), even when dealing with the people they have conquered. They are courageous and never shrink from battle. The barbarians, however, cannot be said to possess a noble origin. Whatever their origin, they display a servile nature . They are extravagant, spending excessive amounts indulging themselves.⁴¹ They are cowardly, faithless, and so on. Many of the standard categories appear.

A further example can be found in a forensic speech of Demosthenes, that “pillar” of classical education.⁴² In his speech De corona, Demosthenes defended his private life and his public transactions in response to charges made by his accuser, Aeschines (De cor. 8). He did so by means of a series of attacks on the origin, education, occupation, and character of Aeschines: Aeschines was not properly educated; rather, he makes pretensions to the culture (paideia) that he is so obviously lacking (128).⁴³ His father was a slave. His mother engaged in indiscriminate sexual intercourse in a public latrine. He was brought up to excel in minor parts on the stage (129). His servile origin and lack of means led him to accept menial and degrading occupations (258). He possesses a spiteful temper, demonstrated by his mean-spirited attack on Demosthenes (252–53). He involves himself in suspect religious rituals involving exotic apparel and associations with old women (260). Demosthenes, on the other hand, was well educated and avoided turning to disreputable occupations to support himself (257).

A speech of Aeschines, Demosthenes’ rival, given during the prosecution of Timarchus serves as a final example.⁴⁴ Timarchus was accused of prostituting himself in his youth and squandering his inheritance. A person who prostitutes himself (acting as either a or a ), Aeschines argued, cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of the city: “One who had been a vendor of his own body for others to treat as they pleased would have no hesitation in selling the interests of the community as a whole” (In Tim. 32).⁴⁵ Demosthenes offered the speech for the defense. Aeschines prevailed and Timarchus was disenfranchised.

The speeches of Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Aeschines were standard fare in later Greek and Roman rhetorical education. About Isocrates, Cicero commented, “Then behold! There arose Isocrates, the master of all rhetoricians, from whose school, as from the Horse of Troy, none but leaders emerged” (De or. 22.94). Demosthenes and Aeschines were revered as experts at forensic oratory (De or. 23.94–95). Quintilian began his discussion of speeches of praise (laudem) and blame (vituperationem) with a discussion of Isocrates, remarking that Isocrates thought praise and blame had a place in every kind of oratory (Inst. 3.4.11). In two of his parallel Lives, Plutarch compared the Greek orator and politician Demosthenes with the Roman orator and politician Cicero. These two shared much in common, Plutarch stated, since both rose from obscurity to positions of influence by means of their remarkable oratorical skill (Plut. Dem. 2.3–4; Plutarch, Comparatio Ciceronis cum Demosthene): Demosthenes surpassed the eloquence and force of his rivals when delivering forensic speeches, and when offering deliberative speeches, his mastery of the art of rhetoric was clearly greater than that of other professional declaimers (Comparatio Ciceronis cum Demosthene, 1.1). Dio Chrysostom similarly asserted that Demosthenes was the best of the Attic orators. His style was the most vigorous, his thought the most impressive, and his vocabulary the most extensive of all the rhetoricians (Or. 18.11).

Clearly, literate people received a rhetorical training that included detailed instructions on how to offer praise or blame in a variety of contexts. As part of their education, young men during the imperial period would have become at least somewhat familiar with the speeches of select Attic orators—speeches that contained numerous examples of the commonplaces appropriate to praise or blame—and they were encouraged to refer to these commonplaces in their own speeches. This training provided its students with a stereotyped portrait of an ideal man: a man who could list illustrious ancestors, boast of his excellent city, and name his honorable friends. Such a man mastered both himself and his subordinates. He was brave in the face of danger but never rash. By contrast, his less honorable, less manly opposite failed to control his passions. His origins were humble and his circumstances unfortunate. He deserted his duty and hated his friends. These rhetorical commonplaces could be generalized to include entire groups, as Isocrates’ speech to the Athenians demonstrates. Cities and their citizens could be described as brave, noble, just, and temperate or, alternatively, as servile, extravagant, disloyal, and cowardly. Good men, and the cities they ruled, displayed virtue. Bad men failed at ruling both themselves and their subjects. In other words, assertions regarding the control of self and others served to define and justify elite privilege. In this context, sexual propriety signified the “refinement and self-control that distinguished the well-born from their unruly inferiors.”⁴⁶ An accusation of sexual impropriety, therefore, was a sharp rebuke designed to indicate that a man had become “like” the subordinates he was supposed to be ruling. Such accusations reiterated and reinforced cultural values regarding “natural” status and gender.

SEX, STATUS, AND “NATURAL” GENDER

The second-century humorist Lucian offered the following description of the dangers of Rome:

Whoever loves wealth and is enchanted by gold, who by purple and power measures happiness, who has not tasted liberty or experienced free speech or contemplated truth, whose constant companions are flattery and servility; whoever has committed his entire soul to pleasure and resolved to serve pleasure alone, loving elaborate dining and wine and sexual pleasure, being full of trickery, treachery and falsehood; whoever enjoys hearing stringed instruments, whistling, and corrupt songs—‘Such a one,’ said he, ‘ought to be suited to life here [in Rome], for every place and every agora is full of the things they love most, and they admit pleasure at every gate—this one by the eyes, that one by the ears or the nostrils, yet another by the throat and by sexual intercourse. By its ever-flowing, foul stream every street is widened; for it [Rome] brings in adultery, greed, false testimony and the whole family of the pleasures, and the soul, flooded from every side, is laid bare of modesty, virtue, and justice; and then the ground, having become a desert, forever burning with thirst, blooms with many a wild passion.

(Nigr. 15–16)⁴⁷

In this packed sketch of the vices of Rome, Lucian suggested that the city and its citizens were utterly enslaved to desire According to Lucian, the person most suited to the depraved environment of the capital city had committed his soul to pleasure he devoted himself to elaborate dinner parties, wine, and sexual pleasure ( what belongs to Aphrodite, i.e., sexual enjoyment).⁴⁸ Given his propensity for excess, this person can also be expected to deceive others, to act like a syco-phant, and to offer false testimony.⁴⁹ Apparently, pleasure leads the city and its denizens to commit adultery together with everything else associated with illicit sex and community corruption.⁵⁰

An anonymous contemporary of Lucian, offering his advice on how to educate young men properly, warned fathers that if they do not pay close attention to the education and rearing of their sons, they may end up behaving much like the dissolute Romans described by Lucian above:

[They will] disdain the sane and orderly life, and throw themselves headlong into disorderly and slavish pleasures… . Some of them take up with flatterers and parasites,⁵¹ men of obscure origin, corrupters and spoilers of youth, and others buy the freedom of courtesans and prostitutes proud and sumptuous in expense; still others give themselves up to the pleasures of the table, while others come to wreck in dice and revels, and some finally engage in the wildest forms of vices, committing adultery and being decked with ivy,⁵² ready to pay with life itself for a single pleasure.

([Plutarch] Mor. 5b–c)⁵³

Musonius Rufus offered a similar warning, contrasting two young men, one “reared in luxury, his body effeminate, his spirit weakened by soft living, and having beside a dull and torpid disposition” and the other, unaccustomed to luxury, “practiced in self-restraint, and ready to listen to sound reasoning.” The latter model was clearly to be preferred (Muson. 5–10).⁵⁴ According to Cicero, extravagant young men should not to be trusted, since revelry and a tendency toward treason often accompany one another (Cat. 2.10). A city—or a father—that fails to control its youth will come to ruin, or so these authors suggested.

Anxieties about the ill effects of luxury and overindulgence in pleasure—lampooned by Lucian, warned against by Cicero, pseudo-Plutarch, and Musonius—abound in the moralizing discourse of this period. Sexual “crimes”—failure at self-mastery, enslavement to lust, whoring, effeminacy, adulteries, orgies, and so on—were imagined as signs of corruption and decay, a threat to a proper order that placed free, citizen men at the helm. In this way, sexualized invective participated in the naturalization of status norms. Ancient status positions—free, free noncitizen, citizen, freed, slave—were not based on inherent characteristics but discursively produced and maintained.⁵⁵ Greek and Roman “elites,” and I use the term provisionally, may have discussed and legislated status as if it were a given, as if it was entirely obvious who may legitimately claim noble origin, free birth, and citizenship; a closer look reveals just how contested these categories were. We have already noted that, according to ancient rhetorical theory, there were sets of attributes said to characterize “the good man,” including noble origin, self-mastery, and courage. Bad men, then, were of servile or foreign origin, incapable of controlling themselves, and cowardly in battle. Legal and literary sources further promoted this view, suggesting that to be a slave or a foreigner necessarily implies that one is ignoble, incapable of true wisdom, and immoral, or simply exempt from morality altogether. The social-discursive production of “citizen” versus everyone else, especially “slave,” served to constrain and constitute the definition of each.

Keith Bradley has argued that Roman slavery was “primarily a social, not an economic category.” As a result, the Romans maintained “a stereotyped portrait of the slave as an unscrupulous, lazy, and criminous being, and while they thought of certain races, Asiatic Greeks, Syrians, and Jews, as being born for slavery, and while they thought certain punishments like crucifixion and burning alive were suitably servile, they never thought of any one form of work as being specifically appropriate just for slaves.”⁵⁶ Bradley demonstrates that slaves fulfilled a dizzying array of economic roles during the early empire; some were very wealthy and owned slaves themselves. One is tempted to ask, then, what precisely was the distinction between slave and free? Perhaps “thinking” of slaves in a stereotyped way was a necessary prop to the rather slippery, uncertain boundary between slave and free. We know who is a citizen because he is not a slave. We know who is a slave because he is not a citizen. These knowledges reinforced and implied one another.

The theory that slaves are different from their masters “by nature” was infamously stated by Aristotle in the Politics. Aristotle argued that slaves have no faculty of deliberation but require their masters, those who have the capacity for moral goodness, to rule over them (Pol. 1260a4–1260b8). Freeborn women were said to be similarly incapacitated by the peculiarity of their gender—they do possess the faculty of deliberation but in them it lacks authority (Pol. 1260a4). Craftsmen and the like, those who labor for their living, free by birth or formerly slaves, can possess some virtue, though in a measure proportionate to the extent of servitude their profession requires of them (Pol. 1260a33). Therefore, slaves, laborers, and women cannot be citizens in the ideal polis since they lack the requisite capacity for virtue (1277b33–1278a40. Compare Plato Leg. 264e). Though Aristotle should not be viewed as representative of the entire ancient world, he was far from alone in his insistence that slaves, women, and, to a lesser extent, laborers (often thought to be former slaves, i.e., “freedmen”) are deficient in virtue.⁵⁷ Nevertheless, slaves and freedmen could be “upwardly mobile,”⁵⁸ and an exceptional former slave could become a well-known philosopher.⁵⁹ The fact that such supposed anomalies could occur demonstrates that these categories were not impermeable but were, in fact, always dangerously subject to renegotiation.

The proposition that virtue has little or nothing to do with slaves was reiterated and enforced in legal sources. In both Athens and Rome, slaves were held to an entirely different sexual standard than were their masters.⁶⁰ According to Roman law, slaves could not legally marry (though at least some did “marry” anyway).⁶¹ They were the sexual property of their masters and could not initiate sexual relations, even with other slaves, without their masters’ permission.⁶² Were they to do so, they could be punished or even, in the case of adultery with a free woman, executed.⁶³ In both the Greek and Roman case, prostitutes were often slaves, and a low sort of slave at that.⁶⁴ Freedmen and wage-laborers were often assimilated to the category “slave” as well, with Cicero asserting that anyone who works for wages lives in a state of slavery (Off. 1.150–1).⁶⁵

Whether or not the author or the target of sexualized invective should be considered “an elite” in an economic or sociological sense is not my primary concern. Rather, I am interested in the various arguments marshaled to define what an “elite”—usually thought to be a freeborn, citizen male—is and what he does or does not do. In the introduction, I argued that power is social and discursive, not a thing that a person or group possesses. So too with “status.”⁶⁶ Status is negotiated and produced and therefore vulnerable to change. Thus, those claiming to be elite, those who argue that they deserve special benefits or authority, must describe what it is that justifies their privileged status. In the words of Althusser, they must create an “ideological apparatus” capable of supporting their claims. Alternatively, knowledges must be produced and reproduced that enable “the elite” to constitute themselves as such.

In the ancient context, sexual behavior was an important component of the production and maintenance of status. The freeborn, citizen male was thought to be—told he should be, claimed he was—in control of his passions. He avoids excess. He is the active partner in sexual acts. To fail in these areas is to fail as both a man and as a citizen.⁶⁷ Charges of sexual vice, therefore, could serve to discount an individual’s claim to status, just as praise of an individual’s sexual virtue could justify his privilege. Those who (in theory) could not possibly be virtuous also could not possibly be “elite.” Those who were supposed to be elite (they were, for example, freeborn) and yet failed to display virtue, especially sexual self-mastery, could not really deserve to be so. They were corrupt, depraved, unworthy. Sex was an essential ingredient to this discourse. Actual status (free, resident foreigner, freed, slave) was fundamental to whether or not a sexual act would be considered criminal in a legal sense. Furthermore, sexual acts dramatized status distinctions, reenacting a “natural” (i.e., entirely conventional) hierarchy along the lines of active partner or passive partner, dominant or submissive. The elite male was imagined as the actor and the dominator, at least in theory. Often, accusations of sexual misbehavior implied the violation of a prescribed role in this sexual drama, a drama imagined as the interplay between an active, citizen male partner and his various subordinates.

In the late 1970s, Kenneth Dover set out to describe the phenomena of homosexuality in ancient Greece. His “relentlessly empirical approach”⁶⁸ succeeded in countering the skepticism of several generations of classical scholars regarding the nature of “Greek love,” and, in the process, he put forward a series of persuasive hypotheses regarding the attitudes of ancient Greeks toward homosexual behavior. Some of his main arguments include: (1) There was no moral censure against an adult male taking an adolescent boy as a lover. Indeed, men are expected to find both young males and females beautiful and to desire them both. (2) Athenian law and custom did not disapprove of the sexual expression of this desire, as long as certain conventions were observed, including the preference for intercrural copulation and the view that the youth did not (or should not) seek sensual pleasure for himself from his lover.⁶⁹ (3) In light of the first two propositions, domination and submission were important organizing principles for what was considered proper sexuality for citizen Greek males. The adult citizen male must always be in the dominant position. He penetrates; he pursues. Women, slaves, young boys, and foreigners—the citizen male’s “natural” subordinates—are pursued and penetrated; they are expected to be submissive. Near-adult citizen males, those who will soon assume the prerogatives of Greek manhood, can be loved and pursued by their adult counterparts, but they are expected to resist, at least partially, the advances of their adult lovers, refusing penetration in most cases.

Numerous scholars have made similar observations regarding the importance of dominance/submission and active/passive as organizing principles in ancient constructions of sexuality. To David Halperin, sex in Greek society “is conceived to center on, and to define itself around, an asymmetrical gesture, that of the penetration of one person by the body—and, specifically, by the phallus—of another.”⁷⁰ Eva Cantarella agrees, noting that this view of Greek sexuality was “confirmed by Dover, maintained by Foucault in the volume on Greece in his History of Sexuality and extended by Veyne to the Roman sexual ethic.” She asserts: “The fundamental dichotomy between different types of sexual behavior, in antiquity, was not between heterosexuality and homosexuality, but between active and passive behavior. Active behavior properly belonged to adult males, while women and paides were supposed to practice passive behavior.”⁷¹ Regarding Roman sexual theory, Amy Richlin notes, “clearly, what bothered the Romans most in male homosexual behavior was assimilation to the female (i.e., receptive) role, as witnessed by the definition of the pathic.”⁷² In his extended study of Roman homoerotic (male) sex, Craig Williams recently concluded that “according to the prime directive of masculine sexual behavior, a Roman man who wished to retain his claim to full masculinity must always be thought to play the insertive role in penetrative acts, whether with males or females; if he was thought to have sought the receptive role in such acts, he forfeited his claim to masculinity and was liable to being mocked as effeminate.”⁷³

This active/passive paradigm was further supported by the complex of charges present in ancient invective. Men who indulged in excessive luxury were labeled “slavish.” Like slaves, they had no control of their passions. Their “slavishness” called into question their sexual habits, for slaves were expected to be the passive partner in sexual acts with their masters, not the other way around. If they were “slavish” in their personal habits, did they also seek to be the passive partner in sexual acts? If so, then they must be entirely depraved, like prostitutes who offer their bodies to anyone. These accusations offer just a sampling of the manifold ways in which accusations regarding sexual acts—configured around active or passive roles—were employed to attack an elite man for violating his status.

According to this paradigm, gender—and the sex appropriate to various genders—were presented as types rather than fixed identities. As Maude Gleason has shown, in ancient medical texts, “masculinity” or “femininity” were defined not in terms of anatomical sex but as a “type” or a “style.” A man could be like a woman, a woman like a man. “Masculinity” and “femininity” “function as physiognomical categories for both male and female subjects.”⁷⁴ Thus, Polemo, a first-century native of Laodicea and author of Physiognomy, concluded, “the male is in every way opposite to this description, and it is possible to find masculine qualities also in women.”⁷⁵ In this scheme, it becomes possible to malign an opponent for being womanish and effeminate not only because he sought the passive role in sexual acts but because he proved himself to be “feminine” in other ways. Furthermore, a woman’s desire to assert “masculine” prerogatives, especially by seeking to penetrate another, was viewed as unnatural and monstrous, a “horror” described for comedic effect by Lucian.⁷⁶

In his Dialogi meretricii, Lucian described the love of one woman, Megilla, for another, Leaina. Megilla was depicted “like a man” she wore her hair closely shorn, invited Leaina to call her Megillos, and seduced Leaina into sexual acts which were hinted at but never fully described (Dial. meret. 5). Though Lucian did not reveal the specifics of how Megilla satisfied herself, he assumed that whatever she did was “unnatural,” “shameful,” and masculine in some way.⁷⁷ Similarly, Seneca decried women who rival men in their lusts, who “having devised so deviant a type of shamelessness, enter men” (Ep. 95.20);⁷⁸ these women may become subject to male diseases and male habits.⁷⁹ The active woman was thought to penetrate her partner in some way, “like a man.” Therefore, she “must become phallic.”⁸⁰ The phallic female who seeks to seduce and penetrate was deemed both “masculine” and monstrous.⁸¹ Masculinity and femininity, therefore, were configured as modalities or styles with the superordinate, phallic, active position identified as “male” and the subordinate, receptive, passive position as “female,” irrespective of the “sex” of the actor so engaged.⁸²

Beliefs about status, sex and gender—described and constituted across a range of ancient medical, literary, and legal sources—served as mutually reenforcing cultural codes.⁸³ Ancient authors “knew” who the elite were because the elite were “virtuous” and, as such, were not slaves. Men were “male” because they were phallic, active, dominant, and superordinate, and women were “female” because they were nonphallic, passive, submissive, and subordinate. Men who violated these categories by desiring “female” sexual satisfaction were depraved and “slavish.” Similarly, women who dared to desire “male” sexual satisfaction were viewed as monstrous deviants. These dichotomies—free/slave, dominant/submissive, active/passive, male/female—appear repeatedly. In a world where the male elite were supposed to be naturally “virtuous,” therefore, sexual slander could prove to be a dangerous rhetorical weapon since, by violating status in a sexual act, such men also violated “nature.”

DEVIANCE DEPLOYED

What, then, were the common charges of sexual weakness? How did they participate in the maintenance and policing of status? What beliefs about gender and sexuality are assumed? To what ends were these charges employed? As was suggested by the above reading of ancient rhetorical theory, charges of sexual vice tended to appear in lists rather than separately. If a man was condemned for his extravagance, he was also likely to be condemned for adultery, effeminacy, corruption of boys, or some other related charge. If a woman was accused of sexual licentiousness, she was also likely to be accused of excessive adornment and concern for her appearance.⁸⁴ For the sake of convenience, however, I will discuss some of the more prevalent charges separately.

EXTRAVAGANT EXCESS

Extravagant spending on pleasure was roundly condemned by many ancient authors. For example, in his Lives, Plutarch characteristically related the relative extravagance of his subjects and judged them accordingly: Crassus spent too much money on dinner parties (Niciae cum Crasso comparatio, 1.4). Lucullus was to be criticized for his luxurious style of living; he wasted his money on ostentatious building projects and costly dining (Luc. 39–41) and was “extravagant and like a Persian satrap” (Niciae cum Crasso comparatio, 1.5–6).⁸⁵ Plutarch offered Lysander as a contrast to these negative exemplars: Lysander rejected the lavish clothing and jewelry sent to his daughters since such extravagant presents would disgrace both his daughters and his family (Lys. 2; compare Mor. 151d). Here, Plutarch echoed the earlier opinion of Aeschines that extravagant dinner parties, flute-girls, courtesans and gambling ought to be avoided by honorable men (In Tim. 1.42). In his moral essays, Plutarch repeatedly recommended moderation over extravagance . For instance, husbands were warned to avoid “gilded drinking-cups, pictured walls, trappings for mules, and showy neckbands for horses,” since their extravagant behavior may be imitated by their wives (Mor. 145b).⁸⁶ A husband who indulged in luxury, a father who attended wild banquets set a poor example for his wife and children.⁸⁷

Setting tryphē (extravagance, luxuriousness) as an antithesis to sōphrosynē (moderation, temperance), Plutarch participated in an argument he shared with several Cynic and Stoic philosophers: moderation counteracts extravagance (tryphē), luxuriousness (polyteleia), and licentiousness (akolasia).⁸⁸ The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus stated it this way: “Gluttony, drunkenness, and other related vices, which are vices of excess and bring disgrace on those who cherish them, show that moderation is necessary for every person, male or female, for the only way to escape licentiousness is moderation; there is no other” (Muson. 4.20).⁸⁹ According to these moralists, extravagance frequently included overindulgence in sexual pleasure, especially with prostitutes or courtesans. Musonius advised those trained in philosophy, honorable men who pursue moderation, to avoid courtesans (hetairai) altogether, as well as intercourse with their female slaves. Still, Musonius recognized that his was the minority view (12.10–45).⁹⁰ Visits to brothels (to a pornē, male or female, or a chamaitupē),⁹¹ the presence of courtesans⁹² at dinner parties, or a man’s sexual involvement with his own slaves were not condemned—brothels were legal and taxed, as were procurers and individual prostitutes;⁹³ that slaves were the sexual property of their owners was assumed⁹⁴—yet overexpenditure on such luxuries was often frowned upon. Quoting Diogenes, pseudo-Plutarch summed it up: “Go into any brothel [porneion] to learn that there is no difference between what costs money and what costs nothing” ([Plutarch] Mor. 5c).⁹⁵ Corrupted sons squander their inheritance on excessive visits to brothels, expensive courtesans, or buying the freedom of the slaves they enjoy.⁹⁶

Interestingly, some Roman authors claimed that wasting money on prostitutes and wild drinking parties was a Greek trait, a characteristic of “Greek leisure” (otium), something that had unfortunately infected Rome.⁹⁷ It is therefore striking that Plutarch usually condemned the Roman exemplar in his parallel Lives for indulgence in extravagant excesses. Furthermore, in the example from Lucian above, it was Rome that was described as rank with luxuries and therefore also with vice. Nevertheless, from the Roman point of view, luxury was a foreign vice⁹⁸ For example, Sallust condemned Sulla for allowing his soldiers to indulge in “luxury and license foreign to the ways of our ancestors” (Sall. Cat. 11.5).⁹⁹ The Roman version of a “Greek life of pleasure” involved “imported wine and perfume, leisure, feasting, love, and literature.” This was a “‘soft’ life, mollis … a life which was defined, at least partly, in opposition to the more authentically ‘Roman’ life of frugality and military virtue.”¹⁰⁰

A paradigmatic example of the connection between luxury, sexual indulgence, prostitutes, and supposed foreign influence can be found in representations, preserved in historiography and biography, of the infamous emperor Gaius Caligula. According to Suetonius, Gaius outdid all others in his reckless extravagance—baths in oil, unusual foods, extensive feasting, expensive perfume, drinks of pearls dissolved in vinegar, meals of loaves and meats of gold, lazy trips in huge boats adorned with jewels, villas of tremendous size—he squandered over 2,700,000,000 sesterces in less than a year (Suet. Calig. 37).¹⁰¹ This same Caligula was frequently remembered as associating himself with prostitutes (Suet. Calig. 41.1; Cass. Dio 59.28.9; Tac. Ann. 15.71). He instituted a new tax on prostitutes (Suet. Calig, 40; Cass. Dio 59.28.8),¹⁰² he treated freeborn, Roman matrons as if they were prostitutes (Calig 36), and he opened a brothel in his palace, which he apportioned lavishly (Calig. 41).¹⁰³ Caligula followed in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, Marc Antony, by seeking to introduce Eastern ways to Rome and by displaying a troubling interest in Egyptian religious cults, or so his critics alleged.¹⁰⁴ Nero, emperor from 54 through 68 C.E., was described along similar lines. According to Suetonius, Nero’s defects first became apparent when, at an early age, he played pranks on unsuspecting old men and women under the cover of darkness (Suet. Ner. 26.1–2).¹⁰⁵ He soon graduated to long revels that lasted nearly all day, accompanied by prostitutes and dancing girls. Like Caligula, he recruited noble women to act like prostitutes and squandered his riches. He sought to emulate his uncle’s extravagance for “nothing so excited his envy and admiration as the fact that he [Caligula] had in so short a time run through the vast wealth that Tiberius had left him” (Suet. Ner. 27.2–3; 30.1–2).¹⁰⁶ Gaius Caligula and Nero were accused of other depraved habits, to be discussed in more detail below.

Thus lavish expenditure on sexual pleasure was repeatedly condemned by both Greek and Roman authors. Prostitution was legal and taxed, the presence of courtesans at the dinner parties of well-heeled gentlemen was expected, and slaves were required to comply with their masters’ wishes, sexual and otherwise. Still, a man could be accused of “slavish” extravagance were he to overindulge in such delights. Such a man had no self-control; he could not be trusted since he was insatiable and immoderate. Building on this tradition, elites accused their rivals of lavish sexual self-indulgence,¹⁰⁷ and Roman historians judged emperors on the basis of the relative extravagance each ruler displayed.¹⁰⁸ During the imperial period, authors who identified as “Greek” and authors who identified as “Roman” both attributed the vice of extravagance to one another and to others they sought to distinguish from themselves—the Romans characterizing luxury and indolence as “Greek,” the Greeks suggesting that it was Rome and the Romans who wallow in lasciviousness and luxury. Persia and “the East” continued to signify sumptuary excess, with Plutarch comparing Lucullus to a Persian satrap,¹⁰⁹ Octavian implying that Antony was under the influence of “the East” (Cass. Dio 48.301), and Caligula remembered for his devotion to Oriental ways. Clearly, this complex of charges—extravagance, “foreignness,” excessive indulgence in sex with prostitutes, lack of moderation—could work to denigrate a variety of opponents, be they a single individual in a law court or even an entire nation of people.

FAILED MEN

In the famous speech already mentioned above, Aeschines accused Timarchus of prostituting himself, a crime for which Timarchus lost his Athenian citizenship. Timarchus was accused of violating the following Athenian law: “If a man who has prostituted himself thereafter addresses the assembly, holds an administrative office, etc., then an indictment, entitled ‘indictment of hetairesis,’ may be brought against him, and if he is found guilty, he may be executed.”¹¹⁰ By law, therefore, citizen males should not prostitute themselves and then later seek to address the assembly. If they did so, they would incur a serious penalty, even execution. Those charged with sexual extravagance were frequently accused of lavish expenditure on prostitutes and courtesans. Another strategy was to accuse the target not only of associating with prostitutes but of acting as a prostitute himself. Demosthenes came close to charging Aeschines of the same crime in his speech De Corona: he accused Aeschines of resorting to menial and degrading occupations in order to support himself (Dem. De cor. 258); he alluded to Aeschines’ slave origins, suggesting that his mother acted as if she were a prostitute, his father wore shackles, and Aeschines was brought up to excel at acting in minor parts on the stage. (De cor. 129–31, 262–63). Though Demosthenes did not go so far as to directly charge Aeschines with prostituting himself, targeting Aeschines’ mother instead, the allusions to Aeschines’ ignoble origins, the degrading occupations he was forced to perform, and his association with the stage implied the worst.¹¹¹

Those charged with prostituting themselves were further maligned by accusations of pathic anal sex and “womanly” behavior.¹¹² Two terms are of importance here: and Both refer to an “effeminate” man, a man with feminine characteristics (as those were variously defined), but kinaidos implies full sexual deviance, defined in its strictest sense as a man who enjoys playing the receptive role.¹¹³ Demosthenes and Aeschines associated one another with the kinaidoi. Aeschines asserted that Demosthenes was an example of “unmanliness” in dress and behavior, insinuating that Demosthenes assimilated himself to women and slaves by seeking phallic penetration (In Tim. 3).¹¹⁴ There were several labels—effeminate, weak, soft, womanish¹¹⁵—available to accuse a man of being “feminine,” preference for the passive role being the most disturbing.¹¹⁶ For example, one could be “soft” (i.e., effeminate) and therefore more likely to take bribes (too soft to resist money), a charge that rested on beliefs about gender, even if the main point was that this man takes bribes (Plut. Them. 4.1).

The accusation that a man had failed at being a “man”—or, worse, had intentionally revoked his male privileges by seeking sexual penetration—was repeated in later, Roman-era sources. For example, Apuleius compared his target Aemilianus to a brothel, calling him a “vile haunt and hideous habitation of lust and gluttony”; Aemilianus was a stage-dancer in his youth, Apuleius continued, yet he was “clumsy and inartistic in his very effeminacy” (Apul. Apol. 74).¹¹⁷ According to Apuleius, then, Aemilianus had not only failed at being a “man,” he had failed at being a “woman” as well. Often, as in the case of the charge of luxury, Greeks were blamed by their Roman counterparts. Plutarch complained that Romans typically characterized Greeks as soft (malakia) and slavish (douleia; Mor. (Quaest. Rom). 40.274d). Tacitus lamented the encroachment of Greek ways on Roman life, especially the new Roman habit of “indulging in the gymnasia and idleness and disgraceful love-affairs” (Ann. 14.20).¹¹⁸ Cicero attacked Antony for turning his toga¹¹⁹ into a whore’s garment: Antony, Cicero alleged, was a common prostitute.¹²⁰ Cicero offered other less direct but equally suggestive insults to the “manhood” of other opponents. Catiline’s “boys,” Cicero argued, “loved to dance and sing, but also to brandish daggers and infuse poison” (Cat. 2.23). Could Cicero intend “daggers” to contain a double meaning here? Similarly, Suetonius criticized both Caligula and Nero for their effeminate tendencies. Not only did they desire to be penetrated, they adopted a feminine gait, wore women’s clothing, and pampered themselves with perfumes.¹²¹ Caligula had an insatiable desire for phallic penetration, Suetonius claimed (Calig. 36.1). He wore exotic, feminine garments, including a woman’s robe and shoes (52.1). He fancied himself a singer or dancer, singing along with actors on the stage, and dancing in front of three consulars in a long cloak (54.1–2). He kissed an actor he particularly liked in public (55.1). Nero defiled every part of his body, enjoying the passive role in sexual acts with his freedmen (Nero 29.1), yet he also lusted after boys, and even went so far as to violate freeborn youths (28.1).¹²²

From Attic Greece to the Roman imperial era, therefore, rhetorical targets were maligned, rivals were eliminated, and rulers were denounced for failing to display and maintain “manliness.” These men were said to be “effeminate” or “soft” and even to seek “feminine” sexual satisfaction, that is, oral or anal penetration by another man.¹²³ Revoking the (elite) male privilege of penetrating another was condemned as a shocking violation of maleness and status.¹²⁴ These charges were so dangerous that Roman youths were trained to shun “feminine” mannerisms (Quint. Inst. 11.3.76), and adult men carefully avoided walking in a “feminine” way (Sen. Ep. 52.12). Yet the twin charges “he seeks to be penetrated” (and therefore to be feminine) and “he seeks to penetrate those who are off-limits to him” regularly accompanied one another, as we saw in the example of Suetonius’ representation of Caligula and Nero. Nero enjoyed being penetrated but he also sought to corrupt boys.¹²⁵ Caligula sought frequent penetration by one of his male slaves, but he also seduced Roman matrons (Suet. Calig. 36). In this way, sexual excess and the reception of a phallus were gendered feminine; both practices were described as a contrary to “manliness.” Lurking behind these accusations of effeminacy was a stereotype of a good, citizen male, a master of his passions, who penetrates others designated “by nature” or station to be penetrated, male or female.¹²⁶ This active man shows courage (Greek: a cognate of “man,” this word could also be translated “manliness”; Latin: virtus) and shuns weakness.¹²⁷ By choosing to insult men by suggesting that they are like women, these charges implied an intimately related definition of femininity and the female.

WILD WOMEN

Like slaves, Aristotle argued, women are deficient by nature. Freeborn women possess virtues appropriate to women, but their gender incapacitates them (Arist. Pol. 1260a4). Many ancient authors accepted and promoted this view, asserting that women need special protection and surveillance.¹²⁸ A few second-century moralists did argue that women should be educated in the virtues, especially the virtue most appropriate to women, sōphrosynē. “It is necessary that a woman be chaste and self-controlled,” Musonius Rufus stated (3.15).¹²⁹ Sōphrosynē, “moderation,” when applied to a woman carried the primary meaning “chastity,” that is, sexual fidelity to one’s husband.¹³⁰ Musonius Rufus explained, “she must, I mean, be pure in respect to unlawful intercourse, pure in other improper pleasures, not be a slave to the passions [mē doulevein epithymias], or fond of strife, or extravagant, or excessive in adornment. These are the works of a female sōphrōn” (3.15).¹³¹ A “good woman” stays at home, is quiet, beautiful, thrifty, and spins wool.¹³² In his criticism of the corruption of his age, Juvenal harkened back to a time when Latin wives were kept chaste. In those days, poverty kept a woman busy with toil and her hands were chafed from spinning (6.285–90).¹³³ Pudicitia (chastity) has, unfortunately, fled and disappeared. This stereotype—a good woman stays at home, is chaste, and spins wool—prevailed even among the philosophers and moralists who supposedly took up the cause of women. Why should a woman be trained in virtue? Musonius Rufus concluded, “the teachings of philosophy exhort a woman to be content with her lot and to work with her own hands” (3.25).¹³⁴

Given this definition of a “good woman,” it is perhaps not surprising that when a woman was a target of abusive speech, she was regularly accused of violating sōphrosynē/pudicitia in some way. She was described as the opposite of the female sōphrōn:¹³⁵ she adorns herself with expensive, ostentatious clothing, perfumes and cosmetics; her passions are insatiable; she seeks unlawful intercourse with whomever she can, wherever she can; she is talkative or ugly or loud; she spreads rumors; she participates in reprehensible religious rituals; she, a freeborn woman, behaves like a prostitute, courtesan, actress, or musician.¹³⁶ So, Demosthenes associated Aeschines’ mother with prostitution. She was not just a prostitute, Demosthenes claimed, she sought sexual gratification constantly, even in a public latrine (Dem. De cor. 129–30). Furthermore, she participated in suspect religious rites, bringing her enthusiastic son along (De cor. 258–60).¹³⁷ A Hellenistic epitaph accused an anonymous woman of playing the whore: “your sleepless, heavy eyes betray you, and the ribbon binding the crowns in your hair, and the ringlet shamelessly torn out, and your limbs shaking from unmixed wine. Go away, common whore, the party-loving lyre and the finger-rattling beat of castanets are calling you” (Anth. Pal. 31).¹³⁸ In this epitaph, the role of prostitute and musical performer were equated, a tendency in abusive rhetoric.¹³⁹ According to Suetonius, the one woman Caligula really loved, Caesonia, was known for her reckless extravagance and wanton behavior (Calig. 25.3). In his sixth satire, Juvenal offered a number of examples of good women gone bad. Eppia, a senator’s wife, ran off with a gladiator (6.82–113). Emperor Claudius’ wife Messalina, Juvenal asserted, crept out at night in a disguise to take her place in a brothel, taking on an assumed name, baring gilded nipples, receiving all comers for a fee, staying through until morning when, with her lust still unsatisfied, she returned to her imperial pillow (6.114–132; compare Cass. Dio 60.31.1). Wives are having intercourse with slaves, Juvenal proclaimed. They lord it over their husbands; they attempt to fight in the arena like men; they think nothing of performing like a musician hired for a banquet; and they adorn themselves with costly jewelry and layers of cosmetics (6.345–50; 246–58; 384; 457–73).¹⁴⁰

These attacks against women can be placed within a tradition of representation in which women could figure as signifiers in discussions about men and the larger society. The honor due a city, an emperor, or an individual man depended, in part, upon the chastity of the women they were expected to control. Conversely, corruption of city or empire was exemplified by the licentious behavior of these same women.¹⁴¹ Particularly interesting examples of this phenomenon are found during the early empire, a period characterized by a “rhetoric of conjugal unity” and a new criminalization of sexual licentiousness, directed primarily at the adulteries and fornications of elite women.¹⁴²

At the turn of the first century B.C.E., the emperor Augustus instituted a set of laws that changed legal considerations of marriage for several centuries, the lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus (18 B.C.E), the lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis (17 B.C.E), and the lex Papia Poppaea (9 C.E.). These laws, a striking innovation, set a precedent that was not lightly discarded.¹⁴³ The Lex Julia made adultery a crime, defining adultery as sex between a married citizen woman and a man other than her husband.¹⁴⁴ A father, a paterfamilias with a daughter in his “power” (patria potestas),¹⁴⁵ who caught this daughter in the act of adultery was entitled to kill the daughter and her lover at once (D 48.5.21.1, Papinian; D 48.5.24.1, Ulpian).¹⁴⁶ A husband could also kill the adulterer, but only if he discovered the pair in his own house or if the adulterer was a pimp, an actor, a freedman of the household, or a slave (D 48.5.25.1, Macer).¹⁴⁷ Deliberate adultery (adulterium) or fornication (stuprum) with a freeborn woman or man was criminalized for Roman men as well. All sex outside of marriage was a crime for free Roman women, though, whereas for men concubinage with a woman of lesser status, as well as sexual involvement with his own slaves, continued to be acceptable practices (D 24.7.1, Ulpian; D 24.7.5, Paul; D 32.49.4, Ulpian; D 48.5.35, Modestinus).¹⁴⁸ The preservation of status was also a concern of the legislation. Senators, their sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons were forbidden to marry freedwomen, actresses, or the daughters of actors and actresses (D 23.2.44, Paul). A senator’s daughter who behaved like a prostitute or an actress could marry a freedman since she “has behaved so disgracefully” that she has no honor left (D 23.2.47).¹⁴⁹

Several suggestions regarding Augustus’ intentions in promulgating these laws have been offered. Garnsey understands them as social legislation designed to rehabilitate marriage and encourage the raising of freeborn children.¹⁵⁰ To Raditsa, the Augustan marriage laws sought to increase Italian stock and reaffirm a sense of Roman identity at a time when power was increasingly being consolidated into the figure of the emperor.¹⁵¹ According to Rouselle, these provisions were designed to prevent Roman men from marrying beneath them.¹⁵² McGinn argues that these laws attempted to reaffirm social status by setting up the Roman matron as the polar opposite of the meretrix (prostitute).¹⁵³ Augustus himself stated that he intended to revive exemplary ancestral customs (RG 8.5). Yet Augustus was “certainly far from the truth” when he claimed that he was reviving old customs. Censors, charged with the duty of preserving Roman mores, may have disapproved of men who seduced other men’s women, “but the task of keeping women in order was mostly delegated to their husbands and menfolk.”¹⁵⁴

What could Augustus have meant to imply when he took on the duty of “keeping women in order”? One possibility is that he sought to make the following point: whereas Rome was in chaos prior to his ascension, a chaos exemplified by the poor state of (feminine) morals, he brought a new order based, in part, on the restoration of the old virtues. The criminalization of the vices stuprum and adulterium signaled his seriousness in this regard. Situating the Augustan marriage legislation within the tradition of rhetorical invective, Edwards offers this sort of interpretation. She notes the frequent mention of adulterous and extravagant women in descriptions of the corruption of Roman society.¹⁵⁵ Edwards also sites the Bacchan-alian scandal, as characterized by Livy, as an instance where uncontrolled female sexuality became an emblem of both political and religious deterioration.¹⁵⁶ Thus, by promulgating his innovative marriage laws, Augustus “may be seen as making a claim, in accordance with the conventions of Roman invective, that the Roman republic failed because its governing class was composed of men who were not men enough to control their own wives.”¹⁵⁷

Further examples can be found to support Edwards’s reading. As we have already seen, Cicero associated his enemies with licentious aristocratic women, indicating their corruption by describing the depravity of “their” women (e.g., Cic. Cael. 49). The satires of Juvenal, though written some one hundred years after the Augustan marriage legislation, continued the same theme. The deplorable condition of Rome was represented by the flight of pudicitia from the city, exemplified by the untamed, insatiable sexual exploits of Roman aristocratic matrons.¹⁵⁸ Horace makes the equation even more explicit, focusing on Rome’s sexual immorality in his indictment of pre-Augustan Rome: “O most immoral age! First you tainted marriage, the house, and the family. Now from the same source flows pollution over fatherland and people” (Hor. Carm. 3.6). By contrast, Horace proclaimed, the Augustan moral revival has restored the city to its proper virtue. Thanks to Augustus, “the pure house is no longer sullied by adultery. Law and custom have tamed unclean lust. Mothers are proud of legitimate children. Punishment follows on the heels of guilt” (Hor. Carm. 4.5). The statement “punishment follows on the heels of guilt” probably refers explicitly to the marriage legislation.¹⁵⁹

The behavior of daughters, mothers, and wives, therefore, could reflect on both men and city. The goodness of Rome was displayed by the purity of its freeborn women. A good husband or father was shown to be so by the proper behavior of his wife or daughters. Thus, men could be shamed by other men for neglecting to control the women in their lives or, conversely, men could derive honor by convincing others that they ruled over harmonious households.¹⁶⁰ Edwards is not the first scholar to argue that discussions, or, in this case, legislation, about women can often be directed, to some degree, at the men with whom these women were associated.¹⁶¹ The mention of a woman’s sexual licentiousness in the context of fourth-century Athenian discourse, for example, could bring shame upon her husband, son, or father. “To preserve honor, a man had the duty both to himself and to his kin to ensure seemly behavior on the part of the women in his kyrieia.”¹⁶² Plutarch claimed that in the good old days of Athens, a daughter who failed to preserve her chastity could be sold into slavery by her father, for she would have violated both herself and her family (Sol. 23).¹⁶³ Similarly, Roman rhetorics that described the concordia of a household served “as a means by which aristocratic families could broadcast the moral character of their menfolk.”¹⁶⁴ Propaganda associated with the empress Livia and her opposite, Cleopatra, offer a paradigmatic example of representations of women intended to shame or promote “their” men during early empire.

Antony, we have already noted, was depicted as being everything his enemy Octavian was not: effeminate, cowardly, haphazard in his application of justice, and unable to control his passions, his lusts so detestable that they were unmentionable by modest, respectable people.¹⁶⁵ Augustus, on the other hand, was depicted as the restorer of the mores maiorum and the greatest exemplum¹⁶⁶ of proper Roman self-control, simplicity, modesty, and courage.¹⁶⁷ Though Antony degraded himself with his Egyptian “wife,”¹⁶⁸ Augustus made the better choice. His wife Livia was a shining example of Roman female virtue, or so the coins and statuary produced in her honor suggested.¹⁶⁹ During Augustus’ “moral revival,” a revival accomplished not only through legislation but also by means of ambitious building projects,¹⁷⁰ Livia dedicated a sanctuary of Concordia containing portraits of the imperial family as a model of marital harmony.¹⁷¹ Antony and Cleopatra, on the other hand, were remembered as emblematic of what happens when Rome is seduced by luxury and the corrupting influence of foreign ways.¹⁷² Cleopatra was not a wife at all, but a royal whore. Augustus and his proper Roman wife were portrayed as models of traditional Roman values, Antony and Cleopatra as the horrific opposite.¹⁷³

Representations of the behavior of a Livia or a Cleopatra can be intended to communicate information not only about their personal virtue or vice but also about the suitability of the men with whom they were associated. Livia, the proper Roman matron, illustrates the virtue of her husband, Augustus, an emperor who restored virtue to Rome and brought concordia to both his own household and the empire.¹⁷⁴ This is not to say that Livia did not work to promote her own political success as well as the success of her husband,¹⁷⁵ but rather to note that representations of her, whether put forward by her, her husband, or the Senate, which had voted to honor her, carried a message that went beyond her own personal honor and position. Prior to her defeat and suicide, Cleopatra had also been honored in coin issues and honorific statuary praising her wisdom, devotion, and conjugal love (Plut. Ant. 86.9; Sen. Suas. 1.6).¹⁷⁶ Yet after her downfall, she was not only dishonored, she became a symbol for the dishonor of Antony.¹⁷⁷

Julia, the daughter of Augustus, offers another important example of female infamy during this period. Julia, together with her daughter, also named Julia, were “guilty of every form of vice,” including adultery, and thus Augustus banished them (Suet. Aug. 65.1). Augustus, the very author of the legislation that demanded their punishment, was forced to relegate his own daughter and granddaughter to an island. Suetonius reports that he even contemplated putting his daughter to death (Aug. 65.2).¹⁷⁸ Seneca records this incident in the following way:

The deified Augustus banished his daughter, who was shameless beyond indictment of shamelessness, and made public the scandals of the imperial house—that she had been accessible to scores of paramours, that in nocturnal revels she had roamed about the city, that the very forum and the rostrum, from which her father had proposed a law against adultery, had been chosen by the daughter for her debaucheries, that she had daily resorted to the statue of Marsyas, and, laying aside the role of adulteress, there sold her favours, and sought the right to every indulgence with even an unknown paramour.

(Ben. 6.32.1)¹⁷⁹

Whatever Julia’s actual behavior may have been,¹⁸⁰ it is worth noting that Seneca’s description of her was strikingly similar to Juvenal’s description of the empress Messalina and even to Demosthenes’ claims about Aeschines’ mother. All three prostituted themselves, and still their lusts remained unsatisfied. Julia and Aeschines’ mother did so in public, Julia at a statue¹⁸¹ and Aeschines’ mother in a public latrine. Julia and Messalina both wandered about at night seeking sexual satisfaction, or so their detractors claimed. Whatever we are to make of the behavior of the Julias, they, like Cleopatra, came to represent another female type: Roman royal femininity gone bad.¹⁸²

Representations of Cleopatra, Livia, and the Julias were intended, at least in part, to send messages about men. Individual men could be evaluated according to their success at controlling women; cities could be evaluated in similar terms. We have already observed that pre-Augustan Rome was described by Horace as overrun with adulterous women. Following the rise of Augustus, Horace claimed, chastity was restored; Rome had finally mastered “her” women. Juvenal made the opposite claim; he satirized the corruption of Rome by describing the fornications of Rome’s “good women” in exquisite detail, including those of the empress Messalina. Lucian, in his characterization of Rome as an ideal place for hedonists, remarked that the city was awash in its adulteries (Nigr. 15–16), an interesting contrast to Horace’s assertions regarding the restoration of Roman chastity. According to the logic of this discourse, “good” cities are populated by “proper” women who preserve their chastity and defer to their husbands, but “bad” cities are overrun with adultery and fornication (e.g., Plut. Cat.Mai. 8.2–3).

Therefore, accusations of sexual misbehavior lodged against women are found in numerous sources and could serve a variety of purposes. Such accusations could malign not only the women so accused but also their men, who, according to the conventions of Greco-Roman gender relations, were expected to control them. As Plutarch put it, “a man must have harmony in his household to produce harmony in the city or in the agora or among his own friends” (Mor. 144c). Women, deficient by nature, required the protection and supervision of men. Without supervision, they may fall into vice, succumbing to their voracious sexual appetites and shaming their families in the process.¹⁸³ Women who were controlled and controlled themselves, exhibiting the sōphrosynē/pudicitia appropriate to their gender and their station, brought honor to themselves, their families, their cities, and their nation. Indeed, true heroines of sōphrosynē could even be described in “masculine” terms.¹⁸⁴ They were “like men” in virtue, but the virtue they displayed was a virtue particular to them, chastity.¹⁸⁵ “Bad” women shame their families, their city, and themselves by engaging in adultery and fornication; they adorn themselves with expensive perfumes and cosmetics; and they seek to satisfy their insatiable lusts at every opportunity.

MALE DALLIANCE

As we have seen, adultery committed by freeborn women was viewed as a horrific sign of the depravity of the accused woman, her family, and even her city. But what about the adulteries of men? In terms of Roman law, a man who had sexual intercourse with a freeborn youth, either male or female, was guilty of stuprum (D 48.5.35, Modestinus).¹⁸⁶ Intercourse with a widow or a divorcée who retained her rank as a matron was also stuprum (D 48.5.9, 11). Married citizen women were off-limits, though the jurists spent much more time worrying about the adulteress than the citizen adulterer.¹⁸⁷ In the Athenian case, a man could be charged with moicheia (adultery) if he had engaged in sexual acts with a respectable Athenian woman, whether or not she was married.¹⁸⁸

Both men and women, therefore, could be charged with adultery (moicheia, adulterium) and fornication (porneia, stuprum), though for men such charges implied sexual activity with the women or youths prohibited to them, not extramarital sex. This double standard—elite women were expected to engage in sexual activity exclusively with their husbands while elite men could have relations with their slaves, with prostitutes, and with courtesans even while married—has often been noted.¹⁸⁹ Wives were encouraged to accept this standard, even to consider it a benefit. As Plutarch put it, if a husband indulges in an affair, his wife ought not to be angry, she should be grateful that he chose to share his drunken behavior, licentiousness, and violence with another (Mor. 140b).¹⁹⁰ Martial made a similar observation, urging wives to tolerate relations between their husbands and slave boys since such activity guarantees that they will be the only female sexual partner their husband enjoys (12.96).¹⁹¹ In this way, the norm that elite men must be the penetrator of women and of men of lesser status was further reinforced. A man was guilty of adultery or fornication only if he dared to cross status or gender lines, that is, if he engaged in sexual intercourse with a free, citizen woman or girl not his wife or assimilated himself to the passive, “female” role. Sex with noncitizen women or men, male or female prostitutes, and male or female slaves was acceptable, so long as the active, “masculine” role was assumed.¹⁹² In every instance, however, an adult citizen male who assumed the passive role was mocked as effeminate and perverse.

Though men were free to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage, within certain limits, at least one second-century philosopher, Musonius Rufus, encouraged elite men to restrict their sexual activity to intercourse with their wives (12.5–45). Musonius was in the minority.¹⁹³ Still, excessive sexual activity with slaves or prostitutes was taken as evidence for indolence and depravity. Furthermore, there are several examples in which adulteries, including those committed by men, indicated the debasement of a man or a city. Rome, a city seething with vice, “brings in adultery, greed, false testimony and the whole family of the pleasures” (Luc. Nigr. 16). Wicked sons, if they were not corrected, would certainly engage in adultery, together with other vices ([Plutarch] Mor. 5b–c). Among their many other crimes, Caligula and Nero were said to have forced freeborn women into adultery, acting as their procurers (Suet. Calig. 35, Nero 27).¹⁹⁴ Their adulteries, therefore, were made more monstrous by their willingness to corrupt proper matrons, even selling the favors of these women to others. The infamous Clodius was accused not only of committing adultery, but of doing so with his own sister, the wife of Lucullus (Plut. Caes. 6).¹⁹⁵

The charges “he corrupts freeborn women and girls” and “he corrupts freeborn boys” often accompanied a charge of treason. A man who would seek to penetrate these special, protected groups could not be trusted to fulfill his duties as a citizen, for he chose to seek his own pleasure at the expense of the very social fabric, spoiling “our” youths, matrons, and virgins.¹⁹⁶ For example, the Athenian orator Dinarchus, in his speech against Philocles, stirred up the audience by reminding them that no one would dare trust their boys to Philocles; such a man must also take bribes, or so Dinarchus claimed (3.15–16).¹⁹⁷ Aeschines made a similar argument in his prosecution of Timarchus. He (mis)quoted the law in question to imply that anyone who sought to hire an Athenian to “use as he pleases” should be liable to punishment (In Tim. 87–88).¹⁹⁸ The term “hubris” and its cognates referred to a man with no control of his appetites who poses a threat to the “good” women, girls, and boys of the city.¹⁹⁹ Such a man must never be entrusted with the city or its lesser, protected members.²⁰⁰ This sentiment was echoed several hundred years later by the Roman-era Stoic philosopher Epictetus; he argued that a man who commits adultery with the wife of another overthrows affection between neighbors, friendship, and even the city (Arr. Epict. diss. 2.4.3).

Character assassination by means of allusions to adultery were frequent in Roman-era invective; Antony, Pompey, Cicero, Caesar, Claudius, Titus, and Domitian were all accused of adulterous affairs.²⁰¹ Adultery could signify the decline of Rome, as we have seen in Horace’s complaint that Rome, prior to Augustus, was filled with adultery. A further example can be found in Livy’s famous retelling of the rape of Lucretia. In this story, the decline of pre-republican, monarchical Rome was epitomized by the forced adultery of a chaste Roman matron. Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the king, set out to have the matron Lucretia at any cost. He conceived of a devious plot designed to force Lucretia to comply with his wishes. He surprised Lucretia in her bedroom, threatened to murder her in such a way that it would appear she was involved in an adulterous liaison with a slave, and, in this way, overcame her resistance. He satisfied himself and her honor was lost. The next day, she called her husband and father to her, exacted an oath from them that she would be avenged, and committed suicide. As a result of Sextus’ horrific act, the royal family was banished and the republic was established (Livy 1.57–59).²⁰²

Still, some accusations of adultery could be ambiguous in their intent. For instance, Suetonius reported that Augustus engaged in adultery repeatedly, yet for the sake of political gain: “That he was given to adultery not even his friends deny, although it is true that they excuse it as committed not from passion but from policy, the more readily to get track of his adversaries’ designs through the women of their households” (Aug. 69).²⁰³ Apparently, the motivation for the act was what distinguished the adulteries of Augustus from the adulteries of Caligula and Nero; Augustus sought political gain rather than sexual satisfaction, thereby maintaining his self-mastery, while Caligula and Nero allowed themselves to be overcome by their illicit, inextinguishable lust.²⁰⁴ Men who succeeded at their seductions could be envied as well as condemned, depending on the circumstances. Such a man may render himself suspect, but, so long as he was the seducer and penetrator, he has also demonstrated his virility.²⁰⁵ Moreover, as emperor, Augustus was in a superordinate position even to Roman senators. Hence, by sleeping with their wives, he was simply dramatizing his position as supreme actor, the most “male” man of all, to whom all were subordinate.

The problem with men who commit fornication and adultery, therefore, was that they allowed their passions to rule them to the detriment of their community. Suetonius’s Augustus was the exception, or so Suetonius claimed, yet he pursued his adulterous liaisons rationally and for the sake of the political gain. Still, illicit intercourse with other men’s wives threatened the “noble blood” of the “elite”²⁰⁶ while calling into question the mastery of the husband and father of the adulteress since, as we have seen, they were supposed to guard and protect “their” women. Sexual involvement with freeborn boys intended, upon maturity, to enter the ranks of citizen men was also condemned (though permissible in the Greek context within certain constraints). Moreover, a man accused of rapacious sexual appetites was often accused of seeking sexual penetration with as much enthusiasm as he sought to violate others;²⁰⁷ the immoderate man was described as both oversexed and effeminate since insatiable lust was commonly said to characterize women, not men. In this way, a man who could not control his passions was, by definition, “womanly.”²⁰⁸ Charges of adultery and fornication against men played a similar function to those of extravagance and effeminacy; they labeled the intended target as unsuitable, indicating that he lacks the requisite virtues of moderation and self-discipline.

CONCLUSION

This survey of charges of sexual depravity demonstrates that accusations of sexual licentiousness were important to a variety of ancient discourses. These charges depended upon and reinforced cultural codes about the characteristics appropriate to “the elite.” “The elite” were here defined as those who are virtuous, and the nonelite as those deficient in virtue. The categories “man” and “woman” were constituted, in part, by these discourses. For elite men, virtue meant mastery of others (penetration, controlling the household, displaying military courage) but also self-mastery. The man who could not or did not control his passions was untrustworthy: if he could not master himself, how could he master others? He was depicted as enslaved to pleasure and unfit for his position. The man who reveled in luxuries—especially with prostitutes, courtesans, and expensive male slaves—corrupted both himself and his community. For elite women, virtue, by and large, meant chastity. Women who did not stay at home, who failed to remain loyal to their husbands, and who adorned themselves with luxurious clothing, cosmetics, or perfumes brought shame upon themselves, their families, and their community. According to this logic, when female sōphrosynē and pudicitia flee the city falters. When matrons, citizens, senators, or emperors fall prey to their lusts, they enslave themselves and the city. A man could be charged with being “like a woman”; citizens were accused of behaving “like slaves”; chaste matrons were represented as whores; and a nation could be evaluated in terms of the relative sexual virtue or vice displayed by its inhabitants. When hierarchical status and gender were overturned by illicit sex, the society crumbles and order falls away.²⁰⁹

This chapter has offered representative examples in sources stretching across several centuries, from fourth-century Athens to imperial Rome. By offering such disparate examples, I have sought to demonstrate the importance of sexualized invective across genres, eras, and regions while also establishing the prevalence of sexual slander as an ancient rhetorical strategy.²¹⁰ Certainly, fourth-century Athens and late-republican or early-imperial Rome were not “the same.” What was specifically at stake when Aeschines accused Timarchus of prostituting himself or when Cicero accused Catiline of corrupting the youth of Rome was undoubtedly very different.²¹¹ Yet both Aeschines and Cicero chose to disparage their targets by representing them as sexual deviants.

Perhaps the fact that Aeschines, Cicero, Plutarch, Suetonius and others attacked their opponents by accusing them of sexual vice could have been predicted, given the rhetorical tradition we noted earlier. Generations of Greek and, later, Roman schoolboys were trained in the repertoire of categories appropriate for praise or blame. Still, there is something larger than a stereotypical rehearsal of categories going on here. Both Aeschines and Cicero, not to mention Demosthenes, Plutarch, Seneca, and Suetonius, relied upon a legal and philosophical tradition that defined and defended privilege in terms of virtue. Aristotle suggested that slaves were (ideally) deficient “by nature” and, therefore, are better off being slaves.²¹² Four hundred years later, Seneca raised the question again when he deliberated whether or not slaves could, in fact, cultivate virtue (Ep. 47). Furthermore, both Aeschines and Cicero, and many of the other authors cited above, understood “virtue” ( virtus) in gender-specific terms. A man is virtuous when he is in control of himself and his household, when he is courageous in battle, and when he is wise in his dealings with his subordinates. A woman is virtuous when she guards her chastity. Her courage lies in maintaining and displaying chastity in face of extraordinary threats. Thus, violations of virtue were equally gender specific. For a woman, any form sexual activity outside of marriage was improper and subject to censure. For a man, sexual acts with freeborn subordinates (boys, girls, women) were largely forbidden,²¹³ yet men were not expected to limit their sexual activity to their wives, though some philosophers may have encouraged them to do so. Since masculinity was defined as activity and dominance, voluntary renunciation of these prerogatives was considered to be depraved, a true indication of a man’s corruption.

Behind these discussions of virtue and vice lay the further assumption that a man’s character ought to be subject to scrutiny. “When a man went to court he threw his whole life, his family, and his friends into the balance against his opponent.” He also did everything he could to vilify the family, friends, and person of his adversary.²¹⁴ Orators were expected to make this argument. Indeed, rousing the emotions of the jury, especially indignation or pity, was a key task of forensic oratory (Arist. Rh 1419b; Cic. De or. 1.12.53). Forensic orators could argue from the general behavior of a target to the particular instance. If a man corrupts boys, he would certainly not hesitate to take bribes (e.g., Cic. Cat. 2.10). If a man cannot be trusted to keep his women in line, then he should not be trusted with the well-being of the state (Plut. Mor. 144c). This logic extended beyond forensic oratory to all sorts of discourse. The Persians are slavish; they participate in every vice, but especially luxury. The Greeks are corrupt; they have no control over their passions. The sexual impropriety of a man, a nation, an emperor, and the women associated with them indicated social and political corruption, the degradation of the entire community.

In this discursive context, sexual slander could be a particularly compelling rhetorical strategy. Rival elites could use arguments about incapacity, effeminacy, luxury, and licentiousness to undermine one another’s political aspirations. A satirist like Juvenal could mock the pretensions of his city by describing the decadence of effeminate senators and insatiable matrons. Humorists like Lucian could turn the tables on Rome, representing Rome not as a bastion of morality but as a vice-ridden den of orgiastic pleasure. Historians and moralists could evaluate infamous men almost entirely in terms of character, describing their sexual exploits in lurid detail. Representations of Octavian and Antony, Livia and Cleopatra served as a shorthand capable of summing up everything that was wrong or right with the early empire.

I have offered this selective survey in order to demonstrate the breadth and significance of vituperation in ancient discourses. In the process, I have broadened the rhetorical category “blame” (psogos/vituperatio): ancient rhetorical commonplaces pervaded all sorts of discourses and were not limited to the formal practice of epideictic or forensic speech. Rather, the commonplaces of “blame”—slave ancestry, foreign origin, sexual misbehavior, improper appearance, and the like—were key to the telling of history, to the writing of law, to the promotion of the morality of the empire, and to the discrediting of other nations. In later chapters, I explore the participation of early Christians in this long-standing rhetorical technique. Christian arguments relied upon, critiqued, and appropriated aspects of the Greek and Roman sex- and gender-status discourse I have been exploring, as well as upon a rhetorical and philosophical training they shared with their neighbors, at least to some degree. They did so within the context of the empire.²¹⁵ What difference did the emperor make? How did he rule? What were the particular manifestations of his auctoritas?²¹⁶ Most of these questions are beyond the scope of my project. Nevertheless, I suggest that the emperor did make a difference to the particularities of virtue and vice during the era corresponding to the development of Christian discourse. Christians knew about and worked with traditions about the virtue (or vice) of the emperor.²¹⁷ Christians highlighted their own virtue against the vices of others, including Roman emperors, Roman citizens, and Roman governors. Rome was represented as an insatiable whore (Rev 17–19). “The world” was described as utterly corrupt, and sexual depravity was offered as proof (1 Thess 4:2–8; Rom 1:18–32; Eph 4:17–23, 5:3–5; 1 Jn 2:15–17). If “the elite” were supposedly “those who are virtuous,” then Christian arguments about their own virtue, against the vice of everyone else, can be read as a direct challenge to the legitimacy of “the elite,” including Rome and “her” emperor. This is the topic of the next two chapters.