Historians of ancient Greece and Rome are sometimes hesitant to engage with the well-documented fact that Greek and Roman men regularly engaged in same-sex sexual relations with younger men. In a similar vein, scholars have constructed elaborate social explanations for Sappho, a 6th-century woman from the island of Lesbos who wrote passionate poetry about her erotic relations with a number of women, in order to avoid her apparent sexual orientation. On the other hand, in recent times the Greeks and Romans have occasionally been idealized as prototypes of modern homosexuality or bisexuality. In this engaging, cross-disciplinary book, Ormand argues that the Greeks and Romans thought of sex and sexuality in ways fundamentally different from our own. Ormand's exploration of Greek and Roman sexual practice allows readers the opportunity to see how attitudes and beliefs about sex--sexuality, in short--functioned in the early civilizations of the West, and how those attitudes reveal the unspoken rules that defined public and private behavior.

Ormand treats Greece and Rome in separate sections, with ample cross-references and comparisons. Within each section, individual chapters focus on different types of texts and visual arts. Just as sexuality is presented differently in our legal cases than it is on television sitcoms, or supermarket tabloids, the reader will naturally find that the Greeks and Romans talk one way about sex, love, and marriage in legal speeches and another way in comedies, satires, and philosophical texts. Ormand's analysis takes into account changes in attitude over time, as well as different modes of presenting a complex and interconnected set of social beliefs and behaviors.

Convening an international group of experts working on the classical world and queer theory scholars, this interdisciplinary volume offers a range of perspectives on the intersection between these two areas, an invaluable collection to scholars working on queer theory and the history of gender and sexuality

This book examines the extant fragments of the archaic Greek poem known in antiquity as Hesiod's Catalogue of Women. Kirk Ormand shows that the poem should be read intertextually with other hexameter poetry from the eighth to sixth century BCE, especially Homer, Hesiod, and the Cyclic epics. Through literary interaction with these poems, the Catalogue reflects political and social tensions in the archaic period regarding the production of elite status. In particular, Ormand argues that the Catalogue reacts against the 'middling ideology' that came to the fore during the archaic period in Greece, championing traditional aristocratic modes of status. Ormand maintains that the poem's presentation of the end of the heroic age is a reflection of a declining emphasis on nobility of birth in the structures of authority in the emerging sixth century polis.

This book examines the extant fragments of the archaic Greek poem known in antiquity as Hesiod's Catalogue of Women. Kirk Ormand shows that the poem should be read intertextually with other hexameter poetry from the eighth to sixth century BCE, especially Homer, Hesiod, and the Cyclic epics. Through literary interaction with these poems, the Catalogue reflects political and social tensions in the archaic period regarding the production of elite status. In particular, Ormand argues that the Catalogue reacts against the 'middling ideology' that came to the fore during the archaic period in Greece, championing traditional aristocratic modes of status. Ormand maintains that the poem's presentation of the end of the heroic age is a reflection of a declining emphasis on nobility of birth in the structures of authority in the emerging sixth century polis.

"Comprehensive, reader-friendly, richly detailed, forthright, subtle, and very clear, Controlling Desires is the only handbook on ancient sexuality that works persistently to offset modern readers' assumptions about sex and sexuality, to challenge the notion that sexuality is natural and universal, and to bring out the differences between ancient and modern discourses of sex-or, even, between ancient and modern experiences of desire. As such, it is a very helpful resource for students working on the history of sexuality in classical antiquity, because it shows how such a history might be possible and what is actually historical about sexuality." -David M. Halperin, University of Michigan, author of One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, Saint Foucault, and How to Do the History of Homosexuality Since its first publication in 2009, Controlling Desires has been widely lauded as an accessible introduction to sexual practices, attitudes, and beliefs in the classical world. Treating Greece and Rome in separate sections, with ample cross-references and comparisons, Kirk Ormand presents a wide array of evidence from literary texts and visual arts, including two new chapters on Greek vase painting and Roman artifacts and wall paintings.

Marriage is a central concern in five of the seven extant plays of the Greek tragedian Sophocles. In this pathfinding study, Kirk Ormand delves into the ways in which these plays represent and problematize marriage, thus offering insights into how Athenians thought about the institution of marriage.

Ormand takes a two-fold approach. He first explores the legal and economic underpinnings of Athenian marriage, an institution designed to guarantee the legitimate continuation of patrilineal households. He then shows how Sophocles' plays Trachiniae, Electra, Antigone, Ajax, and Oedipus Tyrannus both reinforce and critique this ideology by representing marriage as a homosocial exchange between men, in which women are objects who may attempt--but always fail--to become self-acting subjects.

These fresh readings provide the first systematic study of marriage in Sophocles. They draw important connections between drama and marriage as rituals concerned with controlling potentially disruptive female subjectivities.