Product Description

A history of bisexuality in the classical age. Eva Cantarella draws on a full range of sources - from legal texts, inscriptions and medical documents to poetry and philosophical literature - to reconstruct and compare the bisexual cultures of Athens and Rome. This second edition includes a preface which considers work published since the text first appeared.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153286 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

Review
"Cantarella presents the ancient evidence in a straightforward fashion, draws insightful comparisons between heterosexuality and homosexuality, and elucidates the larger cultural context of erotic experience. With its wide scope the book speaks to the classicist, the layman with an interest in antiquity, the student of sexuality, and even to the unabashed seeker of piquant anecdotes." John F. Makowski, Classical Journal "An important study that is destined to take its place next to the classic works of Foucault and Pomeroy." Alan Mendelson, History: Reviews of New Books "Offers a valuable, close-in reassessment of intricate evidence, freshly researched, readable, and open-minded." Alan Sinfield, Gay Times "This is a book I recommend for all students of sexology. The book is a treasure trove of both major areas of information that sexologists would do well to master and trivia that they might enjoy knowing." Milton Diamond, Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality "Easily the best book on the topic." John Buckler, Historian "A valuable contribution to scholarship about sexual orientation." Richard C. Friedman, Psychoanalytic Quarterly "A sexological tour de force... Among students and professionals with even a minimum of sexological curiosity, it will strike a new spark of enlightenment." John Money, Ph.D., Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "Cantarella's work, based on classical sources, points up the multiplicity of possible social and cultural solutions to the underlying problem of bisexual trends in men... It shows us that every society struggles to formulate ways in which to order the complexity of human sexuality and thus places our current American efforts within a far larger perspective of human history." Jessica P. Byrne, M.D., Psychoanalytic Books: A Quarterly Journal of Reviews "Eva Cantarella's cultural history of bisexuality in the ancient world... is an intriguing and accessible study that draws upon a wide range of primary texts and sources... A fascinating account of the multi-layered nature of bisexuality in ancient times." Paul Johnson, Pink Paper "Ambitious, learned, and thought-provoking... The author displays an impressive command of a wide range of primary and secondary sources, and writes with blessed clarity." Charles C. Chiasson, Southern Humanities Review

Alan Mendelson, History: Reviews of New Books
"An important study that is destined to take its place next to the classic works of Foucault and Pomeroy."

Alan Sinfield, Gay Times
"Offers a valuable, close-in reassessment of intricate evidence, freshly researched, readable, and open-minded."

Customer Reviews

An important topic for debate - academic or otherwise
When we strive for an understanding of our cultural and historical past we must be careful to approach our subjects with an open mind. Much of our "Western" culture is directly attributable to the Classical Greek and Roman past, and we simply cannot ignore (or condemn) the elements that we might find distasteful.

To read this past through a modern "Christian" lens is to commit a deep injustice to the subject matter. Although illuminating the prejudices of those undertaking the reading, such a stance offers little to the serious classical historian.

Cantarella's book provides much useful insight and follows on from the work of Dover and Pomeroy. It is a discussion of the situation as it was, insofar as we can reconstruct it.

The audience for this work may be quite small - classical historians with a particular interest in social and sexual history. It - and similar objective scholarly works - should be more widely read if only to put into context the debates on sexuality that still appear to be alive today.

Any view, if cogently argued, deserves further scrutiny, but I find it difficult to accept personal repulsion as an adequate stance to view the mores and practices of the ancient world. The reader is not invited to change his or her moral viewpoint (however that might have arisen) but to simply understand that of others. The ancient Greeks and Romans thought that homosexual love was normal. They had boundaries, just as many today have. That their "normal" might be different from some readers' "normal" does not make them (the ancients or the moderns) wrong. Just a different viewpoint, that's all.