The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity

THE MANLY EUNUCH

THE CHICAGO SERIES ON SEXUAll'IY, HISTORY, AND SOCIETY Edited by John C. Fout AI.SO IN THE SERIES:

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···T·H.·E MAN LY

EUNUCH Masculinity) Gender Ambiguity) and Christian Ideology , in Late Antiquity

MATHEW KUEFLER

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDON

MATHEwKUEFLERreceivedhis Ph.D. from Yale University in 1995. He is assistant professor of history at San Diego State University and has also taught at Yale and Rice Universities.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2001 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2001 Printed in the United States of America H) 09 08 070605 0403 02 01 12 345 ISBN: 0-226-45739-7 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kuefler, Mathew. The manly eunuch: masculinity, gender ambiguity, and Christian ideology in late antiquity / Mathew Kuefler. p. em. - (The Chicago series on sexuality, history, and society) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-226-45739-7 1. Masculinity-Religious aspects-Christianity-History-To 1500. 2. Masculinity-Rome-History-To 1500. 1. Tide. ll. Series. BT702 .K842001 155.3 '32 '0937-dc21 00-011473 @l The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences- Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

ForJoe and Brian

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix

INTRODUCTION

1

Part One- Changing Realities'· 1

19

"MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

Sexual DiJforence~ Gender Ambiguity~ and the Social Utility of Unmanliness

2

"MEN RECEIVE A WOUND, AND SUBMIT TO A DEFEAT"

37

Masculinit)) Militarism~ and Political Authority

3 "A PURITY HE DOES NOT SHOW HIMSELF" Masculinity~ the Later Roman Household~ and Men~s Sexuality

70

Part Two- Changing Ideals 4

"I AM A SOLDIER OF CHRIST"

105

Christian Masculinity and Militarism

5

"WE PRIESTS HAVE OUR OWN NOBILITY"

125

Christian Masculinity and Public Authority

6

"MY SEED IS A HUNDRED TIMES MORE FERTILE"

Christian Masculinity~

7

Sex~

161

and .Marriage

"THE MANLINESS OF FAITH"

206

Sexual DiJforence and Gender Ambiguity in Latin Christian Ideology

8

"EUNUCHS FOR THE SAKE OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN"

Castration!i:tnd Christian .Manliness vii

245

viii

CONTENTS

CONCLUSION

283

A NOTE ABOUT THE NOTES

299

ABBREVIATIONS USED

'300-

NOTES

'301'

BIB L lOG RA P H Y

393

INDEX

429

Acknowledgments

There are many individuals and institutions I "Yish to thank for their part in the creation of this book. The first belongs to my family, who has always provided me with loving support. The sec(;md belongs to Brian Giguere and Joe Elliott, who have invited me into their family. The third belongs to my teachers. Especially to be remembered among this number are Dr. CaroIa Small of the University ofAlberta, who first inspired me to study medieval history; Dr. John Boswell ofYale University, who inspired me in this particular project as a doctoral dissertation but who sadly did not live to see it completed; and Dr. Thomas Head, formerly ofYale University and now of Hunter College, who with great dedication helped me to bring the dissertation to completion. Other individuals helped me to germinate the ideas contained in this book, and I wish to thank each person who took thy" time and interest to read or listen to drafts of the manuscript in its various forms. They include Dr. Joanne Ferraro, Dr. Elizabeth Colwill, Dr. Francis Stites, Dr. Rebecca Moore, and others of my colleagues at San Diego State University, Dr. Robert Babcock and Dr. Bentley Layton of Yale University, Dr. Elizabeth A. Clark of Duke University, Dr. Mark Jordan of Emory University, Dr. Randolph Trumbach of Baruch College, and Dr. Kathryn Ringrose of the University of California at San Diego. Thanks are also due to my friends among the graduate students at Yale University, who created a real scholarly community while I was there. They include Jeffrey Fisher, Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Ramsey, Bernard Schlager, Jeffrey Bowman, Mark Rabuck, Michael Powell, N aney Seyboldt, Kathryn Miller, and many others. I am also grateful to the many individuals who commented ix

x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

on the ideas that would form this book when I presented papers at Yale University, Bennington College, Carleton University, Fordham University, Trent University, and San Diego State University. The financial support of academic institutions also helped me to accomplish the writing of this book. I did much of the research for the project at the libraries of Yale University and the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto, with much help from the library staff at these places. The ongoing financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of the Government of Canada was much appreciated. A doctoral fellowship from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation allowed me to work full-time for one year on the dissertation, with additional financial support from the Research Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University. Support for revision of the dissertation came from the Robert Lopez Prize for Medieval History from Yale University, and especially from a semester's full-time leave, funded by the Faculty Development Program and by the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University. Finally, the unfailing enthusiasm of my editors helped me more than I can adequately say. Dr. John Fout, editor of the Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society, and Mr. Doug Mitchell, editor at the University of Chicago Press, provided regular encouragement through the long process of revision and never seemed to doubt my ability to produce something of worth. I hope, in the end, that this book has merited that support.

Introduction

The problem with men's history is that there is too much of it. How is it that one can study masculinity at all-that is, study men as a genderwhen so much of history is about men's actions, thoughts, and lives? Women's history is typically a process of the recovery of a hidden past, the reconstruction of lives from fragmentary or antipathetic records. Men's history is not at all the same: its past is not hidden, the lives not nearly as irrecoverable, the records are generous. How is it possible, then, to construct a history of men without simply returning to what has been most criticized about earlier generations of history, their overemphasis on the lives and realities of men and exclusion of the lives and realities of women? My solution to this challenging problem will, I hope, provide a new and fully gendered perspective on the period oflate antiquity and situate some of the broad social changes of that period, especially the conversion of the Roman world to Christianity. I argue in this book that the notion of masculinity-that is, what it meant to be a man - formed an integral part of the intellectual life of late antiquity and was crucial in the development of Christian ideology. The men of the Roman aristocracy, Christian or not, were driven by a desire to be manly or at least to appear as manly, and that desire informed their daily lives, both public and private, and the content of their religious beliefs. The complementary fear that Roman noblemen felt, that they were not manly or would not be seen as manly, also influenced their lives and beliefs; hence the anxiety palpable in their writings when dealing with the question of manliness. This double-edged sword of manliness is key to approaching the history of masculinity and figures prominently in this 1

2

INTRODUCTION

book. The cultural and demographic success ofChrlstianjdeology in late· antiquity lay in the ability of the shapers of that ideol
the

GENDER AND HISTORY

Despite the differences in studying men and women in history, this study would not have been possible without the tremendous advances that have been made in women's history. So it is important to begin with some of the theoretical framework that has been laid out for gender and history by scholars in women's studies. In women's history, especially the history of women in male-dominated (often called patriarchal) societies, much of the work done recently has focused on the dissonances b~tween women's social roles and the personal identities of women. The restrictions on women's public lives and accomplishments and the limitations on their social status and personal independence were continually challenged and upset when individual women were unwilling to live with those restrictions and limitations. The social category of ''woman;' in other words, was simply insufficient to contain individual ''women.'' Much has been learned about women in history from the study of this tension between social role and personal identity. The degraded social role otwomen in history was intimately connected with an idealization of the masculine. Much of the literature by scholars of gender theory emphasizes the universalized masculine in male-dominated human cultures. The masculine was central, perfect, and complete; the feminine, in contrast, was marginal, imperfect, and incomplete. Monique Wittig goes so far as to suggest that "indeed there are not two genders. There is only one: the feminine, the 'masculine' not being a gender. For the masculine is not the masculine but the general."l Within the framework of sexual difference between male and female,

INTRODUCTION

3

it is claimed, a whole range of the dichotomies of human thought can be placed: culture/nature, form/matter, mindjbody, subject/object, good! evil, ·and self/other. 2 ·Women were only one of several groups of devalued persons· in lllstory, it is true. Slaves, foreigners, and members of ethnic minoricie~· were also among those excluded from full participation ·in past societies because they were seen as inferior. Recognition of this widespread exclusion has provided a useful balance on seeing misogyny as the sole type of oppression and has been an iinportant element in some recent studies of social "otherness;' in writings on historical notions of racial inferiority, for example. 3 Still, the primary paradigm for understanding the dichotomy between the ideal and the less than ideal is often a gendered one. Judith Butler writes, "the feminine is 'always' the outside, and the outside is 'always' the feminine."4 In a cultural system in which the ideal was a masculine one, anything inferior, even when it occurred in men, was feminized. Male slaves and male foreigners were often treated as equivalent to women because they were sJ.bordinated men. The feminization of such inferior men provides an essential component for the study of masculinity in male-dortiinated societies. The depiction of groups or types of men or individual men as inferior, as womanly or effeminate, or as unmanly (all of which limounts to the same thing) helps us to see the content of idealized masculinity, by giving us as it were a mirror image or photographic negative of it. The behaviors denounced as unmanly in men also reflect the behaviors praised as manly in men. There is much more to it, however. Like women, men can also be studied by examining the tensions between their social roles and personal identities, but in male-dominated societies, this examination must be done in reverse. For men, the dissonance in sex and gender is between an idealized rhetoric of masculinity, on the one hand, and the limitations and restrictions that prevent any given man from realizing the ideal, on the other. The personal identities of most men do not match the elevated social role accorded them. "When masculinity is credited with all of the positive attributes of culture, no man can fully live up to that ideal. The category "man;' unlike that of ,'woman;' is quite literally larger than life: too artificial and idealized a construct to correspond to most men's lives. But the implication of this discrepancy, that no man is actually a man, is untenable in male-dominated societies, because it means that there is no one to "run" the society, to set the rules, to be on top. For one man to describe another as unmanly or effeminate, then, not only condemns the other man as inferior but also distances him from the one doing the describing. In the denunciation ofunmanliness, the spealcer in the same breath insists on his own manliness (not only to himself, but also to all of his listeners).

4

INTROD UCTION

To a careful listener, however, he reveals his own doubts .about his own . manliness, about his ability to live up to the impossible ideal set for. hinl: as a man, about his claim to exercise authority legitimately. Ac;cordingiy, •. he intensifies his denunciation of unmanliness in other men, compadng himself favorably to the men around him so as 'to preserve his own mas:- .. culine "self" intact. As Patrick Hopkins writes, masculinity "exposes its own uncertainties in its incessant self-monitoring-a self-monitoring,often accomplished by monitoring others."5 In order to understand masculinity in this period, then, it is necessary to study the rhetoric ofidealized masculinity as well as those persons, real or imagined, who were either praised for their (near) conformity to this ideal or denounced for their failure to conform to it. It is important to cover the distance between manliness and unmanliness, two terms that serve throughout this study as shorthand for this double portrait of masculinity. Manliness and unmanliness served as the two'endpoints of a continuum of masculinity onto which each individual man could be pinpointed. For this reason, biographical details and general discussions of virtue and vice are as important here as any direct comments on masculinity. The process of placing the individual man on this continuum, whether he be a pagan emperor or a Christian holy man, required a great deal of interpretation by the person doing the pinpointing. One might admit the mixture of good and bad in an individual, but one might just as easily gloss over the deficiencies and paint a faultless portrait ofthe man as a hero, or again, one might choose to emphasize the deficiencies and create an image of the man as a miscreant. All of these approaches may be found in abundance in the historical record. The reasons for placing a man among the manly or among the unmanly of course depended on specific and variant notions of what constituted ideal masculinity, but it is precisely this process of placing men on the continuum that offers important clues in reconstructing historical definitions of masculinity. 6 But the idea of a continuum of masculinity is insufficient unless it contains some recognition of the collective work of men in establishing or challenging the masculine ideal and thus of the possibility of change in the ideal over time. Robert Connell distinguishes between what he calls "hegemonic masculinity" and the "subordinated masculinities" in contemporary society, a distinction that can be usefully applied to past societies. 7 The dominance of a hegemonic masculinity is perpetually asserted by some men against others who are unable or unwilling to conform to its content. Occasionally, the hegemonic masculinity is replaced by a subordinated masculinity, which becomes a new hegemonic masculinity.

INTRODUCTION

5

Such a dialectic seems t<,:> be a constant in the history of male-dominated cultures; accordingly, the content of the masculine ideal has chailged dra ~ maticilly with time and place. To posit a dialectic of masCulinity permits a new arid v~uable perspective on the study of gender. Instead of focusing on gender as a transhistorical constant or artifact of human culture and masculinity. as a "thing" that can be examined in its varied incarnations, this new p~rspective gives us the opportunity to see gender as a series of relations' between individuals, groups, and institutions in constantly shifting configurations. The notion of gender as a dialectic of personal and social relations can also help to clarify the meaning of the terms used in studying sex and gender. Most of us tend to use these terms to refer indiscriminately to various realities: participation in social or cultural roles, sense of personal or psychological identity, and classification according to anatomical or genetic differences. We think we can separat~ out what belongs to "sex" and what belongs to "gender;' but I believe that attempts to distinguish neatly between the two belong to past generations of scholars of gender. These attempts have been creatively challenged in recent years by gender theorists who have recognized the complicated links between the different aspects of human identity: cultural, personal, biological. 8 Because the terms "sex" and "gender" have contested meanings, therefore, I have made no attempt to tie them to any particular definitions in this study. This approach is also more historically sensitive, I feel, since the ancient Romans knew no such distinction. Instead, I have preferred to preface terms like "sex" and "gender" with clarifying descriptions or to replace them with more specific terms throughout, like "anatomical sex" or "personal identity" or "social roles:' When the terms "masculinity" or "masculine identity" are used below (and less often, "femininity" or "feminine identity"), they describe the network of these physiological, psychological, and social aspects of human personality and not anyone feature of them. And for this reason, "male" and "men's" are synonymous with "masculine;' and "female" and ''women's;' with "feminine:' In turn, the terms "masculinity" and "masculine identity" include both the subcategories of"manliness" and "unmanliness" or the "hegemonic masculinity" and the "subordinated masculinities" as described above. For this reason, I have often preferred to talk about "manly" and "manliness" or "unmanly" and "unmanliness" instead of "masculine" and "masculinity" in order to be as clear as possible. Finally, I have mostly avoided terms like "manhood" or "maleness" as distinct from "masculinity;' although when I do use them for stylistic reasons, they mean the same thing. Through-

6

INTRODUCTION

out, I want to reiterate that it is the ~alectic of inclusion or exclusion from a perceived ideal that I am interested in and that I believe faithfully' . n;produces the Roman ideology on sex and gender. . ROMAN MEN IN LATE ANTIQUITY

This book describes a major shift in the dynamic of masculine ideology: the collapse of the ancient or classical ideal for men in the western Mediterranean in late antiquity and the establishment of a new Christian masculinity. The new Christian masculinity moved a previously subordinated masculinity into position as a hegemonic masculinity by means of the rhetoric of manliness and unmanliriess. In other words, men adhering to a subordinated masculinity (the Christian ideal for men) successfully challenged the manliness of the men adhering to the hegemonic masculinity (the classical ideal for men) in such a way as to appeal to men to transfer their allegiance from the one to the other. Christian leaders accomplished this transfer by claiming that they were better equipped to reaffirm the manliness of men, including their sense of difference from and superiority over women. Political and social changes had threatened the traditional patterns of Roman life, including the patterns of male social domin~tion. Christian intellectuals used the dissonance between classical ideals for men and late ancient realities to undermine the traditional masculine ideal and supplant it with their own. At the same time, they emphasized the aspects of the Christian ideal that they felt best suited this goal of malcing Christian belief seem manly, reshaping Christian ideology as a masculine ideology. Through close textual analysis, the book demonstrates the decline of the old hegemonic ideal and its replacement with a new Christian ideal. Part 1 deals with the changing realities oflate ancient life. Chapter 1 looks at the importance of sexual difference in the Roman social order. Chapter 2 examines the waning ancient masculine ideals in men's public lives reflected in their reluctant participation in the military and in politics. Chapter 3 discusses the decline of the masculine ideals in men's private lives, in changes to family life and sexuality. At the end of chapters 1-3, I have included a discussion of eunuchs, because they are a valuable test case for issues of manliness and unmanliness in late antiquity and figure prominently in discussions of sexual difference, the military and politics, and family life and sexuality. They represent a reality larger than themselves; indeed, they symbolize the dangerous gender ambiguity of men in the midst of a changing masculine ideal. Part 2 deals with the emergence of a Christian ideology out of these transformations of later Roman culture.

INTRODUCTION

7

Chapter 4 looks at how the Roman military ideal was reconstituted into the ideal of the "soldier ·of Christ." Chapter 5 describes how the ancient political ideal !Vas transferred from civic office to clerical office. Chapter ... 6 details· the elaboration of ~ manly Christian ideal of sexual and marital renunciatio~. Chapter 7 places the new C~istian masculine ideal within the context of relations .~etween men and women and of notions of sexual difference, arid explains how the new ideal excluded women from any real social power."·Last, chapter 8 deals again with the figure of the eunuch, which became, ironically, an important Christian symbol for the new masculine ideal. ' This book covers the period from roughly the start ofthe third century of the common era to the middle of the fifth century. There were important reasons for defining the period oflate antiquity in this way. The third century is pivotal, for it is when the Roman Empire began its military and political collapse, with the end of the dynastic reign of the Antonines at the end of the second century. By the middle of the fifth century, barbarian rulers had largely usurped central governmental authority in the West even as nominal imperial rule continued to the year 476. Moreover, momentous social changes can be dated to the early third century, especially the extension of Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire in 212, which had significant effects on society, from the realm of politics to that of law. The early third century also marks the period of influence of two key figures in the contest for Roman masculinity: the emperor Elagabalus (ruled 218-222) and the Christian theologian Tertullian (who converted around 197). Elagabalus is often mentioned by historians for his refusal to accept the traditional ideal of Roman masculinity; Tertullian was the first Christian theologian to write extensively in Latin and established the pattern for many of the central themes of Christian masculinity. The middle of the fifth century also provides a practical point of termination. In the third decade of the century, the law code ofTheodosius II was promulgated in 438; the same decade saw the deaths of two major Christian writers: Augustine of Hippo (died 430) and John Cassian (died about 435). The two termini of the study are only approximate, however, and I have felt free to range more broadly when treating specific points. For example, I have included works by Apuleius and Marcus Aurelius, both of whom wrote in the late second century but were widely read in later centuries, and works by Sidonius Apollinaris, who lived until almost the end of the fifth century, but whose literary career began in the middle of the same century. 9 The sources for the information that follows are varied: legal, narrative, biographical, and religious. Some might object to the uses to which

8

INTROD UCTION

I put some of the material. For example; while the laws contained in JUS- .. tinian's Digest originated for the most part from the second century as·.. expert legal opinions, they gradually acqruredmore authoriry:with each'. century until they were codified under his reign in the sixth cel1.tuIy.: In·, . part, the growth of this authority was because they reflected common cul~ .. tural concerns in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, or at least, the common concerns of legislators and judges. Accordingly, I have interpreted them as relevant to this study. 10 The same might be said of biographies: their accuracy when dealing with historical figures is less important than how these figures were remembered or presented by their biographers. Queen Boudicca's speech on the effeminate manners of the Romans that I quote in chapter 2, for example, was as much if not more a comment on the third century when Cassius Dio wrote his history of the event than when she lived in the first century. Another important point mlist be kept in mind regarding the sources used in this study. Virtually all of the sources of this period originated from the upper classes, and it is impossible fully to counteract this bias. Many of the sources-the laws of the later Roman emperors or the sermons of the Christian bishops-did claim to be universally applicable. Nonetheless, it is impossible to know how deeply the concerns of writers whose ·'works survive - virtually all men of the upper classes - were shared by members of other classes or even by members of their own classes who did not leave us a written record. Moreover, men of the lower classes were often considered ineligible for participation in full ma,nhood. Men of the upper classes felt that the exercise of public office by male slaves was an affront to decency, for example, because male slaves were not the right sort of men. Most Christian writers were also drawn from the upper classes and shared the biases of their pagan contemporaries. Mention has been made whenever broader class issues could be discerned from the extant record, but this book is in large part a discussion of changes to aristocratic definitions of masculinity alone. (For stylistic reasons, I have used the terms "noble:' "nobility:' "aristocratic:' "aristocracy:' "elite:' and "upper classes" interchangeably to refer to the classes described in later Roman law as honestiores; I have distinguished the senatorial aristocracy from the rest of the upper classes whenever I felt that it was a useful distinction. 11 ) It is also important to remember that this book attempts only to document the transformation of masculinity in the Roman cultural sphere. In many ways, this designation is conterminous with the western Mediterranean or the western half of the Roman Empire. As early as the reign of Diocletian at the end of the third century, the Roman Empire was

INTRODUCTION

9

divided into four prefectures, two eastern and two western, which pro. vided the basis for a nuinber of divisions of the empire by Diocletian's . successors thrQughout the fourth century. The two halves' of the empire .. :,w.ere never again ruled together after the death ofTheodosius I in 395. The two ~alyes bf the empire, west and ea$t, also roughly followed the linguistic dominance ofLatin and Greek, respectively, although there can be no real hard cind fast distinctions between Latin and Greek writers. Some Western writers wrote in Greek, especially in the third century (for example, Cassius Dio), some Latin writers wrote from the eastern Mediterranean (for example, Jerome), certain important Greek texts were translated into Latin in order to circulate in the West (Rufinus's translation of Eusebius's history of early Christianity, for instance), and certain works were intended to be read in both the western and eastern halves (such as the Theodosian Code). I have included writers and texts in this study as I saw fit but have mentioned contextual peculiarities whenever I felt it appropriate. More important thm language or geography was the cultural divide that Romans felt separated themselves from the peoples around them. As we will see, that cultural divide included a shared literary, political, and military heritage that distinguished Romans in their own estimation from the peoples who merdy inhabited the Roman Empire or enjoyed the benefits of Roman citizenship. Because this study is confined to the Romans of the later Roman Empire, I draw no conclusions about masculinity among the other peoples inhabiting the empire, how it was defined by them, or what changes might have occurred to it over the course of the third, fourth, and .fifth centuries. Many of the same conclusions might be drawn. Anyone attempting to answer these questions, though, must reckon with the complex overlay of ancient cultures especially in the eastern Mediterranean, and how the Roman elite dominated but adapted itself to Hellenistic Greek cultural patterns, which had merged in turn with earlier local Egyptian or Syrian or Jewish cultures, each with its own traditions, including ones concerning masculinity.12 That overlay is another feature that distinguishes the multicultural Eastern Empire from the more homogenous West. Granted, there were regional variations between the ethnic Roman population of Italy and the Romanized Celtic or Punic or other populations of Gaul, Spain, and North Mrica. Members of the uppermost provincial classes of the West had nonetheless been welcomed into the social and political structures of the empire by its last centuries. For example, the provincial nobility typically owned homes in the city of Rome as well as their family estates elsewhere, and some of them participated in the Senate by the fourth century. Unlike in the East, moreover,

10

INTRODUCTION

inhabitants of the provinces of the Wes~ern Roman Empire by late antiq-. uity showed every indication of having felt themselves to be as Roman.as anyone dwelling in the city of Rome and considere·d the' Roman ~eritage . as their own (and in any case, there is little written record that des<;:dbes these peoples before their Romanization).13 .. I must also say a few words about what constitutes Christian ideology.' Throughout the book, I have attempted to distinguish between the opinions and ideas of different Christian writers and to examine the evolution of certain concepts and trends over time and not to assume either a unitary Christian tradition or universal agreement even among Christian writers judged to be orthodox. Still, I believe it is possible to spealc of a gradually articulated Western Christian ideology that evolved over the course of the third, fourth, and early fifth centuries. This ideology was created by the inclusion and exclusion of the writings and personalities of earlier times, the process that we call canonization and that is traditionally linked to questions of orthodoxy and heresy (and throughout the book, I use "orthodox" and "Catholic" simply and solely as the opposite of "heretical"). In important ways, however, Western Christian ideology superseded these questions of belief, and one has only to thinlc of the continuing influence of two writers later condemned as heretical, Tertullian and Origen, to appreciate this fact (see chapter 6 for more on what constituted heresy). For this reason, I believe that it is possible to compare authors from different centuries, regions, and schools of belief together on the same broad themes, as I have done in what follows, since I believe that later writers knew the ideas of, borrowed from, responded to, or distanced themselves from earlier writers. Moreover, I maintain that Western Christian writers, who were also often leaders of local Christian communities, responded not only to earlier writers but also to the Roman cultural tradition on masculinity and consciously crafted a new masculine ideal drawing from both Christian and Roman elements. They acted as cultural innovators or "institutional entrepreneurs;' reshaping an outdated past toward new ends. 14 I try always to keep the human reality of these writers firmly in mind, so I do not use expressions such as "Christianity believed" or "the Christian Church taught;' even when there seems to have been a general consensus of opinion, since the process I document is always one of "Christian writers believed" or "the leaders of the Christian churches taught;' and what the silent majority of Christians in late antiquity believed remains, well, silent. (I prefer to speak of these men as "writers" or "leaders of the churches;' referring to them as "bishops;' when appropriate, only after documenting the evolution of episcopal leadership in chapter 5 and as

INTRODUCTION

11

"patristic writers" or "Church fathers" only after describing the image of the Christian community as a surrogate family in chapter 6.) I do not at. tempt to prove that all men of the Western Empire accepted the new mas. : : . culinitycrafted by Christian leaders; indeed, there is much evidence to . ~. show that they-did not. I do, however, attempt to show that what had previously been a subor~ated masculinitY gained hegemony. From this new hegemonic masculinity, a whole new series of subordiriated masculinities were created (including the previouSly hegemonic masculinity, the masculine ideal I often describe as "pagan" and its continuing proponents as "pagans;' although I admit that this is a convenient term and not one that they would have recognized themselves). I have been encouraged and inspired by scholars who have already been researching in related fields. Foremost among them is Peter Brown, whose body of work has illuminated many aspects of what might be called the "human factor" in late antiquity. In The Body and Society) Brown alludes to the same reformulation of masailinity, even if not in these terms, when he writes of "that exaltation of [bodily] integritas) which enabled the Catholic clergy to provide the most formidable of all the 'invisible frontiers' behind which the Roman populations of the post-Imperial West preserved their identity, long after the military frontiers of the Empire had been washed away by barbarian invasion and settlement."15 (He adds that "to surrender any boundary line was to court the ancient shame of the Roman male-it was to 'become soft: to be 'effeminated."'16) Brown's studies of the Eastern Roman Empire offer points of comparison with the ideas that follow in this book, and they functioned sometimes as the starting point for my own ideas. In Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity) for example, Brown reflects on ways in which men of the new urban Christian elite of the East both continued elements of traditional public authority and also subverted them, a technique also found in the West. 17 The sophisticated work of scholars of women in late antiquity also offered me especial opportunities to reflect on both the similarities and the differences between the status and roles of women and men and on the relationships between women and men. Jo Ann McNamara has been a pioneer in this field. Her workA New Song offers a similar trajectory for late ancient Christianity to what I have charted: a growing accommodation with traditional social forces, including established gender roles. IS The work of Elizabeth A. Clark has also been of particular benefit to me in this project. Another pioneer in the study of gender and sexuality in late antiquity, she has in recent years increasingly pursued new inquiries in postmodern directions. In an essay devoted to the formation of the pa-

12

INTRODUCTION

tristic ideology on women, "Ideology, History,. and the Construction of. 'Woman' in Late Ancient Christianity;' she offers important considerations: A central function of ideology is to "fix" represe~tations of the self, to ·con,,: stitute "concrete individuals as subjects." ... Ideology naturalizes and universalizes its subjects, ignoring the "historical sedimentation" that undergirds the present state of affairs. Ideology thus functions to obscure the notion that ideas and beliefs are particular and local, situated in specific times, places, and groups; to the contrary, it encourages the view that our society's values have no history, but are eternal and "natural;' Situations that have come about through human cDnstruction are thus rationalized . and legitimated as conforming to timeless truth. 19

"Theorists of ideology;' she adds, "challenge historians to uncover the conditions that prompted the production of such interpretations, that is, to 'denaturalize' and 're-historicize' the conditions that produced ideologies of gender."20 In another essay, she clarifies how this project informs her own work. "I do not imagine that I am uncovering the "reality" of late ancient Christianity;' she writes. "My task, as I conceive it, is to push and jab at these documents to malce them yield up their ideological content, to malce manifest the ways in which their authors seek to present their highly constructed arguments as 'natural' interpretations, obvious to all 'rational' people."21 What follows in this book is my own reply to this challenge to understand Christian belief as a cultural production, and my use of the term "Christian ideology" is intended as a constant reminder of that challenge. The use of the term "Christian ideology" is also intended to highlight the role of intellectual argument and conviction in the conversion of men of the Roman Empire to Christianity. The motivations for religious conversion are not well understood, even in modern times, but sociologists of religion have provided important ideas for reflection. Of particular help to me has been the work of Rodney Stark, who suggested that "new religious movements are likely to succeed to the extent that they" demonstrate certain characteristics. Included among these characteristics are the following: first, the ability to retain a sense of "cultural continuity" with the society in which they exist and where the new religious ideas "are rooted in familiar cultural material"; second, the maintenance of a "medium level of tension with their surrounding environment;' seeming neither too conventional nor too radical; and third, their appearance in a social climate in which traditional ideologies are wealcened by "social dis-

INTR OD UCTION

13

ruption." Stark includes other significant features of successful religions, including "effective mobilization" of members, the attraction of new members from "a normal age and sex structure:' and "adequate socializa: _tion" .of new :members. All in all, intellectual considerations in religious conversion are given considerable weight ~ Stark's work. 22 Gerd Theissen has als-o -addressed th~ function of early Christian ideology in "transmitting, internalizing, and legitimating social order" and in containing or limiting social change. Religion, he suggests, compensates for that limitation among its members "in the creation of a counterpicture to social reality" and "in the redirection of existing impulses toward surrogate objects:' offering "a new motivational structure:' including a "reversal of incentives:' "the setting of new goals;' and "new solutions" to old problems. 23 The success of the Western Christian ideology of masculinity derived in no small part from the ability of the men who crafted it to maintain a cultural connection with more traditional Roman formulations of masculinity while at the same time criticizing-The inability of those traditional formulations to respond adequately to the social disruptions oflate antiquity and offering a new model to potential members. The ideology of Christian masculinity did attract male converts. Other scholars of Christianity in late antiquity have provided me with invaluable insights. Reflecting on the development of the concept of original sin inAdam., Eve., and the Serpent., Elaine Pagels asks some difficult questions: "Why did the majority of Latin Christians, instead of repudiating Augustine's idiosyncratic views as marginal- or rejecting them as heretical-eventually embrace them?"z4 Is "biblicai interpretation ... nothing but projection? Is exegesis (what one reads out of the text) merelyeisegesis (reading into the text)?"25 Encouraged by her example, I have tried to ask similar difficult questions about the content of Christian ideology. William Connolly's The Augustinian Imperative also sparked new ideas for me, especially his view that Augustine's feminine subordination to a masculine god provided him with the authority to assume a vicarious masculine role toward other Christians, a view that I have expanded to include other patristic writers in chapter 5. 26 And in Averil Cameron's Christianity and the Rhetoric ofEmpire., I have found welcome support for my belief that late ancient Christian rhetoric was grounded in paradox.27 A few classical scholars also provided a valued stimulus, making me wonder about what came next or providing useful background for my own research. In a book entitled Making Men., Maud Gleason skillfully examines the role of masculine ideology in the public personae and pro-

14

INTRODUCTION

fessianal rivalries af the public rhetars of the Raman Empire, in particular in the secand century C.E.· She alSo. sees the dichatomy between manliness and unmanliness as crucial to. discussians af rriasculinityiii,he~~ saurces and finds that the figure af the eunuch pro~ides a foCus: far·· . . particularly self-cansciaus reflectians on masculinity.28 The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome by Catharine Edwards is a brilliant analysis. af the antaganistic relationship between holders af appasing maral values. 29 Craig Williams's recently published RiJman Homosexuality offers a detailed discussian not only of men's sexual behaviars but also af men's identities and af the prablem af effeminacy in the classical era. 30 Cultural studies were also an impartant catalyst for this study. Marjorie Garber, author of a fascinating work on the role of the transvestite in madern culture entitled Vested Interests) focuses an the place of the transvestite as an intermediate gender figure. Such a figure, she argues canvincingly, affers an opportunity to. highlight tensians and cantradictians nat anly in gender but also in ather areas af culture: political, sacial, religious. In turn, cultural tensians and anxieties show up distarted as gender ambiguities. The transvestite, she writes, serves as "an index ... for the notian af the 'category crisis' ... a failure of definitianal distinctian, a barderline that becames permeable, that permits ofbarder crassings fram ane (apparently distinct) category to. another:'31 This is precisely the rale that I argue was played by the eunuch in later Raman culture, revealing the anxieties araund sexual differentiation and at the same time questioning its foundations, and bringing to the surface all af the uncertainties of masculine identity in public and private life, and in particular, the tension between manliness and unmanliness. This baak, finally, is about the sacial constructian af gender. Granted, there is a bialogical basis to sexual differentiatian, but it is the sacial meaning given to this differentiation that is examined here. In the Western Raman Empire in late antiquity, this meaning was the result af sacial farces as well as the creativity of certain human individuals in interpreting those farces. I use the rather materialistic term "constructian" with hesitatian when describing the crafting af a new Christian masculinity, wishing to leave apen the passibilities both af individual variatians within the same culture and of cansciaus participation by those involved in the "construction:' Indeed, I find myself more persuaded by the metaphars af the performativity of gender than those af constructian. 32 Perhaps that process is itself ultimately the goal of studying historical masculinity: to. prablematize the pracess itself by which gender identity is created, to. highlight the ambiguities and anxieties around sexual differentiatian, to question gender'S place in the foundatians af the sacial hi-

INTRODUCTION

15

erarchy, to challenge the rhetoric of gender, and to reflect on moments of cultural change in men's and women's identities. If this book contributes something toward that goal, and if its conclusions hav~ ramifications for u:hderst~d.ing huinan culture more broadly, then it will have been " , worthwhile."

PART ONE

Changing Realities

·CHAPTER ONE

IIMASCULINE SPLENDOR" Sexual Differencey Gender Ambiguityy and the Social Utility of Unmanliness

Roman notions of sexual difference relied heavily on the absoluteness of the divide between male and female. Notions of moral character, ofvirtue and vice, were directly linked to sexual difference, and social rights were expressed as deriving from masculine superiority and feminine inferiority. Gender ambiguity of any sort was an unsettling proposition, and as much as possible was explained away. The gender ambiguity of the eunuch was not so easily erased, however, and the presence of eunuchs therefore disturbed and challenged those notions of the absolute divide between male and female.

SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AS MORAL DIFFERENCE

Virtue was so intimately linlced to maleness in the Roman universe that it is impossible to separate Roman definitions of masculinity from more general notions of ideal human behavior. Consider the depiction of the Roman emperor Julian (ruled 361-363) from the detailed portrait of him painted by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus: Julian must be reckoned a man [vir] of heroic stature, conspicuous for his glorious deeds and his innate majesty. Philosophers tell us that there are four cardinal virtues [virtutes]: self-control, wisdom, justice, and courage; and, in addition to these, certain practical gifts: military skill, dignity, prosperity, and generosity. All these Julian cultivated both singly and as a whole with utmost care,l

19

20

CHAPTER ONE

This glorified description of Julian is helpful, even if it should not be taken too literally. Although Ammianus had known Julian personally
"MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

21

Roman writers found a vivid metaphor for these notions.of sexual difference and opposition ,in the language of texture. The "hardness" or "toughness" (duritia~ robur) ofmen referred to the muscul~ity ofthe ideal , , male body; it. also symbolized the moral uprightness and self-discipline ·'.-thatmen were preswned to embody. In contrast, the "softness" or "delicateness" (m-ollitta) of women represented not only their delicate bodies, but ~so their love of lUxury, the languor of their minds, the ease with which they gave themselves to their emotions, and their dissolute morals. Such was the opirllon, for example, of the early fourth-century writer Lactantius, tutor to the children of the emperor Constantine I (ruled 306-337). Lactantius repeated a well-known, if invented, etymology: Thus man [vir] was so named because strength [vis] is greater in him than in woman; and from this, virtue [virtus] has received its name. Likewise, woman [mulier] ... is from softness [mollitia], changed and shortened by a letter, as though it were softly [mollier]. 6

The gendered language of hardness and softness was also used to describe the expected sexual roles of Roman men and women. The hardness of men marked not only their moral austerity but also their role as sexual penetrators and sexual aggressors. In a complimentary way, the mollitia or softness of women denoted their role as sexually penetrated, and beyond that, the passive role they were expected to play not only in sexual relations but also in society generally. Roman notions ofhuman gestation lent support for this idea of sexual difference as inversion or opposition. Masculine and feminine characteristics were attributed to early fetal development resulting from the placement of the male seed (semen) in the womb. The opinion ofLactantius, who while learned was not a physician, a Christian but a traditionalist, illustrates a belief that we can imagine was shared by his educated contemporaries. "If ... a maschline seed comes into the right part [of the uterus] and a feminine into the left;' he wrote, "the two fetuses come forth rightly, so that for the feminine the beauty of its nature holds throughout all things, and for the masculine manly strength [robur virile] is preserved both as to the mind and the body."7 From this separation of the physical seed within the womb sprang all of the other separations of sexual difference: virtuous and vicious, dominant and submissive, hard and soft, sexually aggressive and sexually passive. Thus, in the Roman mind the sexual difference between male and female implied, even necessitated, the social roles of masculine and feminine.

22

CHAPTER ONE

RESOLVING AMBIGUITY

The problem with such a neat dichotomy of sexual and gender diff~ren~e .. as the Romans had devised, of course, was that it did not correspond with reality. Even Lactantius, in the same passag~ in which he describedth'~ ideal gestation, was forced to deal with the contingencies that created what he called "different natures" (dispares naturae) in some individuals: , When it chances that a seed from a male parent falls into the left part of the uterus, the opinion is that a male is begotten, but since it is conceived in the female part, it suffers some female characteristics [aliquid ftmineum] to hold sway in it more than its masculine splendor [decus virile]: either a beautiful figure, or exceeding whiteness or lightness of the body, or delicate limbs, or short stature, or a soft voice, or a wealc mind, or several of these characteristics. Likewise, if seed of a feminine stock flows into the right part, a female is, of course, begotten, but, since. it is conceived in the masculine part, then some characteristics of maleness [aliquid virilitatis] hold sway more than the reasoning behind sexual difference [s~us ratio] would permit: either strong limbs, or excessive height, or a ruddy complexion, or a hairy face, or an unlovely countenance, or a heavy voice, or a daring spirit, or several of these. s

As odd ~s this theory may seem to us, it helps us to understand some of

the Roman cultural anxiety about ambiguities in sexual difference. After all, ifthe only thing separating male and female was the direction in which the male seed drifted after intercourse, then the all-important dividing line between male and female, and the social privileges that followed from that dividing line, were quite tenuous indeed. The challenge to Roman cultural traditions was how to deal with the realities of these "different natures" in certain individuals and with the threat they posed to the opposition of male and female, while leaving intact the notions of sexual opposition and the social rights that followed from those notions. One method of meeting this challenge is demonstrated clearly in Roman writings concerning hermaphrodites. Hermaphrodites, individuals of a physiologically ambiguous sex, should have been an unsettling difficulty for the binaries of Roman sexual difference, yet they were not. In earlier times, the threat they posed to sexual classification had been met by exposing hermaphroditic infants to die as monsters and thus eliminating the source of the problem, but this was no longer happening in the last centuries of the empire. 9 Instead, the threat ofhermaphrodites to Roman notions of sexual difference was removed in a symbolic fashion, by disregarding their sexual ambiguity and assigning to them, however ar-

".MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

23

bitrarily, sexual categories of maleness or femaleness. The famous Christian writer of the late fourth and early :fifth century, Augustine of Hippo, explained how the problem of the sexual ambiguity of 4ermaphrodites was typically settled: .' As for An~ogynes' [androgyni], also called ~ermaphrodites [hermaphroditi], they are certainly v<;ry rare, and yet it is difficult to find periods when there are no examples of human beings possessing the characteristics of both sexes, in slich a way that it is a matter of doubt how they should be classified. However, the prevalent usage has called them masculine, assigning them to the better [melior] sex. 10

Augustine confirmed this classification even from grammatical usage, pointing to the fact that hermaphrodite and androgyne were both masculine nouns in Latin.n Augustine was correct: the later Roman cultural tradition quite straightforwardly ignored the female aspect of herrnaphrodites and subsumed them within the category of males, assigning to them a male identity and masculine status based presumably on the visibility of the male genitals. The assignment of a masculine identity to the hermaphrodite can be confirmed from discussions of hermaphroditism in Roman law. In a legal opinion that had become binding in the later empire, the early thirdcentury jurist Ulpian suggested on the subject of hermaphrodites that "each one should be ascribed to that sex which is prevalent in him [in eo] using the masculine pronoun to describe the individual. At another place, Ulpian contended that a hermaphrodite should only have the masculine right of establishing a posthumous heir "if the maleness [virilia] in him [in eo] is predominant."13 A similar argument can be found in the legal opinion ofUlpian's contemporary Paulus: "Whether a hermaphrodite can witness a will depends on his sexual development?'14 Paulus actually used the phrase "the quality of heating of the sex" (qualitas sexus incalescentis), but he meant maleness, since all medical writers considered men's blood to be warmer than women's blood. In all cases, the maleness of the hermaphrodite was sought, and rights were extended or withheld on the basis of the individual's proximity to that maleness. Pagan myths also demonstrate the assignment of a masculine identity to the hermaphrodite. Later Roman authors appropriated the earlier Greek legend of a male youth, Hermaphroditus, whose name was already an amalgamation of those of his divine parents, Hermes and Aphrodite. Hermaphroditus acquired the aspects of both sexes when he was merged with a female wood nymph who had fallen in love with him and who had asked the gods to unite her to him. He retained his masculine identity

:n2

24

CHAPTER ONE

even in their union; her feminine identity, signified by her name Salmacis, disappeared in their fusion. 15 Another example from myth and again. ail . .appropriation from eastern legend is that ofAgdistis,·a hermaphro<;iitic . companion to the Phrygian goddess Cybele. Having been b~::>rn of ~(toct< .. onto which Zeus's seed had been dropped, Agdistis was arousedrc) spill his seed under a pomegranate tree, the fruit of which was then eaten by the princess N ana, who gave birth as a result to the boy Allis .16 Although. Agdistis was a hermaphrodite, he functioned in the myth only as a male. In both myths, the sexual ambiguity of the hermaphrodites is resolved by their social and sexual actions as males. By placing value on the presence of the exterior male genitalia in the hermaphrodite, Roman law and myth assigned to "him" a masculine identity based on "his" masculine social capabilities as genitor., that is, as one capable of fathering ·children. We might conclude that the visible presence of male genitalia helped to some extent in establishing a psychological separation of the male from the female, ·what might be called a phallic economy of sexual and gender difference. The hermaphrodite is also an excellent example of the masculine as the universal or general, since it was absence - here, of developed male sex organs - which established the individual as female. This tendency to identify individuals of indett:;rminate sex as male, incidentally, might help to explain an odd poem by the fifth-century writer Ausonius about the surprise when a child thought to be male suddenly exhibited female sexual characteristics. "Everyone there wondered at the thing beheld [monstrum J:' he wrote. 17 Roman notions of sexual difference might adapt themselves to human physiological variations, identifying a particular individual as an anatomical male or female and thus doing away with the problem of physical ambiguity. Moral variations on the pattern of virtuous males and vicious females were much more clifficult to resolve, because these ambiguities threatened the whole equation of masculinity with moral excellence. Nonetheless, these ambiguities were generally resolved-not, as in the case of hermaphrodites, by creating new categories of men and extending to ambiguous individuals the privileges of men - but by creating new categories ofwomen. Roman writers consistently gave to those men who failed to live up to expectations of them as men -unmanly men -a feminine identity, and denied to them the privileges of men. The unmanly man thus became a social woman. All of the negative attributes applied to women were equally applied to men who shared the moral nature of women: they were dissolute, irrational, passive, and inferior. The term mollitiaJ moreover, used to describe the "softness" of women, was equally

"MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

25

used to refer to men who were believed to possess the moral qualities of women. Indeed, mollitia functioned as a virtual synonym for unmanlinessand molliS (soft)· for the unmanly man, alongside a host of other terms, incll:1dlng: eviratus (unmanned), eJfeminatus (effeminate), and , ,'muliebriari-us (womanly). Thewordsemivir (half-man), also used for un, manly men; carried the same semiotic equations and reveals a mindset in which certain men so described were felt to have failed to achieve full masculinity. It was not enough, however, for some writers to claim that vicious men were the social equivalent of women. As part of the equation between moral and anatomical difference, moral vice in men must leave its physiological traces. At least, Roman writers assured their readers that it did, and thus they confirmed the "truth" of the equation of masculinity and moral excellence. Better than simply to say that a man was not a true man was to be able to point it out from his anatomy. Such an opinion was plainly articulated in an anonymous late fourth-century physiognomic treatise (De physiognomia tiber), the very purpose of which was to deduce moral character from physiological traits. Uppermost in the mind of its author was how to distinguish between a manly "man of strength" (vir fortis) and his effeminate counterpart, the "timid and feeble man" (timidus et imbecillis).18 In the treatise, unmanliness presented itself in men through a host of physical characteristics from fine hair to soft feet. 19 The unmanly man could be distinguished by his throaty voice, inclined head, raised eyebrows, quick movements, and light step.20 Indeed, unmanliness could show itself in any body part-the eye, hand, breast, testicle, or foot - in which the left of the pair was larger than the right, or in which the left part of the head, nose, or lips was more prominent than that of the right. 21 Doubtless, the leftward disposition of the body recalled the drift of the male seed to the left part of the womb when the unmanly man was first conceived. The same separation of unmanly men from the rest of men also appears in a treatise on chronic diseases by the fifth-century medical writer, Caelius Aurelianus. Caelius devoted a section to "unmanly men" (molles), the purpose of which was to show how completely and pathologically "other" such men were. Unmanly men did exist, Caelius began, although their existence was difficult to comprehend since their condition was "not part of human nature." Unmanly men were not the result of human variation, he argued, but were diseased. Unmanliness was not a typical disease, however, being not so much in its manifestation a bodily infirmity as "rather the vices of a corrupted mind [corruptae mentis vitia]." The disease was chronic, he noted, although occasionally the individual's "man-

26

CHAPTER ONE

liness" (virilitas) would manifest itself temporarily despite the condition. The disease occurred at conception, his explariationbemg that it resulted_ ,when a man and woman's seeds fought with each 'o~er (pugnare) instead ' ofjoining together (unam facere). Finally, the disease was incUrahle except .' through self-contro1. 22 Ultimately, of course,.Caelius's diagnosi~ ~as tau': tological: unmanliness was the result of too little virility and not enough manly self-control. Still, we can presume that the opinions expressed by Caelius Aurelianus and in De physiognomia liber were comforting to the readers of such treatises, since both defined a diseased or deformed minority of men as unmanly, however arbitrarily, and distanced "normal" men from them. More important, both left the equation between masculinity and moral excellence more or less intact, malcing such vicious and unmanly men the exceptions to the rule. THE EXAMPLES OF THE EMPERORS

The dichotomy between manliness and unmanliness as an corollary of the distinction between virtue and vice is immediately apparent in descriptions of the Roman emperors, who provide an excellent source for cont~mporary depictions of men. The sharp contrasts between the supreme goodness of some rulers of the empire and the deep depravity of others sprang from a variety of motives, of course, including the writer's need to praise or excoriate the individual, according to particular political agendas and in keeping with established literary models. 23 These agendas and models resulted, admittedly, in shallow or cartoon depictions of these rulers, but it is this very sort of characterization that underlines the fact that the emperor was expected to set an example of ideal virtus~ glorified if he did so and denounced if he did not. The anonymous author of the Historia Augusta (Imperial History) readily admitted this didactic purpose to his biographies. 24 The Historia Augusta is a curious work, and its importance as a source in this study malces it worth a brief pause here to describe it. It was written in the late fourth or early fifth century, but under the pretense of having been written in the late third century. And while most modern scholars recognize the work to have been written by one person, the different biographies of the emperors that comprise it are ascribed to various pseudonyms. Both maneuvers were lilcely done in order to strengthen a claim to authority and legitimacy; in fact, much of the work is of doubtful historical accuracy. It may not represent the second- and third-century emperors well, or as well as a historian might want. Still, it does present an arresting view

"MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

27

of an individual of the later Roman Empire looking back at his culture's leaders and malcing moral judgments on them. Similar caveats must be made about two other collections of imperial .: biographies.frbm theiater Roman Empire, both of which are useful in .. ·this study and worth mentioning at this point. Cassius Dio wrote his Rifmaike historia (Rom~ History) in the early third century, from the vant~ge point ofa highly placed individual within the imperial government (a senator a~ Rome, then governor of several provinces, and even consul twice), and while some of his account is lost and some preserved only in Byzantine digests, his work still provides unique and valuable information, especially about his own age. 25 Aurelius Victor wrote his Liber de caesaribus (Book of the Emperors) in the middle of the fourth century, and included brief biographies of the Roman rulers that were also shaped and censored by his own perceptions. 26 One set of examples will suffice to demonstrate how centrally the categories of manliness and unmanliness figured in the depictions of the Roman rulers. Let us begin with a virtuous emperor. No monarch gained as much renown for his virtue as did the emperor Marcus Aurelius (ruled 161-180). ''At home or in war;' Aurelius Victor wrote of him, "all of his actions and all of his decisions were those of a god."2? Searching for a way to describe the mid-fifth-century Western emperor Anthemius, the poet Sidonius Apollinaris could think of nothing more flattering to say about him than that he was a second Marcus Aurelius. 28 Quite apart from the military and domestic features of Marcus Aurelius's reign, which were mostly unremarkable, his reputation was largely built on his writings about the virtuous ideal. 29 The writings of Marcus Aurelius, usually called meditations, were an amalgam mostly of maxims from Stoic and old Roman ethics written in Greek and idealizing manly virtue. Throughout the meditations, Marcus Aurelius glorified the faculty of reason as the divine spark within each man, which "should preside over a being who is virile [arren] and mature, a statesman, a Roman, and a ruler; one who has held his ground, like a soldier."30 Marcus Aurelius often used manly metaphors of authority and military power to describe reason, also a common feature of earlier Stoic thought. The dominance of reason as a type of inward rule or interior conquest necessitated a personal detachment from the mundane pleasures of life, especially from the emotions, which ~nslaved the rational self 31 The rule of reason, moreover, required a dedication to self-control: In moments of anger, let the thought always be present that loss of temper is no sign of manliness [andrikon], but that there is more virility [ar-

28

CHAPTER ONE

renikoteron], as well as more natural humanity, in one who shows himself gentle and peaceable; he it is who gives proof"of strength and nerve and, ' manliness [andreia], not his angry and disconterite~ fellow. Anger 'is .as : much a mark of wealcness as is grief; in both ofthem men'receiye a wo~d, and submit to a defeat. 32 . '.'

Hidden in this analysis of rationality as manliness was the misogynistic parallel that the feminine represented irrationality, emotionality, lack of self-control. Other writers, like Ammianus Marcellinus, brought this correlative idea to the fore: Anger is defined by philosophers as a long-standing and sometimes incurable mental ulcer, usually arising from wealcness [mollitia] of intellect. In support of this they argue with some plausibility that this tendency occurs more in invalids than in the healthy, more in women than in men, more in the old than in the young, more in those in trouble than in the prosperous. 33

Anger was a typical target of the Stoics, since it demonstrated the temptation to succumb to one's emotions and thus to abandon the supreme virtue, passionlessness (apatheia).34 Ammianus's remark that women tended more to anger than did men only underscored his adherence to a gendersd notion of virtue and was a necessary complement to the school of ideas' of Marcus Aurelius. Descriptions of unmanly rulers made perhaps the more colorful entries in the imperial biographies, but served an equally didactic function. Here, none serves as a better example than Marcus Aurelius's own son and successor, Commodus (ruled 177-192). Aurelius Victor wrote of his reputation for cruelty. 35 The Historia Augusta went much further, detailing his depraved personality with a certain fascination: "from his earliest boyhood he was base [tU1pis], shameless [improbus], cruel [crudelis], lecherous [libidinosus]."36 Examples were given of his shameful sexual lifestyle: Commodus began a life of orgiastic abandonment in the palace, amid banquets and baths: he had three hundred concubines, whom he assembled together for the beauty of their person, recruiting both married women and whores, together with youths of ripe age [puberes exoleti], also three hundred in number, whom he had collected, with beauty as the criterion [forma disceptatrice], equally from the commons and the nobility, by force and by payment. 37

Commodus's lack of self-restraint in sexual liaisons was merely a symptom of a greater unmanliness. The reference to ''youths of ripe age" carried with it an implication that the emperor was the sexually receptive

"MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

29

partner to them, an implication that the author of the Historia Au. gusta stated outright: Commodus was "both orally polluted and anally . dcfiled."38 The imp~rial biogr:aphers were completely at a loss as to how such an . ,. ignoble son sprang from such a virtuous father; how, in the words of Cassius Dio, '~a 'kingdom of gold" had become' "one of iron and rust."39 The author of the Historia Augusta repeated a rumor that COnUnodus's unruly behavior was ,the consequence of the adulterous affairs of his mother Faustina with "both sailors and gladiators;'4o even though this explanation somewhat compromised his ideal image of Marcus Aurelius, implying that he had been a cuckolded husband. The imperial biographer did not dare imply that Commodus had been illegitimate and not the true heir to the empire. Instead, he offered the possibility, attributing it coyly to ''vulgar opinion;' that Faustina had douched herself with the blood of a recently killed gladiator before the sexual act that had conceived Commodus. 41 This explanation again attempted to link the moral and the physical, here an irregularity of conception with Commodus's disreputable character. The misogynistic underpinnings of this explanation are obvious, since the adulteries and lustfulness of Commodus's mother, that is, her "natural'~ feminine moral weakness, formed the cause of his own "unnatural" effeminate and debauched behavior. We are reminded in this way that the stigma of effeminacy drew its strength from the oppression and hatred of women in Roman culture. If vice was somehow more excusable in women, more understandable, it was nonetheless condemned. Such misogyny, moreover, only supported the practical side to the moral division of human nature between masculine goodness and feminine wickedness. THE SOCIAL UTILITY OF UNMANLINESS

The separation of unmanly and vicious men from the rest of men was more than a theoretical principle. The separation helped to sustain the linlc between- masculinity and moral excellence. In this way, the social privileges of the Roman male and men~s domination of Roman society could be upheld even when its logical basis was challenged. If vicious men were not truly men, then other men could continue to assert that all men were virtuous. The practical effects of such a theoretical framework can best be seen through the legal separation of those men whose unmanly behavior or physiology brought their masculinity into question. These men could be legally separated from the rest of men and deprived of masculine rights

30

CHAPTER ONE

by means of the legal concept of infamia (infamy, ignominy), a term that provided a juridical parallel to broader cultural defininons ofunmanli'ness. Infamia could be used to describe the reputation of a man ~ty a wide range of shameful and unlawful activities from 'theft to iinproper' marriages, but was most often associated with unmanliness. For example, men who were dishonorably discharged from the army. for cowardice could be declared infamis (infamous) or famosus (notorious), that is,' guilty of infamia. 42 Infamia represented in many ways, therefore, the legal equivalent of the social category of mollitia. 43 The appellation of infamy brought with it a score of civil disadvantages. Men who were infames were forbidden to act as assessors, to present themselves as witnesses in legal trials, or even to bring accusations against others except in cflSes of treason. 44 The legal incapacities of infamous men only highlighted their unmanliness, because many of these same restrictions were imposed upon women. Both women and infamous men were forbidden to malce application to the magistrate and thus to register a public complaint against another person for civil redress. Both were prohibited from witnessing a will. Both were also forbidden to become attorneys or to plead in court on behalf of another person. 45 Infamous men were thus reduced in fundamental ways to the legal equivalent of women. 46 The restrictions placed on these men, lilce those placed on women, served to emphasize how unlike true men they were, since the privileges of men were talcen from them. Ultimately, men's moral depravity challenged the accepted connection between gender and the exercise of power; in the face of this challenge, the social utility of unmanliness becomes clear. As long as human beings could be separated into two moral camps, the political divide between them could continue unchallenged. Men could be separated into the privileged and the unprivileged, those with rights and authority on one side of the divide, and those without, on the other. This division of privilege was the larger social purpose behind the morbid classifications of medical and physiognomic writers and the oversimplified portraits of the imperial biographers and historians. To distinguish between the manly and the unmanly was to delineate clearly the boundaries of power through gendered identity. The feminization of some men, it should be noted, had its cultural equivalent and parallel strategy in the masculinization of especially virtuous women. Women were frequently described as manly if they showed some virtue greater than that expected of them: courage, equanimity, or sexual modesty.47 The stereotype of the aggressive virago (manly woman) was part of this masculinized image of women, as were the myths of the

of '

".MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

31

Amazons and the Roman cult of Bellona, the goddess ofwar. 48 Through such a strategy,. virtuous .qualities could be praised in women while . leaving the intellectual, equation of virtue and masculinity. intact. 49 Even , : : while'Roman writers. allowed the possibility of women's virtue, more. 'over, they consistently discounted such virtue as "unnatural" and emphasized its oddity and unexpectedness. Much more could be said about the relationship between women and virtus in traditional Roman society, but such a detailed discussion falls outside of this present study. The double meaning of virtus as both masculinity and excellence created a vicious circle. The attribution of "natural" moral characteristics to anatomical differences established clear boundaries between men and women. In turn, the equation of sexual and moral differences provided ideological support for the male dominance that had created these categories in the first place. The theoretical differences between men and women could be supplemented with practical differences, and the practical differences could then be justified by the'theoretical differences. In turn, both supported the notion that men and women were each other's opposites, with complementary natures and complementary roles in society. Sexual differences were not superficial, the implication was, but outward representations of a natural dichotomy in ~human nature. Such delineations are typical of male-dominated and misogynistic cultures, as feminist theorists have demonstrated. Positive values are translated into a masculine framework, and negative values, into a feminine one. The notion of virtus thus formed the core of the Roman gender system. THE AMBIGUITY OF EUNUCHS

Roman cultural notions of masculine identity were also greatly upset by the presence of eunuchs in the Latin West in the later Roman Empire. The sexual ambiguity that was a possibility for any man was particularly visible in the eunuch, who existed in many ways as a constant reminder of the tentative nature of sexual difference and thus of masculine privilege. Remarks about eunuchs demonstrate the uneasiness that even Romans felt about the equation of masculinity, virtue, and social privilege. Eunuchs occasioned unease in part because their gender ambiguity was far less easy to ignore than that of other physiologically ambiguous persons. If hermaphrodites could be assigned a male identity based on the presence and presumed function of male genitals, eunuchs could not be arbitrarily assigned a traditional gender in the same way. Their sterility meant that they could neither father children nor function as males. And the eunuch had suffered the excision, at least in part, of the external

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CHAPTER ONE

genitalia that marked maleness. (I will say mote on the medical proc~­ dures of castration below.) For the time being, it is oi:lly important to· .mention that as a result of their castration~. eunuchs were pe.rp·et:ua:ily . "other:' a status reinforced by odd rumors like the one repeated by:Cas-... sius Dio: toxic vapors from a hole in the ground in Asia killed all living things except eunuchs. 50 . . The amputation of the genitals of the eunuch also questioned the fixed· nature of sexual identity in an unsettling way. Unlike other persons of ambiguous sex, who could be determined to have always been one sex or the other, eunuchs might be considered to have changed their sexual identity at the moment of castration. Medical texts of the later empire referred to how castration led to a loss of "virility [andreia J, which is to say, masculinity [arrenotes]?'51 Castration meant "laying violent hands as it were upon nature and wresting her from her ordained course:' in the words of Ammianus Marcellinus. 52 If it were possible, however, to alter one's sexual identity by means of a surgical maneuver, then the masculinefeminine dichotomy that formed so much of the backbone of Roman culture was tenuous indeed. The eunuch was therefore a daily challenge to Roman notions of the natural categories of gender. 53 The long tradition of animosity toward the practice of castration in Roman society is certainly linked to the uneasy questions raised by the gender of the eunuch. Castration was outlawed within the Roman Empire, and there were many civil penalties against anyone who castrated another. Roman law by the third century is very clear on this point. The jurist Paulus considered the castration of any man against his will as deserving of capital punishment. 54 The jurist Marcian felt that forced castration could be prosecuted under the laws against assault. 55 The jurist Ulpian believed the law against assault to apply not only to the doctor performing the operation but also to men who castrated themselves or who were voluntarily castrated. 56 Again, as with all of the opinions of the jurists, these opinions became increasingly authoritative in the later empire, until by the fifth century they had acquired the force oflaw. 57 Many emperors were also recorded as forbidding castration within the empire. 58 That eunuchs existed throughout the later Roman Empire is beyond dispute, and not all of them were individuals imported from outside the empire; among other things, this fact demonstrates how laws often could be ignored with impunity. Roman law is much more vague on the question of what to do with eunuchs following their castration. This was a reasonable concern on some level, since so many of the rights oflaw accrued only to adult males; the sexual ambiguity of eunuchs further confused issues of masculine

"MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

33

privilege. The crux of the issue was whether eunuchs could assume the le. . gal status of "whole" adult males in such questions as the end of the age of minority, the privilege of writing wills, including testatory bequests to· . : : posthUmous heirs, the right to adopt children, and the capacity to act as . : 'legal guardians to women and minors. Lilcewise, since all other adults before the year' 320 were r~quired by law to marry and have children or face punitive fines, the law cOlisidered whether eunuchs had this ·same obligation. 59 So the sexual ambiguity of eunuchs had practical as well as theoretical considerations. The phallic economy of the Roman gender system, as it was applied to hermaphrodites, might lead us to expect that eunuchs would not be treated as "whole" males. It is true that eunuchs were denied certain masculine rights; nonetheless, they retained other masculine rights, and on any given question, legal opinion might change. In short, they had a confused legal status, and this both reflected and encouraged their ambiguous nature. At least some of the confusion regarding eunuchs in Roman law sprang from the confusion about the exact nature ofcastration. Ulpian attempted to clarify what types of castrations existed. "The name of eunuch is a general one;' he wrote; "under it come those who are eunuchs by nature, those who are made eunuchs [thlibiae thlasiae], and any other kind of eunuchs [aliud genus spadonum]:'60 The Greek-borrowed words inserted into Ulpian's Latin text help us to understand the meaning of his distinctions, because they were derived from the different methods for castration. Spado was a borrowed word in Latin, derived from the Greek verb spen (to tear or rend), and referred to eunuchs whose penises or entire genitalia had been surgically removed. Thlibia was from the Greek thlibein (to press hard or confine), and derived from the practice of tying up the scrotum tightly to sever the vas deferens, a procedure much less dangerous than amputation. Lilcewise, thlasia was from the Greek thlan (to crush), which was another typical way to castrate, disabling the testicles more effectively and more immediately than tying off the scrotum. The latter two procedures would sterilize the individual but leave the appearance of his genitals mostly indistinguishable from those of other males. Ulpian differentiates all of these types of eunuchs from the "eunuchs by nature" (natura spadones) who were probably males born with undeveloped sex organs or whose sex organs did not develop at puberty. Such men were usually grouped together with castrated men. Other authors were not so precise in their terminology, but these three basic procedures for castration-amputating the penis (with or without the testicles), tying up the scrotum, and crushing the testicles - were all attested in late antiquity. 61

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CHAPTER ONE

The various methods of castration .are precisely the source of the anxiety surrounding eunuchs in late antiquity. Some eunuchs - those at least . castrated as prepubescents-were apparently easlly.distinguish
"MASCULINE SPLENDOR"

35

Christian writer John Cassian mentioned eunuchs having erections, but he attributed the erections to the buildup of urine during sleep. Yet he admitted that castrated men might still have sexual feelings. 65 Many felt that eunuchs ·still had 'sexual desires. The third-century Christian writer ". "Tertullian, for ex:ample, doubted that there occurred "any bridling of passion in castration.:'66 and Ausonius declared that "men emasculate, when vain desire attacks them~ exhaust themselves without fruition, mocked by pleasure unachieved."67 Iffrustrated in their masculine desire for penetration' however, eunuchs were obliged to satisfy these desires in other, sexually passive ways, either through oral or manual sex or by being penetrated anally. These possibilities will be further explored below in chapter 3. Here it is important to note only that the sexuality of eunuchs heightened their gender ambiguity. In moral terms, eunuchs also maintained their ambiguous gender status. Later Roman writers typically portrayed them as the equivalent of women, and the stereotypes of their character are virtually the same as those of women: carnal, irrational, voluptuous, fickle, manipulative, and deceitful. 68 These are the vices also of the unmanly, and eunuchs are often referred to as moUes) effeminati) semiviri) the whole host of terms used for unmanly men. Indeed, eunuchs were so much associated with vice that when Ammianus Marcellinus found one (Eutherius, the eunuch grand chamberlain under Julian) who exhibited a manly type of virtue, he felt compelled to offer a lengthy excuse for his praise of him: o

Turning over the copious records of the past, I have not. found any eunuch with whom I could compare him. There were some in old times who were loyal and honest, though very few, but their characters were spotted in other ways. Mixed with the acquired or natural good qualities which any of them possessed was rapacity, or contemptibly brutal manners, or a propensity to inflict harm, or excessive obsequiousness to the great, or the haughtiness which arises from the possession of power. 69

EUnuchs were unmanly both in a moral and anatomical sense. A physiognomic text assured its readers that eunuchs were always eager for evil deeds. 70 The ambiguous status of eunuchs also refl.ected and contributed to the social role they played in later Roman society. They could associate with women and participate in feminine activities even in the most intimate of domestic surroundings, but they also traveled freely among men and in public and held offices and wielded authority reserved to men. Ostracized from true membership in, both masculine and feminine genders, they were, nonetheless, somewhat tolerated in both male and female environ-

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CHAPTER ONE

ments. More of the importance of thi~ ambiguous social role will be ana.... lyzed in the following chapters. Writers of the later empire devised a whole new language.fqr "them-:: termediate gender status of the eunuch. According to the author the' Historia Augusta) the Roman emperor Severus Alexander (rUled 222~ 235) is said to have referred to eunuchs as a "third sex" or·"third type of human being" (tertiumgenus hominum).71 Julian called Eusebius, the eu-' nuch advisor to his predecessor, an androgyne (androgynos).72 The poet Claudius Mamertinus elegandy described eunuchs as "exiles from the society of the human race, belonging neither to one sex nor the other?'73 More rancorously, the poet Claudian called the eunuch Eutropius, a consul under Arcadius (ruled 395-408)~ "you whom the male sex has discarded and the female will not adopt?'74 It is this ambiguous quility of the eunuchs that malces them such a useful means of studying men of the later Roman Empire. The presence of eunuchs constantly tested the division between men and women, between the manly and the unmanly, and continually revealed that division as an arbitrary and constructed one. Indeed, discussions of eunuchs by later Roman writers highlighted exacdy the sites of the greatest tensions and disruptions of masculine identity in later Roman society. These are the areas we will be examining in the chapters that follow: men's public life in the military and political realm, and men's private life in the domestic and sexual realm. In each area, the eunuch was a symbol of Everyman: not Everyman as he might have wished he were, but Everyman as determined by the contingencies of later Roman life. Eunuchs demonstrated the extent to which the old meanings and old realities that had shaped Roman life in former times had given way to new meanings and new realities in late antiquity. By the very fact of their gender ambiguity, eunuchs symbolized the instabilities of the later Roman gender system and the means by which men accommodated themselves to these new meanings and new realities. Eunuchs reflected the tensions that affected all late ancient men.

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CHAPTER TWO

liMEN RECEIVE A WOUND, AND SUBMIT TO A DEFEAT" Masculinity) Militarism) and Political Authority

Roman men of the upper classes had always prided themselves above all on their military and political accomplishments. In their estimation, their martial conquests and public institutions had made the empire great. In the later Roman Empire, however, these conquests and institutions were at risk. Changing circumstances brought new peoFles and new groups to the fore: barbarian mercenaries to defend the empire against barbarian marauders and servile outsiders to staff the growing bureaucracy of the imperial regime. These changes had far-reaching consequences not only for the Roman people as a whole but also for Roman men as individuals. This infusion of outsiders affected the very idea of what it meant to be a man among the elite classes of Roman society. The violent raids of the barbarians threatened both Roman men as holders of lands and wealth and the notion of the individual Roman man as an invincible soldier. The growing autocracy of the emperors and their reliance on new allies for the governance of the empire challenged both the hold on political power by the men of the upper classes of Rome and the individual Roman's sense of the importance of his participation in public life. The presence of eunuchs in both the political and military life of the later empire only highlighted the declining male identity of Roman aristocrats. MILITARISM AND MANLINESS

Roman men consistently pictured themselves as soldiers, and military metaphors formed an essential element of traditional Roman masculinity. The courage and hardiness of the soldier were much admired, as were 37

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the discipline under which he lived and the camaraderie that he enjoyed. Indeed, vita militaris (the soldier's life) functioned as shorthand for the . manly life. But this manly ideal became increasingly difficult tosustain:in . the troublesome military circumstances of the later empire .. Romaliwii.t~ . ers struggled to come to terms with these cir.cumstances and th~tr effeCt~ on men's military identity. There were two elements to this military metaphor. First, writers made repeated references to the successful military history of the Roman people and to their collective military identity. Vegetius, author of a military treatise dating from some point in the later empire, wrote that there existed "no other explanation of the conquest of the world by the Roman People than their ... military.expertise."l References to past glories served not only as lessons in history but also as reminders of the need to remain strong militarily. The poet Pacatus in a speech honoring the emperor Julian compared the importance ofhis wars with that ofthe battle ofActium, which had been instrumental in the foundation of the empire. 2 Such comparisons' even if overblown, also acted as a guarantee ofthe future military promise ofthe Roman people. Claudian's advice to the emperor Honorius (ruled 395-423) was to "read of deeds you may soon rival" and to "study the lives of the heroes of old to accustom yourself for wars that are to be."3 Seco1).d, the "soldier's life" served as a marker of identity for individual Roman'men and a constant means by which men were measured. The soldier's life was a life of frugal discipline and easy comradeship. Such a life was considered even more necessary in the imperial period as the wealth of the Mediterranean flowed toward Rome and as growing political power heightened the stalces of intrigue. Here, as elsewhere, the emperors served as the male exemplar. The description ofPescennius Niger (ruled 193-194), for instance, from the HistoriaAugustaJ probablyexisted more as a mental image than as reality. Still, it is typical of the image of the soldier's life: On all his campaigns he took his meals in front of his tent and in the presence of all his men, and he ate the soldiers' own fare, too; nor did he ever seek shelter against sun or against rain if a soldier was without it. In time of war he assigned to himself and to his slaves or aides as heavy burdens as were borne by the soldiers themselves. . . . He took an oath, besides, in the presence of an assembly, that as long as he had conducted campaigns and as long as he expected to conduct them, he had not in the past and would not in the future act otherwise than as a simple soldier-having before his eyes Marius [the victor during the Jugurthan War] and other commanders as he. He never told anecdotes about anyone save Hannibal and others such as he. 4

"MEN RECEIVE A WOUND, AND SUBMIT TO A DEFEAT"

39

Such behavior was praiseworthy not only in the camps of war. Severns Alexander, the man who defeated Pescennius in battle and who later became emperor himself, is supposed to have remarked that "it is a pity that 'we cannot p.rutate military discipline of this man whom we have overcome in war?'S Indeed, all later Roman emperors wore the tide of soldier 'as a badge of honor and often referred 'to themselves as the "fellowsoldiers" (commilitiones) of their troopS.6 ' Despite the dominance of this military ethic, however, there is little evidence for overwhelming numbers of Romans, especially ethnic Romans and men of the upper classes, in the armies of the later empire. Troops were instead largely composed of non-Romans (while conscription of all able-bodied men still existed in principle, men with money could pay the government to find replacements for them). In the third century, these were men mosdy from the various North Mrican, Asian, and Ballcan ethnic groups within the empire; by the fourth century, Germans who had settled within the borders of the empire formed the backbone of the Roman army. 7 The old Roman nobility refused to participate in their own army not because of widespread antimilitarism, although such a sentiment did exist. 8 It was due rather to what has been called "a process of demilitarization" among the elite classes of Rome eroding the enthusiasm for participation in war. 9 The poet Claudius Mamertinus offered the opinion that "military service was rejected by the nobility as a squalid occupation, unfitting for a free man."lO The refusal of Roman men to fight in the wars they believed had made their people great could not help but have serious consequences for men's identity. For men who did belong to the army, military service offered a road to political success often traveled in the later empire. Emperors were frequendy chosen from the upper ranks of the army to fill the vacant throneY Alternately, military commanders wishing to be emperors simply created their own opportunities for advancement. Legions in virtually all parts of the empire attempted to elevate their commanders to the position of emperor at some point in the third, fourth, or fifth centuries, with varying degrees of success. The armies raised and decimated by these usurpations or attempted usurpations contributed in large part to the military disasters of the empire and certainly to the social and political chaos of the period. Equally fatal to the well-being of the empire and its citizens was the presence of foreign populations ready to talce advantage of this political wealmess. Subject peoples within the empire regularly rose in revolt in the third, fourth, and early fifth centuries. From beyond the empire came the Germans, already entering the empire to join its army as au.waries

m,e

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CHAPTER TWO

and to settle within its borders, and.who crossed over the Rhine and Danube in larger and larger numbers and penetrated ev~r further into the· ·heart of the empire. The best the imperial government could .d6:with.... such groups was to accept the fait accompli of their arrival arid offer. them. . rights of settlement and political autonomy within the empire."I 2 .Groups of slaves also took advantage of the general chaos and escaped to join the foreign troops as they made their way across the provinces or formed· their own guerilla bands. 13 The situation grew more critical over the course of the later empire . .As a result of these military and popular insurrections, fueled as they were by the "process of demilitarizati~n;' men of the later Roman landowning classes were more likely to be the victims of military aggression than its perpetrators. Paulinus of Pella, in his fifth-century autobiographical poem, recorded the devastations caused by the Goths in Bordeaux. "When the Gothic king, Ataulf, commanded his men to leave our city they treated us as though we had been conquered by burning the entire city;' he wrote. "They took from me everything I owned and looted my mother's house as well but they left us grateful that we escaped without injury to ourselves.''l4 Paulinus's reaction to the violence was notably to flee. Flight did not end Paulinus's sufferings, however, as he also recorded: When we were driven off and our ancient house burned, we fled to Vasatis, a neighboring city, which had been the home of my ancestors. There too the enemy came and again laid siege to us. Our danger there was increased when the slaves rebelled in a conspiracy encouraged by a few and abandoned all care for their obligations and armed themselves for the slaughter of their masters. IS

Paulinus escaped from this catastrophe, but again by flight. Throughout the crisis, Paulinus made no attempt to defend himself and his family with arms. Instead, he sought an audience with the Gothic Icing to plead for protection, a typical response to a common problem. 16 The military disasters were thus not only a problem for the empire as a whole but for every free man in the empire. The Roman cultural emphasis on militarism in masculine identity demanded some type of collective response by men. Already in the third century, Cassius Dio interpreted the military crisis of the empire as a crisis of the manliness of Roman men. Cassius projected his worries about Roman men onto the historical figure of the British rebel-queen, Boudicca, and had her denounce the Romans ruled by Nero as

"MEN RECEIVE A WOUND, AND SUBMIT TO A DEFEAT"

41

men insolent, unjust, insatiable, impious, - if, indeed, we ought to term . those people men who bathe in warm water, eat artificial dainties, drink unmixed wine, anoint themselves with myrrh, sleep on soft couches with boys for qedfellows,.- boys past their prime at that [malthakoi ... meta . meirakia],....:... and are slaves to a lyre-player and a poor one tooY

Cassius's indictment was dear: the love ofluxury had provoked the crisis by diverting Roman men from the vita militaris into effeminate enjoyment of wealth. Cassius even placed his denunciation in the mouth of a barbarian woman, whose courage and wisdom shows her to be manlier than her Roman enemies. The speech was as much a comment on contemporary politics as it was a historical depiction, since Rome was ruled in Cassius's day by the emperor Elagabalus, excoriated like Nero for his effeminacy, as we will see below. Again, the reference to "boys past their prime" implies that the Roman men are so unmanly as to be the (passive) sexual partners of other adult men, as we will also see in the next chapter. Not every Roman author was so critical. Vegetius, for example, offered an explanation for the military decline of Rome that tried to circumvent the implicit critique of Roman manliness. The neglect ofmilitary skill among men, he suggested, was because a "sense of security born oflong peace has diverted men partly to the enjoyment of private leisure, partly to civilian careers;'18 The empire had hardly enjoyed "long peace" in late antiquity, and so his response must be seen as more of a denial than a serious attempt at explanation. Still, Roman writerS of the later empire typically only reiterated the masculine military ethic and what was becoming more and more a charade of Roman might in war. More often than not, they simply denied the realities of the political status of the empire and repeated the maxim of the ancients on war: men who avoided things military were "betrayers of liberty" (proditores libertatis) even while they themselves refused military service as demeaning. 19 The denial of the military crisis can best be seen in the panegyrics of the later Roman Empire. The whole purpose of these poetic orations was to praise the emperors as manly heroes. Men often delivered these panegyrics in gratitude for appointments to high public offices, and they can perhaps be excused for their flattery. Their orations followed standard literary themes, including the praise of the parentage of the subject of the poem, his upbringing, and his virtues. Chief among the panegyrists' themes was, without fail, the prowess in war exhibited by the man being praised. (Indeed, it has been suggested that the emphasis on the martial accomplishments of the panegyrists' subjects may have been the most po-

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litically expedient in an age of usurpers and military coups, when the emperor's parentage and upbringing may not have been overly distin~ guished and was best avoided by the panegyrist?O)" " Panegyrics of the later empire demonstrate thefacade~"of coritinli~"d Roman military strength. A panegyric to Julian praised rum "at great' length for his vita militaris.21 A panegyric to Honorius, given" when he was only a youth, dwelt also at length on the military upbringing of the emperor, his eagerness for war, and his manly appearance in armor, even managing to compare him with the god Mars, all necessarily without congratulating him for actual participation in war. 22 The last, most ineffectual emperors of the mid-fifth-century West were accorded some of the most elaborate and laudatory panegyrics. In one, the female personification of Rome bemoans her recent military disasters in the presence of Jupiter, who assures her "that he will send her the emperor Avitus (ruled 455-456) for her rescue. 23 In another, the goddess Rome receives the tribute of other personified peoples because ofh~r new lofty stature underMajorian (ruled 457-461), a warrior since childhood.24 In a third, the numerous gods and goddesses of the pagan pantheon vow to send a savior in the person of the new emperor Anthemius (ruled 467-472) to the personified empire to deliver her from her military troubles. 25 Fifthcentury panegyrics attest both to the heights of unrealistic flattery to which poets were willing to climb in their praise of imperial virtues and to their willingness to deny the realities of the military state of affairs in the empire. The emphasis among men on the honor and dignity of the vita militaris also required the utter disregard for contemporary accounts about how war was actually conducted. The same writers who demonstrated great admiration for the soldier's life repeatedly condemned armies for debauchery and lack of discipline. Ammianus Marcellinus, describing the wintering of Julian's army at Antioch, noted critically the intemperate habits of the troops, who were gorged with meat and demoralized by a craving for drink, so that almost every day some of them were carried through the streets to their quarters on the shoulders of passersby after debauches in the temples which called for punishment rather than indulgence. Conspicuous in this respect were the [legions known as the] Petulantes and the Celts, whose indiscipline at this time passed all bounds. 26

According to the HistoriaAugusta., the future emperor Severns Alexander complained that his soldiers stationed in Gaul "go straggling on all sides; the tribunes bathe in the middle of the day; they have cook-shops for

"]YIEN RECEIVE A WOUND, AND SUBMIT TO A DEFEAT"

43

mess-halls and, instead of barracks, brothels; they dance, they drinle, they sing, and they regard as the proper limit to a banquet unlimited drinleing:'P Emperors occasionally crucified soldiers to discourage theft from . the local populace and had hands cut off recaptured deserters, suggesting "that both offences ·weI;e commonplace occurrences needing severe punishments as disincentives. 28 .Praise of the soldier's life also necessitated ignoring the high rates of desertion in the later Roman army. Some desertion must only have been expected: the continually sinlcing defense against the barbarian invaders must have disheartened even the bravest of the imperial troops. Before a decisive battle in Britain in 368, the,general Theodosius invited all soldiers who had fled because of the ferocity of the barbarians to return with impunity. Many were said to have accepted this offer, which suggests that many had previously deserted. 29 Later Roman emperors were much harsher to deserters, but the situation had by then deteriorated significantly. Almost a century later, for example, 'Valentinian III (ruled 425455) issued fines against anyone who hid an army deserter or who obstructed inquiries into desertion. 3o Military deserters could be punished in a variety of ways, including "reprimand, money fine, imposition of duties, change of branch of the service, reduction in military ranle, dishonorable discharge:' or even death. 31 Men temporarily absent without leave were treated more leniently than were deserters ifthey returned voluntarily and if it could be determined that they had left for understandable reasons: this leniency may indicate that such unofficial leaves were a regular occurrence. 32 The problem of desertion may help to explain the increasing reliance of the Roman army on German mercenary troops, one of the key factors in the eventual collapse of the western Roman government. In turn, the large numbers of Germans serving for pay in the Roman army and without real loyalty to the empire may help to explain the increasing problem of soldiers who fled before battles or defected to the enemy during campaigns. 33 Apparent lack of sustained financial support for soldiers may also explain the frequent defections of mercenary troops. Valentinian III, for example, imposed a new tax to help pay for military supplies so that the troops would not have to continue to engage in trading, "which is unworthy and shameful [indigna et pudenda] for an armed man:' but without which "they can scarcely be vindicated from the peril of hunger or from the destruction of cold:'34 (On this score, the barbarian commander Stilicho was praised for remembering to pay his soldiers in times of peace as well as in times of war 35 ). Lack of supplies and pay similarly resulted in a mutiny of troops in Gaul in 354, a dangerous situation that

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was ended only when the leaders of the rebellion were bribed. 36 The numbers of deserters may also have been augmented by the· numerQus , civil wars of the period. When the usurper MaXimin lost his throne to ' Licinius (ruled 308-324), it.was said of his army that'''halflay ,d~a~, th~· other half either surrendered or took to flight."37 Lactantius, 'describii1g the last scene, added that "any shame at deserting their e~peror had beeh removed by his deserting them."38 The problem of unmanliness was never far from the minds of men, especially in describing desertion from the army and flight from battle. Julian dismissed the fleeing army of the usurper Magnentius, despite their manliness [andreia] in war, as simply "reap[ing] the fruits of his cowardice."39 For those men frightened enough to attempt suicide rather than fight in battle, the law proscribed death. 40 Even Vegetius was forced to admit in his military treatise that "few men are born naturally brave; hard work and good training malce them SO."41 Given the Roman preoccupation with distinguishing the manly from the unmanly, it is perhaps not surprising that Vegetius felt compelled to add that while it was "a natural reaction in the minds of nearly all men to be fearful as they go to do battle with the enemy;' it was also true that "those whose minds are panicked by [the enemy's] actual appearance are without doubt the wealcer sort [injirrniores]."42 In the same spirit, later Roman law decreed that "whoever was first to flee from the line of battle must suffer capital punishment with his fellow soldiers looking on, by way of example."43 Legislating manliness in war was one method of dealing with cowardice and desertion, especially in a period in which many men were not willing to participate in war (and the harsh punishments accorded deserters in battle by legislators who were themselves unwilling to fight carries a certain irony). The stigma attached to desertion or cowardice in battle also made itselffelt in the legislative attitude toward prisoners ofwar. Prisoners ofwar indicated by their very survival that they had preferred capture to death in battle, and the law was harsh to such men. Jurists suggested that. "in every branch of the law, a person who fails to return from enemy hands is regarded as having died at the moment when he was captured."44 The penalties enacted against prisoners of war reinforced their legal nonexistence: their wills were no longer valid, and their citizenship was put in jeopardy. While prisoners of war could be recovered through the negotiated exchange of property captured in war (postliminium), the same was likely felt about the return of men as the return of weaponry: "they are received with disgrace."45

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45

MILITARISM AND ESCAPISM

Yet somehow, despit~ the disasters of the later Roman wars and the demilitarjzatiori of the Roman people, the idea of martial manliness and of the "soldier's life" <:oncinued to hold sway. The power of military metaphors· to express ¢.e cultural aspirati6ns of Roman m':lsculinity, even in the last centuries of the Western Empire, may be seen in the rapid spread of the religion ofMithra. Mithra was a Persian god whose worship first appeared in the Mediterranean sometime in the second century C.E. The cult of Mithra especially attracted soldiers in the Roman army, and they likely brought it west with them as they were transferred from one location to another along the borders of the empire. Mithraism was not confined to soldiers, however, and there is evidence for its popularity among the upper classes ofRome, at least from the end ofthe second century and the reign of Commodus, the first emperor known to have patronized the religion. The emperor Julian was also a devotee and may have sponsored a revival of the cult in the fourth century. In that century, it has been estimated there were more than one hundred temples and shrines to the god in the city of Rome alone, which implies that Mithra's appeal extended well beyond just soldiers.46 Part of the appeal provided by the worship of Mithra lay in its militaristic symbols and vocabulary. The genesis legend of the god himself involved a primordial battle against the forces of evil, signified by Mithra's salvific slaying of a cosmic bull, a slaying reenacted by believers in a rite known as the taurobolium. 47 Followers considered themselves part of a ''holy army" (sanaa militia) with the god as their "commander" (dux). The grade of "soldier" (miles) was one of the seven stages of initiation and may have involved military-type tests of endurance and strength; the very idea of ranks ofmembership formed a parallel with the army. Finally, the complete exclusion of women from the cult of Mithra contributed to this military appearance of the religion and emphasized its masculine character. Through Mithraism, one might suggest, religious devotion could continue to provide a mask of militarism for Roman participants. The martial power of the divinity could be seen as reinforcing the strength of his followers in their daily lives on Earth -lives that may not otherwise have seemed powerful at all. 48 In this way, the aura of a militaristic religion supplanted the cultural void left by the declining military effectiveness of the empire. Men of the later Roman Empire also satisfied their desire for military exploits vicariously through their leisure activities, as spectators of martial violence in the gladiatorial contests, wrestling matches, and various

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arena games. 49 Roman writers frequently connected the images of soldier and gladiator, linking the two in the ancient mind. 50 The Rom'an nobility was notoriously addicted to violent sports, gathering in arenas and phitheaters built in most large Roman cities to watch them'
am-:

there was another exhibition that was at once most disgraceful and most shocking, when men and women not only of the equestrian but even of the senatorial order appeared as performers in the orchestra, in the Circus, and in the hunting-theatre, like those who are held in lowest esteem. Some of them played the flute and danced in pantomimes or acted in tragedies and comedies or sang to the lyre; they drove horses, killed wild beasts and fought as gladiators, some willingly and some against their will. 56

Severus Alexander was supposed to have believed that "actors and wildbeast hunters and chariot-drivers should be treated as if they were our slaves" and not with the false honor of celebrity. 57 The inferior social sta-

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47

tus of the participants in the gan~es worked to undermine their manliness. (Such evidence also suggests that the mixture of disdain and admiration for soldiering by men of the upper classes might have been similarly motivated by.cIass differences.) . Yet another aspect of the Roman response to the military crisis is visible in the frequent lit~rary contrasts betWeen the suppos~d manliness of the Romans, as demonstrated by their martial prowess, and the effeminate practices of the cultures and peoples of the East. This was an old theme in Latin literature, based in large part on the successful historical conquest of those peoples by Rome. The view of the eastern Mediterranean peoples as effeminate may also be found in abundance in the writings oflater Roman authors. Included in the critique of these peoples was a host of negative charges: how their greater wealth, as demonstrated by the richness of their clothing-their use of colored silks, purple dyes, and precious metals and gems - gave them a love of luxury that was unbecoming and quite the opposite of the Romans' own vita militaris.58 In a period when Roman writers were themselves questioning the manliness of Roman men, however, this projection of effeminacy onto Eastern peoples took an ironic turn. In many sources, the terms for Easterner and effeminacy were virtually synonymous. Herodes, son of rebel Palmyran Queen Zenobia, was the "most delicate of men, utterly Oriental and of Grecian luxury."59 Because of the association of effeminacy with the men of the Eastern peoples, Emperor Severus Alexander preferred to be thought of as Roman, even though he was of mixed parentage, and was said to have been angered when reminded of his Syrian ancestry. 60 Julian was similarly angered when his troops called him "a degenerate Greek from Asia:'61 The soldiers were obviously unaware of the manly character that others thought Julian possessed, but they were responding to the same stereotypes of easterners. Julian himself utilized these stereotypes, referring to the "effeminate dispositions" of the Antiochenes and contrasting them with his own hirsute (and manly) sel£ 62 Roman writers of the later empire linked the effeminacy of Eastern men to the martial defeats of their peoples. Indeed, it had been the wealcness of their men's moral characters, Claudian asserted, that had brought to successive ruin the empires of Assyria, Sparta, Persia, and Macedonia. 63 In the final centuries of the Western Empire, however, it was insufficient to remind emperors that they might just as easily crush the German barbarians as the Romans had destroyed the kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean, as Pacatus did in his panegyric to the emperor Theodosius I (ruled 379-395).64 Nor was it necessarily good for morale to describe the old Roman victories over the Celts and Carthaginians, as in the

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HistoriaAugusta. 65 The Roman Empire was by that point at the mercy of foreign invaders, barbarians from the north who were proving th~in~ selves more militaristic and, thus, manlier than ili~ Romans.. .. Again, many Roman writers simply attempted to ignore ~e ~'thr~~t posed by the military successes of the Germans. The numerOus treaties' that the Romans signed with the peoples of the north, in a futile attempt to limit their ravages, were variously described as shrewd political ma.neuvers, peacefully negotiated alternatives to war, or the consequences of shortsighted imperial leadership and were only rarely admitted to be wealc capitulations or practicalities enforced due to lack of financial support for the troopS.66 A description from the HistoriaAugusta represents this see no evil approach: For all Germany, throughout its whole extent, has now been subdued, and nine princes of different tribes have lain suppliant and prostrate. . . . All booty has been regained, other booty too has been captured, greater, indeed, than that which was previously taken. The barbarians' oxen now plough the farms of Gaul, the Germans' yoked cattle, now captive, submit their necks to our husbandmen, the flocks of divers tribes are fed for the nourishing of our troops, their herds of horses are now bred for the use of our cavalry, and the grain of the barbarians fills our granaries. Why say more?67

More needed to be said. In the final century of the Western Empire's existence, writers typically described the fear-inspiring character of the barbarian peoples in frightened recognition of their fighting abilities. 68 In a particularly contrived panegyric, for example, Sidonius Apollinaris unconvincingly compared the martial prowess of the emperor Avitus with that of several northern tribes: the Herulian found in you his match in fleetness, the Hun in javelinthrowing, the Frank in swimming, the Sauromatian in use of shield, the Salian in marching, the Gelonian in wielding the scimitar; and in bearing of wounds you did surpass any mourning barbarian to whom wailing means self-wounding and tearing the cheeks with steel and gouging the red traces of scars on his threatening face. 69

The ferocity of the northern barbarians was unquestioned. As unrealistically as Sidonius described Avitus, he did attribute his military skill to the training he had received under the commander in chief of his empire, the Roman general Aetius who had been raised as a hostage of the Huns and had learned from them the arts of war. Without apparently a trace of irony, the panegyrists lay much of the credit for the military defenses of

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49

the empire, such as they were, at the feet of these military commanders, often barbarians themselves, men like Stilicho who commanded the we~tern Roman army under the emperor Honorius. 70 , Quite s,in1ply, th~ 'Romans believed the barbarians to be manlier than 'they were. -Even the p~nkish skin color of the Germans was evidence of their bravery arid manliness, according to the physiognomists. 71 Sidonius Apollinaris's description of Theodoric II, mid-fifth-cenriuy ·lcing of the Visigoths, high4ghted his ideal masculine physique alongside his manly character: . In his build the will of God and Nature's plan have joined together to endow him with a supreme perfection; and his character is such that even the jealousy which hedges a sovereign has no power to rob it ofits glories. Take first his appearance. His figure is well-proportioned ... his shoulders are well-shaped, his upper arms sturdy, his forearms hard, his hands broad. The chest is prominent, the stomach recedes . ." . strength reigns in his wellgirt loins. His thigh is hard as horn; the upper legs from joint to joint are full of manly vigor. 72

The "manly vigor" of the barbarians, which became more and more apparent as they took gradual control of the Roman Empire, obliged the Romans finally to admit their inability to defend their empire. In their self-examination, the writers of the later empire offered various explanations for the collapse, one of which was, tellingly, a loss of military vigor among the Roman people. Even Ammianus Marcellinus, who had praised Julian's manliness and the brilliance ofhis reign, was forced to recognize that among the best of Julian's troops were the barbarian mercenaries. He concluded that earlier Romans had been better able to withstand foreign incursions because they had not yet traded their vita militaris for what he called a vita mollitiae (life of effeminacy). 73 An important truth lies beyond the crude ethnic and gendered stereotypes found in the writings of the historians, panegyrists, and physiognomists. Roman writers were attempting to explain historical change according to their traditional opposition of manliness and unmanliness. Their accounts and descriptions all emphasized that history was repeating itself and that the manly were conquering the unmanly. Men's rejection of the vita militaris and their loss of manliness had cost them the empire. POLITICAL AUTHORITY AND MANLINESS

Participation in politics was as central to Roman men's public identity as was participation in the vita militaris. The holding of political offices and

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resulting placement among the hierarchy of ranlcs ·of the Roman elite col-. lectively known as the "course of honors" (cursus honornm) .also m~de . men what they were as men. Indeed, while women's natural· sphe.re :of influence was felt to be the home and domestic affairs, men ·wete bS~· lieved equally to be natural rulers of the state and thus of political affairs. Nonetheless, the foundations of public authority also underwentsignificant changes, changes that again brought into question masculine ideals. A number of classical scholars have discussed the relationship between political authority and elite identity in Roman culture. These scholars have noted how the shifting system of family alliances and family rivalries that had marked politics in the republican era took second place at the start of the empire to a new political strategy of alliance with the imperial family, who dominated politics. In other words, courting imperial favor and appointments became the dominant goal of the efforts of Rome's elite families, turning what had been a competitive aristocracy into an aristocracy of imperial service. The changes to th~ imperial government in the later centuries of the empire, while less well studied, can be seen merely as an intensification of this process, in which more of the balance of public power was removed from the elite classes and given to the emperor and his associates. Indeed, the later Roman government virtually exclude9- the old nobility from political power except through imperial service. 74 But few of these scholars have recognized or analyzed the significance of the central role that masculine identity also played in this relationship.75 Some background information might be helpful here to better appreciate the decline in status of men of the Roman aristocracy within the political life of the later empire. To begin, changes in the imperial succession worked largely to exclude aristocratic men from positions of power. The usurpation of the throne by ambitious generals in the third century meant that the imperial throne was controlled by a series ofmilitary rulers who owed their elevation to the army and not to any aristocratic connections. These generals-turned-emperors usually rewarded the armyaccordingly, preferring to name its officers to influential posts in place of the established senatorial families, who were neglected and demoted from positions of power. Even the restoration of the political order at the end of the third century precluded any significant influence by the nobility in imperial accession. The establishment of a semidynastic system in the fourth century encouraged the reestablishment of a system of promotion through favor and alliance with the imperial family. Finally, by the fifth century, at least in the western half of the empire, the army commanders known as "masters of the soldiers" (magistri militum), many of

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51

whom were barbarians, established a succession of puppet emperors under their contro1. 76 All of these political systems worked to exclude the Roman nobility from real political power. Sihlilarly, the later 'Roman Empire witnessed an increasing emphasis on the .independent authority of the emperors, with a corresponding downplayirtg of the political support that had brought them to the throne. Diocletian (ruled 284-305) and his successors had exaggerated the divine aura of the imperial command and added many of the trappings of eastern Mediterranean rulers to Roman custom. Later emperors robed themselves in purple silk, adorned themselves with gold and jewels, and demanded the prostration of all- even the members of the uppermost nobility-before the sacred imperial presence. Both visual and literary depictions of imperial rulers show an idealization of rulership and a view of the emperor as the charismatic embodiment of the providential presence in the empire and a symbol of divine favor, whether that divinity was perceived as pagan or Christian. This idealized image of the emperor required ever more elaborate rituals of imperial procession, in which the later Roman nobility was obliged to participate. 77 The new ceremonies made the new political realities of aristocratic exclusion increasingly visible to Roman men. The exclusion of the Roman nobility from power was never absolute. There were still prestigious public offices held by men of the Roman nobility, who served as consuls, praetors, prefects, and governors?8 Urban elites continued to exercise considerable local authority in the provinces, and the imperial government still needed to draw from these men to fill its regional representation. 79 In a sense, the challenge to the public authority of the aristocracy was met by means of a gradual adaptation to the new political realities, so that the old elites operated within this new system of imperial patronage. In addition, men of the upper classes continued to emphasize exactly those qualities that set them apart from women and from men of the lower classes: their education in literature, philosophy, and rhetoric, and their network of friendships and personal alliances. 8o The ranlcs that defined the later Roman nobility, moreover, were hotly debated, and much was made of the privileges that certain titles and offices conferred. All members of the upper nobility-the senatorial class-were permitted to call themselves clarissimi (the brightest); members of the lower nobility-the equestrian class-might only call themselves egregii (the distinguished). Participation in the imperial service, notably, brought further titles of distinction. Men of the senatorial and equestrian classes who had been provincial governors could call them-

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selves perfectissimi (the most perfect),- but only those who had been praetorian prefects could bear the title eminentissirni (the most" eminertf) , " Members of the aristocracy who had held other maJ.or posts colli,d" call" "" themselves illustres (the illustrious) or gloriosi (the" glorious); those whq" had held minor post were known as spectabiles (the brilliant)~ Each rarllc " carried with it various honors and a different social status. An individual's place in this hierarchy also determined his access to the emperor and his position in public ceremonies. 81 " Nonetheless, such elaborate schedules of ranlcs and titles served also to mask the decline of real authority of such offices, which became largely honorific. Indeed, these positions vyere becoming less of an honor and more of an obligation because of the many financial responsibilities associated with them, responsibilities that provided a convenient source of income for the state if ari often heavy burden on the individual. Small wonder that many members of the later Roman aristocracy frequently attempted to escape such honors. The unwillingness of the nobility to accept the onus of public expenditures was likely not because of any declining wealth among the later Roman landowning class. Indeed, the opposite seems to have been the case, as a declining population left lands and monies in fewer hands. Rather, the unwillingness resulted from the fact that the expenditures represented an investment in the political economy in which the nobility no longer shared. 82 The changing nature of the political honors can be seen in a law of Constantine I that required a son to talce up the position of praetor, an appellate judge, if his father had died before performing the office. A century later, the law was extended so that a man who died without sons but with a daughter left her the responsibility. "For although it appears to be unlawful and disgraceful for women to advance to the Senatorial garb and insignia:' read a law issued by the emperors Valentinian I (ruled 364-375) and Valens (ruled 364-378), "nevertheless, they shall be able to assume the obligations of the ... praetors hip [carnaria praetura ]."83 If women, who were excluded from advocating in court, were nonetheless assuming the obligations of praetor, the office could not have brought much real authority with it. 84 It should be noted that the law is unclearly worded and may only have obliged the women to pay the public expenses that came with the office and not to perform any of its judicial duties. Still, if women were inheriting some of the highest honors, even if only to increase public revenues, the distinctions between men's and women's roles, in particular their separation into public and private spheres, was becoming dangerously blurred. The shrinlcing political role of the nobility of Rome can best be

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53

demonstrated by the decline of the Senate, the preeminent body of polit, ically influential Roman ,men. The Senate had already begun its decline from its earlier position as the chief executive body for the republican : ~tate withth~ rise ofimperial authority in the first century. Even after the : 'establishment of imperial rule, however, the Senate had guaranteed the political power of the e~ly emperors, and 'no emperor had lasted long without its support. Early imperial legislation, for example~ even if initiated by the emperor, was typically debated in the Senate and then issued "with the advice of the Senate" (senatus consulta).85 Diocletian, however, introduced men of the provincial aristocracy into the Senate, enlarging it for that purpose from about six hundred to about two thousand members and consigning it by its size to uselessness. 86 Rome itself, where the Senate met, became somewhat of a political backwater in the last centuries of the Roman Empire. The imperial residence- and with it, much of the decision-malcing apparatus of the later empire-was removed first to Nicaea under Diocletian, then to the new capital under Constantine, and under the later Western emperors to Trier, Milan, and Ravenna. Emperors in the fourth and fifth centuries only issued independent decrees (constitutiones), and so the senatorial aristocracy was removed even from legislative power. 87 Despite the political limitations of the Senate of Rome, large numbers of men were willing to abandon their membership in the provincial or curial aristocracies and their participation in the governance of the provincial cities of the empire for admission to the senatorial class. The reasons for this willingness to move from the provincial cities to Rome are not hard to fathom. Such a move at least exempted the individuals involved from the onerous public duties of their hometowns, for which they were responsible as provincial decurions (curiales). Chief among these duties was the collection of taxes. If they were unable to raise the tax revenues required for their locality, decurions were constrained to malce up the difference from their own incomes. 88 Numerous laws of the later emperors forbade decurions from abandoning the cities or their curial occupations. The laws made a concerted effort to close the loopholes through which one could escape such duties-except by permission of the emperor-again, by blurring the distinctions between men's and women's participation in such public duties. Daughters of decurions were never made responsible for the collection of taxes, even if they were the sole heirs to their fathers, but later Roman law tied the sons and husbands of such heiresses to the curial obligations, which was not legal custom. 89 Moreover, despite the Roman legal principle that all children should assume the social status of their mother, a

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fifth-century law required the taking of curial rank by any son of a decurion, even if his mother Were a slave; so that he might assume. his father's duties at his death. 9o Thus the law obscured class differences even ~s it . obscured gender differences. Sons and daughters .of a decllrion-'tnade:- . senator were even forced back to their proyincial obligations 'aft~rtheir. father's death; sons were eventually exempted from this reversal of stat\;l.s, ' although if a man had three sons, one had to be degraded to curial ranl~. The legal changes by successive emperors on curial status only .underscored the political wealeness of these classes, whose privileges existed only at the whim of the emperors. 91 At the same time that men of the traditional nobility were being squeezed from political power in the Senate and provincial councils, this power was being given to other men. In part, this reconfiguration of political power was a practical consequence of the expansion of the state service: the size of the bureaucracy had greatly increased as a result of the reforms ofDiocletian, who doubled the number 'of provinces. Still, new administrative posts in the inflated bureaucracy of the later empire dwarfed the traditional offices in political importance. The new posts created a new aristocracy of men-sometimes men of the lower nobility, sometimes men of the lower classes, sometimes even freed slaves of the imperial household-who owed their political rise entirely to the emperor. The emperor Constantine, for example, established a new ranlc, counts (comites), whom he appointed to oversee provincial and urban administrations. 92 Even more significant for the shift in political power was the greater reliance of the emperor on his household staff for official responsibilities. This staff, lenown collectively as the palace (palatium), performed various duties including those of ministers of state (praepositi), scribes (consistoriani), notaries (notarii), and domestic servants (castrensiani). These functionaries were also mostly men of the lower classes, and many were slaves purchased by the imperial administration. 93 Their positions, nonetheless, put them in regular contact with the emperor and assured them opportunities for influence in a political regime dominated by those who gained the emperor's favor. The aristocratic reaction to the changing political realities was varied. Some men sought a place in the new hierarchy, and as early as the end of the fourth century, members of the old nobility were paying large sums for the privilege of talcing bureaucratic positions in the new imperial administration. Some might curry favor by more traditional means, using such occasions as the arrival of the emperor in a given location as an opportunity for imperial recognition and thus for political advancement.

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55

Some men of the old nobility channeled their political energies in subversive directions and r~sented or even rebelled against the authority of the state as an evil imposed on a helpless population. 94 , ' Such new political i~ealities meant not only Cha...l1ging identities for the , ,'Roman elite, as a whole but for each man in that elite. No longer could men depend on their p'articipation in the 'governance of the empire to give'them a sen$e of accomplishment and power: participation in government, dependent on the favor of the emperor, rather enforced their powerlessness. Something new would have to be done to regain that sense ofpower, and that something was provided by the wealth of the upper classes. UNMANLINESS AND THE LOVE OF LUXURY

Given the ungratifying role that public office held in the later Roman Empire' it is not surprising that many aristocratic men ignored their minor political role. Many men chose to abandon altogether the pursuit of public authority and the cursus honorumy retreating instead to their rural estates to lead private lives. In doing so, however, they laid themselves open to charges that they had abandoned their masculine identity along with their public role. Sidonius Apollinaris chided a friend about his decision to remain in the country, because by doing so, he was turning his back on the public life that defined the Roman nobleman. He wrote: Why guide the plough-handle ... and yet forgo all ambition for the consul's robe? Do not bring a slur on the nobility by staying so constantly in the country.... I would not indeed say that a wise man should fail to concern himselfwith his private affairs, but he should act on the even principle of considering not only what he should have but what he should be. Ifyou reject all other forms of accomplishments that noblemen should cultivate, and if the sting to extend your property is the only emotion that stirs you, then you may look back on a name derived from consular robes, you may recall a series of curule seats [for dignitaries] and gilded traveling-chairs and purple mantles all recorded in the annals of the State, but nevertheless you will prove to be that obscure hard-working type who has less claim to be praised by the censor than to be preyed on by the tax-assessor.95

The decision made by Sidonius's friend was apparently a common one. The descriptions of pastoral pleasures found in the Mosella of the poet Ausonius were followed with the wish that he be permitted to leave the emperor's service with the honorary title of consul and to retire to his

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lands in southern Gaul. Others voiced similar wishes. 96 Legislation reminded even governors of the Roman provinces that .they must not prefer leisure activities to their duties and that they must r<::side in th~ c~Pl:- '. tals of their provinces and not on their country estates. 97 . . '" " .' . The acceptance of a quiet, rural, and pr~vate existence by ciristocra;tic. men reflected their disillusionment with public life and political office .. Paulinus of Pella, whose mishaps with the Goths and slave rebels were noted above, detailed how he was drawn into private life: Eventually my concern was for luxury in my house and my life so that at each season the rooms where I lived were always comfortable. My own table was richly and handsomely set; my servants were not only young but numerous; the place was furnished with taste and variety; the silver was valued more for price than for weight; many skilled workmen were there to fill my requests; many ~ell-bred, well-trained horses filled my stables and there were carriages to take me where I wished. 98

Even in Paulinus's well-appointed home, however, repercussions of the challenge to masculine identity were felt, because the domestic affairs in which Paulinus took such pride were precisely the duties of an upper-class Roman woman. As aristocratic men abandoned political office and turned to private life, they seem to have become obsessed instead with the luxuries and pleasure that their station in life provided for them. This shift is not completely without explanation. Ostentatious display and consumption was at least one way of establishing one's superiority, of setting oneself apart from others, when political offices were given to slaves and aristocrats alike. The value attached to luxury items may well have supplanted declining political prestige as a visible indicator of social status when officeholding no longer provided it. 99 The love of luxury, cutting as it did against the grain of the traditional Roman ideal of masculine self-control, drove men of the later Roman elite further into unmanliness. The conservative historian Ammianus Marcellinus was particularly critical of such tendencies, contrasting the unmanly lifestyles of the contemporary nobility with the manly actions of the founders of Rome, their putative ancestors: [They] thinlc that the height of glory is to be found in unusually high carriages and an ostentatious style of dress; they sweat under the burden of cloalcs which they attach to their neclcs and fasten at the throat. These being of very fine texture are easily blown about, and they contrive by frequent movements, especially of the left hand, to show off their long fringes

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and display the garments beneath, which are embroidered.... They presumably do not know.that their ancestors, who were responsible for the expansion of Rome, did not owe their distinction to riches, but overcame all . obstacles by their valor in fierce wars, in which, as far as wealth or style of . livingo~ dress was' concerned, they were indistinguishable from common soldiers. 100

Once again, the vita militaris was contrasted with the vita mollitiae. To some extent, there was nothing new or Unexpected in these Roman moralists' condemnation of the wealth spent on clothing. Extravagant dress had always been a cause for concern in Roman culture. Condemnations of the love of luxury in the later Roman Empire also reveal the greater availability ofluxury items. After all, Romans had by this point established their domination over the Mediterranean littoral and its lucrative trade links with the lands beyond. The condemnations of Roman men's love of luxury probably also indicates the greater opportunity for purchasing luxury items, as the shrinking nUmbers of the aristocracy in the midst of a general demographic decline translated into greater wealth controlled by fewer persons. The wealth exhibited in clothing, however, became the focus for considerable anxiety about manliness. Again, this was nothing new, and even the earliest Roman writers had complained about the effeminacy of a man overly concerned with his appearance or his dress. Nonetheless, the question of manliness in dress was felt in a new way. In fact, we can pinpoint this new anxiety quite precisely to the beginning of rpe third century and the person of the emperor Elagabalus. Elagabalus was much maligned by his biographers. Among other things, he was supposed to have engaged in shockingly unmanly sexual practices, practices we will discuss in the next chapter. Here we will focus on Elagabalus's reputed habit of dressing in women's clothing. Cross-dressing was not unknown in the ancient world, and it was a familiar theme of literature, if one usually associated with disguise. In the second-century Metamorphoses of Apuleius, for example, a robber recounts how he escaped capture: I put on a woman's flowery robe with loose billowy folds, covered my head with a woven turban, and wore a pair of those thin white shoes that ladies wear. Then, disguised and under cover of the weaker sex [insequior sexus] , and riding on the bacle of a donkey loaded with ears of barley, I passed right through the lines of hostile soldiers. Thinking I was a donkey-woman [mulier asinaria], they allowed me free passage, for even then my beardless cheeks glistened with the smoothness of boyhood. I did not, however, fall

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short of my father's reputation or my own manliness [virtus], although I was half afraid, being so close to those swords ofMars. 101 Note how even this temporary transvestite defends his manliness. (There··· may also be a humorous double entendre behind the idea: of a '~donlc~y.., , woman"). Still, there is virtually no evidence for male cross-dr.essing except as a literary motif . '. I would suggest that Elagabalus's supposed transvestism was merely an exaggeration of the wealth he spent on his attire, and the fact that he dressed in what were at the time Eastern fashions new to Rome. At the start of the third century, Roman men were still wearing the traditional white toga, although as Ammianus Marcellinus and others attested, that soon changed. 102 As the author of the Historia Augusta wrote of Elagabalus:"He was the first of the Romans, it is said, who wore clothing wholly of silk, although garments partly of silk were in use before his time:'103 This account continued the description of Elagabalus's attire: He would wear a tunic made wholly of cloth of gold, or one made of purple, or a Persian one studded with jewels, and at such times he would say that he felt oppressed by the weight of his pleasures. He even wore jewels on his shoes, sometimes engraved ones-a practice which aroused the derision of all, as if the engraving of famous artists could be seen on jewels attached to his feet. He wished to wear also a jeweled diadem in order that his beauty might be increased and his face look more like a woman's. 104 The Historia Augusta contrasted the depraved extravagance of Elagabalus with the self-restraint of his successor, Severus Alexander, who is supposed to have declared that "the imperial authority was based on manliness [virtus], not on ornament."105 "He himself had very few silk garments, and he never wore one that was wholly silk?' The account continued: "He would always insist most rigorously on having purple of the brightest hue, not for his own use but for that of matrons"; and also: "the jewels that were given to him he sold, maintaining that jewels were for women and that they should not be given to a soldier or be worn by a man?' The author added: ''And as for inserting gold threads [into cloth], he deemed it madness, since in addition to being rough they also made the garment sti:ff?'106 Equally interesting are those remarks in the HistoriaAugusta that indicate that what was novel during Elagabalus's reign in dress and other lu,"'CU.ries had become more commonplace by the time the historical account was written. Or at least, such things were not unlcnown to the readers of the HistoriaAugusta. Elagabalus "was the first ... who wore cloth-

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ing wholly of silk;' "he was the first to use silver urns and casseroles;' "he was the first to malee force-meat of fish, or of oysters of various kinds or similar shell-fish;' "he was the first to concoct wine .seasoned with [spices] . . . which our luxury retains [and which] . . . are not met with in books before the time .of Elagabalus:'107 The implication is that these things are· all familiar to the readers of the Historia Augusta and that Elagabalus is to. blame Jor their introduction. But if Elagabalus was the first, he was not the last. Already by the late third century, men's garments made wholly of silk had to be forbidden by imperial decree, so popular had they become, according to the account of the emperor Tacitus (ruled 275-276).108 It is not all that surprising that Elagabalus should have introduced new and Eastern customs to Rome. He came from a prominent-Syrian family and was not very Roman at all, although his mother insisted that he was the illegitimate son of the emperor Caracalla (ruled 211-217), a fiction that Elagabalus's cousin, Severus Alexander, used after him. Many men of the traditional senatorial aristocracy rejected the legitimacy of his rule because of his Eastern origins and tenuous links to the Severan imperial dynasty, and any accusations of his transvestism must be placed within the context of the manifold attempts to discredit him. Cassius Dio, for example, consistently replaced Elagabalus's name with Pseudantoninus (the false Antonine) and with Sardanapalus, an ancient Assyrian Icing believed from Greek legend to have worn women's clothing. The latter pseudonym worked to remind his readers not only of Elagabalus's transvestism but also of his Eastern origins, origins that also emphasized his unmanliness. 109 It is entirely possible that Elagabalus's cross-dressing was nothing more than his wearing of types of clothing considered effeminate by his contemporaries, clothing later adopted by many men of the Roman upper classes. We might also contrast the depiction of Elagabalus by western historians with that of an Eastern historian contemporary to Elagabalus and possibly also a Syrian lilee him, the historian Herodian. There is no talle of transvestism in Herodian's history. Elagabalus was said to have been warned, however, that "ifhe was wearing a strange, completely barbarous dress" when he ruled at Rome, he would "offend the spectators who were not used to it and considered this lcind of finery more appropriate for women than men:'110 And, more or less, that seems to have been what happened. So the concern about wealth spent on clothing, then, while framed in the traditional language of effeminacy, was intimately related to anxiety about the exercise of political power. Later Roman emperors forbade their subjects from wearing garments of gold thread or purple, but these

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decrees went largely ignored, if the descriptions of the appearance of the later Roman nobility offered by Arllinianus and others are to be believed. Nonetheless, the emperors wore such garments themselves a~ sY1!lbolsof their unique position in society and topped their' outfits with:jewel~d diadems to symbolize their imperial rule .. 111 The riches disp~ayed in' th'e clothing of the emperors who followed Elagabalus at a' century or two's remove, to be sure, was no sign of unmanliness. Claudian's panegyric to ' the emperor Honorius included a lengthy description of his extravagant appearance, without a hint of embarrassment or criticism: Jewels of India stud your vestment, rows of green emeralds enrich the seams; there gleams the amethyst and the glint of Spanish gold malces the dark-blue sapphire show duller with its hidden fires. Nor in the weaving of such a robe was unadorned beauty enough; the work of the needle increases its value, thread of gold and silver glows therefrom; many an agate enlivens the embroidered robes, and pearls of Ocean breathe in varied pattern. 112

The style of dress seems remarkably like that ofElagabalus, however. In fact, the only imperial figures whose luxurious dress was counted a sign of effeminacy were the usurpers. The poet Claudian accused Rufinus of designs on the imp'erial throne: his purple robe and jeweled crown became "a woman's raiment?'113 "No woman was more elegantly groomed" than the usurper Maximus, according to the HistoriaAugusta. 114 A man attempting to usurp the throne in Julian's reign is said to have talcen "from the women's apartments a purple dress, and showed himself truly a tyrant."115 The real cross-dressing happening here is nothing more than the usurper dressed up as emperor. Most discussions of luxuries as part of the trappings of imperial authority manifest some anxieties about manliness and unmanliness, and behind these discussions lay the anxieties about the new power arrangements. Julian is supposed to have rejected the use of his wife's necldace as a diadem for his impromptu acclamation as emperor, for example, and "protested that to wear a female trinket would be an inauspicious beginning [to his reign]."116 A panegyric to the emperor Theodosius I celebrated his patronage of a return to the frugal "soldier's life": [When] because either through long experience of the East or through the laxity ofmany ofyour imperial predecessors some men were so given up to extravagant living that it seemed by no means an easy task to restrain their inveterate practice of self-indulgence by any remedy, you wished the moral reform to begin with yourself . . . For who could talce it ill that he was be-

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ing confined to the limits of a prince, or be grieved that something was being subtracted from Ills private luxury, when he saw his e~peror, ruler of " world, master oflands and men, living frugally and contentedly, relieving long"fasts with the simple meals of a soldier, or, in addition to this, the "whole co.urt, "sterner than the Spartan gymnasia, abounding in examples of toil, endurance and frugality; or that not one man could be found to dare to demand at "the palace-table fish from remote shores, fowl from foreign climes, a flower that was out of season?1l7

the

The panegyrist contrasted Theodosius with "those delicate and languid men [delicati ac fluentes] such as the state has often endured?'1l8 Since this oration was delivered in the wake of Theodosius's military victory over "the usurper Maximus in 389, it seems an obvious indictment of the previous emperor as both illegitimate in authority and unmanly in character. Nonetheless, the panegyrist's praise did veil a reference to the limitations that the imperial rule placed on men, refusmg them the free purchasing power of their wealth. Through all of these discussions of luxury, the interwoven relations of political power and gender identity are evident. Even those wielding supreme political power were not unaffected by anxiety about the use of wealth and the unmanliness of luxury. How much more acutely would this have been felt for those men of the aristocracy, removed from political influence, and feminized-always according to Roman misogynistic definitions of femininity- by their political insignificance, by their subsequent retreat to the private sphere of hearth and home, and by their relentless pursuit of luxury and ostentation. Abandoning the political responsibilities that were part of the accepted nature of men and instead assuming control of private roles, men of the later Roman aristocracy in effect renounced an important part of their masculinity.

THE RISING POWER OF EUNUCHS

Among the luxuries that Roman men sought as visible representations of their wealth and status were eunuch slaves. There is much evidence for the presence of eunuchs in large numbers in the later Roman Empire, despite the laws forbidding castration and the unease felt toward eunuchs. Ammianus Marcellinus enumerated the sorts of slaves one might find in a typical noble household, including "a crowd of eunuchs, young and old?'1l9 cCCrowds of eunuchs:' cCarmies of eunuchs:' and CCtroops of eunuchs" surrounded wealthy Roman women as personal servants, complained the Christian writer Jerome. 120 The author of the Historia

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Augusta recorded without comment that the emperor Aurelian (ruled 270-275) had "limited the possession of eunuchs to those who had a sen- , ator's ranking, for the reason that they had reached inordinate pric:es?'121',' Populations of the eastern Mediterranean had made use of eUn1ich~ ,as domestic slaves from ancient times. In the western Mediterrarieaii, how-' ever, the presence of eunuchs is attested only in small numbers before the ' third century C.E. 122 Various factors encouraged the movement of eunuchs westward in the later empire, by bringing Romans into contact with peoples and families that kept eunuchs. These factors included the intermarriage of ethnic Romans with other peoples in the empire after the extension of Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire, the general migration westward away from the more populated eastern Mediterranean toward the less populated western Mediterranean and the general Eastern irrfiuencc resulting from the Roman administration of the Eastern provinces, the Eastern dynasties on the imperial throne, and the removal of the imperial court to Nicaea and Constantinople. Romans in the later empire preserved their belief in the Eastern origins of castration: Ammianus Marcellinus repeated a legend that the Assyrian queen Semiramis had begun the practice. 123 The idea that Semiramis, a woman believed in antiquity to have been the first to have raised herself to the mascu1,ine status of royal rule, was also first responsible for the lowering of men to the feminine status of eunuchs, probably seemed plausible to ancient storytellers. Indeed, many of the slaves in elite Roman households in the late ancient West seem to have been of Eastern and often foreign birth. A loophole in the Roman laws against castration permitted this practice. For example, Constantine's law against castration, significantly addressed to the commander of the army in Mesopotamia, forbade only the malcing of eunuchs "within the Roman Empire" (in orbe Romano). 124 A law of the fifthcentury Eastern emperor Leo I referred to the horror of "men of the Roman race, who have been made eunuchs ... in a barbarous country" but then granted permission "to all traders to buy or sell, wherever they please, eunuchs of barbarous nations who have been made such outside the boundaries of Our Empire."125 As a result, most of the eunuchs of the period whose origins we can trace were from Eastern peoples. Ammianus Marcellinus, for example, described the origins of the eunuch Eutherius. "He was born in Armenia:' he wrote. "His parents were free, but at an early age he was captured by members of a neighboring hostile tribe, who castrated him and sold him to some Roman merchants, by whom he was brought to Constantine's palace?'126 Eunuchs frequently bore Easternsounding names of Greek or barbarian origin. 127 Of course, the Eastern

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origin of eunuchs only highlighted their unmanliness, reinforcing Roman beliefs in the general unmanliness of the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. Ei1nuch~ had alSo. iong served in the royal administrations of the an. cient and Hellenistic kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean. In some ways, their influence with Icings was rrierely an extension of their domestic duties, worlcing as ~ediators between women and men and between servants and masters within the household and without. However, castrated men made suitable lninisters of state for other reasons. First, because they were typically slaves or freedmen raised from humble origins and from other peoples to these positions of authority, they did not have the factional loyalties or family alliances that created obligations for men of the nobility, and they were not prone to the nepotism of the aristocracy. Second, because they could not produce children, there was no possibility that they would try to pass their offices, honors, or possessions to sons as inheritances, leaving these positions firmly in the monarch's control of appointment. Third, eunuchs posed little threat of usurpation, since even if they might desire to talce the throne, they could found no dynasty to rival the succession to the established ruler. The Roman emperors did not long ignore the convenience of eunuchs in positions of responsibility. Already in the early empire, a few eunuchs served in the imperial household in some reigns. 128 It is from the third century, however, that eunuchs became a regular and dominant presence in imperial administrations. Their arrival in large numbers is often attributed to Elagabalus, which is possible: his Syrian family would certainly have had eunuch servants. It is equally possible, however, that eunuchs had entered the imperial service a few years earlier during the reign of Caracalla, whose consort Plautilla was said to have been reared in a household of over one hundred eunuchs produced especially for her. 129 The association of the emperor Elagabalus with the arrival of eunuchs in Rome may simply be a reflection of his bad reputation. The author of the HistoriaAugusta-who wrote his history long after eunuchs had become a major power in the empire-considered it a sign of Elagabalus's unmanliness that he had relied so heavily on eunuchs in his bureaucracy and a sign of the manliness of his cousin and successor, Severus Alexander' that he had dismissed from office the whole lot of them. The latter was alleged to have said, "I will not permit slaves purchased with money to sit in judgment on the lives of prefects and consuls and senators:'l30 The point of the mention of eunuchs in the HistoriaAugusta was clearly to underline the disruption of the social order that results from the inappropriate exercise of authority. The unsuitable rule of an effeminate like

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Elagabalus paralleled his delegation of authority to men equally unfit to hold office because of their emascuhition and low birth. SeverusAlexan:der, who was generally depicted as the moral oPP9site to Elagabalus (r~­ call how he refused to wear jewelry and silk), restoted all things t? th~it proper place: '' He removed all eunuchs from his service and gave orders that they should ' serve his wife as slaves. And whereas Elagabalus had been the slave of his eunuchs, Alexander reduced them to a limited number and removed them from all duties in the Palace except the care of the women's baths; and whereas Elagabalus had also placed many over the administration of the finances and in procuratorships, Alc::xander took away from them even their previous positions. 131

The contrast was obvious: the true place for eunuchs was not with the men but with the women, in the private and notthe public spaces. The tension between manliness and unmanliness in the guise of political and domestic spheres was played out here in the appointments of eunuchs. The greater use of eunuchs in the later Roman imperial bureaucracy is intimately connected both to the increasing autocracy of later Roman rule and to the exclusion of the old nobility from political power. Ancient writers }Vere well aware of these links between the power of the emperors and the eunuchs, on the one hand, and the impotence of the traditional noble classes, on the other. The author of theHistoriaAugusta~ for example, concluded his biography of Severus Alexander with these comments: It must be added, furthermore, that he never had eunuchs in his councils or in official positions - these creatures alone cause the downfall of emperors, for they wish them to live in the manner of foreign nations or as the Icings of the Persians, and keep them well removed from the people and from their friends, and they are go-betweens, often delivering messages other than the emperor's reply, hedging him about, and alming, above all things, to keep knowledge from him. 132

The battle between noblemen and eunuchs over access to the emperor had already been lost by the time these words were penned. Virtually all fourth- and fifth-century emperors associated themselves with powerful eunuch ministers. Eunuchs held a variety of positions in the imperial palace, but it was especially in the office of grand chamberlain (praepositus sacri cubiculi), an office reserved almost exclusively to eunuchs, that they exerted the greatest dominance. 133 By the early fourth century, the grand chamberlain held the right of senatorial rank and the title of clarissimus; in 384, his rank was raised to the level of illustris~ to which prefects be-

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longed. From 422, grand chamberlains took the title of eminentissimus~ shared by only tlle magister militum and the praetorian prefects. 134 That eunuchs should receive the same ranks and the associated privi, : leges as thos,e ,accorded the men of the ancient no bility was the source of , 'great resentment. Claudius Mamertinus noted with disgust how "even , the illustrious representatives of the old farriilies ... fawn upon the most degraded [sordidissimi] arid infamous [probrosissimi] crearures of the imperial COurt.''l35 "Were it not that the mighty gods watch over the Roman Empire:' the author of the HistoriaAugusta remarked bitterly, "even now we should be sold by purchased eunuchs as though we were the slaves [and not them] ."136 No response to the rising power of the eunuchs was more acrimonious than that of the poet Claudian in his In Eutropium (About Eutropius). The poem has been called "the cruelest invective in all ancient literature."137 It is little more than a long harangue against the most powerful eunuch of Claudian's day. Eutropius was grand chamberlain to the Eastern Roman emperor, Arcadius, who appointed Eutropius to the honorific title of consul for the year 399. It was this appointment that provoked Claudian's poetical response. Claudian had his reasons for portraying Eutropius in as unflattering a light as possible. Claudian owed much of his literary reputation to the patronage of Stilicho, commander in chief (magister militum) of the western Roman army and advisor to the Western emperor Honorius, the younger brother of the Eastern emperor Arcadius. Stilicho had distinguished himself in battle on the North African frontier, an event Claudian had also commemorated in verse. Stilicho had hoped to be named consul for the year 399, even though as a barbarian he would have been an equally unconventional choice for the honor. Since the choice belonged to the elder of the emperors, however, Arcadius had chosen his own political associate and not his brother's. From the Western Empire and therefore safely out of Eutropius's political reach, Claudian launched a literary attack on behalf of his own patron, the purpose of which was to discredit Eutropius both as a man and as a politician. The poem relies on earlier Latin models, but incorporates entirely new elements-some invented and some based on historical events-in order to defame Eutropius. 138 In Eutropium is hardly a reliable account of a eunuch's life or career. It is, however, an extremely useful and detailed account of the challenge to men's roles and identity occasioned by the presence of so powerful a eunuch. We will have many reasons to turn to Claudian's poem here and in the next chapter for its fascinating insights into eunuchs and masculinity. Central to Claudian's poetical attack was the fact that Eutropius was a eu-

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nuch. His elevation to such a position of honor was, in Claudian's estimation, an unnatural usurpation of mascUline political authority by an individual who was no man at all. The first part of Claudian's poem fo.:. cuses on Eutropius's lowly origins as a foreign, Eastern slave, "anc}."ho-Whe was bought and sold to several owners for domestic service before bemg purchased for the imperial household. (We will discuss the sexual impli'cations of this part of Claudian's poem in greater detail in the next chap- " ter.) Doubtless Claudian was seeking to undermine Eutropius's" political reputation by emphasizing his foreign and lowly status. Claudian had much to say about the political authority that Eutropius wielded: ''Nothing so cruel as a man raised from lowly station to prosperity"; "he vents his rage on all, that all may deem he has the power"; "being a eunuch also he is moved by no natural affection and has no care for family or children."139 Determined to defend traditional Roman masculinity against this latest assault - or so he cla~ed - the poet piled insult after insult onto Eutropius, "an old woman in a consul's robe who gives a woman's name to the year."140 Claudian made use of the whole arsenal of established anti-effeminate and misogynistic ideology for his purposes. ''No country has ever had a eunuch for a consul or judge or general;' he wrote; "what in a man is honorable is disgraceful in a eunuch.''l41 Or again: "Had a woman assumed the fasces [symbols of political authority], though this were illegal it were nevertheless less disgraceful."142 Or yet again: "If eunuchs shall give judgment and determine laws, then let men card wool and live lilce the Amazons, confusion and license dispossessing the order of nature."143 "With these words, Claudian linked the rise of eunuchs to the decline of "true" men. It is not difficult to understand why Claudian resented the political power wielded by eunuchs in the later empire. Eunuchs holding prestigious imperial offices served as visible signs of the increasing autocracy of the emperor, his isolation from aristocratic control, the extension of the bureaucracy, and the other political shifts of the third, fourth, and early fifth centuries. As men's public and military status declined, the successes of eunuchs became emblematic of men's reversal of fortunes and a convenient scapegoat for the rancor of the elite classes. Among the many worries to which the consulship ofEutropius gave rise, Claudian added the military fate of the empire. "What kind of wars can we wage now that an effeminate [mollis] talces the auspices [symbols of military authority] ?" he asked. 144 Claudian was alluding to the fact that Eutropius had been rewarded with the consulship in part because of his successful leadership of a military campaign against the Huns in 398. In mentioning the defenses of the empire, however, Claudian was also al-

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ludffig to a familiar source of male aILTIety in the later Roman Empire. He wrote: "Our ene~es rejoiced at the sight [of a eunuch leading a Roman army] and felt that, at last we were lacking in men. Towns [in the empire] were set al?laze; walls" offered no security; The countryside was ravaged and . brought to r:Un' ... 'Yet Eutropius (can a slave, an effeminate [mollis], feel , shame? . . . ), Eutropius returns in triumph., The troops are mutilated, squadrons lik~ their amputated leader, maniples of eunuchs .... Great is his self-esteem; he struggles to swell out his pendulous cheeks and feigns a heavy panting; his lousy head dust-sprinlded and his face filthier in the sun, he sobs out some pitiful complaint with voice more effeminate than effeminacy's self and tells of battles. 145

I

He ended with the quip, "Leave arms to men.,,146 There is some evidence for the use of trusted eunuchs of the imperial household in military campaigns. & with their elevation to civil commands, eunuchs placed in charge of troops posed no threat to the imperial succession, and this was especially important in a period in which generals had so often led coups against the state. 147 To see military commands given to eunuchs, unmanly foreigners of low birth, might have been particularly galling to Roman men of the upper classes, reluctant as they were to talce part in war themselves. One example of the role of a typical eunuch among the troops must suffice to demonstrate this point. Ammianus Marcellinus provided an excellent example in his detailed account of the career of Eusebius, grand chamberlain under Constantius II (ruled 351-361). Eusebius made his first appearance at the mutiny of the soldiers at ChaIon in Gaul in 354, when Constantius sent him from the imperial treasury with money, "which he distributed secretly among the authors of the agitation." Ammianus added dryly, "This quieted the unrest of the troopS.''l48 Eusebius next appeared as one of several eunuchs at the imperial court who falsely accused Ursicinus, master of the infantry, of preparing to usurp the throne, although the true motive, accordffig to Ammianus, was that Ursicinus refused to donate to Eusebius an estate of his in Antioch that Eusebius coveted.149 After the accusation, Constantius sent Eusebius together with Arbitio, master ofthe cavalry and not a eunuch, to investigate the alleged treason. Ammianus described their actions: both these were men of careless arrogance, equally capable of injustice and cruelty. Without any thorough investigation, without drawing any distinction between innocent and guilty, they sentenced some to exile after being

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beaten or tortured, reduced others to the ranlcs, and. condemned the rest to capital punishment. Then, having filled the cemeteries with corpses, they . returned as iffrom a successful campaign, andreported their exploits to ¢.e: emperor. lSO

Even Arbitio himself, Ammianus claimed, was too afraid of Eusebiu~'s power to come to Ursicinus's aid. 151 When Ursicinus, in his own defense, reproached the emperor for having "allowed himself to be dictated to by eunuchs;' the remark so angered Constantius that he immediately dismissed Ursicinus from his office. 152 Ammianus's point is clear: the power of the eunuch Eusebius was fearsome. Eusebius's arrogance and cruelty may have been accurately depicted; more likely, it reflected the lack of ~anly virtue that all eunuchs represented. The next time we hear ofEusebius is also the last; his career ended together with his life, and both at the death of his patron, Constantius II. Julian, who blamed the chamberlain for the death of his brother Gallus, had him condemned to death as soon as he took command of the empire. 153 It was an end typical for eunuchs, tied as their fortunes were to individual emperors. (Even the eunuch Eutropius was executed within a year of his appointment as consul. 154) "This man, who had been raised from the lowest station to a position which enabled him almost to give orders like those of the emperor himself;' Ammianus concluded ofEusebius, "in consequence had become intolerable. Fate threw him headlong, as if from a lofty Cliff."155 Ultimately, the prosperity and prestige of the eunuchs was an indictment of all Roman men of the upper classes. If men feared eunuchs, like Arbitio before Eusebius, it was because they feared the power of the emperor beyond them. Claudian recognized this fear, and at the end of his poem against Eutropius, turned his venomous pen against his contemporaries. "Will this corrupt age never stiffen up?" he asked, with obvious double entendre. 156 "0 people worthy of such a senate, senate worthy of such a consul! To think that all these bear arms and use them not, and that, among so many, these swords do not bring to mind their manly sex with indignation!"157 Consequently, he put the full weight of responsibility for the barbarian invasion on the unmanly men of the empire, meaning not the eunuchs but all Roman men: It is neither on their own valor or numbers that they rely; it is our own cowardice urges them on, cowardice and the treason of generals, through whose guilt our soldiers now flee before their own captives, whom, as Danube's stream well knows, they once subdued; and those now fear a handful who once could drive back all. lSS

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As if to sum up what it was all about, the last word of Claudian's poem against Eutropius was the word virtuS. 159 . tn. the end, the power of eunuchs was a disgracefully visible reminder of the fail~e of Roman masculine ideals. Eunuchs in politics and as army . ~o:mmanders ~erelyreflectedthe unwillingness or inability of "real" men to hold the same publi~ positions. Anxiety over manliness in public life, such as seen in .discussions of the authority exercised by eunuchs, only reflected the exclusion of the male aristocracy from the positions they had traditionally held and felt themselves entitled to hold. In a symbolic sense, it was an exclusion from their public masculine identity.

CHAPTER THREE

iiA PURITY HE DOES NOT

SHOW HIMSELF" Masculinityy the Later Roman H ouseholdy and MenYs Sexuality The reorientation of the public lives of men of the Roman elite in late antiquity unfolded in tandem with an equal transformation in their private lives. In the realm of marriage and family life, men of the Roman nobility felt the consequences of social and legal changes that brought into serious q~estion their traditional rights as husbands and fathers over their wives and children. In the area of sexuality, newly imposed restrictions greatly curtailed men's traditional sexual behaviors, sexual self-control replacing sexual dominance as the masculine ideal. These changes and restrictions also posed a threat to traditional Roman gender boundaries, obscuring the divisions between men's and women's social roles and challenging the basis of these divisions. The presence of eunuchs in the later Roman household only heightened the anxiety over men's changing domestic and sexual roles. THE DECLINE OF PATRIA POTESTAS

Patria potestas (paternal power), the near-absolute control in ancient Roman society that the eldest living male of a noble family exercised, was proverbial. 1 In the early Roman period, the power of this male, called the paterfamilias (father of the household), over all of his descendants had ineluded his right to control all property or money that they had garnered, to choose their marriage partners or end their marriages, and even to sell them into slavery or abandon them at birth. The paterfamilias wielded authority over his wife in the same way, who was legally the equivalent to a daughter, according to the system of marriage "with the hand" (cum 70

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manu). Patria potestas perperuated itself from generation to generation: each male achieved independence upon his father's death and became. a paterfamilias in his own right, while the legal control of an unmarried woman felJ. afterhecfather's death to her brother or other close male relative, and the o~ontrol oof awidowed woman to her son or other male .relative ofoher husband, a lifelong rutelage of women (tutela perpetua mulierum).2 The absoluteness of these patriarchal rights may have been in part mythical, because the earliest periods of Roman history already show some restraints on the rights of a father. Even before the republican era, the law denied fathers complete autonomy in exposing unwanted children and regulated the sale of their children into slavery. 3 Scholars have typically interpreted such changes to the patriarchal system as the encroachment of the rights of the state on the rights of the individual man. 4 Even more recently, scholars have examined the restraints that human feeling placed on the unrestricted exercise of paternal power by creating sentimental ties between a father and his family. 5 Moreover, scholars have noted how women wielded informal authority within the patriarchal household, especially in home management. 6 Still, Roman writers generally looked back on their past as a golden age of unobstructed men's rights. 7 The constraints onpatria potestas-, it should be noted, often happened within the context of a struggle between the rights of men as fathers and their rights as husbands. Fathers likely engineered the decline of the marriage ''with the hand" by the end of the republican era, for example, so that their financial interests would not be lost by a daughter's marriage. 8 In a marriage "without the hand" (sine manu), a husband could not expect any direct financial gain from his wife's family. Instead, he received a dowry from his wife as her share ofher father's estate. While he controlled its use as well as the income from it during their marriage, he could not sell or otherwise alienate it, and it reverted to her family of birth at his death or upon their divorce. 9 The pateifamilias did retain the right to choose his children's marriage partners and to initiate their divorce. 10 Patriarchal rights continued to decline in the early imperial period. New imperial legislation of Emperor Augusrus probably only cemented what was already social custom in the later republic. Nonetheless, the legal reforms of Augusrus did permit the state to intrude in new ways into the private lives of men. 11 His reforms included penalties against men and women who chose not to marry, not to have children, or not to remarry after divorce or the death of their spouse. 12 Augusrus's concerns at the declining numbers of the Roman nobility and the need for even larger num0

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bers of them to enforce the Roman governance of the Mediterranean likely prompted this law, since it was apparently enforced only am~ng , the upper classes of the Roman population. Another of Augustus'$ laws confirms his demographic concerns: it gave women whp b6re$eve,r:aI children a privilege known as the "right of children" (ius liberorUm) ·of' freedom from their lifelong tutelage. Women with this privilege ad- . ministered their own financial affairs without the bindirig supervision'of a male relative. 13 Legal changes to family life in the early empire further eroded the absolute nature of patriarchal authority. By the second century of the common era, for instance, women gained the right to initiate divorce, a right previously only belonging to their husbands and fathers. At about the same time, fathers lost the right to force a divorce of a son or daughter under their authority if the couple did not want to separate. 14 The paterfamilias was also restricted in his ability to force an unwanted marriage on those under his authority. IS Also during the second century, edicts permitted some men to leave property in wills to their mothers, who earlier had been forbidden to own property at all. Mothers were permitted, in turn, to leave such property to their children and to bequeath their dowries to their children rather than have the property be reappropriated by their paterfamilias. Moreover, mothers might write such a will without the supervision of their legal guardian. 16 The hitherto male domains of marital consent, ownership of property, and testation were now shared by women. The demise of patria potestas continued in the later Roman Empire. The public crisis of the empire certainly played a role in this demise. The deterioration of Rome's military greatness and the numbers killed in the periods of civil unrest and rebellion seem only to have worsened the demographic decline. 17 The decline in numbers in the upper classes was somewhat alleviated by the influx of a new nobility drawn from the provinces made possible by the extension of Roman citizenship to the free inhabitants of the empire in 212 C.E. The new Romans, however, brought not only new potential marriage partners into contact with the old elites, but also new customs of marriage and family life. IS In the later empire, further changes to women's rights challenged men's fundamental authority over them. Foremost among these changes were those concerning marriage payments. Specifically, the later empire saw the establishment of a reverse dowry system that equaled in value the traditional dowry. Under the title of betrothal gifts, the future husband's father gave substantial benefits, usually properties, to the betrothed couple for use in their marriage, just as the dowry provided the opportunity

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for the bride's father to give properties to the couple. 19 The exact nature of the establishment ofa reverse dowry system in this period has not been well studied but is clear from the sources. 20 The reasons for such a shift are equally obscure. 21 But one law noting the increasing value ofmarriage payment~provides a possible explanation for this double system. 22 The . combination of a dowry and reverse dowry provided a double mechanism for the transference of properties from one generation to the next in an environment . of low birthrates in which family inheritances fell into ever fewer hands. Laws originally enacted to protect women's dowries continued to apply to the reverse dowry. The effect of these laws was, therefore, to further restrict men's rights within the family. For example, even while the property designated as her betrothal gifts did not come from her family, the wife was legal owner of it, and her husband could not alienate it nor could she legally give it to him. The betrothal gifts also belonged to her when the marriage ended. 23 She was obliged to preserve the value of the betrothal gifts intact for her children if she had them or for her husband's parents if they were still alive. In other cases, the property was hers to dispose of as she wished, and in any case she had free use of the property's usufruct. 24 The rights of women to possess and bequeath inheritances and dotal properties in the later empire was combined with a greater control over the disposition of the actual property during their lifetimes, a change made possible because of the disappearance of the lifelong tutelage of women. This ancient principle, which had obliged a man to manage all property owned by women, disappeared as a social institution sometime between the third and fifth century. The jurisprudents of the later second and early third century C.E. had already generally concurred that the legal incapacity of women was merely customary and had nothing to do with their intellectual abilities. 25 At the beginning of the fourth century, Emperor Constantine permitted women of good character over the age of eighteen to control their own property, although they still seem to have had to retain legal guardians. 26 By the end of the fourth century, legislation specifically treated women as legally equivalent to men in the administration of their affairs and ignored the tutelage of women, which must have had little consequence. 27 Indeed, a law of 414 ordered that all contracts made by women be considered as binding: a clear indication of women's independence in these matters, as is another law permitting women to act as guardians for their children. 28 Such formal changes in the legal position of women carried tremendous social consequences. Consider the disparate ages of marriage be-

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tween men and women, for instance, which typically saw a woman not much past puberty marry a man perhaps decades older; and probably outlive him and his parents. 29 Given the dramatic decline in the birthr:at~ ill·· the later empire, many married couples might well have had no. chil~en surviving them, and a widowed wife might,have no natural helrs.· tJnd~t, the old Augustan laws, widows under the age of fifty were required to·re- . marry within two years or lose full ownership of their property, but in the year 320, Emperor Constantine ended the penalties against the unmarried. 3o Such circumstances conspired to produce large numbers of independent widows in the fourth and.fifth centuries: women in full possession of large estates, without male guardians or natural heirs, and not obliged to remarry. The numbers of independent widows troubled many male writers; the emperor Majorian condenmed their "lascivious freedom ofliving?'31 The Christian writer Jerome also complained that even widows who chose to remarry insisted on their independence. "Rejoicing that they have at length escaped from a husband's dominion;' he wrote, "they look about for a new mate, intending not to yield him obedience, as God ordained, but to be his lord and master. With this object they choose poor men, husbands only in name, who must patiently put up with rivals, and if they murmur can be kicked out on the SpOt?'32 That men h<}d been enjoying such freedoms since ancient times was not the point; ·here is clear evidence of the real decline of men's patriarchal authority over women. Indeed, Majorian's law attempted to do away altogether with independent widows, ordering all childless widows under the age offorty to remarry within five years or face financial penalties. Before the deadline had passed, however, the law was repealed by his successor.33 Legal reforms of the later Roman Empire also greatly disrupted the patriarchal rights of men over their children. Later imperial legislators expressly repealed the ancient custom that gave fathers the natural right to any inheritances of their minor children, an obvious indication of the declining authority of men. 34 Several laws repeatedly denied fathers the permission to sell property inherited by any of their children from their mother's relatives. (The repetition of these laws provides evidence both for fathers' opposition to the law and for a persistent intent on the part of legislators).35 Legislation also gave children the right to receive the inheritance due them from their mother and her relatives during her lifetime, without interference from their father.36 Nor did the law permit a father to have any rights to the property that his children had gained by their own marriages. 37 Indeed, if his children died with their own children living, the law considered these persons, his grandchildren, as the

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natural heirs to the property that had belonged to his children, to his complete exclusion, even if as his descendants they lived under his patriarchal authority. 38 Other l
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woman permission to divorce her hl~lsband for excessive drinking, gambling, or for being a muliercularius) an otherwise unattested term of certain meaning that we will discuss below. She could, however, bbtaili~" legal divorce ifhe were a murderer, a tomb robber, or"a medicam~nfariu~)" that is, a "male medical practitioner:' again possibly an abortionist or p"dl- . soner. 46 Both sets of restrictions are interesting comment$ on the absolute limits ofunacceptable behavior for men and women within marriage. According to the law, if the couple separated for any other reason thart those delineated, neither could remarry. The penalty exacted from a woman who remarried was still greater than that from a man, though, since she forfeited her dowry if she were guilty of any of the three offenses delineated for her or if she left her husband for any but the three offenses delineated for him. IT he were guilty of any of the offenses, or left her for other reasons, he lost his access to her property but not to his own property. Still, if a man remarried after leaving his wife unjustly, she had the right to claim his second wife's dowry. 47 After Constantine's law restricting divorce, men of the later empire also lost the right to repudiate a marriage partner at will, another significant curtailment of their traditional rights. In earlier periods, divorce had been an effective tool for maintaining patriarchal authority. It was especially useful for reformulating elite alliances, because men could divorce women who belonged to families on the wane politically and replace them with others who were more advantageous. Men could also ensure heirs by marrying women who had proved their fertility in previous marriages. 48 Constantine's law denied these strategies to elite families, again probably for other than religious reasons.49 Not surprisingly, the law proved unpopular with the Roman nobility, and was briefly abrogated by the emperor Julian, in a law not preserved, but presumably overturned by Jovian (ruled 363-364).50 The divorce law was also annulled briefly by Theodosius II (ruled 408-450) in 439 51 but was revived under Valentinian III in 452. 52 By the mid-fifth century, then, the state held the rights of divorce firmly in its possession, dispensing it only infrequently. The narrowing of men's freedom of action within marriage and family life through the decline ofpatria potestas must be talcen as further evidence ofthe declining fortunes ofRoman men. Although the political turbulence of the later Roman period had persuaded many men to escape the hazards of public office and military life and concentrate their personal ambitions within their private lives, neither marriage nor the family offered any guarantee of masculine success or the authority that men had traditionally wielded. Instead, the growing power of women and children within the elite family only intensified the disruption to Roman men's ideals.

un.,.

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UNMANLINESS AND MALE SEXUALITY

The relationship be~een the elite Roman male and those around him was certainly in, flUx in the last centuries of the empire. Nonetheless, it was not - orily his relationship to others, but his very relationship with himself'with his body and his use of it in sexual activity - that was b~ing drastically altered. More important, men believed that the changes they were experiencing were undermining the manliness of male sexuality. Roman men were still bound by ancient codes of sexual behavior, but sexual morality as developed in the later empire added new restrictions to these ancient codes. Previously accepted patterns of sexual behavior with little or no social reproach fell under social sanction and legal prohibition. Philosophical and medical perspectives also limited men's sexual behavior. The changing nature of male sexuality has already come to the attention of some historians of the classical period of Roman history, and scholars have theorized about the ways in which political and social changes affected men's sexuality. In particular, they have looked for consequences of the shift from a republic controlled by the male elite as a collective body of men to an empire ruled by a single man, as seen, for example, in the restructuring of the early imperial family by the Augustan laws. Some of these scholars have concluded that in the context of men's declining authority within the state and within the family, men of the early empire sought greater authority within themselves, including a sexual self-control. 53 The possibility of a connection between sociopolitical changes and changes to sexuality deserves consideration. Indeed, one might speculate that in the later Roman Empire the connection between the two is even clearer. After all, the final centuries of the Western Empire witnessed the further decline of men's authority in the state and in the family as well as the collapse of military effectiveness. As an explanation for cultural change, however, this connection leaves much to be desired. One might speculate with equal plausibility that the loss of authority in politics would have led Roman men to strengthen their sexual hold on those persons they could still dominate within their households. It is also difficult to speculate that the downfall of the system of elite familial alliances led men to focus on the conjugal unit and on marital fidelity; such speculation is unable to explain the free access to divorce in the early empire and the restrictions on divorce in the later empire. It also seriously underestimates the continued strength of familial alliances in the imperial period. If we cannot see the social and political changes as the cause of the changes to men's sexuality, it is important nonetheless to see them both as

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parts of a whole. Anxiety about the .male role, an aIL-uety created in the midst of social and political crisis, was also felt in the "arena of sexuality. Sexual prowess was as central to masculine identity in classi<;:aJ. Rome" as "" was participation in public life; both sexual and political domin~c~ w~~e understood as the proper positioning of adult males. 54 In both politics and . sex, moreover, attempts were made to avert the challenges to masculinity by avoiding the uncomfortable roles available to later Roman men. But just as men's withdrawal from politics only served to malce their role closer to that of women, and thus to obscure the traditional division between men's and women's public identities, the changes to male sexuality in late antiquity also assimilated men's sexuality to women's and further eroded the separation between men's and women's roles and identities. Ammianus Marcellinus's description of the emperor Julian illustrates both the restrained ideal of men's sexuality and the attempts to linlc that ideal to a traditional sense of manliness. vVe have already seen that Ammianus regarded Julian as an ideal man generally. Ammianus praised Julian at length for his decision to renounce sex after the death of his wife as a manly autonomy: "he was so spectacularly and incorruptibly chaste after the loss of his wife he never tasted the pleasures of sex, but [said] ... that he was glad to have escaped from slavery to so mad and cruel a tyrant as 10ve~'55 These remarks followed immediately after Ammianus's general assessment of Julian's character-even before the description of Julian's vita militaris that follows it, or the description ofJulian's courage and skill in battle, or the description of the authority that Julian exercised over his army. 56 Clearly Julian's renunciation of sex proved his manliness of character in Ammianus's eyes, at least as much as did his military prowess. Ammianus clarified his understanding of the manliness of Julian's sexual abstinence by describing the emperor as virtually assuming the philosopher's mantle (pallium). 57 Linking the renunciation ofsex to the pursuit of philosophy helped to assimilate it to the Stoic apatheia and the mind's mastery over the body and its feelings. (Not surprisingly, Stoic writers were among the first to call for men's sexual restraint, long before the ideal was generally promoted in the later Roman Empire.) This image also helped to associate Julian with the Platonic ideal of the philosopherIcing: the man who pursues virtue both privately and publicly, exercising the same authority over himself as over his subjects. Self-domination as a legitimation for the domination of others was a sentiment common to writers of late antiquity. The same thought can be seen in the poet Claudian's advice to the emperor Honorius: "When you can be Icing over yourself, then you will rule rightfully over all."58 An associate of Julian's , the philosopher Iamblichus, made explicit the

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connection between the philosopher's life (vita philosophica) and the life of sexual renunciation in his biography of the ancient Greek philosopher, Pythagoras. In the absence of any real information about the philosopher's life,Iainblichus was obliged to invent episodes and attribute sayings to Pythag~)fas .and his followers to suit his own tastes and those of .his contemporaries, and possibly also the tastes of his imperial patron. Ianiblichus's point was clear: "By their discipline 'and self-control [sophrosyne]:' he wrote, men "should become examples both to those in the households where they live, and to those in the whole community."59 This so-called Pythagorean ideal was composed of variations of the cardinal virtues found in the Stoic and Platonic philosophers and on display in Ammianus's description of Julian. The Pythagorean ideal included a component of sexual restraint. ''And those men apparently believed it necessary to prevent births which arise contrary to nature and with violence:' he wrote. "They allowed, however, those in accord with nature and temperance [sophrosyne], which talce place for the purpose of temperate and lawful begetting of children."6o Iamblichus credited the Pythagoreans with the belief that sexual activity should begin late in life, be enjoyed only infrequently, and be committed always only with the purpose of procreation in mind. 61 Any other sexual activity was mere selfindulgence, which was the opposite ofmanly self-control and from which had come all of the vices. 62 There was more to the renunciation of sex, though, than either Ammianus's praise of Julian or Iamblichus's invented lives of the early Pythagoreans might suggest, something that calls into question the manly image of sexual restraint these writers invented. It is the ancient scientific theory of the medical dangers of sex and its unhealthiness to the male body. An unmanly fear of sex pervaded later Roman culture, perhaps having to do with the increased popularization of these ancient medical notions among men of the Roman aristocracy, although such a popularization is difficult to gauge. Still, the desire to avoid the dangers that sex posed to the male body probably had as much to do with the curtailing of sexual expression in the period as did the manly pursuit of the philosopher's life. Even Julian himself may have shared these fears. Oribasius, a fourthcentury medical writer and court physician to Julian (and, therefore, also an associate of Iamblichus) , collected a lengthy series ofmedical opinions for his imperial patron. Included among these opinions were some that explained the dangers of sex in clear and forceful language. Oribasius, like most practitioners of ancient medicine, felt that semen was purified blood and, therefore, part of what animals and human beings needed to

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live. For a man to expel semen through ejaculation was to deplete his reserves of vital fluid. Accordingly, Oribasius believed that a man who en:gaged in "continual sexual excess" would drain thi~ vital fluid from.every· .' part of the body: .. .. This draining process does not stop . . . so if it is constantly repeated . . . the result will be that all the parts of the animal (or the living' creature) ~e' , drained not just of seminal fluid but also of their vital spirit. . . . It is hardly surprising, therefore, that those who lead a debauched life become wealc, since the purest part of both substances is removed from their body. As well as this, pleasure itself can dissolve vital tension to such an extent that people have died from an excess of pleasure. We should therefore not be surprised if those who indulge moderately in the pleasures of love become wealc. 63

In sum, sex was deadly. This was not exactly a new idea in late antiquity, and Oribasius derived much of this passage from the writings of the second-century physician Galen, who borrowed it, in turn, from earlier writers. Still, earlier writers had believed in some benefit to sexual activity if not engaged in to excess. Not even Galen took his ideas as far as Oribasius did: sexual abstinence was the ideal state of health, the latter maintained, both in women and in men. 64 The fifth-century medical writer <;;aelius Aurelianus came to the same conclusion: although sex is natural, virginity is healthier. 65 Both philosophical and medical beliefs worked together to discourage all but the most "essential" sexual activities. The notion of the vita philosophica gave a manly justification to the abandonment of sex, but the fear of the physiological effects of sex revealed its unmanly side. It was vital that sex happened, if only within a public context of demographic replacement or a private context of family continuity and the transmission of property through inheritance. But according to these beliefs, procreation was the only virtuous form of sex (another Stoic idea popularized in late antiquity), that is, the only form of sex that satisfied these familial and demographic requirements, or perhaps, rather, the only form of sex worth the risk. The value placed on procreation even came through in the imperial biographies of the later empire. The author of the HistoriaAugusta said admiringly if wishfully of Pescennius Niger that "as for intercourse with women, he abstained from it wholly save for the purpose of begetting children."66 Some refused even procreative sex after Constantine repealed the laws denying inheritances to unmarried and childless persons. Ammianus complained that in his day the childless and unmarried were easily the most popular individuals at Rome, he concluded, because everyone wanted to be remembered in their wills. 67 Fears about sex

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may well have played a part in the refusal by these individuals to marry or have children. THE CHANGIN,G DEFINITION OF PUDICITIA ,

'

,

Locating-manliness in 'this procreative sexual ideal remained an important requirement, and'writers of the later empire cleverly 'referred to the ideal with the and-ent term pudicitia (sexual modesty). In a general sense, pudicitia and its 'opposite, impudicitia (sexual immodesty), had always marked the limits of male sexuality. The pudicus (sexually modest man) acted in a sexually appropriate manner; the impudicus (sexually immodest man), in contrast, acted inappropriately.68 Significantly, the terms had always been virtually synonymous with manliness and unmanliness. When writers of the later Roman Empire used pudicitia and impudicitia to describe specific sexual activities, however, it becomes clear how much had changed from the classical uses of the term. What is also clear is how much the revised concept ofpudicitia resisted men's attempts to find manliness in sexual restraint. Perhaps it seems odd to characterize a sexual ideal designed to shore up the manliness of later Roman men as undermining it. To understand this point, it is important to realize that. classical Roman writers had also used the concept of pudicitia to de~cribe women's sexual behavior, but used it in very different ways than for men. The pudica (sexually modest woman) was she who kept her virginity before marriage, reserved her sexual behavior exclusively to her husband once married, and abstained from sex in widowhood after marriage. This was the ancient Roman sexual ideal for women, an ideal that did not so much celebrate any innate goodness in women as it did successful control of women by their male guardians. Even in the early empire, when women under the age of fifty who refused to remarry were restricted in their rights of inheritance, the ideal of the woman devoted to one man (univira) remained intact. The strict ideal of pudicitia for men in the later empire defined appropriate sexual relations in exactly the same way as it had for women. In doing so, later Roman writers and legislators again obscured the distinction between men and women, integrating their roles in the arena of sexuality and contributing to the subversion of traditional notions of masculinity and the traditional gender boundaries. The clearest example of the elimination of differences between men's and women's sexual ideals is in the area of adultery. In earlier Roman law, adultery (adulterium) was a crime only if it involved a married woman. Although both men and women could be prosecuted as adulterers, only

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the marital status of the woman had juridical significance. In other words, a married man who had sex outside df marriage was not liable. for pros<::cution under the law against adultery unless he did. so .with a ma.rrl~d. woman. Moreover, according to the system of patria pot~stas;' adnlre.ty· was primarily an offense coinmitted agains~ the man under ·whose au:" thority the guilty woman lived. The old laws against adultery reinforced a woman's sexual purity within marriage, confining her sexual expression solely to her husband, while leaving her husband's sexual conduct largely unregulated. 69 In the later Roman Empire, however, married men came to be subject to restrictions similar to those placed on married women. The belief that men should be bound by the same principles as women in cases of adultery actually came first from the writings of some of the Stoic philosophers of the early empire?O It was only in the later empire, however, that this belief was translated into law. Ulpian suggested that in determining the guilt of an adulterous woman A judge ought to keep before his eyes and to inquire into whether the husband by his own chaste life [pudice vivens] was also setting his wife an example of cultivating sound morals; for it appears the height ofinjustice that a husband should demand of his wife a purity [pudicitia] which he does not show./himsel£ 71

By the fifth century, Ulpian's opinion was considered as the equivalent of law. In this way, a woman's standard of marital sexual behavior now became a man's. Such changing standards for men's sexual behavior required a new vocabulary. Accordingly, the Latin language imported a term from Greek, moechia; to use for the broader category of extramarital sex, whether committed by a married woman or a married man, and the term moechus specifically for a married man who engaged in sex outside of his marriage. 72 A fourth-century law referred to "the disrespectful of marriage" (sacrilegi nuptiarum) perhaps as a term meant to include both husbands and wives who had sex outside of marriage. 73 The otherwise unattested term muliercularius; from Constantine's law restricting divorce, has also been interpreted as a synonym for moechus; that is, a married man who has sex outside of his marriage, but its meaning is not that clear. (Again, more on this term below). Beyond the specifics' of these legal and terminological changes was a sexual ideal that bound men and women by the same moral code. The future emperor Julian wrote a panegyric to his predecessor, Constantius II, declaring on the matter of extramarital sex that "all that is forbidden to women by the laws that safeguard the legitimacy of

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offspring, your reason ever denies to your passions."74 Julian called this attitude "the fairest example of modesty [sophrosyne], not to men only but to women alsO.'~75 The Greek termsophrosynej used for the philosophical ideal of se1f-con~ol, was al~'o the usual translation for the Latin pudicitia. 76 . Apparently manly reason did not only prevent men from engaging in extramarital sex in the later empire but also Curtailed their traditional freedom to exploit their household slaves for sex. In earlier tllnes, Roman men who owned.slaves had often made use of them for sexual purposes (including both male and female slaves, as we will discuss below). According to one classical source, sex with slaves was sex "close at hand and easily obtainable."77 While the possibility of such relationships remained legally open to men of the later Roman nobility and continued in discreet practice throughout the period, it was considered a weakness and a fault according to the rigid code of morality and its model of male pudicitia. 78 In his autobiographical poem, for example, Paulinus of Pella offered this comment on sex with slaves: lest I should heap heavier offences on my faults, I checked my passions with this chastening rule: that I should never seek an unwilling victim, nor transgress another's rights, and, heedful to keep unstained my Cherished reputation, should beware of yielding to free-born loves though voluntarily offered, but be satisfied with servile amours in my own home; for I preferred to be guilty of a fault [culpa] rather than of a crime [crimen], fearing to suffer loss of my good name. 79

Paulinus excluded three criminal possibilities of sexual outlet: rape, because his partner would be unwilling; adultery, because it would transgress a husband's rights; and sex with a freeborn partner, because it would damage his own reputation, since he might be found guilty ofinfamia for seducing an unmarried person. So he engaged in sex with his household slaves. It would not damage his reputation, he added, since he could not be found guilty of infamia because of it. He might equally have added that neither would it transgress another's rights since the slaves were from his household, nor was the consent of the slaves relevant since they were legally chattel and not persons. 80 Many Roman men may have felt the same way that Paulinus did. Paulinus's mention of rape as a possible outlet for male sexuality deserves comment. Early Roman law had prosecuted cases of rape as a type of injury (iniuria). As with adultery or other offenses committed against an individual under the authority of a pateifamilias~ the injury was considered as inflicted against the husband or father of the victim and compensation was due to him. 8l The unlawful sexual penetration ofunwill-

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ing women, as opposed to other types of assault, was specifically prohibited only from the early fourth century, in a law isslled by Constantin~~ 82 . As has been pointed out by other historians, the law did not distinguish . between rape and seduction, that is, between an uO.willing.pariner.anq.a··· partner who was originally unwilling but whose consent was eventUally . obtained. 83 It has also been suggested that rather than l'rohibiting rape per se, the law might have been invalidating so-called abductive mar:riages, in which the sexual act between the prospective couple circumvented the families' negotiations and possibly the families' opposition to the match. 84 If this is true, the unlawfulness of the sexual act remained, since it was committed without the consent of the woman's father. A legal definition ofrape in a later Roman context might be sex initiated without consent, whether that consent was the woman's or that of her paterfamilias. In any case, the issuance of this legislation and the severity of the punishments may point to an intensified awareness of rape as a serious sexual transgression by men. Men who abducted women for the purpose of sex were to be executed without possibility of appeal. 85 Even clarissimi) the men of the senatorial rank, were warned in law that whoever ''would carry off a virgin [vi'l-;ginem rapueritJ" would suffer the same penalty as those oflesser rank. 86 If a man killed a rapist when protecting either himself or ? member of his family, he would be acquitted of any charge of homicide. 87 In the context of the increased social disorder of the later empire' these laws may well have been necessary reminders of the limits of men's sexual behavior. (We might also note at this point a law of Constantine, which threatened with exile and loss of property a man who was given charge of an orphan girl if that girl was found at the time of her marriage not to be a virgin. 88 ) Even if Paulinus considered the sexual use of slaves as a lesser offense than sex with an unwilling or unlawful person, his remarks also reflected the reluctant sexual use of slaves in the later empire. This reluctance is less likely related to a greater concern for the personhood of slaves than it is an appreciation for their overall value in a period of a declining agricultural population, slave revolts, and foreign raids. The jurist Paulus implied the latter view in his legal opinion: "He depreciates the value of a slave who persuades him to talc.e to flight or to commit theft, or who corrupts his morals or his body. "89 Corruption (corruptio) is the term most often used to describe sexual relations with a slave, and a term that implies damage or spoilage of property. Corruption may also mean the devaluation of the slave simply as the result of the sexual experience. Paulus used the term elsewhere to refer to the deflowering of a female slave and the penetration of a male slave, perhaps implying the first encounter in both cases. 90

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The concern for the damage done to a slave through sex with a master, however, appears to result not only from the lesser resale value of the slave, but also from the effects on the moral atmosphere in the home. " PaulUs described not only "the hurt done to the essential quality [sub,'.Stantia]" 'of a, slave u.sed for sex but also an "overturning [eversio] of the whole houSehold."91 The context for his statement is unclear. It may be a refer~nce to the blurring of the distinctions between the social classes if children were born 'from the union, although Roman law had long dealt , with the offspring 'of male mast<:;r-female slave sexual relationships with precision. 92 His statement is more likely a reference to the rupture of the marital bond, emphasized in later Roman discussions ofpudicitia. 93 Interpreted as such, the statement accords with the greater restrictions on men's sexual behavior. Legal sources recognized the constraints that the prohibitions against sex with one's own slaves placed on the individual male, but defended these constraints nonetheless. Ulpian wrote with disdain of the master who "has acted cruelly to his slaves, or forces them into sexual impropriety [impudicitia] and a shameful violation."94 He continued by quoting from an earlier imperial law that ordered slaves to be sold from such a master, a law that did not exactly support his argument: "The powers of masters over their slaves certainly ought not to be infringed and there must be no derogation from any man's legal rights. But it is in the interest of masters that those who malce just complaint be not denied relief against brutality or starvation or intolerable injury." 95 Diocletian and Maximian maintained that even if he did not become Hable for a charge of infamia) a man's reputation suffered when he used a female slave (ancilla) for sex; his fault, they added, was "an excessive longing for sexual pleasure [libido intemperatae cupiditatis]."96 A law of Constantine referred to sexual unions between free men and slave women as "unbecoming" [indigna], although it did not forbid them. 97 Several laws of the later empire imposed the restriction on the slaveholder that his slave "not be prostituted" (ne prostituatur),98 and removed yet another sexual outlet for men. A close relationship existed between prostitution and the sexual exploitation of slaves, since most prostitutes of both sexes were slaves owned by the men or women who ran the brothels in which they worked. 99 Exhortations similar to those against sex with slaves voiced disapproval of men who frequented prostitutes. Distaste for prostitution is evident in many of the writings of the later Roman Empire. Although prostitution remained legal throughout the history of the empire, the author of the H istoriaAugusta claimed that the emperor Severus Alexander, a man much admired, had considered out-

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lawing it, "but he feared that such a prohibition would merely convert an evil recognized by the state into a vice' practiced in private - for,men when driven on by passion are more apt to demand a vice which is pr~hjb~ " ited?'IOO Nonetheless, prostitution is described ill, terms ~,of "evil" an.ct' "vice," and the moral underpinnings of thi,s description are, very 'much, in keeping with the more restrictive sexual morality of late antiquity. Severns Alexander may well have investigated the possibility of criminal-: izing prostitution, perhaps as a way of distancing himself from the reign of his cousin and predecessor, Elagabalus, who-if we can believe the HistoriaAugusta- both spent his free time with prostitutes and even occasionally dressed as one. 101 Instead, Severns Alexander continued to collect the tax on prostitution, as did all,the Roman emperors until the sixth century. 102 For economic purposes, at least, prostitution continued to be tolerated. Severns Alexander did enact a law ordering that if a female slave sold under the ne prostituatur condition was made to serve as a prostitute, she could be immediately freed. l03 In the :fifth ceritury, the Christian emperor Theodosius II extended this law, ordering any slave forced into prostitution to be freed. 104 Similarly, he ordered that any father who prostituted his children forfeit his patria potestas over them. lOS The moral constraints on prostitution in the later empire provide the most rsliable context for the interpretation of the uncertain term muliercularius from Constantine's law restricting divorce. Remember that Constantine's law had forbidden a wife to divorce her husband for being one, a clause that implies it was considered a serious breach of marriage, although ultimately not one serious enough to initiate a divorce. The root of the term is muliercula (little woman), used occasionally for young girls as in the phrase "young boys and girls" (pueri et mulierculae) but standing by itself most often used for immoral women, especially prostitutes. A mulierculariusJ it seems lilceliest, was a man who visited female prostitutes' unproblematic for most Roman men of the classical era and for which there existed no Latin term, but requiring a newly coined legal term in the later empire. (The same could not be said of a man whom we would consider an adulterer, which is how muliercularius is usually translated by scholars, since there already existed a term for such a man in later Latin, moechus.) 106 The legislative efforts against men's adultery, against their sex with household slaves, and against their visits to prostitutes, provide proof for a remarkable shift in the Roman moral stance from earlier traditions of male sexual behavior. Even if they were never effectively enforced (and all indications seem to show that they were not), such laws represented a radical shift in acceptable sexual behavior for men. Men might ignore the

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restrictions on their sexual behavior, but such actions were increasingly interpreted as transgressive. The ideal worked to hold men in the later Roman Empire to the same standard ofpudicitia as women. IMPUDICITIA AND P;EDERASTY

The.'changing nature ofpudicitia in late antiquity obliged men to confront and ultimatdy to reject another of the most central features of ancient male sexuality: pederasty, or the sexual penetration of adolescent males by adult males. Traditional Roman views of male sexuality emphasized adult men's sexual roles as penetrators; more significant than the sex of their sexual partners was a respectable difference in the partners' ages. 107 We cannot know the extent to which individual preferences directed some men toward women alone, others toward young men alone, but the writings of the classical period assume a more-or-less equal sexual disposition toward women and young men. Most of the writings on sex between men and the slaves of their households that were detailed above, for example, mention both male and female slaves or refuse to mention either (recall the vague recollections of Paulinus of Pella, for example, who did not mention the sex of any of his "servile amours"). The ethic that encouraged the sexual availability of women, young men, and slaves of both sexes to adult males corresponded neatly with and probably originated in men's social dominance over these groups. 108 Still, Roman pederasty was never wholly unproblematic. Since sexual penetration defined male sexuality, to be male and to be penetrated-even if only temporarily while an adolescent-threatened one's manliness, especially since the age at which the young man was supposed to switch from penetrated to penetrator was always vaguely defined. Roman custom dealt with this threat in interesting ways. Romans consistently described pederasty as a Greek practice imported into Roman culture. Perhaps the acceptability of the practice had been encouraged by cultural contact with the Greeks. It may also have been easier for Romans to distance themselves from those aspects of the practice they regretted by describing it with Greek terms, using Greek literary models to document their feelings, or denouncing it as a Greek vice imported from the effeminate East. The Christian writer Tertullian, for example, in alluding to the sexual penetration endured by a slave boy, had only to mention that he was "used as a Greek [utitur Graeco] ;'109 Nonetheless, there were distinct differences between the conventions of Greek and Roman pederasty. U nlilce the Greeks, Romans frowned upon the sexual penetration of free adolescent males, even while they permitted the penetration of male slaves. An

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attempt may even have been nude to criminalize the sexual penetration of free males in the late republic with the lex ScantiniaJ although. so little is known of the law that it is clifficult to discuss it with certainty,and ~t~p:- . . parently went mostly unenforced. llO By stigmatizing sex with free adoles.~ .' .' cent males, Romans sought to guarantee that me men who wouldbe'co~e their future social leaders would not be tainted by sexual. passivity. Romans also denounced sexual passivity in adult males and vociferously con-. demned the men they called cinaedi (a Greek-borrowed word), males who refused to switch from penetrated to penetrator, but denounced them with a frequency that belies the effectiveness of any prohibition. So central was this stigma of sexual passivity in adult males that it could be described simply as impudicitia in the classical Latin sources-that is, as the opposite of what was appropriate to male sexuality. III No figure aroused more disgust because of his sexual passivity in late antiquity than the emperor Elagabalus, and so he is a useful starting point for our discussion of pederasty and impudicitia. Eiagabalus's biographer in the Histona Augusta vacillated between horror and titillation in a lengthy discussion ofElagabalus's desire for sexual passivity and penetration, a passivity heightened in effect by emphasizing Elagabalus's preference for sex with men with large penises: "he did nothing but send out agents t~ search for those who were 'well hung' [bene vasati] and bring them to.'the palace in order that he might enjoy their vigor."1l2 Or again: He made a public bath in the imperial palace and at the same time threw open the bath of Plautianus to the populace, that by this means he might get a supply of well-hung men [bene vasatiJ. He also took care to have the whole city and the wharves searched for "mule-like men" [onobeliJ, as those were called who seemed particularly virile [viriliores J.1l3

Elagabalus is called impurus (impure) and obscenus (obscene) and infamis (infamous) and luxunosus (voluptuous)Y4 Over and over again, his biographers returned to the theme of his unmanly sexual desires. "He was more degenerate than any unchaste or wanton woman could ever be;' exclaimed Aurelius Victor with horror. lls These suggestions about Elagabalus' sexual behavior, however, require some clarification. To begin, they are merely part of the general unmanly reputation in which Elagabalus was held (alongside his supposed cross-dressing and his championing of the use of eunuchs, as we saw in the last chapter, and his association with prostitutes, earlier in this chapter), and are not necessarily to be believed. Elagabalus's sexual reputation also seems to have been exaggerated over time. All that Cassius Dio (his contemporary) said of him was that he "appeared both as manly and as

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unmanly [kai gar endrizeto kai ethelyneto], and in both relations conducted himself in the most licentious fashion?'1l6 Admittedly, not all of Cassius Dio's account ofElagabalus has been preserved, bl:lt the historian might simply. have been indicating that Elagabalus participated in sexual ,- activity, both as the penetrating and penetrated partner. Indeed, Elagabalus was ' linked publiCly with older male companions - and was presum,ed, according to the' conventions of age difference" to' be the penetrated sexual partn.er of these men - but was also married three times and was believed to enjoy sexual relations with these women. There is nothing in Cassius Dio's account that suggests the sexual scandal and debauchery of the later histories. Furthermore, Elagabalus was only fourteen years of age when he took the imperial throne, an appropriate age to engage in pederasty as the penetrated sex partner, even if as emperor he had a political responsibility to marry far earlier than most Roman males. But his boy.ish sexual behavior could not be reconciled with his manly imperial identity. "Who could endure an emperor who was the recipient oflust in every orifice of his body?" opined the author of the HistoriaAugusta long after the fact. 1l7 The manliness of the emperor could not be in question without challenging the linlc between political authority and masculinity. An emperor who behaved in a way that threatened his manliness could not be tolerated: Elagabalus was overthrown and assassinated after only four years as emperor. Later generations of historians in turn justified his deposition and murder by magnifying the transgressive nature of his sexual behavior and gender identity, with tales of insatiable sexual passivity, flaunted transvestism, and open debauchery. Elagabalus was, nonetheless, no isolated instance of reputed impudicitia in a Roman emperor. The emperor Commodus was tainted with the same sort of sexual scandal as Elagabalus. Commodus "defiled every part of his body, even his mouth;' claimed the author of the HistoriaAugusta" "in dealings with persons of either sex?'1l8 He was "orally and anally debauched?'1l9 He consorted in public with "mature and grown-up men" (puberes exoleti), again an implication that they were the sexual penetrators in their dealings with him.120 Similar rumors circulated about the third-century usurper Opellius Macrinus (ruled 217-218), who was said to have been "unchaste in mouth [oris inverecundus] as well as spirit?'121 When acclaimed emperor by the Senate, someone shouted: ''Anyone rather than the depraved one [incestum] ! Anyone rather than the polluted one [impurus] !"122 Roman writers had always found such impudicitia in adult men a cause for concern. There is no reason to believe, despite one historian's attempt to convince us otherwise, that the proliferation of statements against sex-

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ual passivity represented some increase in the number of men who participated in it or their liberation from the restraints of the stigma attached to it. 123 Nor should specific accusations be believed; especially when kyd~d· . against the emperors, since such accusations had always be~n a pO"Yerf\1:l.· ingredient of political invective and satire an~ an extremely effective way· of discrediting a male rival or political opponent. 124 Particularly in the later empire, when the imperial succession was such a chaotic combination of the dynastic principle and the emperor's free choice of his successor, any man handpicked by his predecessor for the throne was open to the insinuation that his sexual favors had helped secure his place in the imperial succession. 125 Still, the emperor acted as focus and exemplum for Roman masculinity generally, in sexual behavior as elsewhere, and so it should not be surprising to see the accusation of sexual passivity frequently made against emperors in a period when the relationship between pederasty and the sexual manliness of its participants was in question. Behind the antipathy towards the penetrated adult male, the impudiCUS;, lay once again the traditional Roman belief in the absolute separation of masculine and feminine. Men and women should exhibit the appropriate sexual characteristics. Men should be sexually dominant, should talce pleasure in sex, and should penetrate. To be dominated sexually, to give pleasure, and to be penetrated was the province of women. To use the mal~ body as if it were a female one was to misuse it and to call into question the absolute distinction between masculine and feminine. Of course, it was precisely the absoluteness of this distinction that the changes to masculinity in the later Roman Empire had called into question. It is not surprising then that many later Roman writers evinced real anxiety about impudicitia and the impenetrability of the male body-and beyond that, about the sexual manliness of all Roman men. The Roman tradition of pederasty was increasingly viewed as a violation of male pudicitia because it threatened-even temporarily-that great divide between masculine and feminine. The threat may be clarified through the example of a comment on the practice of pederasty among the barbarians. Ammianus Marcellinus described the sexual customs of the Taifali, an otherwise unknown group of northern barbarians who associated themselves with the Goths. He wrote: I have been told that this people of the Taifali are so sunlc in gross sensuality that among them boys couple with men in a union of unnatural lust, and waste the flower oftheir youth in the polluted embraces of their lovers. But if a young man catches a boar single-handed or kills a huge bear, he is exempt therefore from the contamination of this lewd intercourse. 126

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The language that Ammianus used says much more about his feelings toward his contemporaries within the empire than those outside it. The sexual practices he Was describing were known throughout to-e Roman Em. : pire, 'and .he was likely as familiar with pederasty from local custom as .. "from reports.about barbarians. The main difference that separated the Taifali from the inhabitants of the Roman Empire (arid we must read between the lines to appreciate this difference) wq.,s the manly action of hunting that ended the sexual relationship. The Roman world had no similar endpoint to turn the boy unambiguously into a man. Roman men - a contrast Ammianus also left uns'aid -continued such unseemly sexual effeminacy into adulthood because they were not able to prove their manliness once and for all. When the manliness of all men was in doubt, society could no longer afford the sexual customs that questioned the manliness of individual men. The lack of a precise endpoint to the period of adolescence when a young man might be excused for taking a passive sexual role, the lack of a defining manly moment as Ammianus Marcellinus suggested happened among the Taifali, meant that some Roman men of late antiquity continued to pursue sexual passivity into adulthood, depilating themselves and painting their faces to appear younger and more like boys. Elagabalus, for example, was said to have shaved and plucked himself to disguise the growth of adult male body and facial hair, but he was not the only one. 127 The trouble with pederasty, in other words, was that a young man might not lmow when to stop. Commodus, who was nineteen years of age when he took the throne, no longer had the excuse of age for his sexual passivity (and was also eventually assassinated). The bigger problem of manliness lay behind the problem of pederasty, as the examples of Elagabalus and Commodus and of many others brought into unpleasant focus. Sexual passivity in males was also the subject of satire in late antiquity. The poet Ausonius devoted a series of epigrams to the shame of the impudicus:J using fellatio as a particularly strong point of ridicule. 128 In one poem, a man sucks his wife's fingers so that he might not miss any opportunity to practice performing the action. 129 (Note the talcen-forgranted bisexuality, which has the man married and still enjoying sex with males.) In another, Ausonius spelled out in Greek the action that he accused a man of doing-"he licks [leichei]"-adding coyly that "it is not seemly that I should say such a nasty thing in Latin."130 (Again, note the implication that the sexual morality of the Greeks would permit such a mention). Several of his poems hinge on the malodorous breath of the man who enjoys oral sex. 131 There is nothing particularly new in Auso-

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nius's satire: Roman poets had made artistic use of the same cultural discomfort with sexual passivity in meri for centuries. What can be seen for the first time in the later empire, however, is: an attempt to translate the social sanctions against male 'impu4iciiiaihto)~:-' gal prohibitions. In the judicial opinion of Ulpian, for example, "whose body has been opened like a woman's" was guilty of infamia~ that legal category of unmanliness. 132 In the opinion o{Paulus, no male should endure sexual penetration for any reason, even the threat of death, because "for decent men a fear of this kind ought to be worse than the fear of death."133 Paulus might also have suggested that any man who had submitted sexually to another should have half of his goods confiscated. 134 These legal opinions gradually became codified as law in late antiquity. The anxiety surrounding sexual passivity in men in the later empire also meant that for the first time the legal and social sanctions against impudicitia in men were extended to the active partner, who despite his manly penetration, participated in the feminization of his partner. The penetration of unwilling males was punishable by death from at least the beginning of the third century. 135 A fourth-century imperial law similarly denounced men ''who have the shameful custom of condemning a man's body, acting the part of a woman's, to the sufferance of an alien sex;' and exacte'" the death penalty.136 This law, though, did not specify that the penetrated partner had to be unwilling. An epigram of Ausonius, although intended as satire and not as legislation, made the same point:

aman :

"Three men are in a bed together: two are committing sexual misconduct [stuprum] and two are having sexual misconduct committed against them." "1 think that malces four;" "You are wrong: give the ones on either side a single offense [crimen] and the one who is in the middle two, because he is doing it and having it done to him;'H37

Stuprum was the ancient term for any unlawful type of sexual misconduct. Ausonius used it here in an active sense (stuprum committunt~ "they are committing sexual misconduct") when it involved the action of the penetrating partners, and used it in a passive sense to refer to the penetrated partners (stuprum perpetiuntu1; "they are having sexual misconduct committed against them;' or "they are undergoing sexual misconduct"). But he described both as offenses (crimina). Legal definitions of stuprum began specifically to include the unlawful sexual penetration of males alongside the unlawful penetration of women. 138 The intended result is obvious: to shore up an eroding masculine identity with new and wider prohibitions against sexual passivity in males. In narrowing the field of activities included within the realm of pudicitia~

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however, the same writers who sought to present their ideal of sexuality as manly, seeing it as self-restraint, contributed to a new and unmanly restriction of men's sexual freedoms by widening the field of transgressive sexuality: In p:irticular~ the shift in attitudes toward pederasty in the later . , empire me;int that the adult, penetrating partners in pederastic relation. ships also came into disrepute. Such a shift of attitudes is apparent in descriptions of the sexual encounters of emperors in the imperial biographies. Cassius Dio's idealized depiction of the emperor Trajan (ruled 97-117), for example, required this half-hearted apology: I know, of course, that he was devoted to boys and to wine, but if he had ever committed or endured any base or wicked deed as the result of this, he would have incurred censure; as it was, however, he drank all the wine he wanted, yet remained sober, and in his relations with boys he harmed no one. 139

Both actions were minimized. A century and a half later, though, historian Aurelius Victor admitted to Trajan's fondness for wine in apologetic tones but passed over in complete silence his pederastic pursuits. 140 Perhaps such behavior could no longer be dismissed as easily in the fourth century as it had been in the third. Trajan's successor Hadrian (ruled 117-138), whom Cassius Dio praised at length, was criticized in the HistoriaAugusta for his "excessive lust [nimia voluptas]:' including his relationship with the young man Antinous. 141 Perhaps because of the seeming incongruity between Hadrian's manly martial abilities and the unmanliness of his pederastic involvements, Aurelius Victor dismissed as "evil gossip [rumores mali]" the notion of a sexual relationship between him and AntinoUS. 142 Examples of the denunciation of adult pederasts by later Roman writers abound. The emperor Carinus was a "frequent corruptor of youth [frequens corruptor iuventutis]:' which the author of the Historia Augusta defined as the "evil use of the enjoyment of his own sex."143 The poet Ausonius offered the opinion that if the transmigration of souls truly existed' a pederast deserved to be reincarnated as a bug (a dung beetle, in fact, malcing a witty allusion to the enjoyment of anal sex).l44 Attempts were also made to criminalize or recriminalize pederasty beginning in the third century. As the jurist Paulus wrote: Anyone who debauches a boy under the age of seventeen, or commits any other outrage on him, whether he is abducted by him or by a corrupt companion; or who solicits a woman or a girl, or does anything for the purpose of corrupting their chastity, or offers his house for that purpose, or gives

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them any reward in order to persuade them, and the crime is consummated, shall be punished with death; if it is not consurrimated, he" shall be deported to an island, and his profligate accomplic:es shall suffer the extreme penalty.14~

After a long absence, moreover, references to the lex Scantinia b"egm. ag~ . to appear in the sources. 146 " Some later Roman poets continued to describe the b~auty of the adolescent male. Yet even they shared with their contemporaries an atLuety about the manliness of such attraction and its connection to a discredited form of sexual desire. The poet Claudian dedicated a panegyric to the young emperor Honorius. "The women of Rome never tire of gazing at those blooming cheeks:' he declared, "those crowned locles, those limbs clothed in the consul's jasper-studded robes, those mighty shoulders, and that neck, beauteous as Bacchus' own, with its necldaces of Red Sea emeralds. "147 Even while Claudian as poet recognized the beauty of the emperor, and even while he compared his appearance with that of the youthful (and sexually ambiguous) god Bacchus, he nonetheless attributed the longing solely to "the women ofRome." Roughly the same thing was said of the young Maximinus (ruled 235-238) by the author of the Historia Augusta: "He himself was so beautiful that the more wanton of women loved bpn indiscriminately, and not a few desired to be gotten with child by hini."148 A similar discomfort with the adult male's appreciation for youthful male beauty may be found in an anonymous poem once attributed to Ausonius. The poet suggested to a nameless youth that ''while nature was deciding whether to malee you a boy or a girl, beautiful one, you were made a boy who is almost a girl?'149 The poet was rescued from the implication of pederasty because the object of his affections was onlyambiguously male. The poet's desire is further disguised and yet further admitted with the phrase paene puella puer (a boy who is almost a girl), since in late ancient Latin it would have been a virtual homonym for pene puella puer (a boy who is a girl with a penis). In his poetry, Ausonius addressed a boy as ''Adonis'' and "Ganymede," traditional ideals of youthful beauty and both associated in pagan myth with pederasty, and alluded to that age when the object of his affection "seem[ ed] either a boy or a girl?HSO Ausonius's poems on the beauty of Narcissus (another mythical ideal of youthful male beauty who fell in love with his own reflection in water) have a similar tone: one included the female figure of Echo who fell in love with Narcissus, but the other two imagined a male admirer who gazed at Narcissus in the same way he gazed at himself 151 Pederastic desire seems still to have existed in adult men, but they were no longer able to act on it with impunity.

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The reformulation of male pudicitia in the later empire virtually necessitated the abandonment of any sexual relationships between males as failings, regardless of the age of the participants or the type of sexual activity enjoyed. The poet N emesianus represented the end of a tradition when he descril?ed two shepherds who compared their loves: one for "the beautiful girl Meroe" (Meroe formosa) and the other for "the beautiful boy Io11as" (formosus Iollasy as "the same passion for different' sexes."152 No other statements .about pederasty in late antiquity share the positive perspective ofNemesianus. Even the medical beliefs oflate antiquity worked to give added weight to these fears. The physician Oribasius wrote that sex between males was more vigorous and more tiring than sex between a man and a woman and should be more avoided to preserve the body's health. 153 Ifprocreative sex could be excused or risked because of familial or demographic obligations, sex between boys and men had no such justification. The results of the later Roman sexual code are straightforward. Both adult and adolescent participants in pederastic relationships were condemned. The ancient dichotomy in classical sexuality between penetrated males who were stigmatized and penetrating males who were not-emphasized in recent secondary literature on ancient homosexuality as not really being homosexuality at all-was largely abandoned in late antiquity in favor of a condemnation of both roles as unmanly. A new vocabulary of sexual vice appeared, using terms like stuprum cum masculo (sexual misconduct with a[nother] male) that did not distinguish between active and passive roles in homosexual sex but subjected both to censure and legal impediments. 154 In sum, the later Roman notion ofpudicitia required men not only to keep their bodies free from penetration but also to refrain from a whole series of penetrative acts not previously sanctioned: with young men, with slaves and prostitutes of both sexes, and with women other than their wives. An individual man wanting to preserve his manliness, wanting to be a pudicusJ was still required to act only as a sexual penetrator, but only with his wife. In turn, an impudicus was not merely a man guilty of sexual passivity with another male but a man tainted by any sort of sexual impropriety. Indeed, sexual desires of all sorts were suspect. Already at the end of the second century, Marcus Aurelius had written that "sins of desire, in which pleasure predominates, indicate a more self-indulgent and womanish [thelyteros] disposition:'l55 Later Roman writers returned repeatedly to this theme, exhorting men to flee from sexual desire generally as from "a beast, opening its capacious jaws:'l56 Physiognomic portrayals of the deformed bodies of oversexed men (called inverecundiJ "the

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immodest:' or libidinosiJ "the lustful") demonstrated what could happen if men ignored these warnings. 157 . By exhorting men to rise above th~ir physical natures and bodily de- . sires, later Roman writers offered men an opportunity' to ex;ercise great~r . self-control in their very bodies and thus to demonstrate their virtus.· Even while the stricter sexual attitudes were translated into the ancient gendered language of manliness and unmanliness, however, the distinctions between men's and women's sexual roles were becoming blurred by the integration of the pudicitia of both sexes. Women were still expected to serve as passive sexual recipients of men's desires, to be sure, and men were still considered to function as sexual agents. Nonetheless, men were judged by a feminine standard of sexual restraint and sexual exclusivity, hardly a manly thing at all. THE SEXUALITY OF EUNUCHS

Eunuchs performed useful functions in the later Roman householdtheir numbers and cost would seem to indicate something of the sortbut they also provoked great anxiety in the household, particularly in the realm of sexuality. Eunuchs served as reminders of two of the greatest probleIIfs of men's sexuality in the later empire: their control of women and their control of themselves. Once again, eunuchs embodied the great changes talcing place in Roman masculinity. In Roman households, as in eastern Mediterranean households, eunuchs performed a variety of domestic tasks. Foremost among these tasks was the guardianship of women and children. The eunuch's supposed inability to engage in penetrative sex made them eminently suitable for protecting the pudicitia of such persons. The poet Claudian called the eunuch's ability of safeguarding the chastity of a man's wife and children his "sale virtue" or "one manly quality" (unica virtus). 158 Cassius Dio related with horror an incident in which an early third-century prefect had had over one hundred men castrated, but this measure had been talcen so that his virgin daughter would be above reproach in all her dealings with these men, who were her attendants and teachers. 159 As a child, the future emperor Julian's tutor had been a eunuch, a Scythian slave who had also taught his mother. 160 So removed were eunuchs from the sexuality of men in some eyes that women apparently felt no embarrassment at including them in the most intimate of surroundings. The Christian Jerome criticized the practice by which women might bathe together with eunuchs, because the latter still have "men's feelings" (animi virorum), but he was stricter than most, and

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also felt that Christian virgins should not even see themselves naked. 161 In order to humiliate Eutropius, the eunuch consul, the poet Claudian reminded his readers of some of the man's former domestic duties, duties . : that describ~ certain intimacies between eunuchs and women (even if we . : .canitot be c.ertain that ElJ.tropius had ever really performed such duties) : and so the future consul and governor of the East would comb his mistress' lodes or stand naJ.ced holding a silver vessel wherein his charge could wash herself And whert overcome by the heat she threw herself upon the couch, there would stand this patrician fanning her with bright peacock feathers.162

Because of the familiarity of eunuchs with women's bodies, they might be called upon to act as investigators of the virginity of potential brides, a custom about which the Christian Lactantius also complained. 163 Even as eunuchs were intended to guard the sexual integrity ofwomen on behalf of the men of the household, however, they also gave women a new degree of independence. In the ancient Roman world, a woman of the upper classes was not permitted to travel in public except in the presence of men, but for reasons of female pudicitia the only men with whom she might associate were her relatives. A noblewoman's eunuch slaves provided public transportation, acting as her porters and carrying her in sedan chairs whenever she traveled in public, allowing her to travel without her male relatives. 164 At the time when the laws were granting greater freedoms to women to act independently in the arrangement of their affairs, eunuch slaves were providing the material basis to malce such independence possible. The assignment of eunuchs as personal slaves to women also assumed that castrated men could not engage in sexual activity: an unreliable assumption and the basis for much male anxiety. Some eunuchs continued to have sexual desires, as Jerome complained above. Some might even act on those sexual desires, he added elsewhere; for that reason it was best that women not associate themselves with eunuchs, "so as to give no occasion to evil tongues."165 Claudian slandered Eutropius in much the same way, calling him his mistress's nutritm; a word presumably of his own design meaning roughly a male wet nurse. 166 Claudian's point was to ridicule Eutropius's former physical intimacy with a woman, like that between a wet nurse and her ward, but left unsaid what sort of intimacy they had enjoyed. The third-century Christian writer Tertullian made this accusation against the women of his day: "A great many of them, even those of noble birth and blessed with wealth, unite themselves promiscuously with mean and base-born men whom they have found able to

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gratify their passions or who have been mutilated for purposes oflust."167 And although it does not mention eunuchs "by name,' a law of Constantine threatened the severest punishments for a noblewoman who w?-s.· found to be having sex with one of her male slaves (she was-to be stjipped of all her possessions and exiled; he was to be killed).168 In short, sex be- . tween women and eunuchs was always possible. Eunu~hs with penises . intact might still achieve erections and engage in penetrative sex without the worry of impregnating the women in their charge. Even eunuchs unable to engage in penetrative sex could give sexual pleasure to women in non-penetrative ways such as in cunnilingus. Cunnilingus was an unmanly sexual activity from a traditional Roman perspective, because a man gave sexual pleasure instead of received it, but eunuchs had no manly reputation to preserve. The unmanliness of eunuchs also meant that they were presumed to have no ability to restrain themselves from all kinds of sexual vice - but then, neither did the women. The intimacy between women and eunuchs and the ability of eunuchs to move about in public as well as in the women's quarters in the Roman household meant that eunuchs could also act as go-betweens on behalf of married women seeking sexual affairs with other men. In his description ofEutropius's career, Claudian asserted that the eunuch-consul had excelled ~t just such a thing: he entered upon the skilled profession of a pander. His whole heart was in his work; he knew his business well and was master of every stratagem for the undoing of chastity. No amount of vigilance could protect the marriage-bed from his attack; no bars could shut him out.... None could arrest the attention of a maid-servant [from guarding her mistress] with so neat a touch as he, none twitch aside a dress so lightly and whisper his shameful message in her ear. Never was any so skilled to choose a scene for the criminal meeting, or so clever at avoiding the wrath of the cuckold husband should the plot be discovered. 169

Claudian probably meant to hint that Eutropius's behind-the-scenes conspiracies as a domestic slave acted as a rehearsal for his equally wicked machinations at the imperial court. It is impossible to know how often women had sex with eunuchs or used them to arrange sexual encounters with other men. In any case, the real issue here is men's anxiety around such possibilities. The wanton lack of self-control in sexual matters was not only a sign of the eunuch's unmanliness but also a humiliating reminder of a husband's failure either to satisfy his wife sexually or at least to guard her against sexual involvements with other men. In this way, the eunuch figured as a symbol of

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men's broader marital anxiety. The scenes that Jerome or Tertullian or Claudian described, even if imaginary, must be interpreted in the context of the loss of men's authority over their wives and the sexual morality restrictingm~ds sexual freedoms. In such an adulterous fantasy, the eunuch . coUld do with Unpunity what other men could no longer do. The eunuch .represented the wanton man. The presence of euriuchs in the later Roman household triggered other masculine amcieties around sex, anxieties related to the penetration of males. Although the practice is ignored by most historians, Roman men sometimes castrated their male slaves so as to prolong their youthful beauty for pederastic relations with them. I70 Given the Roman cultural emphasis on the attractiveness of youthful males, the widespread knowledge of castration, and the near absolute· control of masters over their slaves, it should not be too surprising to find references to the castration of slaves for sexual purposes. The jurists Paulus and Marcian both implied that sex was as likely a motive for the castration of a slave as resale: both used the phrase "for purposes oflust or commerce [libidinis aut promercii causa]" when referring to the motives for castration. I7l Considering the later Roman restrictions both on sexual behavior between males and on the use of slaves for sexual purposes, however, it should not be surprising to find this sort of behavior problematized. Claudian is once again a rich (if complicated) source on the topic ofsex between men and eunuchs. In a carefully euphemistic passage, the poet alluded to a connection between Eutropius's sexual services to men and his lofty position of influence in the empire. Although the passage is ostensibly about his generous patronage of the aristocracy, Claudian implied with dripping sarcasm that Eutropius's generosity with his sexual talents provided the real cause for his political success: He ever loves novelty, ever size, and is quick to taste everything in turn. He fears no assault from the rear; night and day he is ready with watchful care; soft, easily moved by entreaty, and, even in the midst of his passion, tenderest of men [mollissimus], he never says 'no; and is ever at the disposal even of those that solicit him not. Whatever the senses desire he cultivates and offers for another's enjoyment. That hand will give whatever you would have. He performs the functions of all alike; his dignity loves to unbend. His meetings and his deserving labors have won him this reward, and he receives the consul's robe in recompense for the work of his slcillful hand. 172

Claudian also claimed that Eutropius's lengthy sexual history had included a sexual relationship with the keeper of a hostel [stabulum] named

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Ptolemy, before being discarded and sold by him after "Eutropius' long service to his lusts" because he was "no longer worth keeping."l73 Bysay~ , ing that E utropius had reached an age ,at which he was no longer sexually.,. desirable, however, Claudian was obliged tounderstore ELJ-troplus'spr,e~' vious sexual attractiveness as a young eunuch. Claudian acerbly' compared the relationship between the two to a marriage, with Eutropius'as the pseudowife discarded from the home. In an age in which the law had curbed a man's ability to dismiss an unwanted wife, such a statement itself had a cultural resonance. Claudian managed to mock in the same breath both the relationship and Eutropius's less-than-masculine identity: How the scorned minion wept at his departure, with what grief did he lament that divorce! "Was this your fidelity, Ptolemy? Is this my reward for a youth lived in your arms, for the bed of marriage and those many nights spent together in the inn? Must I lose my promised liberty? Do you leave Eutropius a widow, cruel wretch, forgetful of such wonderful nights of love? How hard is the lot of my kind! When a woman grows old her children cement the marriage tie and a mother's dignity compensates for the lost charms of a wife. Me Lucina, goddess of childbirth, will not come near; I have no children on whom to rely. Love perishes with my beauty; the roseslof my cheeks are faded.'n74

Eutropius had failed not only as a man, by the constant reference to his feminine role as wife, but had even failed as a woman, incapable of true marriage or the children that reward a wife's faithfulness. In this period of declining birthrates, the mention of childlessness again touched a cultural nerve. Claudian's record of this sexual relationship between a man and a eunuch is obviously not a reliable one. Other evidence would suggest, however, that such sexual relationships between adult men and eunuchs were not uncommon. Even the emperor Domitian (ruled 81-96) who first outlawed castration had "himselfentertained a passion [eros] for a eunuch named Earinus:' according to Cassius Dio, and the emperor Titus (ruled 79-81) "also had shown a great fondness for eunuchs.''l75 More detailed is the description of the marriage of Nero to the eunuch Sporus. Cassius Dio claimed that "he used him in every way like a wife [hosgynaiki]."l76 Nero also "formally married Sporus:' according to Cassius, "and assigned the boy a regular dowry according to contract; and the Romans as well as other peoples publicly celebrated their wedding."l77 ''All the Greeks held a celebration in honor of the marriage:' Cassius claimed, "uttering all the customary good wishes, even to the extent of praying that legitimate chil-

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dren might be born to them."178 Cassius took his information on the relationships ofNero, Titus, and Domitian largely from the older imperial biographies of Suetonius and Tacitus, although his account is much more detailed on the indu~ion of the traditional aspects of marriage between , ,- Nero and SporuS.17~ Aurelius Victor repeated some of these features of the marriage in'his biography of Nero, but'then added that it was "of no gre,~.t account" becauseofNero's many other evil deeds. 180 Aurelius Victor's dismissal of this event as being "of no great account" is curious, because he wrote his history on the heels of a law on the very subject of the marriage of two males, enacted in 342 by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. The law imposed the death penalty ''when a man marries in the manner of a woman [in ftminam], as a woman who wants to offer herself to men, where sex has lost its place, where the offence is that which is not worth knowing, where Venus is changed into another form, where love is sought but not seen."181 The law is oddly worded, and various opinions have been offered as to its best translation and interpretation. 182 All of the secondary literature seems to interpret it as attempting to prohibit marriages between two adult males, although the language seems overly complicated for that purpose, and it has been argued that intimate relationships between adult males used ceremonies of fraternal adoption to effect a bond with legal consequences for the transmission of inheritances. 183 It seems that what the legislators had in mind were precisely those sexual relationships best known through marriages between men and eunuchs in which the castration of one of the parties provided the context for the feminization of the castrated man and his marrying "in the manner of a woman." Nowhere does the law mention eunuchs or castration outright, but this is not unexpected: later Roman legislators typically used flamboyant and vague language to malce their points on sexual matters. Consider a more-or-Iess contemporary law also issued under the name ofConstantius II: "If any person ... should commit anywiclced or shameful act or by chance should violate the chastity of anyone with the shame of lust, vengeance of appropriate severity must be extended against him."184 In the same way, a law of about a century later issued under Leo I and Majorian rails at "the outrage that resulted in another man's sorrow" and "a case of the disgrace of destroyed chastity and that highest crime in which is contained all that is unworthy of a man." 185These laws should all be seen as avoiding direct reference to an indelicate subject. In fact, nowhere in the Theodosian Code is castration mentioned directly or eunuchs named as such. 186 The condemnation of the action by which "sex has lost its place" and in which "Venus is changed into another form;'

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parallels exactly the idea of the mutability brought about by castration from a later, fIfth-century law, in which Leo II referred to eunuchs. as "transformed into entirely different beings."187 In the end, the eviqence .. . . that the emperors were forbidding marriages between men. arid ~illiuclj~ .. . by means of this law is not conclusive, but i.s more reliable than aiterna~ tive explanations. If the law of 342 is understood as prohibiting the marriages of men with eunuchs, then a subsequent law of the year 390 can also be given a new and clearer social context. This law extended the death penalty from men who married eunuchs to men who had any sex at all with eunuchs, in the words of the legislators, men "who have the shameful custom of condemning a man's body, acting the part of a woman's, to the sufferance of an alien sex, for they appear not to be different from women:,188 Like those laws forbidding the castration or corruption of one's slaves, the force of this later law was directed against the men who performed the action rather than those who were subjected to it. 189·The language of both laws hints at a profound belief in the feminization of males used for sexual pleasure. Given the uncertainty about the sexual identities of eunuchs and their common presence in elite households of the later Roman Empire, it is possible that formal marriages, believed valid, were being performed between men and those "whom the male sex has discarded:' in the words of the poet Claudian. Claudian's dismissive account of Eutropius's relationship with Ptolemy may also refer to such a marriage, twisted to suit his purposes, and his antipathy may be related to that of the fourth-century legislators. Although the custom of castration provided Roman householders with a method for the maximized sexual enjoyment of their male slaves, it could not escape the growing problematization of the sexual use of slaves or of men's participation in sexual activity with other males, even within the private sphere of familial life. The growing movement against castration was a reminder of this intrusion of new social and sexual values into the Roman family. Moreover, the presence of men, even castrated men, in intimate association with either the men or the women of a Roman household created as many problems, real or imagined, as it solved. Roman men of the aristocracy no longer enjoyed the same absolute authority over the women of their households, nor even the same freedoms over their sexual desires, as they once had. The presence of the eunuch in the later Roman household provided only another reminder of the loss of manliness in men's private lives.

. PART TWO

Changing Ideals

CHAPTER FOUR

III AM A SOLDIER OF CHRIST" Christian Masculinity and Militarism

Christian men oflate antiquity shared with their pagan counterparts a desire to see themselves as manly, a desire also threatened by the military crisis of the Roman Empire. They also worried about the unmanly stance of victimhood. Out of that desire and because of those worries, Christian men fashioned for themselves the image of the soldier of Christ. From the ,) martyrs, who represented the best and bravest soldiers of Christ, the image grew to encompass all Christian men, whose daily struggles against sin and temptation - against the !ffi111anliness of vice within themselveswere identified as warfare against evil. These moral battles were sufficient to men and did not require further bloodshed in actual combat. Through the image of the soldier of Christ, Christian ideology was transformed in such a way that Christian men of the later Roman Empire might find manliness even in the midst of military collapse. PATIENCE AND PACIFISM

Christian writers were well aware of the disastrous military predicament of the Roman Empire in late antiquity. Indeed, they penned some of the most dramatic descriptions of the barbarian invasions. "My voice sticks in my throat, and as I dictate, sobs choke my utterance:' cried the priest Jerome upon learning of the sack of the city of Rome in 410 at the hands of the Goths. "The City which had talcen the; whole world was itself talcen."l Several decades earlier, the Christian bishop Ambrose of Milan described the barbarian attacks with equal horror: "How could you bear these things, I wonder, which we are compelled to endure, and what is 105

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worse, to behold: virgins raped, little children torn from the embrace of their families and thrown onto swords, bodies consecrated to God defiled. . . . How could you tolerate them, I ask?"2 And a half-century later, Sidonius Apollinaris used similar pathos, concluding that "amid those calamities, that universal destruction, to live was death."3 Many more Christian writers echoed these sentiments. Like pagan writers, Christian writers used the ravages of the barbarians to deliver indictments of the Romans and their moral character. Salvian of Marseilles, a priest writing about the middle of the fifth century in Gaul, claimed that God had permitted the attacks because of the Roman people's many sins. He wrote: Among chaste [pudiciJ barbarians, we are unchaste [impudiciJ. I say further: the very barbarians are offended by our impurities. Fornication is not lawful among the Goths. Only the Romans living among them can afford to be impure by prerogative of nation and name. I ask: What hope is there for us before God? We love impurity [impudicitia J; the Goths abominate it. We flee from purity; they seek it. Fornication among them is a crime; with us a distinction and an ornament. 4

He concluded, perhaps responding to popular explanations, that "it is not the natural vigor of their bodies that enables them to conquer us, nor is it our natural wealmess that"has caused our conquest." Rather, he continued, "the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered US."5 Salvian's comments were almost assuredly exaggerated for rhetorical purposes. Still, it reminds us that Christian writers linked the military catastrophe to their identity as Romans. (It also suggests that Christian writers might have highlighted the catastrophe for their purposes, which we will see were to highlight the futility of a military response to the crisis of the empire.) Let us concentrate on the response of one Christian writer to the barbarian invasions. That writer was Augustine of Hippo, a Christian bishop in North Mrica and one of the most prolific and most famous of early Christian writers, writing mostly in the first decades of the fifth century. His comments will be used as a linchpin in this chapter and as evidence of a careful Christian response to the military crisis of the later Roman Empire. From the example of Augustine, we will be able to situate more generally the shaping of Christian ideology by individual writers in response to the military crisis and to the challenge that this crisis posed to Roman masculinity. Augustine certainly learned of the horrors of the barbarian invasions and the sack of the city of Rome in 410, and he drafted a series of sermons

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in order to console the Romans stunned by the implications of current events. 6 He was also aware of the accusation of some pagans that the Roman abandonment of the traditional gods was the cause of the military disasters of the empire. This accusation prompted Augustine to compose his lengthiest work, De civitatis Dei (On the City of God) following the sack. Augustine's reply to this accusation was twofold. First, he asserted that it was only because of the Christian god's providence that the destruction was somewhat mitigated. 7 Second, he demonstrated that the vi01ence and victimization of warfare was nothing new to Roman history, but was a natural consequence ofwhat he called "the lust for domination" (libido dominandi) that had dominated the Roman cultural mentality. 8 Indeed, he maintained that the effects of war were always dire and among the greatest tragedies of human life. 9 (Such statements are an important antidote to much of the secondary literature on Augustine and war, which details his concept of the just and justifiable war but neglects to document his fundamental opposition to war.) Considering the emphasis on militarism among Roman men, it is curious that Augustine and his Christian contemporaries were able to distance themselves from the failure of the empire and from its militaristic tradition without at the same time sacrificing their masculine identity. Yet this is precisely what they did. To understand how this distancing was possible, it is important first of all to appreciate the strong antimilitaristic tradition among the earliest Christians in the West. This antimilitarism appears especially in the hagiographical stories of individual Christians in the Roman army. One man named Maximilian, as he was inducted into the army at Tebessa in the Roman province ofMauretania in 295, refused to join, saying that "I cannot wage war, I cannot do evil. I am a Christian."lo When the soldier Martin of Tours converted to Christianity in Gaul in about 356, he resigned when faced with battle, declaring that "combat is not permitted to me."ll Such antimilitarism also found support among the earliest Christian writers of the West. Tertullian, writing in North Mrica at the turn of the third century, took a rigid stance against Christian involvement in war. 12 Hippolytus of Rome took a similar position shortly afterward in decrees intended as binding on Christians. 13 Scholars examining the Christian prohibition on military service have offered various explanations for it. Some see it as part of a general pacifism in early Christian ideology, which precluded any shedding of blood. Others see its origins in the Christian condemnation of idolatry, since occasional ritual worship of the emperor was required of all soldiers until the year 312, after which Constantine permitted Christians the free prac-

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tice of their religion. There is no need to rehearse the arguments of these scholars, who all see a sea change after 312. All recognize that after that date-whether through a falling away from the early pacifism, or because of the end of emperor worship, or because of the growing Christian domination of public life- individual Christians regularly served as Roman soldiers, prayers were offered to the Christian god before battle, and Christian symbols replaced pagan ones on soldiers' shields and army banners.14 It is not necessary to reconcile entirely these opinions; rather, one must respect the possibility that different Christians held various viewpoints on the permissibility of soldiering according to diverse traditions of interpretation and specific cultural influences, and that these viewpoints might have contradicted each other. Still, it is also possible to see a broad path in Christian attitudes - both before and after the year 312in which participation in war happened and was permitted and yet not encouraged. IS From this perspective, it does not matter that there were numerous Christian soldiers in the Roman army from the second century onward, which seems indisputable. Nor does it matter that the army was thoroughly Christian by the end of the fourth century, which also seems lil(ely. For it was not the Christian men of the army, but the men who refused to be made soldiers, men lil(e Maximilian, or the soldiers who refused continued service, men lil(e Martin, who were seen as the Christian ideal. 16 Sources from the period after 312 confirm this antimilitarist ideal even while permitting Christian soldiering. Augustine declared that no sin was involved in soldiering as a profession, in a letter addressed to a Christian military commander, but even he felt war to be a necessary evil at best. 17 The bishop Paulinus of Nola in southern Italy attempted to persuade a Christian soldier to abandon his military career by appealing . to his religious ideals. 18 Leo the Great, bishop of Rome in the middle of the fifth century, called military service "free from fault;' although he believed that refusal to fight was a better option, and ordered that a public penance should be required for Christian soldiers after the end of their secular career.19 Several church councils and bishops argued for a ban on former soldiers becoming Christian priests, precisely because the sinful nature of the former could not be reconciled with the special holiness expected of the latter. 2o These writers all recognized more or less that military service was a part of life for Christians of the later Roman Empire, but they also held up the refusal to participate in war as exemplary and as a higher ideal.

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The Christian ambivalence toward military service, permitting it but recommending against it, stemmed in part from the reluctant reconciliation of Christian ideology to a militaristic society. But the ambivalence can also be better understood by placing it within the context of the tension between traditional and emerging ideals of masculinity. Military identity was seen as a sign of Roman manliness, but the Christian ideal of nonviolence - the virtue known as patientia) usually blandly translated as "patience" but from the Latin patiri) "to endure, suffer, submit to" - was in a real sense based on an ideal of passivity and of being a victim. Again, if we return to the earliest days of Christianity in the western Mediterranean, we see how central a theme this quality of patience was to Christians and how it was defended. Tertullian, who devoted a whole treatise to the encouragement ofpatientia) called it "the height ofvirtue and manliness" (summa virtuS).21 Needless to say, this ideal of patient submission contrasted sharply with the myth of the Roman as bellicose aggressor, driven by the ideal of the vita militaris. Christian men of the western Mediterranean in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries had to step gingerly to find their way between these opposing ideals. Let us look, then, at the tension between patientia and militarism in the Western Christian tradition to clarify what was at stalce for men in the development of an ideology of being a victim. Cyprian, the mid-thirdcentury bishop of Carthage in North Mrica and one of the earliest Latin Christian writers, also devoted an entire treatise to the subject ofpatientia. He understood it as an attitude of forbearance to all of life's ills: When any man is born and enters the abode of this world, he begins with tears. Although even then inexperienced and ignorant of all things, he can do nothing else at his birth except weep. With natural foresight he laments the anxieties and labors of this mortal life, and at its very beginning, by weeping and lamentations his young soul testifies to the trials of the world which he is entering. For he toils and labors as long as he lives here. Nothing else can relieve those who labor and toil more than the consolation derived from patience. 22

It is easy to see how a philosophy offering such consolation could have been attractive to men of the later Roman aristocracy, fraught with a sense of their helplessness in the collapsing empire. The idealization of such impotence as the virtue of patience offered at least a method for Roman men to begin to malce sense of their lives through Christian ideology. (One also hears more than a few echoes of Stoic thought in this ideal.) Cyprian, continuing in a later passage in the same work, touched

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on the very areas of upheaval in men's lives as examples where patience was most helpful: marriage and sexuality, wealth and power. He wrote: It is that same patience which tempers anger, bridles the tongue, governs the mind, guards peace, rules discipline, breaks the onslaught of lust, suppresses the violence of pride, extinguishes the fire of dissension, restrains the power of the wealthy, renews the endurance of the poor in bearing their lot, guards the blessed integrity of virgins, the difficult chastity of widows, and the indivisible love of husbands and wives. It malces men humble in prosperity, brave in adversity, meek in the face of injuries and insults. 23

In many ways, patience was a resignation to the life and lot of the later Roman male. Christian writers did not describe patientia only in terms of passivity or resignation, however, but also with metaphors of triumph and success. Endurance in suffering was, as Cyprian and Tertullian reminded their readers, a virtue with many Biblical precedents. Indeed, Cyprian dealt at length with the model of patience provided by Jesus, who, he reminded his readers, had still overcome the world, and he equated patience with the Roman ideal of firmitas (steadfastness).24 These metaphors of triumph and success became the foundation for the idealization of patience and a key to the transformation of Roman masculinity through Christian ideology. The ideal ofpatientia is apparent, above all, in the deaths of the Christian martyrs who, during the time especially of the third-century persecutions, served in many ways as visible signs of Christian perfection. Indeed, the perfection of the martyrs came precisely from their willingness to become victims. 25 Cyprian claimed just that, giving the example of Stephen, revered as the first of the martyrs, "who, in preceding by his most fitting death the martyrs that were to come, was not only a preacher of the Lord's suffering but also an imitator ofRis most patient [patientissima] gentleness."z6 The more violent the attacks on Christians, Cyprian maintained, the more unresisting should be the individual's response. 27 In a letter to a friend, Cyprian addressed the persecutors directly on behalf of the Christian martyrs: "no one of us fights back when he is apprehended, nor do our people avenge themselves against your unjust violence however numerous and plentiful."28 The victimization embraced in Christian patience and martyrdom were obviously contrary to traditional Roman standards of masculine militarism. Pagan critics of Christianity were quick to point out the unmanliness inherent in such a willing acceptance of violence and death. Or

"I AM A SOLDIER OF CHRIST"

III

at least, this is the viewpoint preserved in the hagiographical and historical sources of the martyrs - all written by Christians - in which the stigma of unmanliness is often included as an aspect of the pagan antagonism toward the Christian martyrs. When the martyrs of Lyons in 177 were brought into the arena just before their deaths, the crowd taunted them as lowborn [agenneis] and unmanly [anandroi]. 29 When the soldier Martin of Tours refused to fight, his commander ridiculed his reluctance as unmanly cowardice, saying that "it was fear of the battle which was to occur the next day that was causing him to refuse participation, not any religious motive."30 Some Christian men were willing to accept this label of we alcness and unmanliness as part of the humility required by patience and to leave the retribution for such attacks to God. As Cyprian wrote, the ultimate victory of God made the individual's victory unimportant. 31 Other men tried to find ways both to remain true to what they felt to be their Christian ideals and to counter pagan imputations of unmanliness, or perhaps also to allay their own concerns about their manliness. These men made frequent reference to the paradox of the Christian reversal of symbols, in which wealcness was strength and defeat was victory, to create a manifesto for a new Christian masculinity. They embraced the paradox that a man might find military success even in patientia. MILITARISM AND MARTYRDOM

The number of Christian writers who attempted to defend their manliness, despite the seeming wealcness and passivity of the Christian ideal of patientia~ demonstrates how important the preservation of a masculine identity was to Christian men in late antiquity. The supreme act of Christian patience was to be martyred, and so it is in the accounts of the martyrs that the manliness of pacifist and patient Christians is most often invoked. Indeed, as we will see, the Christian martyrs were said to represent the new military ideal of masculinity. As early as the beginning of the third century, Western Christian writers defended the manliness of pacifist Christians. "For what wars should we not be fit;' asked Tertullian, "even with unequal forces, we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion it were not counted better to be slain than to slay?"32 In other words, Christians would have made the best soldiers, exactly because of their steadfastness in facing suffering, had their religious beliefs not discouraged them from participating in war. In his account of the life of Martin of Tours , written

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two centuries later, Sulpicius Severns drew upon precisely the same motif, defending Martin's manliness despite his pacifism: Martin undismayed [by his military commander's charge of cowardice, noted above], was made all the bolder by the attempt to intimidate him. "If my act is set down to cowardice [ignavia] rather than to faith:' he said, "I shall stand unarmed tomorrow before our lines. In the name of the Lord Jesus and protected only by the sign of the cross, without shield or helmet, I shall penetrate the enemy's ranks and not be afraid."33

Martin's bravery was never tested, Sulpicius noted, because God intervened and the enemy cancelled the battle. A similar story was also told of Victricius, a former soldier who became bishop of Rouen in Gaul in the early fifth century. Victricius was supposed to have faced torture gladly for his refusal to continue fighting in battle. Again, his courage was never tested, since God struck his torturer with blindness. 34 The emphasis on the manliness of the martyrs can be seen, above all, in the military metaphors that Latin writers used to describe the martyrs, especially in the manly posture of the "soldier of Christ" (miles Christi). The origins of this image are uncertain, though the phrase had been mentioned in earliest, Biblical Christianity, and there are other Roman, Hellenistic, and Jewish uses of the metaphor of life as a battle, some of which might have been in circulation in the western Mediterranean in the third century C.E. 35 Among the Latin writers of late antiquity, though, the phrase "soldier of Christ" was turned into the heart of a sophisticated (and complicated) defense of Christian manliness. Tertullian was the first Christian writer to use the image of the soldier extensively, at the beginning of the third century, and he did so precisely in order to defend the manliness of Christians. Its first appearance occurs exactly in an apology for Christian victimization that Tertullian directed at pagan critics: It is quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it is in the way that the soldier longs for war. Noone indeed suffers willingly, since suffering necessarily implies fear and danger. Yet the man who objected to the conflict, both fights with all his strength, and when victorious, he rejoices in the battle, because he reaps from it glory and spoil. It is our battle to be summoned to your tribunals, that there, under fear of execution, we may battle for the truth. But the day is won when the object of the struggle is gained. This victory of ours gives us the glory of pleasing God, and the spoil of life eternal.... Therefore we conquer in dying; we go forth victorious at the very time we are subdued. 36

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The paradox to which Tertullian alluded, that in the martyrs' seeming defeat they conquer, is simply the first instance of what would become a general theme in Latin Christian writings about masculinity: that true manliness is found in apparent unmanliness. In refusing to be soldiers, Tertullian argued, Christians were in fact showing themselves to be more militaristic and manlier than their pagan counterparts. The idea was a radical reworking of the traditional Roman military identity. . In a work addressed to the potential martyrs themselves, Tertullian returned to the same theme. He counseled those Christians imprisoned in the latest round of persecutions by the Roman government to count their hardships as a type of military discipline of their virtus for the battle ahead that was their approaching death. He wrote: No soldier comes out to the campaign laden with luxuries, nor does he go to action from his comfortable chamber, but from the light and narrow tent, where every kind of hardship and roughness and disagreeableness must be put up with. Even in peace soldiers inure themselves to war by toils and inconveniences - marching in arms, running over the plain, working at the ditch, making the shed, engaging in many arduous labors. The sweat of the brow is in everything, that bodies and minds may not shrink at having to pass from shade to sunshine, from sunshine to icy cold, from the robe of peace to the coat of mail, from silence to clamor, from quiet to tumult. In lilce manner, 0 blessed, count whatever is hard in this lot of yours as a discipline of your manliness [virtus] of mind and body. 37

His description is reminiscent of countless descriptions of the vita militaris. Tertullian's use of the military metaphor to describe Christians derived perhaps from some connection to the combination of militarism, masculine identity, and religion found in Mithraism. 38 Tertullian had a certain familiarity with the Mithraic religion and is one of our best sources of information about the cult in the West. At one instance, he wrote: "if I remember Mithraism on this point:'39 when referring to an aspect of the religion, which some scholars have interpreted to mean that he had been an adherent of Mithraism before his conversion to Christianity. At the least, the statement implies a prior acquaintance with Mithraism, perhaps through his father, who might have been an army official. 40 It is also possible that Tertullian may have adopted the military image from Mithraism because of its potential for popularity among the Roman population of Carthage where he wrote, since many of the Carthaginians in the third century were descendants of Roman soldiers retired onto estates there. 41 Tertullian did explicitly contrast the Mithraic soldier with the soldier of

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Christ, even while noting the similarities between the two images, complaining of how the enemies of Christianity ape certain religious truthS.42 The image of the Christian soldier, however, functioned for Tertullian in exactly the same manner as it had for the Mithraists. It gave a military flavor to religious devotion when describing the victory of individual salvation. In this context, Tertullian's use of the term solely to refer to martyrs, those individuals for whom the victory of salvation was assured, is noteworthy. Indeed, Tertullian in one passage called martyrdom a second baptism of blood instead ofwater, an image that also invites comparisons with the ceremony of initiation of Mithraism, called the taureboliumJ in which initiates were drenched in the blood of a slaughtered bull. 43 The soldier was also a uniquely masculine image, another parallel between Christian soldiering and the religion of Mithras (again, a religion that was open only to men). Christian writers were well aware of the masculine connotations of being a soldier of Christ when they described the martyrs, as we can see if we look at their descriptions of female Christian martyrs. Women were certainly among the early martyrs, and they were highly praised for their courage and willingness to suffer evil. 44 The fourth-century Christian historian Eusebius, for example (who wrote in Greek, but whose account was translated at the end of the same century into Latin by Rufinus and known in the West), detailed at length the strength and courage of Blandina, a woman executed in Lyons in 177.45 Nonetheless, at no point did he or any Christian writer of late antiquity ever call any woman a "soldier of Christ?' (Paulinus of Nola is the only writer that even comes close to doing so, referring to Melania the Elder as "a woman, inferior in sex, fighting for Christ [militans Christo] with the virtues of Martin;' but even he stopped short ofusing the expression miles Christi to describe her. 46 ) The real importance of the soldier-of-Christ symbol, one might suppose, was not in its origins but in its uses for Western Christian ideology. The qualities that the ancient Romans had so admired in soldiers could be emphasized as the qualities that the Christian martyrs exhibited. For instance, a parallel might be easily drawn between the eagerness of soldiers for battle and the eagerness of Christians for martyrdom as equivalent indications of bravery, just as Tertullian did. 47 Tertullian's use of the term sacramentum (usually translated as "sacrament;' but meaning a military vow of loyalty) for Christian baptism is another example of the implications of the military metaphor for Christian ideology. Several scholars have analyzed the military roots of this term in detail, noting among other facts that the term was by Tertullian's day already used to describe the rite of initiation into other religions, notably the Eastern mystery re-

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ligions. 48 Such an oath of initiation had been part of the Mithraic religion, where the military aspects of the cult served to emphasize the analogy between the promise of participation in the religion and the oath of loyalty taken before war. 49 Tertullian made the same connection, writing to Christians that "we were called to the warfare of the living God in our very response to the sacramental words [spoken at baptism] ?'50 The model of the Christian soldier carried important ramifications for masculine identity. As an ideal of manliness, the miles Christi could take on himself all of the military vocabulary of traditional masculinity: the bravery, endurance, and self-sacrifice even to the point of death, everything associated with the vita militaris. The difference between the secular soldier and the Christian soldier lay in his attitude toward victory. While a secular soldier who did not win the battles in which he fought was no good soldier, the Christian soldier won the battle by remaining passive in the face of violence and gained the victory in the very act of being defeated. In short, the figure of the soldier of Christ preserved for pacifist and suffering Christians a heroic and manly self-image in what might otherwise have been considered an unmanly action. Because of this paradox, Tertullian was able to suggest to Christians (all of whom in his day were potential martyrs): "Let outrage be wearied out by your patience. Whatever that blow may be, conjoined with pain and contumely:' he declared, "you wound that outrageous one more by enduring?'51 The stories of the military martyrs demonstrate best how Christian writers manipulated the paradox of Christian manliness. Montanus and Lucius, imprisoned during the persecution in Carthage in 259, were remembered as understanding their confinement as a battle for Christ: The torments we suffered in prison go beyond anything we could describe. It is not that we are afraid to tell how bad it really was. The more intense the temptation, the more powerful is the one who conquers it within us; indeed, it is not a struggle, but rather a victory under the shield of the Lord. To God's servants it is easy to be killed; and hence death is nothing when the Lord crushes its sting, conquers its struggle, and triumphs by the trophy [trophaeum] of the cross. 52

(The trophaeum was a traditional memorial to victory in battle, originally a tree hung with the spoils of war, compared here to the cross on which Jesus died.) How readily this account corresponded with the experiences of Montanus and Lucius cannot be known; the usefulness of the source is as an example of instructing readers of or listeners to the legend in the lessons of paradoxical Christian manliness. A similar accounting is attributed to Julius the Veteran, a soldier killed

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on the Danube frontier in the persecution of 304 after being asked to offer incense to the emperor as god. "I went on seven military campaigns:' Julius is supposed to have replied, "and never hid behind anyone nor was I the inferior of any man in battle. My chief never found me at fault. And now do you suppose that I, who was always found to be faithful in the past, should now be unfaithful to higher orders?"53 Interestingly, Julius here defended his secular record as a soldier: he was brave in battle and obedient to his superiors, as a good soldier should be. Of course, it was exacdy Julius's bravery and obedience to the commands of the Christian god that required him to talce a stand against the pagan sacrifices. The manly and militaristic image of the martyrs remained long after the period of persecution ended. Evidence of the continued popularity of the legends of the bravery and self-sacrifice of the martyrs comes especially from a poet of the early fifth century, Prudentius, who called his accounts of the martyrs Liber peristephanon (The Book of the Crowned). Even the tide contains a military reference: victorious soldiers typically wore a crown of laurel leaves at their return home. 54 The first part of the work describes the legend of two soldier-comrades, Emeterius and Chelidonius of Calahorra in northern Spain, executed sometime in the third century. Prudentius made extensive use of the contrasts between traditional and Christian masculinity. "They deemed it of little worth to carry javelins in hands ready for action:' he wrote, "to batter a wall with engines of war, to gird a camp with ditches and stain godless hands with bloody slaughterings."55 "They abandoned Caesar's ensigns:' he continued, "choosing the standard of the cross."56 Finally, Prudentius concluded, it was by means of their sufferings and deaths that "the manliness [virtus] that is in the martyrs beat down the filthy devil, constrain, torture, burn, enchain him."57 The first legend sets the tone for the rest of the Liber peristephanon where such masculine imagery is frequendy repeated, even though the saints depicted in the other stories of martyrdom were not soldiers. Prudentius depicted the Roman martyr Lawrence in the same way: "In warfare Lawrence did not gird a sword on his side, but turned back the foe's steel against its wielder."58 And in similar words, Prudentius wrote of the martyr Vincent: "Victorious in a cruel death, you then after death in lilce triumph trample victoriously on the devil merely with your body."59 Indeed, Prudentius addressed Vincent as "bravest of the brave" (fortissimorum fortior) and "most invincible of soldiers" (miles invictissime) also malcing a play on words with his name, Vincentius, meaning "victorious" in Latin), in an obvious contrast between the apparent reality of the martyr's defeat and the true reality of his spiritual conquest. 60

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The manly image of the martyrs had other important uses. If the persecuted Christians could be depicted as manly, then the persecuting pagans could be equally depicted as unmanly. Accordingly, Tertullian contrasted the toughness or duritia of the deaths of true Christians in the arena with the effeminate softness or moUitia of the death in bed of even a pagan pseudomartyr such as Socrates. 61 The pagan also showed his true colors in the unmanly fury with which he persecuted Christians. So Prudentius, even while stressing the complete submissiveness of the martyr Romanus ("he goes unresisting, asks to be bound, and of his own accord turns his hands round behind him"62), nonetheless had the martyr-to-be ridicule his torturers precisely for their lack ofmanliness: "What unmanly [non virile] strength! What effeminate [moUes] hands! To think that in this long time you have failed to demolish the fabric of one poor perishing body!"63 Leo the Great made repeated references to the wealmess of the persecutors in a sermon written at Rome in the mid-fifth century for the feast of the martyrdom of Lawrence (again showing the popularity of the manly image of the martyrs long after the end of the persecutions). Resaid: You gain nothing, you accomplish nothing, savage cruelty! The mortal matter is subjected to your inventions, but when Lawrence climbs to the sky, you lose. Your flames could not overcome the flame of the love of Christ, and the fire that consumed without proved wealcer than the fire which burned within. Persecutor! You became the slave of the martyr when you raged against him [senJisti . . . cum saevisti]; you added to his glory when you added to his suffering. 64

Leo's manipulation of opposites only reinforced the general paradox of Christian masculinity. Armed with their paradoxical masculinity, Christian writers could not only present their martyrs as heroic and manly, but also attack the pagan persecutors of their heroes as unmanly. Christian ideology thus absorbed much of the rhetoric of manliness and unmanliness in talcing onto itself the image of military masculinity. By reversing the associations of the military metaphor and identifYing manliness with pacifism, Christians helped to create a new masculine ideal, one that corresponded much more closely to Roman men's reluctance to engage in warfare. THE INTERIOR BATTLE AGAINST SIN

From the martyrs, the image of the soldier of Christ was eventuallyextended, as the image of the vita militaris had been extended, to any man.

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Instead of battling physical persecutors, writers encouraged the Christian man to battle his interior wealmess. In part, this reworking of the military image of Christian manliness was the necessary consequence' of the end of persecution in 312, although references to the interior battle against sin predated the imperial edict of Christian toleration. The interiorization of the military image also permitted individual Christian men to see themselves as soldiers without having to face the supreme sacrifice demanded of the martyrs. Cyprian of Carthage was an important participant in the extension of the notion of the soldier of Christ from martyrs alone to include all Christians. Although Cyprian wrote in a period of intensified persecution of Christians in North Africa in the middle of the third century, he relied much more on preparedness for martyrdom rather than death itself as defining the Christian soldier: For he cannot be a soldier fitted for the war who has not first been exercised in the field .... It is an ancient adversary and an old enemy with whom we wage our battle .... If he finds Christ's soldier unprepared, if unskilled, if not careful and watching with his whole heart; he circumvents him if ignorant, he deceives him incautious, he cheats him inexperienced. But if a man, keeping the Lord's precepts, and bravely adhering to Christ, stands against him, he must needs be conquered, because Christ, whom that man confesses, is unconquered. 65

In this sense, any Christian individual, martyr or not, could be a soldier of Christ. Cyprian added that "if persecution should fall upon such a soldier of God, his virtue [or manliness, virtus], prompt for battle, will not be able to be overcome"; and that "in persecution the warfare, in peace the purity of conscience, is crowned."66 Cyprian extended this metaphor at length, writing how "the white-robed cohort of Christ's soldiers ... by a steadfast formation have broken the turbulent ferocity of an attacking persecution, prepared to suffer imprisonment, armed to endure death."67 Again, Cyprian's elnphasis was always on the readiness for martyrdom. The use of the term sacramentum for baptism, which Cyprian adopted from Tertullian, helped to strengthen this idea that a military-type oath bound all Christians, whether martyr or not (and referring to Christians as a white-robed cohort did the same, since Christians wore white robes at baptism, a parallel with a soldier's uniform). It is significant that it was Cyprian who first extended this military metaphor, given what we lmow of his personal history as bishop of Carthage. Instead of facing martyrdom in the Decian persecution of 249 to 250, he fled the city. This action was viewed as cowardice and as aban-

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donment of his episcopal responsibilities by some, especially by a large group of near-martyrs called the confessors. The confessors had been imprisoned and sentenced to death, but had been freed after the period of persecution ended, before the sentences against them had been carried out. Revered as living "soldiers of Christ" for their willingness to face death, their denunciation of Cyprian carried considerable weight. Cyprian returned to his episcopal duties, but for the remainder of his writing career he downplayed the authority of these confessors who criticized him. 68 The extension of the military image from martyrs alone to all Christians may even have been a conscious strategy to deny to the confessors an important part of their authority. Cyprian's ideas were also a necessary rebuttal of those of Tertullian, who had written a treatise a half-century earlier opposing flight in persecution, describing it as cowardly and unmanly. "1 had rather be one to be pitied [as a martyr] than to be blushed for [through shame because of flight]:' Tertullian had argued; "more glorious [pulchrior] is the soldier lost in battle, than he who has safety as a fugitive."69 One might also contrast Cyprian's views with those of a contemporary at Rome, N ovatian, who also took a much more critical view of the Christians who fled or sacrificed during the Decian persecution, and again used the military metaphor, comparing those who had lapsed to deserters from an army out of fear of the enemy. 70 It was after the end of the period of persecution of Christians, though, in the fourth and fifth centuries, that the use of the symbol 'Of the soldier of Christ for all men was especially popular and widespread. This is logical, since the risk of martyrdom no longer existed and Christian writers were faced with the choice of abandoning the metaphor or using it in a different way. This choice is the exact point of a fifth-century sermon of Leo the Great, who urged his Christian audience not to abandon the fortitude that they had acquired "in the times when the Icings of this world and all of the secular powers raged with a cruel impiety against the people of God:' but to "be vigilant and beware of the perils which are born from the very quietness of peace." He continued: The enemy himself, who was ineffective in open persecutions, now uses hidden arts to our destruction: so that those whom he did not malce flee by striking them with afflictions, he now malces fall away by love ofluxury. . . . The terror of proscriptions he has changed to the fire of avarice, and those whom he did not destroy with condemnations, he corrupts with lust. 71

Leo considered the Christian who resisted lust and the love of luxury as brave and as true a soldier of Christ as the martyr who faced death. The

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Christian poet Commodian concurred: "if you conquer by your good deeds, you are in that way a martyr."72 It is easy to see how such an idea was attractive to Christian men, since it permitted any of them to view their daily struggles as part of a larger battle between good and evil. Such an idea made them the equivalent of the martyrs by being comparable followers of the "commander of the heavenly army" (dux caelestis militiae), as Ambrose of Milan described Jesus in the late fourth century.73 Each man might say to himself what Hilary of ArIes is supposed to have said to his saintly predecessor as bishop in the fifth century: "In truth, I believe that no one disputes that only the occasion of martyrdom was lacking in you, and not the spirit for it."74 Similarly, a man's daily fight against sin and temptation might take on cosmic significance when construed in the fashion of a metaphysical war against the Devil and his armies. Already in the mid-third century, Cyprian often returned to the refrain that the true enemy of all Christians was the Devil, picturing him besieging the individual as a military commander might try to talce a town. "Circling about each one of us;' he wrote, "and just as an enemy, besieging an enclosed people, he explores the walls and tries to find out if any part of our members is less stable and less faithful, by which he might, approaching, penetrate to the interior."75 It could well be that the magnification of the role of the Devil in Western Christianity in late antiquity, while also influenced by Eastern dualist sects lilce the Manichaeans, owed something to the military analogy of sin and temptation, requiring its own commander and legions. So, for example, the renunciation of the Devil at the moment of baptism became a standard part of the Christian rite in the third century. 76 The popularity of the image of opposing spiritual armies may also have intensified the role of the Antichrist as the future enemy of Christians, beginning with Hippolytus of Rome in the mid~third century and also described in military terms. 77 Individual Christian participants in such battles, in turn, could perceive themselves as heroic fighters in an invisible but consequential war. By the middle of the fifth century, the seasons of the Christian churches and the commemorative feasts of the martyrs continually reminded Christian audiences of the military flavor of their lives. The theme of the war of the soul against sin could be found in virtually any writer preaching sermons on these occasions. Peter Chrysologus devoted a sermon entirely to the subject: [The Devil] conquers us in abundance, takes possession of us in pleasure, gorges himself at our feasts, and whenever luxury does not let go ofus, lust arouses us, a pagan procession carries us off, ambition compels us, wrath

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urges us, fury fills us, hatred kindles within us, desire inflames us, cares concern us, profits seize us .... Then virtues die, vices live, pleasure runs forth, respectability perishes, mercy disappears, and greed abounds, confusion reigns, order succumbs, and discipline lies prostrate. These very things war against the soldier of Christ; these very things are the cohorts of Satan and the legions of the Devil. 78

What is being fought here, of course-lust, love of luxury, wrath and p~ide-are the vices that were long held to make a man effeminate.

The image of warfare against sin was especially popular with poetic writers. Commodian wrote: "Lust overtalces you: it is war, fight against it. Greed tempts you: do not listen to it, and you have won the war."79 Pmdentius used the image to its fullest effect. In his fifth -century allegory of the fight against sin, called the Psychomachia (The Battle of the Soul), the personified forces of good battle their corresponding vices in a war depicted in bloody detail. He addressed Christ as the commander-in-chief of the virtues. "You yourself command relieving squadrons to fight the battle in the body close beset;' he wrote, "you yourself arm the spirit with preeminent kinds of skill whereby it can be strong to attack the wantonness in the heart and fight for you, [and] conquer for you. The way of victory is before our eyes."80 Again, the attack against the vices was nothing more than a war between virtus and mollitia. It was the battle to be a man. Tertullian's linlc between militarism and baptism also provided a context in which fourth- and fifth-century writers could remind their audiences that all Christians, having talcen the oath of baptism, had declared their preparedness for the war against evil. In a discussion of baptism in the fourth century, Jerome called the ritual God's "protection and shield;' adding that "the enemy wars against us and never retreats, even in defeat, but always lies in ambush, ready to shoot his arrows at the upright of heart from his secret hiding place."81 In a homily addressed to Christian catechumens preparing for the rite, Jerome repeated this idea: You, too, who are going to receive baptism, begin your preparation for tomorrow. They, who are going into battle, prepare themselves carefully beforehand. Each one sees whether he has a shield, a two-edged sword, or a spear; whether he needs arrows; whether his horse has been put into condition; he prepares his equipment and weapons ahead of time that he may be ready to fight. Your weapons are fasts; your battle is humility. 82

Examples of Christian funerary sculpture from late antiquity also demonstrate how baptism was compared to battle and perhaps testify to the popularity of the idea outside of literary circles. 83

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Christian writers generally recognized the irony in describing nonviolence in militaristic terms, but placed this within the context of the general paradox of Christian masculinity. Sulpicius Severns, in probably the most famous example of this disjunction of image and reality, had Martin of Tours say at his moment of conversion: "1 am a soldier of Christ; it is not permitted to me to fight."84 But a similar disjunction appears in the anonymous story of the martyrdom of Marcellus, killed in North Mrica in about 300: "it is not fitting that a Christian, who fights for Christ his Lord, should fight for the armies of this world:'85 Peter Chrysologus also emphasized the paradox of militarism in patientia: "The meek warrior is to subdue the devil, the gende victor is to reduce the pride of the world, the peaceful fighter is to blot out the discords of nations:'86 But it was Tertullian who had first embraced this paradox: "let [the Devil] find you armed and fortified with concord; for peace among you is ballie with him:'87 One final point remains. Spiritual militarism left lillie concern for the actual state of the defenses of the empire, only of secondary importance in a symbolic universe that measured victory by internal rather than external success. AB Ambrose wrote: "The church conquers hostile forces not with physical weapons but with spiritual ones."88 It is with this in mind that we should return to Augustine's comments on war and violence with which we began the chapter, and in this context that we should situate the general Christian reaction to the disintegration of the Western Empire. Augustine, who believed that military service was permissible to Christian men, referred to the different ballies waged by Christians. "Some fight for you against invisible enemies by prayer:' he wrote in a letter written in 418 and after the sack of Rome, "while you strive for them against visible barbarians by fighting:' Nonetheless, he left lillie doubt about which he considered to be the more important war, saying that the men who had renounced the world's ballies enjoyed "the highest selfdiscipline" and "a more prominent place" before God. 89 Augustine wrote his own treatise on Christian patience at about the same time. In it, he returned to the problems of the military crisisamong them, "the bitterness and uncertainty of wars, the strokes of terrific blows and dreadful wounds:' and "highway robbers, all of whom spend sleepless nights lying in wait for travelers"90 - but placed these among the troubles that should not concern the patient man. He reminded his readers of the experiences of the martyrs: In the body, they were fettered, they were imprisoned, they were beset with hunger and thirst, they were tortured, cut to pieces, lacerated, burned,

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butchered. Yet, with a faithfulness that remained unmoved, they subjected their minds to God while they suffered in the flesh whatever cruelty came into the minds of their assailants. 91

In other words, the example of the martyrs could be used to see Christians through whatever kind of physical attacks they might face, even if the age of the martyrs had passed . . In fact, the age of the martyrs had not quite passed. The Christian associates of Augustine in North Mrica were suffering tortures not only at the hands of brigands and barbarians, but also by bands of Christian renegades known as the Circumcellians, a splinter group of an already divided North Mrican Christian population. To put it as simply as possible, the Circumcellians were a branch of the Donatist Christians, who in 311 had refused to accept the election of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage and had elected their own line of replacements beginning with Donatus. Augustine belonged to the descendants of the Christian faction who had supported Caecilian; because they had the support of the imperial government and the other bishops of the empire, we can call them the Catholic Christians. Augustine's Catholic Christians claimed that the Circumcellians engaged in guerilla-type acts of violence against them. The Donatists claimed, in turn, that the Catholics harassed them and that the imperial soldiers had orders to exterminate them. The Donatist Christians wrote stories about this persecution, stories in which they considered the individuals killed by the Catholic Christians as martyrs. 92 Augustine wrote to a Donatist bishop about the Circumcellians, and complained in the letter how the Circumcellians falsely depicted themselves as martyrs. "You say that you suffer persecution:' he wrote, "and we are beaten by your armed bands with clubs and swords; you say that you suffer persecution, and our homes are robbed and ravaged by your armed bands; you say that you suffer persecution, and our eyes are put out by your armed bands with lime and vinegar."93 Augustine responded by claiming that it was the Circumcellians who "are raging against us with a persecution of a new sort and of unspealcable cruelty."94 More interesting than the Circumcellians' use of violence (after all, Augustine also believed that violence was sometimes justifiable) were the attempts by both parties to describe the violent actions against them as persecution and thus to assume for themselves the label of martyrs. It also reminds us that among Christians of the fifth century, the image of the soldier of Christ was not merely a metaphor. Perhaps Augustine gained his perspective on the larger military problems of the empire in part from his experiences with the Circumcellians.

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In correspondence with an Italian priest in 409 - that is, a year before the sack of Rome-Augustine was voicing ideas that would be found in The City ofGod. This letter began: Indeed, the whole world is afflicted with such great disasters that there is scarcely a part of the earth where such things as you have described are not being committed and lamented.... I am sure you know what cruelties were perpetuated in parts of Italy and Gaul, and reports are beginning to come in now from many of the Spanish provinces, which had long seemed immune to these calamities. But why go so far afield? Right here in our neighborhood of Hippo, which the barbarians have not touched, the brigandage ofDonatist clerics and Circumcellians has so ravaged our churches that the deeds of barbarians might be less destructive. 95

"These are sorrows to be mourned over:' Augustine continued, but "not wondered ae'96 Instead, Augustine took a different tack. "You say that good and faithful and holy servants of God have fallen by the sword of barbarians:' he declared. "What difference does it make whether they are set free from the body by fever or by the sword? What God looks for in His servants is not the circumstances of their departure, but what they are like when they come to Him."97 Augustine demonstrated here how much the image of the soldier of Christ had come to be a moral rather than physical one. In one of the sermons devoted to consoling Christians upset by the sack of Rome, Augustine contrasted the temporary sufferings of the victims at Rome with the eternal ones of the damned in Hell, for these were the true tortures to fear and the sufferings to be avoided. 98 The manly self-image of Christian men did not depend on the successes of the armies of the Roman Empire but on the victories of an interior struggle, thanlcs to a redirection of the military image inward. Here was a masculine image that could no longer be threatened with a sinking into effeminacy by the collapse of Roman borders and the invasion of foreign troops, because it did not depend on outside variables such as these, but on the integrity of interior borders. Roman men who were Christians could continue to aspire to a vita militaris of steadfastness and courage and wage victorious wars of conquest, even in the final desperate years of the Western Empire and without ever picking up a sword, by redefining those wars in Christian terms of sin, suffering, and salvation.

CHAPTER FIVE

IIWE PRIESTS HAVE OUR OWN NOB I LITY" Christian Masculinity and Public Authority

Christian men admitted, perhaps as reluctandy as their pagan counterparts, that public life in the later Roman Empire required them to submit to authority. Unlike pagan men, however, Christian men made their submission to an authority higher than that of the emperor or his government' namely, to God. This submission required them to assume a femi-I nine posture, as they understood it, and some were willing to admit and even embrace the paradox of a feminine identity by referring to themselves as "brides of Christ." At the same time, the notion of the "bride of Christ" allowed for a new type of authority, the authority of the bishops whose intimacy with God allowed them to talce on a masculine posture, even toward the emperor. It was as bishops, then, that men of the later Roman aristocracy rescued their political identities and their social superiority and found new means to achieve manliness. FLIGHT FROM THE WORLD

Christian writers, like their pagan counterparts, frequendy criticized the extravagant wealth and idle leisure of the nobility of their day. They were equally concerned that the upper classes were wasting their potential in the private pursuit of luxury. Unlike the pagan writers, however, Christian writers did not blame this waste and idleness on the political impotence of the Roman elite, and did not fear that by their impotence the elite was losing its distinctive identity. Rather, Christian writers offered the suggestion that all secular pursuits were meaningless. In place of the pursuit of wealth or ofpolitical office, they advocated a complete withdrawal from the world. 125

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Complaints about the no bility's love ofluxury were a perennial feature of Latin Christian writings. Already in the middle of the third century, Cyprian described the population of Carthage in the following terms: "Each one was intent on adding to his inheritance; ... each one with insatiable greed was absorbed in adding to his wealth."l At the end of the fourth century, Augustine of Hippo complained in much the same tone that some of his contemporaries "consider that happiness is nothing else but the enjoyment of earthly pleasures:' dismissing them as no better than animals. 2 And in the middle of the fifth century, Valerian, a bishop of Cimelium on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul, also spoke out against greed for things and extravagance in food, lamenting that such vices "drag along to the depths a great part of the human race."3 Let us concentrate on one Christian writer who dedicated several treatises to the vanity of riches. That writer was Ambrose of Milan. Ambrose was a member of the uppermost Roman nobility in the late fourth century: his father had been a praetorian prefect, and he himself had been governor of the province whose capital was Milan before being made bishop there. Furthermore, Ambrose held office at the time when Milan was the primary imperial residence in the West, and he associated himself with several successive Western emperors. Ambrose provides an ideal focus for our discussion of the relationship between Christian ideology and political authority. Ambrose's treatises against excessive wealth were written from the vantage point of obvious familiarity with it. De Tobia (On Tobias) drew its title from the pious and honest merchant father in the Biblical book of Tobit. In it, Ambrose recounted at length the story of a rich man who overextended himself financially and brought himself and his family to ruin. It is easy to imagine that he borrowed his description of the man's life and home from his contemporaries: "The table is loaded with foreign and choice foods, splendid attendants are procured, purchased at great price, and to be supported at greater expense."4 Ambrose continued his tale by describing the man's eventual ruin: Meanwhile his money flows away, his debt overflows. Time grows short, the usury increases; his treasure is exhausted, his debt is piled up .... His golden and silken vestments are gradually taken away and are sold for less than half their value. His wife, now in deeper misery, with tears lays aside her ornaments, that she bought too dearly, to be sold too cheaply. At the public sale the slaves are put up as table servants, and, because they are illexperienced, turn away the buyer. 5

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Eventually, the man is sold for his debt. Ambrose's point is all too clear: the security of the nobility will not be found in fleeting wealth. Another of Ambrose's treatises against riches, De Nabutha (On Naboth), was so named after the impoverished farmer in the Bible who was murdered so that the wicked rulers Ahab and Jezebel might confiscate his land. In this work, Ambrose made the comparison to and critique of his contemporaries even more explicit: "Who of the rich does not daily covet the goods of others? ... Who is content with his own? What rich man's heart is not set on fire by a neighbor's possession?"6 Ambrose declared this lifestyle inimical to the very idea ofnobility. "Talce care, therefore, a rich man, lest in you the merits of your ancestors be put to shame:' he wrote. ''Not in golden ceilings nor in tables of porphyry is the merit of an heir."7 Like traditional Roman moralists, Ambrose viewed the pleasure talcen in goods not only as ignoble but also as effeminate. He placed Illuch of the blame for the extravagance of the upper classes on women. Addressing his presumed male readers, he suggested that the problem was that their wives will urge you to purchase female ornaments and finery.... She will impose upon you the necessity of expenditures that she may drink from a goblet set with stones, sleep on a purple couch, recline on a silver sofa, and load her hands with gold and her neck with strings of gems. Even in shacldes do women delight, provided they be fastened with gold .... Women even enjoy wounds, so that gold may be inserted in their ears and that pearls may hang down .... Even ifhalf their patrimony be asked, they do not spare expense while they are indulging their cupidity. 8

Even if such cupidity were natural to women, Ambrose worried that it was infectious. "Let not Jezebel:' he warned his male readers, using the Biblical queen as his symbol of feminizing greed, "dwell with yoU."9 Ambrose's antidote to men's idleness and rapaciousness was not, though, to encourage them to devote themselves to civic duties and politicallife. Instead, in a treatise he entitled De fuga saeculi (On Flight from the World), he recommended that men continue to distance themselves from society and public life, but encouraged them to renounce their desire for wealth and property as well. "Let us flee from here:' he wrote, "where there is nothing, where all that is reckoned noble is empty, and where the one who thinks himself to be something is nothing, yes, nothing at all."lO He added: But this is the meaning of flight from here-to die to the elements of this world, to hide one's life in God, to turn aside from corruptions, not to

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defile oneself with objects of desire, and to be ignorant of things of this world. For the world lays sorrows of various kinds upon us, it empties when it has filled, and it fills when it has emptied. And all such proceedings are empty and vain, and there is no profit in them. 11

"Such a flight;' Ambrose concluded, "does not know the chill of fear, the dread of death, the despondency of anxiety, the idle life of debauchery, the festivals of licentiousness, the stupefaction ofinsensibility."12 These exhortations were obviously designed with the worries of elite men in mind. Other Christian men apparently shared Ambrose's feelings about the welcome retreat from public life. Paulinus ofNola was governor of Campania in Italy, but resigned his position in 395 out of a desire to remove himself from the world into private seclusion (although eventually becoming bishop of Nola in 409). Ambrose said that people felt it was a shame that a man of such a prominent family should have abandoned the honor and status of the governorship.13 Sidonius Apollinaris had been a military official (comes) in central Gaul but left the post to become bishop of Clermont there in 469. 14 So Christian men were abandoning secular posts as readily as their pagan counterparts. Some Christian men even attacked the notion of service to the government as inimical to the pursuit of Christian holiness. "What is the life of the decurions but injustice?" thundered Salvian of Marseilles. "What is the life of government officials but slander? What is the life of all connected with the army but pillage?"15 Ambrose's own life as we know it was such an example of the withdrawal from secular office. Paulinus of Milan began his account of Ambrose by stressing how traditional Ambrose's early career was, with its formal education and pursuit of the cursus honorum typical of Roman men: And when after being instructed in the liberal disciplines he had departed from the city [of Rome] and had talcen up his profession in the court of the Praetorian Prefect, he pleaded his cases so brilliantly that he was chosen by the Right Honorable Probus, then Praetorian Prefect, to act as his advisor. After this he received the dignity of the consulship so that he should rule , over the provinces of Liguria and Aemilia, and he came to Milan. 16

But Ambrose left this prestigious political office suddenly in 374. After the death of the Christian bishop of Milan, the people of that city chose Ambrose spontaneously as his successor, according to Paulinus, despite its irregularity (Ambrose was not yet baptized) and his extreme reluctance. Ambrose resisted the popular acclaim that made him bishop ofMi-

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lan, even to the point of ordering several prisoners to be tortured and entertaining prostitutes in his home, in order to show his unsuitability for the position. He tried equally unsuccessfully to flee the town at night. 17 In his own writings, Ambrose claimed an utter lacle of interest in and complete unworthiness for the powerful office to which he had risen: "0 Lord, preserve this office [munusJ a public posting] ofyours, keep this gift that you have conferred even to one who fled from it. For I knew that I am not worthy to be called bishop, since I gave myself to this world. But thanks to you I am what I am, even though I am the least of all the bish0ps and lowest in merit.''l8 More will be said about this typical declaration of humility as well as the topos of unwillingness to hold ecclesiastical office later in this chapter. The flight from the world and from secular office that Christian writers such as Ambrose advocated was a direct abdication of the political authority so central to traditional Roman definitions of masculine identity. Christian writers seemed unconcerned about this threat to their manliness, though; different factors were obviously at work. Ambrose again provides a useful example. However reluctantly he was enrolled as the bishop of Milan, it was his public role as bishop that afforded him the platform from which to wield a new kind of authority. It was as bishop, for example, that he denounced the worldly lifestyle of others, as described above, and criticized the lifestyle of officials in the government, as Paulinus remarked: For he lamented vehemently whenever he saw that avarice was flourishing, the root of all evil, which can be diminished neither by abundance nor want, and was increasing more and more among men, especially among those who had been placed in authority, so that it was a most difficult task for him to prevent it among these, because all things were being torn asunder for gain. 19

Ambrose's past as governor doubtless lent weight to his denunciations of imperial officials. Obviously, Christian men were able to find satisfaction in ecclesiastical office that they did not in governmental positions. Indeed, it is probably not too much to suppose that the rapid expansion of the Christian hierarchy in this period-one fifth-century law noted how "the number of the clergy is being superabundantly augmented" - reflected the greater satisfaction that men of the nobility found in ecclesiastical rather than secular public office. 20 Paradoxically, it was their abdication from the political life of the empire that afforded Christian men of late antiquity the

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greatest opportunity for status and power. Even the emperor had to take notice of these men who had fled from the world. THE EMPEROR AND THE BISHOP

Men of the later Roman nobility removed themselves from public life because the autocratic rule of the later Roman emperors necessitated an unmanly submission that noblemen were unwilling to malee. Christian men found a new source of public authority as bishops in the local churches, an authority that allowed them to challenge the emperor in ways not previously possible, and one that required him to submit to them. In that authority' the Christian bishops found a new manliness. Ambrose again provides a helpful starting point for this topic. His claim to authority as bishop of Milan sparked several conflicts with the western emperors; four incidents are usually mentioned. The first was in 382, when Ambrose successfully prevented the restoration of a pagan altar to the goddess ofvictory in the Senate at Rome, something suggested to the young emperor Valentinian II (who resided in Milan) as a concession to the pagan population. The second incident occurred in 385, when Ambrose had his supporters successfully prevent with a human blockade the return of one of the basilica-churches in Milan to the worship of Arian Christians (a substantial sect within the empire and one that included Valentinian and his mother Justina among its adherents). The third incident was in 389, when Ambrose persuaded the new emperor Theodosius I to rescind an order he had given, obliging Christians in the eastern town of Callinicum to rebuild the Jewish synagogue they had previously destroyed. The fourth happened a year later in 390, after Theodosius had ordered the massacre of a large number of persons in Thessalonica, when Ambrose managed to oblige the emperor to beg forgiveness for the killing in a public rite of penance lasting several months. In each conflict, Ambrose successfully asserted the strength of his position as bishop over that of the emperor. How he did so is what we will uncover. In some ways, the kind of relationship Ambrose shared with the emperor reflected a history of suspicion between church and state. Until the early fourth century, the Roman government had tried sporadically to eradicate the Christian religion, with individual emperors and civic officials sometimes taking an active role in enforcing that eradication, sometimes not. From the reign of Constantine, however, the imperial government no longer represented such a malevolent force and even encouraged the Christian religion through numerous laws and donations (more about these below). Even the brief reign of the pagan emperor Julian in

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the mid-fourth century, however, renewed Christian fears of government-sponsored persecution. But Julian's reign did not last. By the end of the fourth century and the reign of Theodosius I, Christianity was not merely freely practiced and favored by the emperor but was the majority and official religion of the empire. Still, the suspicion continued. 21 Admittedly, the Christian piety of the emperors from Constantine on sometimes resulted in a sort of triumphalism. Some Christian writers thought they saw the power of God behind the actions ofthe emperors and interpreted imperial authority as an instrument for the greater glory of the Christian religion. Lactantius, for example, saw Constantine's military victory over his pagan predecessor as the "triumph of God" and the "victory of the Lord?'22 It must be said that Lactantius was a close associate and ally of Constantine; he was also writing only a decade after the initial successes of Christians. Later Christian writers were not so convinced that their successes had been complete. The Christian emperors tended to want to rule with the same absolute power that pagan emperors had wielded. After the period of initial relief, most Christian writers made sure to point out that the emperors ruled successfully only to the extent that they relied on the assistance of the Christian god. Consider how Prudentius described the defeat of the Goths by the emperor Honorius at the beginning of the fifth century: To lead our army and our empire we had a young warrior mighty in Christ, and his companion and father [-in-law] Stilicho, and Christ the one God of both. It was after worship at Christ's altar and when the mark ofthe cross was imprinted on the brow, that the trumpets sounded. First before the dragonstandards went a spear-shaft raising the crest of Christ before them. 23

Ambrose shared this later perspective. He recognized God's intervention in the defeat of the forces of the usurper Eugenius at the hands ofTheodosius I in 394 but attributed it to the fact that Eugenius, while himself a Christian, had made numerous concessions to the pagans. 24 He also argued with equal fervor that a Christian military victory had much to do with worship and little to do with heroism. Even the adherence of the later Roman state to Christianity, Ambrose felt, served only as a collective atonement for the earlier persecutions. 25 (It is worth noting how readily fourth- and fifth-century Christian writers celebrating the martial victories of the Christian emperors ignored the older tradition of Christian pacifism.) Ambrose constantly downplayed imperial authority in his writings. He was the first to record a legend that the nails from Jesus' crucifixion Constantine's mother, Helena, was supposed to have discovered them-

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had been melted down to add to a crown and horse-bit as symbols of state. 26 What Constantine thought he was saying in refashioning these holy relics in such a manner we do not know (if the legend is true), but we know the conclusion Ambrose drew from the legend and what it shows about his general regard for the imperial throne. ''A crown made from the cross, that faith may shine forth;' he declared, "reins likewise from the cross, that power may rule, and that there may be just moderation, not unjust caprice."27 The point of his story was less the honor of imperial rule that took such holy symbols to itself and more the limitations that piety should impose upon Christian rulers. The limitations on imperial authority consisted of nothing more than the extent to which the emperor was willing to be obedient to the will of God as expressed by the bishops of the Christian churches. Ambrose chastised the usurper Eugenius with these words: "Though the imperial power be great, yet consider, 0 Emperor, how great God is.''28 Christian writers concurred that even if the might or power (potestas) of God might be exercised through the emperors, the will or authority (auctoritas) of God was made manifest through the bishops of the Christian churches. Episcopal commands were, therefore, superior to any commands of the state or of its rulers. The submission of the later Roman emperors to the bishops of the Christian churches was never fully accomplished and was always subject to reversals. Some of the Christian emperors made counterarguments, claiming that the bishops exercised their jurisdictions under the supreme authority of the emperor as did any other civic official. 29 Still, even the attempt to assert episcopal superiority to imperial rule by means of Christian ideology must be considered in itself as a tremendous shift in the bases of public authority. And we have only to think of the conflicts between Ambrose and the emperors, conflicts invariably resolved in Ambrose's favor, to see how effectively that authority might be exercised in the right hands. Issues of masculinity were never far beneath the surface of the relationship between emperor and bishop. At the time of the controversy over dle erection of the pagan altar to victory, for example, Ambrose relied heavily on the manly language of militarism in words addressed to the emperor Gratian. ''As all men who live under the Roman sway engage in military service under you, the Emperors and Princes of the world;' he wrote, "so too do you yourselves owe a military service to Almighty God and our holy faith."30 When the emperor Valentinian II and his mother threatened to use military might to force Ambrose to hand over the basilica to the Arians, Ambrose is said to have replied: "Do not, 0 Emperor, lay on yourself the burden of such a thought as that you have any impe-

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rial power over those things which belong to God. Exalt not yourself, but submit yourself to God."31 In his account of Ambrose's conflict with Theodosius over the rebuilding of the synagogue, Paulinus claimed that Ambrose had dared to deliver a sermon in the presence of the emperor, speaking in the voice of God. "I made you emperor from the lowest, I delivered the army of your enemy to you, I gave to you the troops which he had prepared as his army against you, I brought your enemy into your power;' he declared. "I made you triumph without labor, and do you give triumphs to my enemies over me?"32 The presumptive ability to spealc on behalf of God, even to an emperor with the military might and political power of Theodosius I, was the cornerstone of Ambrose's episcopal authority. Ambrose himself, when describing the incident, compared his words with the words of the Biblical prophet Nathan to King David. 33 It was a clever reference, because it alluded both to the Biblical tradition of God's prerogative in choosing whom he wills as ruler and to the notion of the bishop as a prophet, that is, as one who spealcs for God, a mouthpiece of divine authority more powerful than any earthly ruler. If Christian bishops believed their position to be one of divine authority, they also made clear their opinion that the appropriate stance of the emperor, despite his imperial might, was one of submission to that authority. In 395, during an address delivered at the funeral ofTheodosius, Ambrose made proud mention of Theodosius's public repentance five years earlier: He threw on the ground all the royal attire which he was wearing; he wept publicly in the Church, for his sin which had stolen upon him by the deceit of others; he prayed for pardon with groans and with tears. That which brings a blush to private citizens, the Emperor did not blush to do, that is, to perform penance publicly; nor did a day pass afterwards on which he did not grieve for that mistake of his. 34

In other words, the emperor Theodosius humbled himself before him, not blushing though he was humiliated as a man. (The word erubescereJ "to blush, to feel ashamed;' is used here and elsewhere for this feeling of a man humiliating himself in submission.) Theodosius's humiliation, it should be noted, also paralleled an episode in the Biblical account of King David. If we compare Ambrose's description of Theodosius's penitence with one of David's penitence (by a later Christian writer, perhaps with Ambrose's description in mind), we can see the similarities: The guilty man acknowledged his sin, was humbled, filled with remorse, confessed and wept. He repented and asked for pardon, gave up his royal

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jewels, laid aside his robes of cloth of gold, put aside the purple, resigned his crown. He was changed in body and appearance. He cast aside all his kingship with its ornaments. 35

In the Christian political perspective and with Biblical precedent, sub-

mission was the true nature of kingship because true authority belonged to the Church and its leaders. These twin themes of exaltation and submission appear as a refrain in Ambrose's dealings with imperial authority and in other Christian political writings. But they only really malte sense when combined with prevailing cultural attitudes regarding gender and authority, attitudes that held that dominance was appropriate to men's nature and submission, to women's nature. Christian writers used Biblical references to make their point. Exegesis on the myth ofAdam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and in particular, God's punishment of Eve, forcing her to accept the overlordship of her husband, became a means by which to reiterate ancient beliefs in masculine dominance and feminine submission. Through this exegesis, Latin Christian writers were able to attribute these beliefs to the origins of humanity and to God's commands. Augustine, in commenting on the Genesis myth, for instance, said: And just as in man's soul there are two forces, one which is dominant because it deliberates and one which obeys because it is subject to such guidance, in the same way, in the physical sense, woman has been made for man. In her mind and her rational intelligence she has a nature the equal of man's, but in sex she is physically subject to him in the same way as our natural impulses need to be subjected to the reasoning power of the mind, in order that the actions to which they lead may be inspired by the principles of good conduct. 36

In another place, he compared the subordination of "the feminine to the masculine" with that "of the corporal creature to the spiritual creature, of the irrational to the rational, of the terrestrial to the celestial" and "of that which is worth less to that which is worth more."37 Ambrose, also commenting on the fall of Adam and Eve, concluded that it was for this reason that the Greek word nous (mind, intelligence) was masculine in gender and aisthesis (sensual perception) was feminine. That is, since Eve was tempted by her senses, which as part of the physical world were inferior to the metaphysical realm, the human senses must be subjected to the mind. 38 (Ambrose'S play-on-words works in Greek, and indeed, he borrowed the idea from Greek writers. But the play-on-words works in reverse in Latin, since mens) "mind;' is a feminine noun and sensus) "sensual

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perception;' is a masculine noun, a fact Ambrose did not bother to mention' even though he wrote his treatise in Latin. He was obviously not going to let linguistic obstacles stand in the way of his point). When Christian writers wrote about the submission of the emperor, we can be sure that they had such gendered notions in mind. Curiously enough, Ambrose's point and the larger linlc between natural masculine dominance and feminine submission was somewhat contradicted by the many influential women in the political life of the later Roman Empire. Women dominated the government through many decades as empresses and unofficial regents, despite their official exclusion from imperial authority. They may only have been exceptions to the rule about women, but they were famous exceptions. One example was Valentinian II's mother, Justina, who ruled with her young son from Milan at the time that Ambrose was bishop there and with whom he had many conflicts. There were many other powerful women in the government of the later Roman Empire. Helena, mother to Constantine I, was another example from the fourth century. Examples might be just as easily given from the third century, lilce Julia Maesa, grandmother ofElagabalus and Severns Alexander, or from the fifth, like Galla Placidia, sister to the emperor Honorius, or Pulcheria, sister to Theodosius II.39 But these women exercised authority only in unofficial capacities and only tenuously, and most ended by being deprived of influence by their male relatives anxious to preserve autocratic rule for men. The association of women with imperial rule often served as yet another opportunity for Christian writers to reiterate gender stereotypes and to promote the authority of bishops over emperors. Paulinus ofMiIan linlced much of the opposition to Ambrose during the reign of Valentinian II to the feminine wiles of the empress Justina and her cunning use of the public insecurities of the men around her. At the time of the Arian basilica incident in 386, for example, Ambrose is said to have withstood countless insidious attacks of the above mentioned woman Justina, who, by bestowing offices and honors, aroused the people against the holy man. And the weak were deceived by such promises, for she promised tribuneships and various other offices of authority to those who would drag him from the church and lead him into exile. 40

Augustine of Hippo, who was present in Milan at the time, noted the fortuitous discovery of the relics of the Christian martyrs Protasius and Gervasius, which Ambrose had translated to the altar of the basilica in order to strengthen his claim to the building. The act was done, Augustine later wrote, "to thwart a feminine fury, but also a royal one."41 And in his re-

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counting of the same incident, Rufinus added (again relying on Biblical precedent comparing the bishop with a prophet): "She fought armed with the spirit ofJezebel:' but ''Ambrose stood firm, filled with the power and grace ofElijah."42 Ambrose's exploitation of the martyrs was no mere aside in his war against Justina, it should be noted, but formed an integral part of his gender politics. The martyrs were imbued with a manliness that made even the remains of their bodies useful resources for political strategies, especiallyones based on gender stereotypes. Ambrose relied specifically on the manly image of the martyrs to bolster episcopal authority in the context of his struggle with the imperial government at that time, a government controlled by a woman. In a letter to his sister about the incident, Ambrose made clear the connection between the martyrs and their manliness, emphasizing the martyrs' might as soldiers of Christ. Ambrose wrote: Thanks be to Thee, Lord Jesus, that at this time Thou hast stirred up for us the spirits of the holy martyrs, when Thy church needs greater protection. Let all know what sort of champions I desire, who are able to defend, but desire not to attack. These have I gained for you, 0 holy people, such as may help all and injure none. Such defenders do I desire, such are the soldiers I have, that is, not soldiers of this world, but soldiers of Christ .... Let them come, then, and see my attendants. I do not deny that I am surrounded by such arms.43

Such masculine imagery was a useful foil to the feminine machinations of Justina. Ambrose's treatment of the relics of the martyrs has been described as "revolutionary:' because it seems that he was the first bishop to bring the relics of the martyrs into the churches and thereby to bring the cult of the martyrs directly under episcopal supervision. 44 Indeed, Ambrose continued throughout his career to find and talce control of the remains of martyrs, removing them from public cemeteries and placing them in churches and shrines under his jurisdiction and forbidding Christians from going to cemeteries to revere there the remains of martyrs. Other bishops soon followed suit, appropriating the manly authority of the martyrs to themselves. Official celebrations in honor of the martyrs that found their way into the Christian ritual or liturgical calendar in the fifth century also helped in this appropriation, since the sermons preached at these celebrations served as an opportunity for a public platform for bishops to promote their religious ideas and agendas. (In chapter 4, I quoted several of these sermons to malce points about the martyrs.)

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It is not too much to say that the manly power of the martyrs came to form a primary support of the authority of the bishops. But the bishops had another source for their political authority. It was a source not, like that of the soldiers of Christ, only recently exploited, but one dating back to earliest Christianity. And it was a source not based on a manly image but on an unmanly one. It was the image of the bride of Christ. BRIDES OF CHRIST

Christian bishops might complain that imperial women held power illegitimately, since they were only as powerful as the men with whom they were associated, but the Christian bishops themselves held power as feminine consorts of an even more powerful ruler. They were brides of Christ. Bishops used the image of the bride of Christ as a central feature of their authority, despite its unmanly connotations, because it was one that permitted them to demonstrate their intimacy with God and their right to act as vicarious officials of divine authority. The metaphor of marriage to describe the relationship between God and a male devotee may seem odd. But it had existed for centuries before this time, and was not unique to Latin Christian writers, nor indeed to Christian writers at all. It was long used in Biblical tradition to refer to the special bond between God and the Jewish people, especially when referring to the Biblical Song of Songs, an erotic poem between a bride and a bridegroom. The Song of Songs was interpreted allegorically by Jewish scholars from at least the beginning of the Common Era, even though such an interpretation placed men who belonged to the Jewish faith in the feminized position of being the collective bride of God. 45 It was presumably from the Jewish exegetical tradition that Christians derived their similar interpretation for the Song of Songs, as well as the larger marital metaphor. Already in the middle of the third century, Origen of Alexandria wrote a Greek commentary on the Song of Songs, using the same allegorical understanding of the Biblical book. There was a large Greekspealcing Jewish community at Alexandria, from whom Origen may well have learned of this exegetical tradition, although earlier Christian writings had used the bridal metaphor. 46 There was also some basis for such an understanding in the feminine gender of the Greek noun ekklesia (assembly, church), which lent a feminine nature to the collective body of Christians. Origen's usage was adopted by other Greek Christian theologians after him and adapted to Latin usage by various writers - helped along by the fact that the word for the Christian church, ecclesia- borrowed from the Greek-was also a feminine noun in Latin. (Origen's

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Greek text has not survived but was translated in the late fourth century into Latin by Rufinus, and parts of that translation have survived.) Many Christian writers used the image of the bride of Christ after Origen, but its champion among Latin writers was Ambrose, who used it in virtually all of his theological treatises. A passage from his De mysteriis (On the Mysteries) provides an example typical of his language on the subject (with frequent citations from the Song of Songs sprinlded throughout that I have abbreviated): But Christ, beholding His Church ... says, "Behold, thou art fair, My love, behold thou art fair, thy eyes are like a dove's ... ?' And farther on: "Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep. . . ?' The Church is likened to a flock of these, having in itself the many virtues of those [Christian] souls . . . The Church is beautiful in them. So that God the Word says to her: "Thou art all fair, My love, and there is no blemish in thee ... ?' And the Church answers Him, "Who will give Thee to me, my Brother ... ? If I find Thee without, I will kiss Thee ... ?' You see how, delighted with the gifts of grace, she longs to attain to the innermost mysteries, and to consecrate all her affections to Christ. 47

The sexual relationship implied in the notion of the bride of Christ is often only narrowly avoided in the erotic Biblical language. Ambrose remarked in his De patriarch is (On the Patriarchs) that God "alone is the husband of the Church, He is the expectation of the nations, and the prophets removed their sandals while offering to Him a union of nuptial grace."48 Ambrose recognized the nature of this language himself In his De Isaac vel anima (On Isaac or On the Soul), he s~d of the bride of Christ: "She either rested in Christ or reclined upon Him or even - since I am spealcing of a marriage - as if already given into the power of Christ, she was led to the bridal couch by the bridegroom."49 "Open to me;' he had Christ say to his bride, "and I will fill yoU."50 In a letter to his sister also intended for wider publication, Ambrose dwelt on the theme of kissing Jesus (again, with frequent references to the Song of Songs) : The Synagogue has not a lass, but the Church has, who waited for Him, who loved Him, who said: "Let Him lass me with the lasses of His mouth?' For by His lasses she wished gradually to quench the burning of that long desire, which had grown with loolcing for the coming of the Lord, and to satisfy her thirst by this gift. . . . Anyone, then, lasses Christ who confesses Him: "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation?' Anyone, again, lasses the feet of Christ who, when reading the Gospel, recognizes the acts

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of the Lord Jesus, and admires them with pious affection, and so piously kisses, as it were, the footprints of the Lord Jesus as He walles. We kiss Christ, then, with the kiss of communion: "Let the one that reads understand."51

In a curious metamorphosis of personhood, the Church as "she" becomes "anyone;' which becomes "we" in a growing identification betWeen Ambrose and the bride of his text. As Ambrose implied, the marital metaphor was intended to symbolize the intimacy between God and all believers, whether collectively or individually. According to the metaphor, any believer-even a male onemight portray himself as the bride of Christ. The idea of an individual bride of Christ was also aided by the feminine gender of the Latin noun anima and of the Greek nounpsyche) both meaning "soul" or "spirit;' considered the core of the self in classical philosophical language. The twin symbols, Church as collective bride and soul as individual bride, are intertwined in Christian writings and sometimes difficult to separate. Both symbols provided an occasion for Christian writers to describe themselves in feminine terms and to enact a feminine persona before a masculine God. Paulinus of Nola expressed the wish that, like the virgin who "awaits the arrival of the bridegroom;' his "mind may be fruitful for God" and that his "spirit be virgin, despoiled by no attractions of this world and remaining unstained by any vice."52 Augustine regretted not waiting for "the bridegroom of my soul" when he abandoned the Christian God and faith of his mother and lapsed into heresy.53 "I used to lie at Jesus' feet; I bathed them with my tears, I wiped them with my hair;' Jerome wrote, comparing himself to the repentant prostitute of the Gospel story already identified in late antiquity as Mary Magdalene. "I do not blush at my unhappiness;' he added (again, using the verb erubescere to describe the embarrassment of humiliation). 54 Ambrose and Origen both also linked this Biblical figure to the bride of Christ. 55 When Jerome pictured himselflying at the feet ofJesus , he implied not only an intimate posture but also a submissive one. Given the connection between gender and authority, in fact, the language of masculine dominance and feminine submission was never far removed from marital imagery in the minds of Christian writers. It still seems odd that Christian men would be willing to describe themselves in such an unmanly manner. But this problem has been explored in a brilliant work on authority in the thought of Augustine, in an argument that can be expanded beyond his writings. 56 The argument is as follows: The Christian god, as the personification

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of moral perfection, also represented ultimate masculine authority, according to the gendered standards ofvirtus. The relationship of all human beings to that divine and manly perfection was already, therefore, from a subordinate position, a feminine position in the eyes of contemporaries. But it was precisely this subordinate posture that paradoxically permitted Augustine to wield moral authority over others. This paradox is a complicated one, but one that can be clarified through reference to Augustine's description of his mother, Monica. The passage in question is therefore worth quoting at length, despite the caveat that we cannot know whether Augustine's mother Monica actually believed what Augustine said she believed. Note also that here, as throughout this work, Augustine addressed his recollections to God, an indication of their intimacy. Augustine wrote of his mother: It was you who taught her to obey her parents rather than they who taught her to obey you, and when she was old enough, they gave her in marriage to a man whom she served as lord [dominus]. ... Though he was remarkably kind, he had a hot temper, but my mother knew better than to say or do anything to resist him when he was angry.... Many women, whose faces were disfigured by blows from husbands far sweeter-tempered than her own, used to gossip together and complain of the behavior of their men-folk. My mother would meet this complaint with another -about the women's tongues .... She told them that ever since they had heard the marriage deed read over to them, they ought to have regarded it as a contract which bound them to serve their husbands [as made slaves, ancillae factaeJ note the servile metaphor], and from that time onward they should remember their condition and not defy their masters [domini]. 57

Monica's subservient posture before her husband was the impetus for her aggressive stance in front of the other women of her town. It was precisely because she was so servile toward her hus band, in other words, that she had the moral authority to act in such a domineering way toward the other wives. She presented herself as a moral ideal in her own marital relationship, and that gave her the right to instruct the others in how they might live up to the same ideal. In his own life, Augustine repeated this relationship and played the feminine role of the submissive wife toward God (recall his mention of God as "the bridegroom of his soul"). But being God's bride was a role that also allowed him to talce on the masculine role of domineering authority in his dealings with everyone else, telling them how to act and reminding them what they should believe. The argument is a provocative and compelling one. This simultaneous reversal of gender-based roles of dominance and

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submission was useful not only for Augustine, as I suggested above, but for all of the Latin Christian writers who identified themselves as brides of Christ. The image of the bride of Christ is central to a general understanding of the paradox of Christian political authority, because it was through the unmanliness of submission to God that Christians articulated a concept of the manly dominance of episcopal authority. I should repeat that the image was not unique to Latin Christian writers. Ambrose and Jerome, who were among the first Latin writers to use the image, presumably borrowed it from Greek Christian writers, probably from Origen (Augustine probably borrowed it, in turn, from Ambrose, who was his teacher). What is important is not that Latin Christian writers appropriated the notion of the bride of Christ from others but that they found it such a useful notion. It has been suggested, for example, that Ambrose used the marital metaphor in order to mal<e a profound point about the union of the human and the divine in Jesus. 58 Fourth-century Christians were indeed engaged in serious theological debate about how the apparent humanity and assumed divinity of Jesus might be logically reconciled (it was the main point of dispute between Arian and Catholic Christians, for example, in Ambrose's day). But there were many other means available to Ambrose to mal<e that same point, and many Biblical passages far closer to the debate at hand than any from the Song of Songs. It is critical always to keep in mind that Christian ideology never just happened haphazardly and that analogies were not simply made at random but were shaped consciously by individual writers for particular purposes. Gender-based analogies when used in theological writings were chosen specifically for the associated meanings they carried, meanings shared by writers and readers who lived in the same cultural milieu. (Doubtless, both the Jewish and the Greek Christian theologians had their own reasons for finding the image a helpful one for understanding their relationship to God, and gave their own cultural meanings to the image.) The usefulness for Ambrose of the bride of Christ image-and this is also true of other theological images from late antiquity, lil<e the soldier of Christ for Tertullian - was in the gendered paradox it embodied. The male bride of Christ was a paradox designed to meet the needs of Ambrose and his readers, men living in the midst of the demise of traditional masculinity in late antiquity. The image of the bride of Christ was an embrace of gender ambiguity derived from a specific agenda and intended for a specific goal. It provided an interior and feminine submissiveness that was no sign of unmanliness but rather formed the basis for a public and masculine Christian authority. Christian writers appreciated the need for men to submit

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to authority even while they argued for the feminine nature of submission. But Christian writers also insisted that the authority to whom they submitted was the Christian god, and so they spoke of themselves as feminine only before God. It was this feminine identity in their private lives that permitted Christian men to assume a manly stance in the exercise of public authority. Like the paradox of Christian militarism, embodied in a renunciation of actual warfare, the Christian ideology of political life was an embrace of unmanliness in a traditional sense but its radical reinterpretation as an act of manliness. EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY

The language of feminine submission and masculine dominance lent authority to any man willing to consider himself a bride of Christ. But the same language also helped a few Christian men, the bishops, achieve positions of authority over other Christian men. Bishops presented themselves as brides of Christ in a unique way, a way that gave them spiritual and moral authority over others. Lilce Augustine's mother Monica before the other women of her town, the bishops claimed the right to tell the other "brides of Christ" how best to fulfill their marriage vows. As the leaders oflocal Christians, moreover, the bishops argued that they themselves symbolized the collective Church in a way that no one else did and were therefore more to be considered as the bride of Christ than anyone else. If we are to understand how the language of gender ambiguity was first used to bolster episcopal authority, we must look back from the era of Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine at the end of the fourth century to the era of Cyprian of Carthage in the middle of the third century. Cyprian's career as bishop of Carthage lasted only a decade, from 248 to 258. Much of that career was spent away from Carthage in hiding from persecution, as I mentioned in the last chapter. However brief and controversial, Cyprian's career was still fundamental in the development of episcopal authority. We have already seen how Cyprian downplayed the authority of the martyrs and confessors who challenged his authority as bishop by broadening the meaning of the soldier of Christ. Not surprisingly, scholars have also viewed in Cyprian's writings an attempt to downplay the charismatic authority of the martyrs and confessors in favor of the institutional authority of bishops. For these reasons, Cyprian is a good place to start to look at the development of new notions of episcopal authority and its relationship to masculine authority. Cyprian is so important to emerging notions of Christian authority

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that it is also helpful for us to look at his life before his election as bishop (just as Ambrose's secular career as governor before his election as bishop provided an interesting perspective on his later exhortation for men to "flee from the world"). Before his conversion to Christianity and subsequent election as bishop, Cyprian was supposed to have led a life of worldly ambition as a rhetorician. 59 If true, the eloquence and skills of persuasion he learned in this profession without a doubt came in handy later as a Christian writer, struggling against the opposition to his authority. There is an alternative tradition, however, that painted Cyprian as a magician. Prudentius, for example, who included Cyprian in his fifthcentury poetic account of the Christian martyrs, described him thus: He was pre-eminent among young men for skill in perverse arts, would vi0late modesty by a trick, count nothing holy, and often practice a magic spell amid the tombs to raise passion in a wife and break the law of wedlock. But all at once Christ checked this great rage of self-indulgence, scattered the darkness from his heart, drove out its frenzy, and filled it with love of Him, giving him the gift of faith and of shame for his past behavior. And now his face and his elegant style changed from their former fashion; his countenance lost the softness of its skin and went over to an austere look, the flowing locks were clipped short, his speech was sober, he looked for the hope of Christ, holding to his rule, living according to his righteousness, and seeking to fathom our doctrine. 60

The veracity of the account is not as important as its hagiographical usefulness: the emphasis on the immorality of his life before his conversion, visible both in his profession and in his style of dress (note the unmanly associations of "softness of skin" and "flowing locks:' and the implication that he used his magic skills to cuckold husbands). The adoption of sobriety and self-restraint exemplified the Christian transformation. The change from effeminate extravagance and trickery to manly temperance and truth also represented the personal preconditions necessary for Cyprian to hold authority within the Church: it demonstrated his worthiness. 61 Having fled the city during the Decian persecution, Cyprian faced the concerted opposition by the confessors of Carthage, those individuals whose manly bravery as near-martyrs lent them great authority. These confessors acted together as the local Christian governing body in Cyprian's absence and performed various episcopal functions as a committee. For example, they issued certificates of forgiveness on behalf of lapsed Christians, allowing those who had sacrificed to pagan gods under pain of death but then regretted their actions to rejoin the Christian com-

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munity. Cyprian's purpose, in the treatise entitled De lapsis (On the Lapsed), written while he was still in hiding, was to assert his own right to judge the lapsed Christians over that of men who had been willing to undergo martyrdom. 62 To assert his authority as bishop, Cyprian had to wrest the masculine image from the martyrs and near-martyrs and apply it to himself vVhile the confessors were indeed "the bright army of the soldiers of Christ;' Cyprian conceded, not even their "spiritual triumphs" could mend the split caused by the sins of those who abandoned the faith, and they should stop issuing the certificates. 63 But Cyprian knew that he had to find some counterbalance to the spiritual weight of martyrdom to justify this prohibition, and he found it by turning the confessors' very challenge to his authority against them. He described himself as the collective body of the local church, writing about the persecution and its effects on the community as if it were a wound that made itself felt in his own body. In this manner, Cyprian presented himself as a kind of living martyr, more than balancing the moral authority of the near-martyrs: Believe me, my brothers, I share your distress, and can find no comfort in my own escape and safety; for the shepherd feels the wounds of his flock more than they do. My heart bleeds with each one of you, I share the weight ofyour sorrow and distress. I mourn with those that mourn, I weep with those that weep, with the fallen I feel I have fallen myself. My limbs too were struck by the arrows of the lurking foe, his raging sword pierced my body too. When persecution strikes, no soul can escape free and unscathed: when my brethren fell, my heart was struck and I fell at their side. 64

Even while safely in hiding, Cyprian argued that he was being wounded for his faith. In malcing his claim to be a symbolic martyr, not only did Cyprian share in the glory and manly reputation of the confessors, but he was also something that the confessors were not: the embodiment of the Church. This stance permitted him to represent the whole community in himself, something the confessors could not claim. He did not use the words "bride of Christ" in referring to himself, it should be noted, but the implication is the same, and Cyprian often used the feminine expression "mother church" (mater ecclesia) to refer to the community of Christians united under episcopal authority. As the embodiment of the community, as bishop and ecclesiaJ Cyprian was able to claim an intimacy with God that lent authority to his position and to his commands. Consider the tone of Cyprian's words from the same treatise on the lapsed Christians:

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To disregard God's decree is to call down His anger.... Suppose the martyrs do want something done; if it is good and lawful, if it is not something against God himself that God's bishop is expected to do, then let him accede readily and with all deference to their wishes - provided of course that the petitioner observes a becoming modesty.65

To refuse to obey Cyprian is to refuse to obey God. To separate divine from episcopal authority here is impossible; they are the same in intention and expression. In turn, the duty of all Christians under a bishop's command was to submit to his authority. With this in mind, he called upon the lapsed to repent and seek forgiveness from him, even those who had already received certificates of forgiveness from the confessors. "You must beg and pray assiduously:' he wrote, "spend the day sorrowing and the night in vigils and tears, fill every moment with weeping and lamentation; you must lie on the ground amidst clinging ashes, toss about chafing in sackcloth and foulness."66 In his other writings, Cyprian reiterated these same ideas. Membership in the Church was nothing more than submission to its bishop, he wrote to some of the priests in his jurisdiction who had questioned his right to return to his episcopal office. 67 Disobedience of the bishop equaled disobedience of God himself; indeed, "the Church is in the bishop, and if anyone is not with the bishop, that person is not in the Church."68 The sole cause of heresy and schism is refusal to obey the bishop.69 (It is probably not too much to say that one sees in the constant repetition of these ideas a kind of desperate attempt to undermine the authority of everyone but the bishop; the Christians of Carthage were obviously not listening to Cyprian.) Cyprian reinforced and intensified his ideas about episcopal authority in his De ecclesiae catholicae unitate (On the Unity of the Catholic Church). In the treatise, Cyprian reminded the confessors of their lack of authority and of their feminine standing in relation to himself: He is a confessor: let him be humble and peaceful, let his actions show modesty and self-control, so that, as he is named a confessor of Christ, he may imitate the Christ whom he confesses. For if Christ said: "He that extolleth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted;' and ifHe Himself, the Word and the power and the wisdom of God His Father, was exalted by the Father because He humbled Himself on earth, how can arrogance appeal to Him who not only enjoined on us humility by His law, but was Himself rewarded for His humility by His Father with the most glorious of all names?70

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Interestingly, Cyprian counseled the confessors to imitate Christ, and to remain humble if they wished rewards and glory. This advice allowed Cyprian to malce use of the many Biblical passages in which Jesus was described as following unquestioningly the will of his divine father; the unspoken parallel is that the confessors should follow Cyprian with equal unswerving loyalty. In the same treatise on unity and by way of explaining its title, Cyprian also emphasized the divine origins of episcopal authority by emphasizing the singular person of the bishop as mirroring the singular nature of God's will: He established by his own authority a source for that oneness having its origin in one man alone. No doubt the other Apostles were all that Peter was, endowed with equal dignity and power, but the start comes from him alone, in order to show that the Church of Christ is unique .... Now this oneness we must hold to firmly and insist on - especially we who are bishops and exercise authority in the Church - so as to demonstrate that the episcopal power is one and undivided. 71

Here was a pointed reply to the rival authority of the confessors, based as it was on governance by committee and consensus. Cyprian's invocation of Peter-leader of the first disciples of Jesus according to Biblical tradition and first bishop of Rome according to early Christian tradition -deserves some comment. Modern scholars have debated whether the passage was meant to convey Cyprian's approval for what would become in subsequent centuries the Petrine basis ofpapal authority. But that is to miss the point of what Cyprian was trying to say. If we read in context we can see that for Cyprian, Peter's leadership of the early Christian community paralleled Cyprian's own leadership of the Christian community of Carthage. Cyprian admitted that Peter might have had no innate or particular superiority to the other early disciples of Jesus; this may be a reference to Cyprian's own inglorious past. But once he had been chosen as their leader, the others were obliged to respect that choice as God's will, and Cyprian obviously hoped that his own community would do likewise. In other words, Peter functioned symbolically as the male embodiment of outward episcopal authority, in much the same way as the bride of Christ functioned as the female embodiment of the individual in inward relation to God. This symbolic function of Peter was clearly more important for Cyprian than the actual ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Rome, since Cyprian showed himself none too anxious to submit to the bishop there. 72 Ambrose's writings on the authority of Peter, made over a century later, should be interpreted in much the same way. Peter functions as the symbol of the masculine or public authority of the

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episcopacy. In the context of the unity of Christian belief and of its enforcement, Ambrose declared: "Therefore, where Peter is, there is the church."73 It would only be in the middle of the fifth century and beyond that bishops of Rome would adduce the jurisdictional primacy of Rome from Petrine language. 74 What I am suggesting is that, beginning with Cyprian, bishops took advantage of the language of gender ambiguity in asserting their authority, describing themselves both as feminine in relation to God and as masculine in relation to other Christians. A letter by Cyprian, recognizing the election of Cornelius as bishop of Rome, demonstrates this language better than anything else (and for Latin Christian writers, earlier than anything else). Cyprian held up Cornelius's feminine modesty as the greatest proof of his worthiness for the manly authority of his office. He wrote: the episcopate itself he neither asked for nor desired, still less did he -like others whose self-importance is swollen with arrogance and pride-thrust himself into it. He was quiet [quietus] and humble [modestus] as ever, and such as those are wont to be who are chosen by God for this post. With the natural modesty of his virginal chastity [pudor vi1lJinalis continentiae], and with his inborn humility [humilitas] and habitual modesty [verecundia], so far from resorting to violence, as some do, in order to be made bishop, it was only under pressure that he reluctantly accepted the episcopate. 75

According to Cyprian, Cornelius was modest, humble, and virginal. The words used to describe him are identical to those used by Roman men to identify prospective brides. They are not manly qualities. But those qualities were exactly what made him so well suited to become the bishop of Rome: he was an ideal bride of Christ and chosen as such by God. Cyprian contrasted the meekness of Cornelius with the "snalce-tongued deceivers;' "skilled corruptors of the truth, spewing deadly venom from their poisonous fangs;' who "seize authority for themselves without any divine sanction" and "assume the title of Bishop on their own authority."76 Cyprian ignored in both of these descriptions the communal decision-malcing process that actually selected the bishop in late antiquity, the process by which he himselfhad presumably been selected and that he described elsewhere, a vague process that often resulted in disputed elections and the violence to which he alluded. 77 To listen to Cyprian's words, the choice of bishop was God's alone, an immediate and irrevocable choice. Cyprian'S description of Cornelius's unassuming nature was only the first of numerous accounts describing how unwillingly the saintliest of men assumed the duties of the office of bishop. We must keep in mind

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that we can never know how closely the accounts reflected these men's actuallives; the hagiographical accounts were written sometimes with limited biographical details and always with specific agendas in mind. But it is interesting to see how frequently extreme reluctance to assume ecclesiastical office was mentioned in episcopal biographies. Sulpicius Severus maintained that it was only through a ruse that Martin-the former soldier, whom we met in the last chapter-was elected bishop of Tours, so unwilling was he to assume the title and position. 78 Augustine of Hippo was similarly described as having been forcibly conscripted into service as bishop at Hippo. "He was standing in the congregation quite unconcerned and with no idea of what was going to happen to him:' his biographer Possidius wrote; "as he used to tell us, he used to keep away from churches where the bishopric was vacant:' fearing such a thing might happen, and wept when chosen. 79 (The selection of an unwilling man as bishop may not have been solely a literary topos: a decree of the emperor Majorian in 460 forbade such an action. 80) Bishops might act like blushing brides in their modesty and in their reluctance to tal<:e upon themselves the responsibilities of ecclesiastical office. After their consecration, however, the men chosen as bishops had a public authority that was denied to all others. The extent of that authority proves the political usefulness of the bride-of-Christ image and of the feminine interior of the Christian man. If any bishop'S claim to public authority was going to work, he had first to demonstrate a unique intimacy with God, an intimacy that gave him that authority beyond that of any other members of the Christian community. To be united with God in a marital bond was an intimacy beyond all others. And as brides of Christ, bishops willingly issued commands on God's behalf, much like the imperial consorts did on their husband's behal£ If the inward authority that bishops received was a feminine one, moreover, the outward authority that bishops wielded was very much a masculine one. For example, accounts of the bishops often recorded how women led the opposition to their authority. Paulinus of Milan, for example, related an interesting episode in his account of Ambrose's career. When Ambrose intervened in the election of a bishop near to Milan, a consecrated female virgin of the Arian sect of Christians (and thus, Paulinus ofMilan noted, an associate of the empress Justina) attempted to pull him off the episcopal throne in the cathedral and "drag him to a group of women, so that he might be beaten by them and driven from the church." Ambrose is said to have delivered this retort to the woman: "Even ifl am unworthy of so great an episcopal office, yet it does not become you or your profession to lay hands on any bishop whatsoever; wherefore, you

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should fear the judgment of God lest something may happen to YOU."81 (Paulinus added that the woman died the next day, and that Ambrose graciously presided over her funeral.) A similar legend was promoted about the opposition to Caecilian as bishop of Carthage at the start of the Donatist schism. Optatus, a bishop ofMilevis in Numidia writing at the end of the fourth century, claimed that "some factious woman or other called Lucilla" had instigated the schism. According to Optatus, this Lucilla "was unable to bear the rebulce of the archdeacon Caecilian:' given because of her inordinate fondness for kissing the relics of an unidentified martyr. "That is, if he was a martyr:' Optatus added, to undermine further any spiritual value to her actions. She "went away in angry humiliation:' he continued, "she raged and grieved." When Caecilian was later chosen as bishop, she had "a domestic [slave]" from her household, Majorinus, "ordained bishop with her approval."82 Seemingly off-handed remarks like these helped to reinforce the connection between masculinity and true authority, and at the same time linked femininity with opposition to the bishops. The complex gender arrangements, in which bishops represented true brides of Christ while they were simultaneously opposed by actual women, were not lost on the writers of late antiquity themselves. Before beginning his account of the Donatist schism, Optatus identified the unity of the community under its rightful bishop as a respectable femininity, and contrasted that with the disreputable femininity of the bishop'S opponents. He wrote: We know that the churches of individual heretics are prostitutes without any legal sacraments, who lack the status of an honest marriage. These Christ rejects as superfluous, he who is the bridegroom of the one church, as he himself declares in the Song of Songs .... He affirms in the Song of Songs . . . that there is one dove that is his, the same being his chosen bride, his enclosed garden and his sealed font, so that none of the heretics may have the keys which Peter alone received. 83

The illegitimate authority exercised by the heretics is comparable to the illegitimate embrace of a travestied "bride of Christ." The opponents of the bishops might claim an equal status of intimacy with God, but it was a base intimacy and a shameful embrace that only gave them a feminine identity at its worst, as prostitutes. It also denied them the masculine status represented by Peter, who is again linlced here to the bride of Christ and symbolizing the outward authority of the bishop. The mention of influential women as opponents of the bishops was not accidental, but part of a larger strategy to deny women a role in the

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public authority of the Christian churches in late antiquity. It is now well known that women exercised some ritual functions within the early Christian churches as deaconesses, as wives of priests, even as prophetesses. Women also played a central role in the early churches through their financial contributions, a role made possible by women's increased legal control over their property and income, as described in chapter 3. 84 As part of their efforts to gain control over the churches, the bishops worked hard to eliminate the public roles exercised by women. Already at the beginning of the third century, Tertullian argued that "it is not permitted to a woman to spealc in the church; but neither is it permitted her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function [virile munus], not to say in any sacerdotal office."85 By the fourth century, regional meetings of the bishops condemned women who performed ritual actions. 86 Women still exercised some spiritual authority in the Christian churches of the later fourth and fifth centuries, but this option was open only to women with considerable financial assets, and they did so only in unofficial capacities and by embracing an outward humility and an ascetic renunciation that belied that authority. 87 Even the clerical office granted to women as deaconesses, recognized as legitimate by the bishops of the Eastern churches and supported by Biblical authority, was denied to women by the Western bishops.88 Wealthy women were still permitted to malce donations to churches and religious institutions or to patronize individual churchmen, but that was the farthest extent of their public role. 89 Ultimately, ecclesiastical roles for women in the Western Christian churches were eliminated because they threatened the perceived relationship between masculinity and public authority. The exclusion of women from ritual roles worked to the advantage of the bishops, because their authority also had an important ritual basis. Christian writers emphasized the special powers and prerogatives of the men chosen and set apart by God. Again, Cyprian played an important role in the beginnings of this usage. "The priest truly functions in place of Christ;' he wrote, "who imitates what Christ did and then offers the true and full sacrifice in the church to God the Father."90 It is important to keep in mind that ancient Christian writers did not use the term "priest" to mean a ritual function apart from that of the bishop, as later Christians would do, but to describe the ritual role of the bishop. A discussion ofterminology is necessary here. Writers used the Latin term presbyter (borrowed from the GreekpresbyterosJ "elder") to refer to the men who served under the local jurisdiction of the bishop as his assistants; they had a much more limited role in the late ancient churches than in

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later centuries. The Latin term Cyprian used, sacerdos) was meant to reinforce the sacredness of the episcopal office in a way that the term episcopus did not. Sacer in Latin meant "consecrated, set apart for a religious purpose"; the Greek kleros) from which the Latin cierus had been derived, and from which we get "clergy" and "cleric:' meant much the same thing, "an allotment or portion" dedicated to some purpose. In contrast, the Greek episkopos and the Latin episcopus meant merely "overseer" or "supervisor." The term sacerdos also lent a pagan touch to the ritual role of the bishop, since it was the usual term for a priest in traditional or pagan Roman religion. Cyprian probably used the term, as Tertullian had done before him and as other Latin writers would do after him, because it contained that connotation of being consecrated, and reinforced the singular and sacred authority of the office. The implicit comparison with paganism also reinforced the masculine flavor of episcopal office, since traditional Roman religion had always excluded women from the public role of priests. (The vestal virgins, who exercised the closest thing to a feminine religious office in traditional Roman religion, were shut away from the community and did not perform any rituals in public. 91 ) The sacerdotal authority that bishops claimed only added to the other bases of authority they used to justify their unique status. They were chosen by God and were intimate with him, and thus spoke and acted for him. Just as important, they were men. This new version ofmasculine political authority allowed for a new and manly nobility in the later Roman Empire, a nobility based on Christian piety rather than birth, but a nobility all the more powerful for it. BISHOPS AS A NEW NOBILITY

The bishops sometimes spoke as though social distinctions no longer meant anything in the new Christian dispensation. But the episcopacy offered men of the noble classes new opportunities for status, a status cemented in the laws and realities of the later Roman Empire. This new nobility of the bishops gave them an authority over all other men, even over the man who ruled the empire. As bishops, men of the later Roman elite found a new basis for political power and for manliness. Bishops found in the language of humility (humilitas) a perfect means to belie their ambition for social status and public authority. The term carried a complicated set of meanings. The root of the word was humus) "dirt:' "soil:' and in classical Latin humilis meant "of the soil:' and also "poor" or "needy:' but by extension "lowly" or "base:' and even "obscure" or "insignificant." In the law codes of late antiquity, the word hu-

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miliores (the more humble) was the usual legal term for the lower classes. It was the ideal word for Christian writers to assert their affected social insignificance. The language of humility allowed Augustine to claim that the Christian reality erased the old grades of nobility and distinction, so that "finally today both noble and ignoble, the learned man and the unlearned man, the poor man and the rich man alike draw near to the grace of God:' because "in the reception of that grace, pride talces no precedence over humility."92 The rhetoric of humility even went so far as to borrow from the institution of slavery to describe the lowliness of Christian men. Salvian of Marseilles, writing in fifth-century Gaul, often returned to the theme: When a slave performs only those of his master's commands which he likes to perform, he is not following his master's will, but his own. Ifwe who are weak little men do not wish to be held entirely in contempt by our slaves whom their slavery makes our inferiors but whom their !Iumanity makes our equals, how unjust it is for us to despise our heavenly Master?93

At about the same time, Peter Chrysologus offered the opinion in a sermon that one was either a slave to God or a slave to sin. 94 In a society in which slaves were all around, describing oneself as a slave provided a tangible metaphor for the Christian abdication of social privilege. 95 It was precisely by asserting their lowliness and humility, though, that the men who became bishops found a new source of social superiority. To understand how this language worked, we need to consider for a moment what the quality of humility meant for these men in positions of power. If humility served as an indicator of one's suitability for episcopal office-even a prerequisite, according to Ambrose96 -then it was nothing more than a new mark of social distinction. Lilce the old privileges of rank, it divided those deserving of political office from those undeserving of it. In an age in which a nobility of lineage meant little in the holding of public offices, which could be conferred or withheld at the whim of the emperor and doled out to slaves as well as to free men of all classes, humillty was a radical new means of separating those who should wield authority from those who should be subjected to it. Valerian even made the claim that an increase of power was always accompanied by excessive pride in lowly persons, but by humility in persons of nobility. 97 Humility was certainly as radical a means as the ostentatious display of wealth that other members of the old aristocracy were using to mark themselves as supenor. Unlike the old social markers of political authority and the distinctions of birth and wealth, the quality of humility was far more open to manip-

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ulation and contestation. But in this flexibility was precisely its usefulness. For the men holding power based on humility, the consecrated bishops who were supposed to have demonstrated such utter lack of ambition and such reluctance in advancing to their positions, humility was the best means to retain their authority and to undermine their rivals' attempts to seize it. Because any man who attempted to move himself from the category of those subjected to authority to the category of those wielding authority might be easily accused of a lack of humility. Recall Cyprian's praise of Cornelius's humility as a proof of his suitability for the office of bishop of Rome and his denunciation of the arrogance of men who actually tried to be made bishops. I do not want to imply that challenges to episcopal authority never occurred. Quite the opposite is true, and bishops had constantly to defend their rights. But the rhetoric ofhumility was one of the bishops' chief weapons against such challenges. The humility of the Christian bishop was much preferable to the unmanly submission of his secular counterpart, the nobleman holding political office, because it conferred rather than eroded manly authority. Christian leaders relied on their humility to exact obedience from their spiritual subordinates. Accordingly, they promoted obedience as a great virtue for men outside the episcopal structure (called the laity, from the Greek laos) "people:' used in the classical period for the common people as opposed to their leaders and for the subjects of a ruler). "Let them imitate the Lord:' Cyprian recommended to the confessors of his community who questioned his right to remain in office. In obeying his authority they would be imitating the example of Jesus, he added, "who at the time of his passion, did not become proud, but rather more humble."98 Elsewhere, he reiterated the same point. "Conscious of the divine precept:' the laity "with meekness and patience obeys the priests of God, and thereby becomes deserving before the Lord by obedient and holy deeds."99 And in a letter to a fellow bishop, Cyprian recalled the Biblical legends of torments inflicted by God upon those who did not obey their religious superiors. "They, devoured and swallowed up by an aperture in the earth, paid the penalty immediately for their sacrilegious insolence:' he wrote; "their companions in insolence were consumed by fire sent forth by the Lord, that it might be proved that the priests of God are avenged by Him who malces priests."lOo Later bishops expanded on Cyprian'S exhortations to Christian obedience, none more so than Augustine of Hippo, who knew well the writings of Cyprian and whose own experience with the Donatists had made him acutely aware of the problem of disobedient Christians. Augustine admitted that some lay Christians were embarrassed-he used again the

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verb erubescere-to think of humbling themselves in ways the bishops demanded, but he rejected this as vain and sinful. 101 It was Augustine who more than any other writer of late antiquity refined and elaborated upon the principle of Christian submission, grounding his comments on the Genesis legend of Adam and Eve. "God's instructions demanded obedience:' he wrote. "It is to man's advantage to be in subjection to God, and it is calamitous for him to act according to his own wilL" Accordingly, "obedience is ... the mother and guardian of all the other virtues."102 "Pride:' in contrast, "is the start of every kind of sin:' and is nothing "except a longing for a perverse kind of exaltation:' as happens "when a man is too pleased with himself:'103 Augustine translated his complex theories of the corruption brought about by the original sin ofAdam and Eve and its effects on the human will into terms of ecclesiastical dominance. Iflay individuals could not regulate their own behavior, corrupted as their wills were by sin, their spiritual superiors aided by God must do it for them, and the laity must willingly accede to their superiors' deniands. 104 It was as a member of the laity that the emperor owed obedience to the hierarchy of the sacerdotal church, and as a result, the power of the state was to be subjected to the authority of the bishops. When the emperors converted to Christianity in the fourth century, the bishops of the Roman Empire considered them as having submitted themselves in the same way as any other laymen. If we return to Ambrose and his relations with the emperors at the end of the fourth century, we can see this point made clear in a letter to Valentinian II: When have you heard, most gracious Emperor, that laymen gave judgment concerning a bishop in a matter of faith? Are we so prostrate through the flattery of some as to be unmindful of the rights of the priesthood, and do I think that I can entrust to others what God has given me? If a bishop is to be taught by a layman, what will follow? Let the layman argue, and the bishop listen, let the bishop learn of the layman. But undoubtedly, whether we go through the series of the holy Scriptures, or the times of old, who is there who can deny that, in a matter of faith, - in a matter I say of faith,bishops are wont to judge of Christian emperors, not emperors of bishOpS.IOS

Elsewhere, Ambrose reiterated this point in a sermon given at the time of his refusal to hand over a basilica to the Arians: "The emperor is within the church, not above the church:'106 Opinions lilce those of Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine were the key to the new balance of political power in the later Roman Empire. Such an assertion of political inviolability gave an entirely new

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strength to the men of the Roman nobility. A...fter all, almost all of the men chosen as bishops in the Western Empire call1.e from the old aristocratic families. Indeed, a combination of ecclesiastical and secular legislation prevented the men of most other classes from joining the clergy, including decurions (that is, the provincial "middle class"), some merchants and artisans, and all slaves and freedmen. 107 Anecdotal evidence also supports this conclusion. In one reference, a priest named (appropriately enough) Senator is described as "noble by birth, more noble by his piety.''l08 Ambrose of Milan, Paulinus of Nola, and Sidonius Apollinaris of Clermont were all from the senatorial class. Augustine of Hippo was lileely of the equestrian class. The examples could be endlessly multiplied. There are exceptions, of course, free men of the lower classes who became bishops. Martin of Tours was from such a background: his father had only been an army official in Pannonia, although one with the ranIe of tribune. But Martin was greatly criticized for his uncouth manners by his fellow bishops, as Sulpicius Severns indicated in his account of Martin. 109 When a freed slave was chosen as bishop of Rome in the person of Callixtus in the early third century and before the ecclesiastical censure of such an action, he was opposed by Hippolytus, who made mention of his opponent's low social status as part of the reason for his unsuitability for such an office (alongside his shady past, as he had served a sentence in the mines for allegedly having embezzled from his former owner; and on account of his disturbing pronouncements, permitting free Christian women to cohabit with Christian male slaves).llo Such snobbery was obviously common. In a letter to a third party, Augustine of Hippo remarked on the "unpolished speech" of one bishop, although he recommended the man's piety. III And Jerome offered the opinion that any man raised from a position of poverty or of low social standing to the office of bishop would only be grasping and hungry for power. ll2 Recall, finally, how Optatus dismissed Lucilla's choice for bishop of Carthage as a domestic slave. So even if the bishops might celebrate their slavery to God and their humble baseness, this rhetoric must be tempered by their continuing appreciation for a distinguished birth. Whatever they might say about their humble status, men of the Roman nobility who became Christian bishops relied on the upbringing designed to train them for public life when holding ecclesiastical office. In this regard, the new Christian elite continued many elements of traditional Roman politics: the formal education and the rhetorical skills that it provided for men, the importance of decorum in public, and the reliance on a wide network of friends and allies and the old system of patronage. Admittedly, Christian leaders also experimented with innova-

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tions in these traditions. They rejected a classical pagan education, for example, in favor of an education focused more on Christian and especially on Biblical texts, and they advocated for the poor and powerless as new political allies and spiritual patrons who might gain heavenly favor for them. 1l3 Other features of ecclesiastical male leadership blended much more easily with more traditional forms of political office. The old networks of the aristocratic families, which had always provided methods of patronage and advancement for men, became an integral part of the structure of the Christian churches. The fact that these alliances were put to theological or ecclesiastical purposes rather than political has perhaps disguised their many similarities, but much could be said about the role of existing marital and familial alliances in delineating the factions of theological controversies in late antiquity.1l4 In all of these areas, nobility lent its advantages to the Christian bishops. Despite the rhetoric of episcopal lowliness, moreover, legislation confirmed the elevated social status of the bishops of the later Roman Empire. Constantine granted to bishops an exemption from the public duties and financial obligations required of other men of the nobility. lIS Laws of the Christian emperors after Constantine extended these privileges given to bishops. All bishops received the honorary rank of nobility of illustresJ the ranlc also given to the men who held important political offices in the empire. 116 Bishops could not be brought into secular courts on any charge, nor might any frivolous charges be brought against them. 117 Any assault made on the person of a bishop required capital punishment. llB A bishop had the power to expel from office any presbyter who was judged unworthy of office. 119 Some of these laws made explicit mention of the "saintly name and ranlc" of bishops and the "reverence for religion and the priesthood [sacerdotium]" that prompted these laws. 12o In addition to their legal privileges, the Christian bishops of the later empire enjoyed other marks of social distinction. They had tremendous wealth at their disposal, the wealth of continual donations to the local churches from wealthy patrons and from the rulers of the empire. This wealth existed at least from the time of Constantine, who gave large gifts of property and buildings and money to individual churches across the empire, and who also made churches the heirs to any unclaimed estates belonging to martyrs killed in the most recent persecutions. 121 Continuing donations augmented this wealth. Less than a century later, Jerome was complaining to his correspondents that some bishops enjoyed their wealth a bit too much. 122 Wealth was combined with social importance. Beginning in the early fourth century, Christian bishops met regularly in councils, both regional

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and imperial-wide (the latter called ecumenical), the first of which were held in the West at ArIes in Gaul in 314 and at Elvira in Spain earlier in the century. At these meetings, they voted on issues of social regulation as well as doctrinal controversy, and issued their decisions in decrees (called canons) considered as binding on all Christians. Unlike the meetings of the Senate or of the provincial councils on which they were presumably based, the decisions of the church councils had some punch, enforced at the local level by the authority of the bishops and the piety of the laity.123 The bishops did not only talce on the trappings of the senators, however, but even borrowed some of the trappings of the emperors. Constantine and his imperial successors donated many basilicas - assembly halls used for audiences with the emperor (hence their name, from the Greek basileusJ "ruler") -for rededication as Christian churches. Elaborate processions had talcen place at these basilicas in the presence of the emperor, who seated himself on a throne at one end of the hall. By the end of the fourth century, the processions involved the bishops and the bishops seated themselves on these thrones (from which these basilicas took their alternative name, cathedrals, that is, from the Greek kathedraJ "cushioned seat, throne").124 The laity approached bishops with their heads bowed, not as complete a submission as their required prostration before the emperor but still a sign of subordination. 125 Some presbyters even preferred to keep silent in the presence of a bishop.126 Echoes of an imperial presence might even have been seen in the dress of the bishops in late antiquity, because at some indeterminate date bishops borrowed the robes of imperial purple for themselves. 127 Such symbols of episcopal authority functioned as a silent but powerful response to the might of imperial rule. Through the ecclesiastical structure of the Christian churches, Roman men of the upper classes could rediscover a public life and political influence, albeit directed into new channels. The bishop came to represent the new public man. "What is to be treasured is not a place of honor or power in this life:' Augustine suggested to his contemporaries, but neither should a man reject all for "a life of leisure:' especially "so leisured as to talce no thought in that leisure for the interest of his neighbor."128 Instead, Augustine recommended, the best life should be a mixture of public responsibilities and leisure for study: in short, he concluded, the life of a bishop. In their public role and political authority, the bishops oflate antiquity also represented a new manliness. Sidonius Apollinaris described one bishop of Gaul- Lupus of Troyes - in the distinctly manly terms of militarism:

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You are, beyond all doubt, the first of all bishops everywhere in the world; members even of your provincial college bow to your pre-eminence and tremble before your censure; and your commanding prestige makes the minds even of the old seem childish by comparison. . . . [You are] their most famous centurion [primipilaris]. Is it possible, then, in spite of all this greatness, that you separate yourself for a while from the company of the front-rank fighters [hastati] and soldiers who fight in front of the standards [antesignani] and do not scorn your lowliest military servants [catones] and camp-followers [lixae] ?129

Sidonius took advantage of a specialized military vocabulary to reinforce his larger point: that bishop Lupus was a "veteran commander" (dux veteranus) of the spiritual army of Christians. 130 It should not be surprising that the hierarchy of the army should have been superimposed on the hierarchy of the church or that episcopal authority, once established, should have been considered as equivalent to military command. Such a linlc helped to affirm both the bishops' authority and their manliness. In fact, Lupus's success was based in part on a military encounter. He was supposed to have persuaded the Huns to leave Troyes undisturbed in 451 during their raids through Gaul. It was a martial victory of sorts, at least according to the standards of the later Roman Empire .. There is also a high degree of flattery involved in Sidonius's extravagant praise of Lupus , of course, not unlike the flattery once granted to emperors alone in the panegyrics (Sidonius composed panegyrics to the emperors Avitus, Maj orian, and Anthemius and so knew the genre as well as anyone). The manly might of the bishops, with its spiritual and practical benefits, was obviously firmly in place in the minds of contemporaries in the middle of the fifth century, when Sidonius wrote, even as the might of the emperors was in steep decline. Sidonius Apollinaris also wrote to the people of Bourges to recommend a man named Biturigans as their bishop. He listed the qualities he felt demonstrated Biturigans's "honest manliness" (bonus viratus) and made him such an excellent candidate: He is constant in times of adversity, faithful in times of uncertainty, moderate in prosperity; simple in dress, genial in conversation, an equal among his comrades, pre-eminent as a counselor; well-proven friendships he strenuously pursues, staunchly maintains, and guards to the end; a quarrel declared against him he conducts honorably, ever slow to credit it and quick to lay it down. 131

There is not much here to distinguish Biturigans from the ancient ideal of a Roman public figure. Sidonius added one more quality that made it

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clear that Biturigans was also the new Christian ideal: "A man to be desired in the highest degree because he desires so little for himself, he seeks not to assume the priesthood but to deserve it."132 Biturigans joined in himself the manliness and unmanliness of the Christian public official, and this is what made him so well suited to episcopal office. It is in the context of the Christian reorientation of public life that Ambrose's important work, De officiis ministrorum (On the Duties of Servants [of God]), should be placed. The work was in many ways a Christian redaction of Cicero's De officiis (On the Duties [of Roman Citizens]), that is, a guide for the functioning of the individual man within society. Ambrose delineated what was expected of men in ecclesiastical service in a straightforward manner. A sample passage reads: In giving judgment let us have no respect of persons. Favor must be put out of sight, and the case be decided on its merits. Nothing is so great a strain on another's good opinion or confidence, as the fact of our giving away the cause of the weaker to the more powerful in any case that comes before us. The same happens if we are hard on the poor, while we malce excuses for the rich man when guilty. Men are ready enough to flatter those in high positions. 133

The qualities that Ambrose described would have been appropriate to any Roman public man. Ambrose's treatise also included traditional manly exhortations to justice, courage, prudence, temperance, and generosity; exhortations that Cicero also made. 134 Nonetheless, Ambrose also included a number of unclassical virtues in exhortations to humility (humilitas) and modesty (verecundia).135 Cicero would certainly have considered these virtues unmanly and therefore unbecoming in a public man, but they were central to Christian manliness. It was a sign of the new conviction in the bishop as political figure that Ambrose thought it worthwhile to write such a treatise and to write it implicitly as a revision of Ciceronian ideals. In the end, Christian men of the later Roman nobility who transferred their allegiances from the secular to the ecclesiastical realm did not suffer from their lack of influence with the state, because it was ultimately less important. Augustine argued for the insignificance of the state in his City of God right at the point in which he detailed the victories of the Christian emperors over their pagan rivals. Even "the loftiest summit of power;' he commented, "is nothing more than a passing mist."136 Ambrose went even farther: all worldly honors belonged to the Devil. 137 True political authority belonged to the Church and its officials, and not to the emperor and his officials. "We priests have our own nobility;' Ambrose wrote,

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"which is preferable to that of prefects and consuls; we have, I say, the glories of the faith which cannot perish."138 Within this context, the churches' gradual appropriation of civic management in the fifth century, while also a response to the disintegration of the Roman state, can be seen at least in part as a result of the bishop as having replaced the magistrate in symbolic power. The Christian transformation of political authority required considerable manipulation of traditional gender roles of masculine authority and feminine submission, but out of this manipulation came a new paradox of masculine identity. Men of the upper classes, removed from any real participation in the imperial government by the autocracy of the emperor, found a new type of political authority in the hierarchy of the Christian churches. As a result, Christian leaders helped to rechannel men's energies away from the pursuit of bureaucratic offices or the vain ostentation of rural seclusion. Political power thus remained an important masculine pursuit for the Christian nobility of the lat~r empire.

CHAPTER SIX

liMY SEED IS A HUNDRED TIMES MORE FERTILE" Christian Masculinity) Sex) and Marriage

Christian writers added surprisingly little to the litany of sexual transgressions already delineated in late antiquity or to the inventory of the disadvantages of marriage already formulated by pagan writers. By pinpointing sexual desire as the origin and core of human sinfulness, however, the Latin Christian writers argued that the renunciation of sex and marriage was a sign of perfection and therefore a sign of manliness. They managed to use both traditional philosophical and Biblical language to express these opinions and thus laid claim to be true heirs to the classical heritage and orthodox interpreters of the Christian message. The manliness of Christian sexual renunciation also meant discouraging marriage. Still, as much as they discounted sex and marriage as inferior to virginity and celibacy, orthodox Christian writers condemned as heretical those Christians who forbade sex and marriage altogether, since the continuation of sexuality and marital relations helped to preserve masculine authority. Even when women and men chose lives of sexual renunciation and abandoned ties of familial affection, moreover, men's authority remained over them as spiritual fathers. In sum, Christian ideology-as it pertained to sex and marriage - was crafted to perpetuate masculine privilege in private life. CHRISTIAN SEXUAL TRANSGRESSIONS

The traditional freedom of the Roman man to pursue a variety of sexual pleasures found no place in the developing Christian ideology of sex. Already at the end of the second century, an anonymous Christian writing 161

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in Rome echoed the words of his contemporary, the jurist Ulpian, on adultery: "He who wishes to have a restrained [siiphrona] wife must also restrain himself [siiphronein].''1 Christian writers also showed themselves as anxious about men's sexual transgressions as had been their pagan counterparts. In the middle of the third century, Cyprian of Carthage offered the opinion that a man who sinned sexually was even worse than a lapsed Christian who sacrificed to the pagan gods, since the latter acted only under compulsion while the former acted freely, "profaning his own dedicated body and God's own Temple in the abominable filth of the sewer and the slimy dives of the masses."2 Christian writers considered sexual vices as manifesting something troublesome about human nature itself In the early fourth century, Lactantius argued that it was the Devil who implanted sexual sins in men: he has established also houses of ill-repute and made public the shame of unfortunate women, so that he might hold in mockery thos~ who do it as much as those who have to suffer it. He has plunged in these obscenities, as in a whirlpool of filth, souls destined for sanctity; he has extinguished shame; he has berated modesty [pudicitia]. The same one has even joined males and has contrived abominable intercourse against nature and against the institute of God. 3

Worse, Lactantius continued, was that "yet these practices among them are regarded as light and sort of honorable."4 Few Christian moralists manifested greater concern about sexual behavior than Jerome, another of the prolific Latin writers of late antiquity and the point of focus for this chapter. Jerome wrote frequently on the subject of marriage and sexuality during his lifetime, which stretched from the middle of the fourth to the early fifth century.· He was an educated man and was ordained a presbyter at Rome. But he abandoned Rome and the clerical life for Bethlehem in Palestine and the monastic life under a cloud of scandal in 385, when a young woman under his counsel died from excessive fasting (more will be said about Jerome's advocacy for monasticism in chapter 8). Still, he associated and corresponded with the wealthiest and most influential of Christian circles in Rome even after his departure for the East. Living in the East, he was more familiar with the currents of Greek Christian and even of Jewish thought than were most other Latin Christians, and he drew freely from both sources in his writings (he read Greek and Hebrew, and used his lmowledge of both languages in his Vulgate translation of the Bible, for which he is best remembered). 5 Let us begin with one of the many letters Jerome wrote, dated to 399

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and addressed to Oceanus, a man of the senatorial aristocracy of Rome. The letter was an elegy for the widow Fabiola, a relative of Oceanus and a faithful supporter of Jerome. The letter is fascinating in its details, including an emotional recollection of the arrival of the Huns in the Eastern Empire: "flying hither and thither on their swift steeds ... these invaders were filling the whole world with bloodshed and panic. ... May Jesus save the Roman world from such wild beasts in the future!"6 Jerome's depiction of Fabiola is equally fascinating; she seems exactly the sort of widowed noble Christian patroness described in chapter 5 who, in freeing herself of masculine familial control, became worrisome to the male episcopal authority. But Jerome argued that Fabiola had not considered her widowhood as an opportunity for freedom, the way so many others wickedly did. "Widows:' he declared, "having shaleen off the yoke of slavery, are wont to grow careless and indulge in license, frequenting the public baths, flitting to and fro in the squares, showing their harlot faces everywhere."7 Fabiola, by contrast, used her wealth and freedom for the benefit of others and not herself. "Shall I mention her studied squalor:' he asked, "her plebeian dress, and the slave's garb she chose in condemnation of silleen robes?"8 "She preferred to breale up and sell all that she could lay hands on of her property-it was a large one and suitable to her rank - and when she had turned it into money she disposed of everything for the benefit of the poor."9 Fabiola also used her funds to travel across the empire on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Jesus, where she befriended Jerome. When she returned to Italy, she purchased a hostel at the port of Rome in tandem with a Christian widower named Pammachius, which they opened to the destitute. The only quarrel between the two of them was "who should be first in . . . kindness:' Jerome claimed. "What each desired they carried out together. They joined purses and combined their plans, that harmony might increase."l0 One aspect of this letter that is of particular note is the way Jerome depicted Fabiola's first husband in his elegy and the comments he made about him. Fabiola had divorced her first husband and found another, and Jerome did his best to hide this blemish on her character by painting it as an intolerable situation (I will talle more about the scandal of remarriage later in this chapter). Fabiola's first husband was the worst sort of man, Jerome declared, "a man of such heinous vices that even a prostitute or a common slave could not have put up with them."ll Jerome took the opportunity to rail against the men of his day, perhaps intending it in part as a lesson for Oceanus and other male readers of his letter. ''Among the Romans men's unchastity goes unchecked:' he exclaimed; "seduction and adultery are condemned, but free permission is given to lust to range the

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brothels and to have slave girls." But "the laws of Caesar are different from the laws of Christ;' Jerome continued, "Papinian commands one thing, our Paul another." In sexual matters, "with us what is unlawful for women is equally unlawful for men, and as both sexes serve God they are bound by the same conditions."12 In other words, even while some Roman moralists and legislators worried about the collapsing distinctions between men's and women's sexual roles, Jerome demonstrates-and other Christian writers voiced the same sentiment-that Christians were unconcerned about the gender ambiguity involved in assimilating men's and women's sexual virtue. Indeed, Jerome freely admitted that both sexes were held to the same standard. Likewise, Jerome worried about the disturbances of domestic life caused by promiscuous husbands and freewheeling widows, as other moralists of late antiquity did. But he did not seem concerned that Fabiola had escaped the control of men by refusing to remarry; indeed, he praised her widowhood and characterized as harmonious a peculiar unmarried relationship between her and Pammachius. Different criteria were obviously being used in Christian writers' approvals and criticisms, criteria that I will attempt to illuminate in this chapter. In terms of actual sexual transgressions for men, Christians seem to have added little to the opinions already circulating in late antiquity. The extent to which the Christians accommodated themselves to existing Roman sexual attitudes may seem surprising to modern readers, since the Christian code of sexual morality, once formulated, often cut squarely against the grain of the cultural attitudes of later societies, but this accommodation can be easily demonstrated. Christian definitions of and opposition to adultery is a good example. All extant Latin Christian writers who wrote on the subject of adultery, from Tertullian on, condemned it. ''All things are held in common among us;' Tertullian said about his fellow Christians, "except our wives."13 Christian writers also firmly believed that married men were bound by the same restrictions as married women. Hippolytus declared that "if any man has a wife, or a woman has a man, they should be taught to be content, the man with the woman and the woman with the man.''l4 Christians themselves noted the conjunction of pagan and Christian attitudes on this subject but included adultery among those offenses that met with universal disapproval. 15 Christian writers also held that divine command as well as human law condemned adultery. Salvian used Biblical justification, for example, to argue that "the Lord said that the lewd glances of the lusting man do not fall short of the crime of adultery.''l6 But although both Jesus and Paul were remembered as having spoken against adultery,

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neither of their statements was detailed or precise, and it is unclear the extent to which the earliest Christian tradition required an interpretation of adultery in anything other than the traditional Roman sense of sex with a married woman. 17 The anonymous late ancient Christian writer identified as Ambrosiaster expressly recognized this limitation on the meaning of the Biblical passages on adultery, although he also rejected extramarital sexual affairs for men. 18 . Despite the uncertain Biblical precedent, Christian moralists clearly wanted the prohibition against adultery to limit married men's sexual behavior to their wives and not merely to limit married women's sexual behavior to their husbands. Accordingly, they appealed to reason and emotion as well as Scripture in their argument. Lactantius said to husbands that "it is evil to exact that which you yourself are not able to exhibit" and even suggested that "when a wife falls into such a marriage, aroused by the very example, she thinks that she should either imitate it or get revenge."19 Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine also all condemned married men's as well as women's extramarital sexual relationships. Ambrose, for example, said that "every kind of sexual offense [stuprum ] is adultery, and what is not appropriate to the woman is not appropriate to the man."20 The constant repetition of this clarification suggests that the Church fathers themselves were aware of the limited Biblical support for their opinions and felt it necessary to rely on other methods for preventing Christian men from engaging in what they might not otherwise have considered sinful. Christian prohibitions against men's sexual use of slaves, either within their own household or by consorting with prostitutes, follow the same pattern. There were not really any suitable Biblical precedents for such prohibitions, except in Paul's brief condemnations ofpornoi. The word referred to those who engaged in porneia) which sometimes meant "sexual offenses" broadly conceived but which more often meant "prostitution" in classical sources; Paul might well have meant "persons involved in prostitution:' but more lilcely prostitutes or panderers rather than frequenters of prostitutes. Jerome, perhaps recognizing this ambiguity in his Latin translation of Paul's writings, translated the term as adulteri) "men who have sex with married women:' in one passage, and as flrnicarii) "men who frequent brothels:' in another.21 So Christian writers again preferred rational argument to Biblical prohibitions to make their point. Salvian of Marseilles complained that "the mother of the house is not far removed from the lowliness of female slaves when the father of the house is the husband of slaves.''22 Again, these arguments may well have talcen place in the context of men's ignorance that these were supposed to

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have been considered as sins. Recall, for example, Paulinus of Pella's admission that he was "satisfied with servile amours in my own home; for I preferred to be guilty of a fault rather than a crime."23 Lilce their pagan counterparts, Christian intellectuals were trying to persuade men to adopt a new and more rigorous code of sexual restraint. Ambrose, condemning men who had sex with prostitutes, specifically rejected the suggestion - perhaps commonly made by men opposing a more rigid sexual morality - that it was only natural that men would seek outlets for their sexual drives. 24 Jerome, too, declared that no man should "deny that there is a lustful sacrilege" ifhe had "violated the members of Christ and the living sacrifice that is pleasing to God through shameful impurities with the victims ofpublic lust;' that is, ifhe had enjoyed sex with prostitutes. 25 But it may be that some Christian men were refusing to accept as sinful exactly what Jerome insisted was sinful. A final example of the confluence between Christian and pagan sexual morality in late antiquity can be found in Christian opposition to sex between males. Christians probably had clearer Biblical precedents here for their condemnations, from Paul's lists of sexual offenders that included "effeminate men" (malakoiJ the Greek equivalent of the Latin moUes) and "males who lie down with males" (arsenokoitaiJ translated into Latin as masculorum concubitores). 26 The juxtaposed terms seem to indicate a condemnation of both the male who penetrates and the male who is penetrated, but the precise meaning of both terms is uncertain. The Biblical legend of Sodom also provided a limited basis for the condemnation of the penetrating male (since the sin of Sodom was already interpreted by some in late antiquity to have been a sexual one, and the Sodomites were thought to have wanted to penetrate the strangers and not be penetrated by them).27 But Christian moralists seldom made use of these Biblical precedents in their condemnations of sex between males, which may reflect their own uncertainty about the interpretation of these passages. Instead, they resorted to a typical Roman rhetoric of the violation of nature. An anonymous late ancient Christian poet attributed any sexual desires between males to the intervention in human affairs of the Devil, who induced men "to transgress nature's covenants, and stain pure bodies, manly sex, with an embrace unnamable, and uses feminine."28 N ovatian described how sex between males resulted in "uncommon and fearsome monstrosities against nature itself from men through men?'29 The nature that men violated through sexual relations with each other was not human nature but masculine nature, by blurring the distinctions between masculine and feminine sexual behavior. Salvian of Marseilles ridiculed the ancient belief that it was part of manly sexual aggression to

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penetrate another male, calling it folly that men "who subdued men to the worst infamy of feminine use believed that they were possessors of great manly strength." He continued sarcastically, "Since they were brave men, they could change men into women! How criminal this was!"30 Again, we cannot know how many of their contemporaries shared their views and how many disputed them: Salvian's comments seem pointed toward an opposing opinion. But Christian leaders made a point of using the familiar horrific rhetoric of the penetrated male and attaching the same horror to the penetrating male in their blanlcet condemnation of sexual behavior between males. They, like pagan moralists, condemned the actions of both men involved in sexual encounters between males. Cyprian denounced the men whom "with frenzied lusts rush against men;' intending apparently to rebulce the penetrating partner. 31 There are vestiges of an older morality on male sexual behavior. In an odd set of treatises on lying, Augustine argued that for a man to swear falsely was worse than for him to be penetrated by another man. 32 Augustine's argument only made sense if the sexual penetration of a man was thought so horrific that it seemed counterintuitive to assert that lying was worse, and Augustine obviously assumed that the disgust at the thought that an adult male wanted or permitted himself to be penetrated sexually was sufficient to drive home his point. In general, though, Christian moralists continued the blurring of the distinction in male sexual relationships between active and passive roles and lumped both together as sin. The condemnation of male sexual immorality along familiar lines was part of a larger Christian rhetorical strategy. The preference for arguments from reason and emotion and nature instead of Biblical citations was not only because of the obliqueness of the Biblical texts but also because Christian writers sought to persuade their audience by appealing to existing perceptions of right and wrong. We should not believe that Christian moralists were coldly calculating popular response to their ideas; they doubtless held these beliefs sincerely. Rather, they used the attitudes of contemporary moralists to demonstrate the similarities between the Christian sexual code and the code of sexual self-restraint already encouraged in late antiquity and thus to associate themselves with what they considered the best of the Roman heritage. The appeal to common understandings can be seen, for example, in the Christian denunciations of the immorality of the emperors, which are entirely reminiscent of the denunciations of the Roman histories. Nero was "inflamed by an excess of every vice;' Hadrian dishonored his companion Antinous "in the imperial embrace" and "robbed him of his manhood;' Elagabalus "defiled the innermost sanctum of the Augustan seat" (also a play on

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words that alluded to his preference for assuming the penetrated sexual role), and Maximian directed himself "not only to the corruption of young men, an odious and detestable thing, but also to the violation of the daughters of the leading citizens."33 Even if Christians adopted the later Roman sexual morality as they inherited it, though, they attributed this morality to the teachings of their religion. Again, this attribution was part of a larger strategy, because it enabled Christian writers to criticize the earlier sexual customs of Rome and even to associate these customs with unmanliness, something pagan writers were unwilling to do. Accordingly, Christian writers were able to initiate a larger critique of pagan culture through their discussions of sexual morality. Already at the beginning of the third century, for example, Tertullian attempted to undermine the wisdom of Greek philosophy by calling Socrates "a corruptor of youth" (corruptor adulescentium). It was true insofar as it was the reason Socrates had been condervned to death and shows Tertullian's knowledge of the classical heritage. But Tertullian meant to draw attention to Socrates' enjoyment of Greek pederasty in using the phrase, which is clear from his contrast between Socrates and what he claimed was a typical Christian man - one who "confines himself to the female sex."34 Pagan intellectuals of late antiquity never made a similar statement, even those who condemned sex between males; they were tied too closely to the ancient Greek and Roman cultural heritage to be able to formulate so hostile an assessment. In contrast, Christian writers were more easily able to dismiss the pagan and classical foundations of late ancient culture, because they had at their disposal an alternative cultural tradition in the Biblical heritage, even if they did not malce much use of the actual content of the Biblical heritage in creating that sexual code. Through their condemnations, we see another aspect of the importance of Christian ideology in late antiquity, as a means for escaping the intellectual constraints of the classical heritage. Christian ideology permitted Christians to brealc with the past in a way that was impossible for pagans. Above all, this contrast is evident in the Christian denunciation of the sexual immorality of the traditional Roman gods, a double vituperation of the paganism itself as well as of earlier sexual customs. Jupiter "held the wretched Ganymede in his foul embrace:' in the words ofPrudentius. 35 "I malce no mention of the virgins he defiled:' began Lactantius on the same subject, "but I cannot pass over . . . [what] he spoiled with dishonor and infamy:' which Lactantius considered "a deed of consummate impiety and wickedness, his rape and outrage of the royal son:' and a "true spoilage which is committed against nature." Lactantius concluded the following about the myth of Jupiter and Ganymede: "For what other

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purpose is the eagle worshipped in the temples of Jupiter, except that the memory of the wicked crime and outrage might remain forever?"36 Jupiter was not the only god to be tainted with such sexual vice. Hercules was also "notorious for his love of an effeminate boy [mollis puer]."37 Bacchus "was a pervert [cinaedus] and served the lustful desires of his lovers" with "his halfmen [semiviri] friends, his associates in debauchery, shame, and lust."38 And Apollo, who "was in love with a beautiful boy, violated hiIn."39 The need for such a Christian denunciation was muted over the course of the fourth century, as paganism declined in importance and was eventually outlawed. But even at the beginning of the :fifth century, Augustine still criticized the immorality of the pagan gods in The City ofGod. Jupiter was "a seducer of the wives of others, and a shameless lover and ravisher of a beautiful boy."40 In the same work, he complained that classicalliterature still "excited the base passions of young men by portraying the disgraces [fiagitia] of Jupiter."41 In general, and because of such depictions of sexual vice in the myths of paganism, Christian men felt a real ambivalence about reading classical Latin literature. Most of the Christian writers of late antiquity were educated in the classical texts, knew them well, and even imitated their style (recall, for example, Ambrose's redaction of Cicero's De officiis mentioned in chapter 5). They also worried about the corrupting influence of classical literature. Jerome, for example, promised to God never again to read a pagan text after receiving a vision from a sickbed in which God accused him of being more a Ciceronian than a Christian. Nonetheless, Jerome continued to sprinlde quotations from and allusions to classical texts throughout his letters; a discrepancy that a rival eventually pointed out to him.42 His ambivalence is painfully clear. The problem with such literature, the fourth-century polemicist Firmicus Maternus suggested, was that men used the legends of the pagan gods to justify their own immoral actions. He described this tendency in a passage dripping with sarcasm: Another person is fond of the embraces of boys: well, let him look for Ganymede in Jupiter's bosom, let him see Hercules questing after Hylas with the impatience of love, let him learn how Apollo was overcome with desire for Hyacinthus ... so that he may declare that his gods authorize him to do whatever is today most severely punished by the laws of Rome .... If someone acts passively like a woman or seeks solace in an effeminate body, let him see that Liber [Bacchus] is rewarded by his lover even after death with favors of promised passion in imitation of shameful intercourse .... For those wishing to commit incest the example of Jove

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should be taken up, since he slept with his mother, married his sister, and so that he might complete the whole repertoire of incest, that corrupter of persons even made advances toward his daughter. 43

The contrast between the sexual immorality exhibited in ancient myths and what was encouraged by contemporary moral standards also served to differentiate neatly Christian from pagan culture. (Firmicus was a former pagan astrologer himself, who became a Christian and then ridiculed his former pagan beliefs). The repeated comparison of pagan belief to prostitution also reinforced the connection between the traditional religions and sexual vice. 44 The real importance of Christian ideology lay not so much in the denunciation of specific sexual activities but in changing the moral significance of sexual acts. The ancient myths and classical literature of the pagans continually reminded everyone that men had not al~ays been so sexually restrained as their moralists told them they should be. But Christians, who viewed such traditions as nothing more than a heritage of sexual sin, could forge a new masculine identity removed from the sexual behavior of the ancients. "The laws of Caesar are different fr,om the laws of Christ," Jerome said, merely adapting an earlier and more famous dictum ofTertullian: "What has Athens to do with Jemsalem?"45 The heritage of pagan sexual transgression functioned for Christian writers as a symbol of the need for a total cultural transformation.

THE MANLINESS OF SEXUAL RENUNCIATION

Christian leaders encouraged the code of male sexual restraint not only as a sign of Christian conviction but also as a sign of manliness. They did not rely on ancient medical beliefs in the dangers of sex to enforce the code but on Christian theological beliefs in sex as sin, and in this way they avoided the trap of unmanliness. They turned male sexual renunciation into a heroic act and created an intellectual environment in which men might abandon sex and its dangers without jeopardizing their masculine identity. An excellent example of the Christian reformulation of male sexual renunciation can be found in the funerary portrait of the emperor Valentinian II, delivered by Ambrose of Milan in 392 (and serves as a nice comparison with the depiction of the emperor Julian by the pagan Ammianus Marcellinus, written about the same time and used as an example of pagan sexual renunciation, in chapter 3). It may seem odd to find Ambrose lavishing praise upon this emperor, given his numerous struggles against

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him and against the authority of the state in general, but this incongruity merely highlights the stylized nature of the oration. Once Valentinian was dead, Ambrose could safely depict him as he wished he had been. Ambrose began his funeral speech in a typically panegyric way, idealizing all aspects of the emperor's life and reign. He was courageous in war; his subjects loved him dearly. Ambrose glossed over Valentinian's Arian Christian upbringing and the fact that he died unbaptized and instead emphasized the restrictions that Valentinian placed on paganism as a sign of the sincerity of his Christianity. 46 Ambrose even suggested that Valentinian was like Christ, by means of a quirky argument, in that Valentinian appeared to Ambrose as "a bright and ruddy youth:' and therefore not unlike the Biblical description of the bridegroom of the Song of Songs. 47 These descriptions all echoed the extravagant praise of pagan panegyrics, but with a definite Christian twist. Whenever Ambrose commented upon Valentinian's sexual behavior, both this Christian component and the artificial nature of the text become clear. Ambrose conceded that a typical young man was "unwilling to offer the neck of his mind to the yoke" of sexual restraint and submit to "the burdens of discipline, the rigor of amendment, the weight of abstinence and the curbing of lust:' but maintained that Valentinian easily accepted such things happily. 48 To emphasize his point, he related a tale of a beautiful actress whom the young emperor had brought to court, only to see all ofhis young companions fall lustfully enthralled to her. But Valentinian "never gazed at her or saw her:' according to Ambrose, so that "he might teach the youths to refrain from the love of a woman whom he himself, who could have kept her in his power, had spurned." Ambrose concluded that "he thus gave proof of his chastity:' adding that "who is so much a master of a servant as he was ofhis own body?"49 When he described Valentinian's marriage, Ambrose made obvious again the elegiac nature of the speech. The emperor deferred his marriage as long as he could, Ambrose avowed, enjoying only the pious and chaste love of his sisters. 50 When the necessities of state obliged him to marry, he became a model husband, "chaste in body, who had no intercourse with any woman other than his wife."51 Insofar as Valentinian II bore any resemblance to the figure portrayed in Ambrose's oration, he lived according to the sexual ideals held by both pagan and Christian moralists in late antiquity. Ambrose, who knew well how to manipulate the image of manliness, said of Valentinian that "he died a veteran in the campaigns of virtue [virtus]:' evoking with these words the martial identity that Roman man so admired and linlcing it to sexual restraint. 52 The manliness of sexual re-

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nunciation was an assertion that carried obvious appeal, and Christian writers skillfully deployed gendered rhetoric in support of their ideals of male sexuality. But Christian writers had another rhetorical device in their armory, a device they also used in military and political tropes, as we have seen in the last two chapters, and that was the paradox of apparent unmanliness. Let me give an example before I explain further. When Ambrose gave a funeral address for his brother Satyms in 379, he did not link sexual restraint to a military manliness, as he did for Valentinian II. Instead, he attributed to his brother (who never married) a sexual modesty more reminiscent of ideals for women rather than for men. He said of Satyrus: if perchance he had ... met some female relative, he was as it were bowed down and sunlc to the earth, though he was not different in company with men, he seldom lifted up his face, raised his eyes, or spoke; when he did one of these things, it was with a kind of bashful modesty of mind [p~dico mentis pudore], with which, too, the chastity of his body [castimonia corporis] agreed. 53

His brother's demeanor was not an effeminate one, despite:its similarity with women's. Rather, it represented the "foundations of manliness" (fondamenta virtutis), according to Ambrose. His was a manly modesty. Finding manliness in sexual modesty was only possible because of the differing beliefs of pagans and Christians about the origins of sexual desire. Pagan writers relied on the ancient medical perspective that tied sexual desire to the heat of the male body and sexual exertion as diminishing that heat and draining the energy of the male body. Christian writers apparently also accepted this medical perspective. Jerome, for example, wrote of one man that "the natural heat of the body fights against his fixed purpose" of sexual renunciation, and Ambrose bemoaned the fact that men, "being warm with the natural heat of the body and inflamed beyond the measure of nature by the heat of wine:' are often unable to "restrain themselves, and are excited to bestial passions."54 Nonetheless, Christian writers overwhelmingly preferred a theological to a medical terminology for discussing both the nature and origin of sexual desire (or lust, both terms being acceptable translations of the seemingly interchangeable Latin terms libido and concupiscentia). 55 Christians borrowed from and extrapolated upon a Biblical perspective of the place of lust in men's lives, especially through an interpretation of the fall of humanity and the origin of sin from the first chapters of the book of Genesis. Christian writers managed to construct a framework for understanding sexual desire as the result of human frailty rather than

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its cause) as the medical perspective had insisted. Sexual restraint was not the fear of wealcness but its undoing. The champion of the linlc between lust and the fall of humanity was Augustine of Hippo, and the ideas that filled several of his treatises can only be briefly encapsulated here, but have been sufficiently detailed elsewhere. 56 In his earliest writings, Augustine followed earlier Latin Christian moralists -like Jerome and Ambrose, from whom he borrowed some of his ideas - in questioning the place of sexuality in the will of God. "I lcnow nothing which brings the manly mind down from the heights:' Augustine wrote in his earliest extant treatise, "more than a woman's caresses and that joining of bodies."57 In these writings, Augustine claimed that only after the advent of sin did God permit to Adam and Eve the sexual abilities with which to procreate, so that they might replace themselves before they died (death being another consequence of the first sin).58 In other words, sex was not part of God's original plan for humanity but began as a consequence of human sin and was linlced to the punishment of human mortality. Augustine eventually changed his mind on this subject, in part because he was uncomfortable with the idea of a God who had not anticipated human sin and had to improvise sexuality. In his later writings, Augustine argued that Adam and Eve would indeed have had sex even if they had not sinned and that sex was part of God's plan after all, but their sexual encounters would have been orderly and completely devoid of lust. 59 Lust was the punishment for and the greatest evidence of the original sin ofAdam and Eve. 60 Indeed, lust was the only part of original sin that even Christian baptism could not erase, Augustine maintained, although baptism was supposed to remove all sin; lust remained like convalescence after illness. 61 The evidence of sin was imprinted upon us in an appropriate fashion: our inability to control our sexual thoughts or to prevent the sexual arousal of our bodies was a fitting retribution for Adam and Eve's disobedience to God. 62 Ultimately, Augustine's theological acceptance of sexuality came at the price of condemning human sexual desire as sinful. The association between sexual desire and sin was no innovation on the part of Augustine, however, even if he laid out his understanding of the connection more carefully and more fully than most. The same links can be seen in virtually every Latin Christian author. Tertullian included "the lusts of the flesh, and disbelief, and wrath" as those qualities that "are accounted to the common nature of all men, while yet the devil still has designs upon nature."63 Cyprian claimed that it was the Devil who "offers to the eyes seductive forms and easy pleasures so that by sight he may destroy chastity."64 Lactantius also blamed the Devil for implanting sexual

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desires in men: "in our innermost parts, he sets going and incites stimuli, and he arouses and inflames that natural ardor."65 And Jerome declaimed: "the devil's power, all of it, is in the loins."66 It is important to highlight here an obvious corollary to the union of sex and sin: the parallel link between sinlessness and sexlessness. That is the underlying message of the Christian writers on sexual matters. Sexual desires are the result of the wealcness of the first human beings. Human perfection, in contrast, consists in the desire for a return to the innocence of original humanity, understood both in terms of innocence from guilt and innocence of the lcnowledge and practice of sex. (So innocent were Adam and Eve before they sinned, claimed Augustine, that they did not even lcnow sexual modesty or shame and did not need to cover their genitals. 67 ) The preferred use of the Latin castitas (translated as "chastity" but which in a classical sense had meant "guiltlessness" and "innocence" and "moral purity") for Christian sexual abstinence, even more than pudicitiay echoes with the moral superiority of sexual renunciation. Chastity subsumed all of the sexual virtues of pudicitia in late antiquity -'--virginity before marriage, sexual moderation and fidelity during marriage, and sexual continence in widowhood after marriage- and gave them a Christian coloring. 68 Consequently, desire for chastity was not at all the same as the fear of the physical dangers of sex, although these dangers were considered real enough. Indeed, it may not be too much to suppose that ancient medical notions of the wasting effects of sexual activity may have prompted the Christian placement of sexual desire at the heart of the debilitation caused by sin. 69 In contrast, chastity was resistance to sin, a refusal to succumb to the wealcness of temptation that had banished Adam and Eve from Paradise. The association of sexual renunciation with steadfastness and strength, in turn, helped to give it a masculine flavor and appeal. Women were already tied to physicality and wealcness through long-standing Roman cultural tradition; as objects of sexual desire they could equally stand as Christian symbols of the temptations of lust. "The enticements of sin pursue us and lust pursues us:' Ambrose wrote, "flee from it as from a frenzied mistress."70 Jerome recounted a disturbing but telling incident involving an unnamed martyr: When everyone had gone away, a beautiful prostitute came up to him and began to stroke his neck with gentle caresses, and (what is improper even to relate) to touch his private parts with her hands: when his body was roused to lust as a result, this shameful conqueress lay down on top ofhim. The soldier of Christ did not know what to do or where to turn: he who had not

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yielded to tortures was being overcome by pleasure. At last, by divine inspiration, he bit off his tongue and spat it out in her face as she kissed him; and so the sense of lust was overcome by the sharp pain that replaced it. 71

The prostitute, as the sign of the temptations of sex, could not overcome the heroic resolve of the chaste "soldier of Christ." Resistance to lust, as the didactic nature of Jerome's legend indicates, was the martial sort of discipline that all men might desire for themselves. "The most selfcontrolled sort of man, when he is completely a marl [plane virJ;' Augustine offered, is able "so manfully [viriliterJ to make use of women, that he is not subdued by the delights of the flesh, but governs them."72 The military metaphor reinforced the links between sexual continence and manliness. Jerome used it repeatedly. "The voice of the Lord is as one exhorting and urging his soldiers to the reward of sexual modesty fpudicitia J;' he wrote, and "whoever can fight, fight, conquer and triumph."73 Augustine also relied on military imagery in a long letter to a man named Laetus, who had been considering marriage. Augustine argued that Laetus should remain celibate and thus ready for spiritual battle and not abandon his fight before the final victory by surrendering to his lust. 74 Tertullian called the desire for sex an "infirmity ofthe flesh" that did not compare well to wounds received in battle or through torture (linlcing chastity not only with soldiering but also with martyrdom): Certainly, infirmity which succumbs in battle is more easily excused than that which succumbs in the bedchamber; that which gives way on the rack than that which gives way on the bridal bed; which yields to cruelty rather than concupiscence; which is conquered, groaning with pain, than that which is conquered, burning with lust. 75

Tertullian mocked the manliness of those who were thus conquered by sexual appetites. "A thing which calls for real virility!" he scoffed. "To rise from the easy relaxation of continence and fulfill the functions of sexthis is to prove oneself a man indeed!"76 These descriptions were all attempts to instill the manliness of sexual renunciation in men's minds. The manly image of a charioteer in particular found its way into Christian writings on chastity. Novatian, an early-third-century presbyter at Rome, wrote a treatise entitled De bono pudicitiae (On the Good of Sexual Modesty), in which he declared that "the spirit, after a manner of spealcing, like a tried and true charioteer, curbs with the reins of the heavenly precepts the impetus of the flesh which exceeds the just limitations of the body."77 The same image can be seen in Jerome ("you, Christ's charioteer"78) and Pmdentius ("so let the desires of our bodies be reined in"79).

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The allusion is to Plato's PhaedrusJ and it is found in a discussion of pederasty, curiously enough, although its argument is that men's love for boys should be spiritual and not physical. Given the Christian ambivalence about the classical philosophical tradition and the opposition to the ancient sexual values, it is odd to see it borrowed by Christian writers. But the Platonic metaphor for the soul's mastery of the body was too helpful for Christian intellectuals to ignore. It made the point that Christian moralists wanted to malce and in a language familiar to the audience they wanted to reach, men educated in classical literature. The specific context of the metaphor in pederasty had to be ignored, but the manliness of the charioteer image outweighed the risks of reference to immoral sexual customs. Moreover, the original context of the metaphor in a discussion of classical sexual restraint probably also explains why the image of the charioteer was linked even in Christian usage to sexual renunciation. The importance of enlisting a manly language in support of chastity also helps to explain the numerous comparisons between Christian chastity and the athletes of the Roman arenas. (In late antiquity, charioteers were competitors in the arena rather than soldiers, so a connection could be easily made in the mind between them and other athletes). Christian leaders overwhelming disapproved of the arena sports, in part because the arenas had been the location of the deaths of many martyrs, and when Constantine became emperor, he outlawed gladiatorial contests. 80 But the arena sports continued, sports lilce wrestling and boxing and the killing of animals, and the manliness of the athlete was irresistible to Christian writers. It prompted Augustine to compare the struggle for chastity to an athletic contest: Behold where the stadium is; behold where the wrestling grounds are; behold where the racecourse is; behold where the boxing ring is! ... If you wish so to fight that you do not beat the air in vain but so as to strike your opponent manfully, then chastise your body and bring it into subjection that, abstaining from all things and contending lawfully, you may in triumph share the heavenly prize and the incorruptible crown. 81

The ambivalence of this imagery can be easily seen when this passage is compared with another: Augustine's description of a friend named Alypius who was attracted to the arena games. With a dramatic flourish that might well betray a certain fascination with the games himself, Augustine depicted the scene: Alypius shut his eyes tighdy, determined to have nothing to do with these atrocities. If only he had closed his ears as well! For an incident in the fight

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drew a great roar from the crowd, and this thrilled him so deeply that he could not contain his curiosity. . . . He was confident that, if he saw it, he would find it repulsive and remain master of himseJ£ So he opened his eyes, and his soul was stabbed with a wound more deadly than any which the gladiator, whom he was anxious to see, had received in his body.... When he saw the blood, it was as though he had drunk a deep draught of savage passion .... He watched and cheered and grew hot with excite. ment. 82

If the spectators of sports might be seen as lacking in self-control, though, the athletes themselves were admired for their discipline and courage. "We are athletes:' Ambrose said of his fellow Christians in a discussion of sexual continence, "we strive, as it were, in a spiritual stadium."83 In perhaps the oddest discussion of Christians and the arena sports, Jerome described the sainted Hilarion of Gaza: unaffected by the games as a young man but as tempted by visions of gladiatorial shows in the desert, willing to cure a charioteer but only if the man gave up his profession, and blessing the horses of a local charioteer with holy water. 84 If Christian men could be construed as athletes, then the martyrs might be considered as the champions among Christian athletes and might even function as popular celebrities in the same way that the most accomplished athletes did. (Tertullian complained that athletes were "most beloved of persons [amantissimi] to whom men surrender their souls and women even their bodies."85) Or at least, some Christian writers hoped to promote them as such. Cyprian compared the willingness of both gladiators and martyrs to face death. 86 Prudentius described in vivid athletic terms the martyrdom of Vincent in the arena: "now they have reached the wrestling-ground where the prize is glory, where hope contends with cruelty, and martyr and torturer face each other and join in the critical struggle."87 Again, it may seem unusual to glorify the type of sport by which Vincent met his death, but Christian writers were working hard to linl( sexual renunciation and manliness, and the obvious physicality of the men of the arenas provided the necessary connection. There may be an additional connection. It was also believed that athletes should refrain from sexual activity before their matches to preserve their vitality' and so the penises of some were even fitted with clamping devices calledJibulae that prevented erection and thus ejaculation. Such procedures were known in late antiquity and described by Oribasius, court physician to Julian, and complemented ancient medical notions of the deleterious effects of sexual expenditure. One might argue therefore that athletes also had connections in the mind with sexual deprivation as well as manliness. 88

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If Christian men were resisting the rigors of the sexual code preached by their spiritual leaders, asserting the manliness of sexual self-restraint was the best means of accomplishing the task of persuasion. Christian writers might understand the reasons for the sexual desire within a Biblical context, as the consequence of an original mythical sin. But they also situated the renunciation of sex solidly within a mental environment comprehensible and even enviable if not familiar to Roman men: a world of soldiers, charioteers, and athletes. This environment betrays how deeply embedded the Christian writers themselves were in the traditions of their Roman cultural heritage. As much as they might attempt to escape that heritage and to discount its influence, it remained wit11 them. Christian writers of late antiquity advocated for chastity from within this perspective. Because it was a sign of perfection, it was also an indication of manliness. The pursuit of sexual renunciation was heroic and virile; it was a mastery of the spirit and a victory of the body as well as a repudiation of sin. Such a view of sex would also require a radical reinterpretation of the place of marriage and family life in human society. J

MARRIAGE AND HERESY

Christian intellectuals argued that all sexual activity-or at least all sexual activity possible since the original sin - was the result of the fallen nature of humanity. It stands to reason that they would discourage marriage. Mter all, it was an institution that permitted sex and even required it for the purposes of familial continuity and inheritance. Latin Christian writers made use of both Christian precedents and classical prejudices in elevating celibacy above marriage, again demonstrating their debt to both. But they also refused to condemn marriage altogether, regarding those as heretics who argued either for the equal moral status of marriage and celibacy or for a total ban on marriage. The orthodox leaders of the Western Christian churches managed to claim that their ideology of marriage not only preserved the best of the classical heritage but also the most authentic of Christian beliefs. Jerome provides a convenient starting point for this discussion. His views on marriage are especially evident in his treatise entitled Adversus Jovinianum (Against Jovinian), a vitriolic reply to a man who was preaching in Rome that celibacy had no advantage for Christians over the married state. 89 Jerome's treatise included many elements drawn from longstanding Roman ambivalence about marriage. Roman men had always halfheartedly resisted marriage, given its association for them with the transition to adult manhood and an end to the pleasures and irresponsi-

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bility of adolescence, and because their marriages were arranged by their parents and more often for political reasons than because of compatibility. Resistance to marriage had also found a place in classical philosophical writings, because it was considered as distracting a lnan from a vita philosophica and the pursuit of wisdom and wasting his intelligence in the mundane affairs of domestic life. 90 So it was not difficult for Jerome to enlist numerous examples from the classical heritage to aid in his discouragement of marriage. He summarized episodes of pagan history and literature in which married couples had fallen into serious disagreements or had caused each other terrible grief (without apparent pangs of conscience here about making use of pagan literature). He referred to marriage as a debt (debitum) and as chains (vinculi) because of the constrain(,s it placed on a man; it was therefore not unlike slavery (a comparison we also saw in chapter 5).91 Marriage was also ineffective, because it was supposed to extinguish "the burning sensation of lust" (ardor libidinis) in a man but in fact only intensified it. Indeed, it turned men into irrational beasts and slaves to licentiousness (an argument that Jerome drew from classical Stoicism).92 Jerome even attempted to demonstrate that traditional Greek, Roman, and barbarian religions already recognized the superiority of celibacy to married life (although he was forced to go far afield to find ancient examples of the praise of male sexual continence, having to use Buddha as one example of marital renunciation).93 In all of these arguments, it is possible to see Jerome's attempt to assimilate his argument about marriage to the intellectual traditions of antiquity so that he could show himself to be heir to those traditions. If Jerome denounced marriage with classical arguments, his praise of celibacy drew much more from Christian sources for its inspiration. He repeated Paul's comments on the practical advantages of celibacy (Paul himself had lilcely drawn from the classical tradition of the vita philosophica in his discouragement of marriage). 94 But much closer to the heart of Jerome's argument was his use of the tradition that Jesus claimed that "at the resurrection men and women do not marry" but "are lilce the angels in heaven."95 Celibacy was a vita angelica) an angelic lifestyle. This concept linlced the renunciation of marriage with personal salvation and the life after death, but it also associated it with a return to Paradise, a recapturing of the innocence lost by Adam and Eve, and the promise of a life without sin, suffering, or death. 96 No wonder it was such a powerful concept. If that were not enough, Jerome added that for a man to remain a virgin was to follow the example of Jesus and his earliest followers, including John the Baptist and the apostle John (here the Biblical trail was not so clearly marked, but Jerome deduced that these men must have been vir-

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gins, since they were both virtuous and unmarried).97 Christ was "a virgin from a virgin, someone uncorrupted from someone uncorrupted;' and Jerome reasoned, "therefore is virginity of divinity and blessedness."98 To De celibate was to share not only in the angelic but also in the divine. In forceful language, Jerome claimed that the difference between marriage and virginity was the same as that between not sinning and actually doing good or that between doing good and doing better. 99 When compared to marriage, celibacy was like gold to silver, the fruit of the tree to its root or leaf, or the grain of the field to the stalle or stubble of the plant. loo In sum, Jerome tried to show that marriage was inferior according to both traditional Roman and Christian standards, and that because it was inferior, it was unworthy of men aspiring to excellence. Jerome's views of Christian marriage created something of a stir at Rome in the late fourth century. Apparently not all Christians shared his opinions on marriage, and some members of the Roman aristocracy, including Jovinian's followers, resisted Jerome's conclusions. 101 It is a useful reminder to us about the limits of our knowledge about how deeply others shared the opinions of Christian leaders. Unfortunately, we do not know much about the followers ofJovinian or their numbers. They seem to have continued as an intellectual faction until the turn of the fifth century, when they disappeared. l02 But the bishops of the Western churches overwhelmingly supported Jerome, and Jovinian's ideas were eventually declared heretical. We can conclude from this fact that even if some Romans shared the beliefs of Jovinian that marriage was equal in honor to celibacy, their numbers were insufficient to hold the day. (Ultimately, the decision favorable to Jerome and the support for his ideas probably also helped in promoting the belief that the Latin clergy should be celibate, since greater perfection was expected of them than most men. In contrast, while Greek theologians also wrote about the inferiority of marriage to celibacy - and from whom Jerome seems to have borrowed some ofhis arguments about sex and marriage - there was not a similar focus on the issue in the late fourth century, and the clergy continued to marryl03). Here as elsewhere in Christian ideology, heretical meant a minority opinion. I would suggest that the association of sexlessness with sinlessness explains why the intellectual faction promoting the equality of marriage and celibacy never reached the level of popularity and numerical support for its ideas to triumph. The heretical nature of theologians lilee Jovinian was little more than their inability to provide a suitable and acceptable meaning for Roman men's reluctance to marry. It was not Biblical precedent that Jovinian and his allies lacked. They also had an armory of Biblical and cultural citations from which they argued (insofar as we

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can reconstruct their arguments from the writings of their opponents) : the holiest of the Old Testament patriarchs were married as was the apostle Peter, Jesus registered his support for the married life by performing his first miracle at the wedding of Cana, and some of the holiest of martyrs were married. Jerome's approach was more successful not because it was better grounded in the Christian scriptures - in fact, in one letter he explained how he felt that one could ignore God's Biblical exhortation to ·"be fruitful and multiply:' and turn Paul's exhortation to remain unmarried into a virtual command - but because his ideas resonated more loudly among the elite of late ancient Rome. 104 Roman men who were Christians were looking to their theologians to provide them with pious reasons to avoid the marriages their parents were contracting for them. Jerome offered them an opportunity to see marital renunciation not only as reasonable but also as holy, and not only as holy but as manly, and Jovinian did not. What is more, Jerome and his supporters allowed men to see marital renunciation as one more battle in the ongoing war between manliness and unmanliness. Marriage and sexual relations, Jerome argued, "effeminate a manly spirit [animumque virilem ejfeminat],:'lOS Celibacy, in contrast, was the manly life. ''No soldier marches into battle with a wife:' Jerome said simply (and probably alluding to the classical prohibition against the marriage of Roman soldiers, a prohibition ended in the third century).106 Jerome depicted Jovinian as a voluptuary and a hypocrite, since Jovinian seems not to have been married himself Even if these charges were untrue, they were an efficient means of discrediting him, because they called into question his manliness. 107 Siricius of Rome also referred to Jovinian as "an opponent of sexual modesty [pudicitia] and a master of indulgence [luxuria] ."108 Ambrose, in condemning followers of Jovinian, called them "delicate men" (delicati) and Epicureans, saying that they tempted others to reject the rigors of celibacy because they themselves were unable to sustain them.109 The skill of these men at wielding the catchwords of manliness and unmanliness was surely part of the eventual success of their ideological position. At the turn of the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo entered the debate with Jovinian's remaining followers about the relative merits of marriage and celibacy. His treatise on the subject, De bono conjugali (On the Good of Marriage ) defended the permissibility of marriage but also maintained its inferiority to sexual abstinence. Like Jerome, he used metaphors to describe the relationship of the two: it was Wee the respective brilliance of the sun and the moon, or the differing brightness of two stars. no Augustine tried to stay clear of some of Jerome's more extravagant language

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against marriage and so avoid the reaction to Jerome's work, but his work reveals the same ideological stance. As a result, Augustine argued that "marriage and continence are two good things, the second of which is better.''l11 Augustine also contrasted the command of God in the period before Christ, when the patriarchs married several wives without sinning, with that of his own days, when a man "does better who does not marry even one wife, unless he cannot control himsel£" 112 Moreover, "in our day, it is true, no man perfect in piety seeks to have children except spiritually."1l3 In a companion treatise written at the same time, De sancta virginitate (On Holy Virginity), Augustine clarified his view that virginity was the true Christian sexual ideal. Indeed, to support his position he claimed that virgins were rewarded in Heaven in unique and preferable ways for their sexual renunciation on Earth. 1l4 There existed a hierarchy of heavenly rewards, he alleged, in which virgins received a greater share than did married persons in the same way in which martyrs received a greater reward than did nonmartyrs. 1l5 The assimilation of virgins with martyrs was telling: it emphasized the perfection of both types of Christians, the sacrifice endured by both, and the manliness of both. Through a rejection of the feminizing effects of marriage, that is, the interior wealmess and bodily indulgence that it was believed to malce manifest, a Christian man could prove his manliness. In addition, the host of problems that ancient marriages entailed - the difficult choice of finding a compatible bride and a suitable familial alliance, the exchange of economic resources in marriage payments and gifts, and the fears that once entangled in the bonds of marriage, it was increasingly difficult to disentangle oneself because of restrictions on divorce-all could be surmounted by abandoning the whole affair and remaining celibate. Again, it is helpful to remember that marriage among the upper classes in late antiquity was not begun out of romantic or sexual desire but arranged by families for financial or political reasons. The appeal of the renunciation of marriage was present in Christian writers long before the end of the fourth century. We can see the same ambivalence already in the writings of Tertullian from the early third century. "I assign to continence and virginity preference over marriage:' Tertullian wrote early in his writing career, "yet without prohibiting marriage."1l6 Nonetheless, Tertullian was married himself, and in a treatise dedicated to his wife he even depicted a pleasant mutuality of a Christian husband and wife before God: How shall we ever be able adequately to describe the happiness of that marriage which the Church arranges, the Eucharist strengthens, upon which

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the blessing sets a seal, at which angels are present as witnesses, and to which the Father gives His consent? For not even on earth do children marry properly and legally without their fathers' permission. How beautiful' then, the marriage of two Christians, two who are one in hope, one in desire, one in the way of life they follow, one in the religion they practice. They are as brother and sister, both servants of the same Master. 117

Toward the end of his life, however, Tertullian adopted a much harsher view of marriage and sexual relations, in part because of his association with the Montanists, a Christian group from Asia Minor later declared heretical. In his De exhortatione castitatis (On the Exhortation to Chastity), for example, Tertullian listed all of the practical justifications that a man might give for getting married. He would need someone to administer his domestic affairs; he would like someone with whom he might share his daily worries; he would hope for a son to inherit his name and estate; he would want to contribute to the collective body of citizens. Tertullian dismissed all such claims as "excuses by which we color our insatiable carnal appetite."1l8 Tertullian also insisted that marriage was a sexual vice not much different from any other, because it sprang from "the carnal nature of lust, which is the cause of all stuprum. Is it not obvious therefore that stuprum is approximate to marriage, since what is found in it belongs also to stuprum?"1l9 Most of the Latin Christian writers after Tertullian did not go so far as he did in his disdain for marriage, yet all of the orthodox writers felt the same ambivalence about marriage and marital sexual relations. Still, as much as later writers like Jerome and Augustine wished to assert the inferiority ofmarriage and sex to celibacy and virginity, they refused to condemn marriage altogether. They all tried to walle the middle ground between approval and disapproval. Their reasons for accepting the value of marriage at all are not self-evident and deserve some explanation. Augustine's assertion that marriage was inferior to celibacy but still morally permissible, for example, obliged him to abandon his usual philosophical position that sin was nothing more than an inferior moral choice and that there were no "lesser good things." Christians of an earlier generation might have been accused of trying to accommodate the Roman civil laws in permitting marriage, since unmarried and childless persons were penalized in their right to accept and pass on property and inheritances. (Tertullian, for example, specifically contrasted the laws of Rome with the law of Christ, saying that the latter promised an equal inheritance to celibate and childless persons as to married persons with children. 120) But Christians of Jerome and Augustine's day had no such practicallimita-

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tions, after Constantine ended the penalties against the unma;-ried and childless. The explanation lies elsewhere, and will be developed more fully below and in chapter 7. For the moment it is enough to say that orthodox Christian writers were attempting to distance themselves from various Eastern Christian sects that prohibited all marital and sexual behaviors - groups like the Montanists, who were still not as radical as others in their rejection of sex and marriage. These Eastern groups shared much with the Western Christian writers, including a belief in the heroic nature of sexual renunciation and exhortations to follow the divine example of Christ and the angelic lifestyle of virginity, but they differed in forbidding all marriages and condemning all sexual activity as Sinful. 121 At least one of these Eastern Christian sects, the Manichaeans (so called because a man named Mani had founded them), had a considerable following in the western Mediterranean at the end of the fourth century. The extent and popularity of Manichaean Christianity in the West is not entirely clear to modern scholars. It certainly had impressive numbers of adherents in North Mrica. Augustine, for instance, was a participant in the religion for almost a decade and took the Manichaean threat seriously enough after his conversion to devote several treatises to the refutation of its doctrine and to engage in several public debates against leaders of the Manichaeans. 122 Julian, a bishop of Eclanum in southern Italy, seems to have argued in a lost treatise that Augustine's continued belief in the sinfulness of sexual desire showed that he had not sufficiently repudiated his earlier Manichaean ideas. 123 Circles of Manichaean or at least Manichaean-type Christians were also scattered through Italy, Spain, and Gaul; it was the fears of their presence there that led to the first execution of a Christian for heresy, that of Priscillian, bishop of Avila, in. 385 .124 Ambrose, who objected to the execution of Priscillian, also spoke· out against the Manichaeans and others who condemned marriage altogether. 125 The appeal of Manichaean Christianity in the West must not be underestimated. The Manichaeans also borrowed elements of the classical heritage, adopting the same Platonic ideas of the superiority of the mind over the body that orthodox writers were incorporating into their religious philosophy. Nor must the possibility be excluded that Manichaean beliefs encouraged the same type of manliness that orthodox Christians advocated. The Manichaean myth of the struggle between the powers of Light and the powers of Darkness, for example, probably encouraged the type of military identity to which the soldier of Christ was a parallel; the place of sexuality within this struggle as the evidence of evil also paralleled the orthodox ideal of sexual renunciation. 126 Manichaean leaders also applied to themselves the label of true brides of Christ. 127 In-

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deed, the teachings of the Manichaeans threatened orthodoxy in large part because of these many similarities. Christian writers, in condemning the Manichaeans and the other groups that rejected sex and marriage, once again made use of the cultural language of manliness and unmanliness. Tertullian (earlier in his career, when he was still defending marriage) set the tone by describing his opposition to the Eastern Christian sects as an athletic or gladiatorial contest: In a combat of boxers and gladiators, generally speaking, it is not because a man is strong that he gains the victory, or loses it because he is not strong, but because he who is vanquished was a man of no strength; and indeed this very conqueror, when afterwards matched against a really powerful man, actually retires crest-fallen from the contest. In precisely the same way, heresies derive such strength as they have from the infirmities of individuals - having no strength whenever they encounter a really powerful faith. 128

When Tertullian denounced Marcion, the leader of an Eastern group that required complete sexual renunciation, he also described their contest as a battle pitting the strong against the we ale. 129 Orthodox Christian writers after Tertullian made use of this same manly military language, but they also often accused their intellectual opponents of sexual immorality. Indeed, they used exactly the same sorts of descriptions of sexual license in their condemnation of the Manichaeans and the other groups that renounced sex and marriage as they had used in condemning individuals like Jovinian who advocated the equality of marriage and celibacy. Jerome, who believed Priscillian of Avila to be a Manichaean, accused him of presiding over secretive religious rituals involving sex with his female followers, women of ill repute. 130 Philaster, a fourth-century bishop ofBrescia in north Italy, depicted the Manichaeans vaguely as "slaves to nefarious turpitude."131 Leo the Great, bishop of Rome in the mid-fifth century, accused them of "multiple perversities;' "the mixing of all kinds of sordid things;' "a multitude of crimes;' "sacred rites as obscene as they are nefarious;' and "an execrable thing which our ears can scarcely bear to hear;' the last of which he clarified as the sexual use of a ten-year-old girl. "In this sect;' Leo concluded, "no sexual modesty [pudicitia] is to be found, no righteousness, no chastity." 132 Leo's accusations, repeated before the Roman Senate and combined with the forced confessions of a Manichaean leader, prompted the imperial government of Valentinian III to issue a ban against the religion. The law used the same sort of language of unmanliness and alleged that the

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Manichaeans exercised an "unchaste perversity, [which] in the name of religion, commits crimes that are unknown and shameful even to brothelS."133 It was only the last of a long series of secular laws against the Manichaeans, the earliest of which was enacted in 372. 134 Beginning in 381, Christian emperors enacted similar restrictions against other Eastern Christian groups that condemned marriage. 135 Men who belonged to heretical sects generally were deprived of the legal rights belonging to other men. 136 The charge of secret sexual immorality against these groups opposed to marriage is a curious one. Mter all, these groups were advocating the total renunciation of sex. Some of the details of the accusations may have been true, lilce those made by Augustine, who said that the Manichaeans permitted sexual alternatives to procreative intercourse as lesser evils, because they did not entrap more pure souls into wicked bodies. 137 It is also possible that if these groups believed that sex was sinful, they may not have believed that anyone form of sex was less sinful than another. Other opponents of these heretical sects made ad hominem attacks, accusing their leaders of not practicing what they preached. 138 Augustine claimed himself to have witnessed groups of carousing Manichaeans who were supposed to have renounced sex pursuing women for immoral purposes in the streets of Carthage. 139 But the point of all of these accusations was clear enough. The manly renunciation of sex was impossible for heretics, because the falsehood of their doctrines meant that they did not have the integrity to achieve real chastity. Their sexual deviance was part and parcel of their doctrinal deviance. Chastity was not laudable if it was heretical because it was heretical, Tertullian said simply.140 "Such virgins as there are said to be among the different kinds of heretics, or with the followers of the filthy Mani:' Jerome declared, "must be considered not virgins but prostitutes.''l41 Such accusations, whether true or not-and it is impossible to decide whether they are true or not-had an important rhetorical function. If the Manichaeans and other groups opposing marriage could be presented as clandestinely indulgent in sexual matters rather than as representative of the sexless ideal, then orthodox Christians could continue to see themselves, despite permitting the indulgence of marriage, as the truly continent, as the closest to Christian perfection, and also as the manliest. Charges of sexual vice could serve important religious ends, separating both the manly from the unmanly and the orthodox from the heretical.

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MARRIAGE AND MALE AUTHORITY

The accusations of effeminacy against those who condemned marriage describes the orthodox Christian position but does not explain it. The appeal of the orthodox position, simply enough, lay in its ability to justify the continued subordination of women to men. Augustine's delineation of the benefits of marriage provides an excellent example of the utility of Christian marriage, even devalued as it was, as a basis for continued masculine authority in private life. It is still necessary to explain why the orthodox position, which permitted marriage as a concession to human wealcness, should have prevailed over the heretical position, which forbade such wealcness altogether. It seems at face value as though the Manichaeans and those like them had the better intellectual position, at least in the context of the general Christian devaluation of marriage, but their eventual loss to the orthodox position must mean that they were unable to gain the numbers sufficient to unseat it. It has been argued that the Christian groups that triumphed were those that allowed for a distinction between strict and moderate lifestyles and that the Christian groups eventually defined as heresies were those that insisted that all adherents practice too severe an ascetic life. This argument maintains that the sects that permitted a wider range of behaviors could become more easily assimilated to the larger society than those that were too demanding. 142 Doubtless the point is well made, and several orthodox writers made a contrast between the narrow and difficult path to salvation of asceticism and the broad and easy path of marriage and family life but stressed that both reached the same destination. 143 But Manichaean Christianity also had such a division between moderates, called auditores (the hearers), and rigorists, called electi (the chosen). Even the early life of Augustine attested to this division (while a Manichaean, Augustine had cohabited with a woman who had borne him a son). I would argue instead that the eventual success of Catholic Christianity in the West has more to do with the ramifications of the total renunciation of marriage and family life for Roman men's identity and authority. The Eastern sects that forbid sex and marriage also tended to advocate a greater sexual equality. The Montanists that Tertullian joined, for example, allowed both men and women to prophesy; more will be said about some Eastern Christian groups' elimination of sexual difference in chapter 7 . Upholding the moral permissibility of marriage, even while relegating it to an inferior status, aided in the important task of continuing men's domination and women's subordination. Catholic Christian leaders who permitted marriage did so because the existence of mar-

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ital and familial roles helped to perpetuate masculine privileges, privileges too imbedded in the Roman cultural heritage for a religious philosophy arguing for their eradication to win out among Roman men. There were Scriptural motives for the orthodox desire to permit marriage, it is true. Even while Jesus was remembered as spealcing in favor of the abandonment of marital and familial expectations, for example, he also was supposed to have spoken about the indissolubility of marriage on Earth and the error of divorce. 144 Of course, the orthodox bishops also influenced which gospels were accepted as the authentic teachings of Jesus; other gospels like the Gospel of Thomas in which Jesus condemned marriage altogether, were rejected by them as inauthentic. 145 Eastern groups supporting the total condemnation of marriage understandably believed in the authenticity of these gospels. The letters of Paul and Peter in the New Testament encouraged Christians not to marry, but they also established the so-called "household codes" in which wives were exhorted to obey their husbands, slaves their masters, and children their parents, in a general continuation of the social hierarchy. (Modern religious scholars mostly reject the authenticity of the texts with these "household codes;' but ancient authorities accepted their authenticity).146 In an important passage in one of these doubtful texts, the relationship between husband and wife was compared to that between Christ and the Church (an image borrowed from the Song of Songs) as two separate persons joined into one body by means of a mystical marriage. The Pauline writer called it mysterion (a mystery) but Latin writers translated the term as sacramentum (a sacred [military] vow) rather than the more usual mysterium probably because of the connection of the term sacramentum with the pagan mystery religions that offered an intimate bond between believer and deity not unlike the one promised by the marital metaphor. 147 Other Pauline writings, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which advocated the total renunciation of marriage and gender differences, were lilcewise proclaimed inauthentic by orthodox leaders, and authentic by heretical leaders. 148 Ultimately, Biblical texts were mostly approved or rejected and Biblical passages cited or ignored insofar as they corresponded with already existing beliefs about the place of sex and marriage within the Christian life. Augustine, who is again the most systematic of the Latin Christian theologians, provides a helpful focal point for our discussion. Augustine's treatise, De nuptiis et concupiscentia (On Marriage and Sexual Desire), was intended to clarify his position regarding the relationship between marriage, sexuality, and sin, in response to the accusation that he still held Manichaean beliefs. It is a crucial work on the Christian ideol-

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ogy of marriage. According to Augustine, the positive value of marriage could be found in its three benefits (bona) "good things:' that he also called its fructus) "fruits"), but which he also called its three chains (vinculi), following Jerome. First was the begetting of children, which he called proles (offspring). Second was the exclusive sexual nature of the relationship between husband and wife, which he called fides (fidelity). Third was the idea that the relationship symbolized the love between Christ and the Christian Church, which he called sacramentum from the Biblical metaphor. 149 If we examine each of the three benefits in the writings of the other orthodox leaders, we will see that they provide important clues to the value of marriage, because each provides a plank in a platform of continuing masculine authority within marriage. First, proles: The orthodox Christian writers agreed that the only appropriate use of sex, even within marriage, was for the purpose of procreation. Lactantius called marriage a "divine and admirable work of God, foreseen and planned by His unfathomable design for the propagation of the race:' but complained that the "obscene lustfulness" of some men meant that "they no longer seek anything from this most holy institution of sex other than empty and sterile pleasure."15o What he seems to have meant by this "sterile pleasure" was oral sex between married couples, since he also complained about the men "who defile the most sacred part of their bodies"151 and against "those whose most loathsome passion and execrable madness spares not even the head."152 Cyprian complained about the same thing: If you should be able ... to direct your eyes into secret places, to unfasten the locked doors of sleeping chambers and to open these hidden recesses to the perception of sight, you would behold that being carried on by the unchaste which a chaste countenance could not behold; you would see what it is a crime even to see; you would see what those demented with the fury of vices deny that they have done and hasten to do.... The same persons are accusers in public and the defendants in secret, both their own critics and the guilty. They condemn abroad what they commit at home. 153

Still, he concluded, "whatever sin is committed with the voice is less than that by the mouth.''l54 Cyprian felt certain that the nonprocreative sexual practices he denounced were commonplace, but we cannot know how accurate he was in his estimation. The issue was important enough for Cyprian that he left himself open to the same charge, because if those who rail in public against various sexual sins can be accused of committing them in secret, Cyprian has implicated himself in what he has denounced. Lilce the classical Roman moralists before them, Cyprian and Lactantius

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worried in particular about the moral implications of oral sex. Like the medical writers of late antiquity, they also felt that procreation was the only appropriate purpose of sex. Nonetheless, the Catholic writers did not only discourage "sterile" sexual acts within marriage but also procreative ones. As Augustine explained it, all sexual desire necessarily embodied the tragedy ofthe human predicament: ever since human beings had rebelled against God, our flesh had ever after rebelled against our minds. Our inability to control our bodies and their desires, and the influence that our bodies' demands perversely exert over us, mirror the brokenness ofthe human relationship with God. Marriage was an attempt to bring some order back to this rebellion of the body and to reestablish the domination of the will but was beneficial only as long as it kept to this purpose and restrained sexual desire. 155 Augustine spoke out, therefore, even against married couples who "malce intemperate use of their [conjugal] right:' wondering "whether this situation should be called a marriage."I56 The best marriages were the ones that involved little or no sex, Augustine concluded, because they were the most orderly in a physical sense and the most caring in a rational sense. 157 Augustine called these sexless marriages "an example of perfection [exempla peifectionis]."158 (We can assume that these were the sorts of statements that led to accusations ofManichaeanism against Augustine.) The encouragement of sexless marriages formed part of the fallout from the fourth-century debate over the place of sex and marriage in the Christian life. In some ways, it was an intellectual concession to the Christians who argued that sex and marriage were always sinful. Married couples were exhorted to renounce sex, and Christian writers often counseled married women (who seem mosdy to have initiated such marriages) on how they might best persuade a reluctant husband to forego sexual relations even within marriage. A modern study of these socalled spiritual marriages suggests that they originated in women's attempts at autonomy within marriage. 159 The usefulness of the institution of spiritual marriage, however, was that it supported sexual renunciation while leaving men's domination over women intact. Indeed, the reaffirmation of a husband's authority over his wife was always at the forefront of the Christian writings on spiritual marriage. Pelagius, a fifth-century teacher in Rome, wrote to a married woman named Celantia who wished to end sexual relations with her husband, that "first of all, your husband should be given all authority, and the entire household should learn from you how much honor is owed to him. Show by your obedience that he is lord, and by your humility that he is great.''l60 Pelagius chided her for attempting to force a spiritual marriage upon her husband by withholding

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sex, because "it is a dangerous matter to promise what is in another's power." He added: The practice of chastity, I am sorry to say, has simply led to adultery. For while one party abstains even from what is licit, the other party falls into what is illicit. In such a case I do not know who deserves the greater censure, who deserves the greater blame: the one who committed fornication ~er his wife rejected him, or the wife who by rejecting her husband presented him, in a certain way, with the opportunity for fornication. 161

It is obvious that Pelagius was not really concerned with Celantia's reasons for wanting to forgo sex or with its benefits for her spiritual wellbeing or development; Pelagius's concern was, rather, with her husband and his authority over her. Augustine, despite his opposition to Pelagius on other matters (the two quarreled over the nature and effect of original sin), agreed with him on this point. "[Your husband] should not have been defrauded of the debt you owed him of your body:' Augustine wrote to a woman named Ecdicia, "before his will joined yours in seeking the good which surpasses the sexual modesty [pudicitia] of marriage:' managing in the same sentence both to praise sexless marriage and to condemn Ecdicia's choice of it. 162 We also see in this concern for men's spiritual health another reason for the sensitivity of Christian writers to married men's adultery and to men's sexual use of slaves and prostitutes, as described at the start of this chapter. Men were liable to turn to these traditional sexual outlets outside of marriage when their wives tried unilaterally to renounce sex for spiritual purposes. Second,jides: The fidelity expected of married persons became for orthodox Christian writers another occasion for reiterating masculine authority. When Christian leaders condemned adultery, they made frequent reference to its breach of the fides of marriage. Christian opposition to divorce also implied that marital fidelity was a lifelong proposition. 163 The defense of marital fidelity is most clearly seen in orthodox discussions of remarriage. Remarriage was closely bound up with the general indissolubility of marriage, since it was often felt to be the impetus for divorce and since it was often presented as being a form of adultery, and so it was considered a grave falling away from the ideal of marital fidelity. The reinforcement of traditional marital roles through the ideal of fidelity was a central element in the Christian opposition to remarriage. Already at the beginning of the third century, Tertullian wrote to persuade his wife not to remarry after his death. He tried to place doubts in her mind about its desirability, saying that if she entered a future marriage, she would be forced to submit to her new husband's authority. For

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example, she would be unable to participate in the charitable activities that would ensure her salvation: Who would allow his wife to run around the streets to the houses of strangers and even to the poorest hovels in order to visit the faithful? Who would willingly let his wife be taken from his side for nightly meetings, if it be necessary? Who, then, would tolerate without some anxiety her spending the entire night at the paschal solemnities? Who would have no suspicions about letting her attend the Lord's Supper, when it has such a bad reputation? Who would endure her creeping into prison to kiss the chains of the martyrs? Or even to greet any of the brothers with a kiss? Or to wash the feet of the saints? To desire this? Even to think about it? 164

Note that Tertullian did not question a husband's right to forbid these things of his wife. After joining the Montanists, Tertullian took an even stronger stance against remarriage, and argued in two treatises dedicated to the subject (De exhortatione castitatis and De monogamia) that remarriage should be forbidden to Christians, also using a combination of Biblical and classical precedents. 165 Later orthodox writers refused to talce such a rigid stance, but while they were willing to accept the permissibility of second or subsequent marriages, they discounted them as progressively inferior to the ideal of marital fidelity.166 For their strategic purposes, they revived the ancient Roman cultural tradition of a woman's lifelong reverence for one husband as a "one-man woman" (univira) and contrasted the honor of widowhood with the dishonor of remarriage. The legal restrictions on unmarried persons in the early empire had deprived this tradition of much real meaning, but the repeal of these restrictions in late antiquity allowed for a renewal of this moral ideal, and orthodox writers showed themselves in this regard eager upholders of tradition. The univira~ it must be noted, existed as a feminine ideal only in the sense that a devoted widow testified to the unique merit of her late husband; it was a reflected virtue. "She has not lost her man;' Ambrose wrote, "who demonstrates chastity [after his death]; nor is she widowed of her companion, who does not change the name of her husband [by remarriage]."167 Ambrose even claimed that widows could surmount "the usual nature of the wealcness of the[ir] sex by the devotion of the mind" to their deceased husband. 168 When discussions of remarriage were directed at men, this reflected value of marital fidelity is ignored. Tertullian thought that a man's desire to remarry after the death of a first wife showed an effeminate lack of selfdiscipline. 169 The third-century writer Minucius Felix also felt that a man who married only once demonstrated the control of his mind over his de-

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sires. 170 The honor due a deceased wife is notably absent. But the discussions of remarriage were usually directed at women, who were much lilcelier to outlive their husbands given the differences in ages at marriage, and presented an opportunity for men to speak directly to women in conservative language about men's and women's marital roles. Third, sacramentum: Exegesis on the mystical union between Christ and the Christian church became, in the hands of the orthodox writers, another opportunity for conservative comments about marital roles. For instance, they used them to reinforce ancient ideals of women's pudicitia before and during marriage. Cyprian wrote that "the spouse of Christ cannot be defiled, she is inviolate and chaste; she knows one home alone, in all modesty she keeps faithfully to one chamber.''l71 ''Noone should doubt that the Church is a virgin:' declared Ambrose, because Christ "is able to vouch for the virginity of the Church in the purity of his people."172 (In general, Biblical models could be called upon to support traditional models of marriage. 173) The comparison of Christ to a husband also reinforced ancient ideals of the subordination of women to men. A wife "is under the power of her husband:' wrote Ambrose, and "is in subjection to her husband, for that he is lord over her.''l74 Pelagius suggested that a Christian woman should honor her Christian husband even more than she would a pagan one precisely because he also represented Christ to her.175 So while depictions of the Church as the bride of Christ might malce important theological points, they also made important statements about gender roles, and representing a Christian husband as Christ multiplied his authority over his wife beyond the capacity for description. It has been argued that some orthodox writers regarded Christian marriage not as a reinforcement of traditional roles but as an experiment in equality. It could be said, for example, that a comparison between a husband and Christ was meant to temper marital authority with affection. "Let a wife show deference, not be a slave to her husband; let her show herself ready to be ruled not coerced:' Ambrose suggested; "let a husband also guide his wife like a steersman, honor her as the partner of his life, share with her as a joint heir of grace.''l76 It has been claimed that spiritual marriages were such an arrangement of equals, and Paulinus, bishop of Nola in south Italy at the end of the fourth century who was himself a partner in a sexless marriage, has been used as an example of this viewpoint. 177 Paulinus said in a marriage hymn or epithalamium he had composed for the wedding of Julian of Eclanum (the same bishop who later opposed Augustine) that "the chaste spouse who has achieved the status of sister is no longer subject to her husband.''l78 But Paulinus also

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advocated strongly for the continuation of male authority in marriage, based on the mystical marriage between Christ and the Church. In the same hymn to Julian ofEclanum, he suggested that a wife "should with a humble mind regard Christ in her spouse, so that, woven in like a joint, she might grow into his holy body, and so that her husband might be her head, whose head is Christ."179 Paulinus also honored with a poem one of the most famous sexless couples of his day, Melania the Younger and her husband Pinian. It was Pinian, though, who was given a heroic stature as "victor of his own body."lsO Paulinus wrote other letters to other spiritually married couples. In one, he said of a wife: She is no one's head, but the embellishment of her husband by the adornment of her virtue. We might say that she is placed at the base to support that body's chain which is linked to God by the head of Christ, to Christ by the head of man, and to man by the head of woman. But Christ makes woman also belong to the head at the top by making her part of the body and of the structure of the limbs. lSI

In another letter, Paulinus argued that a good wife "does not lead her husband to effeminacy and greed, but brings [him] back to self-discipline and courage:' Like other orthodox writers, he was maleing obvious use of the traditional language of masculine privilege, and the husband's spiritual benefit was the primary focus of his comments. Indeed, such a virtuous wife "is worthy of admiration because of her great emulation of God's marriage within the Church:' Paulinus maintained, and if she participated in manly duritia) becoming lilce "the bones of her husband:' she was still symbolically subsumed into his body.ls2 (Paulinus of Nola, it should be noted, had important personal reasons for defending the sanctity of spiritual marriage, because it was a way of undermining the attacks against married clerics, including men such as himself Paulinus could, nonetheless, recount the woes of marriage with the best of them. 1S3 ) In sum, even Christian marriages that did not include the debilitating effects of sex demonstrated the masculine authority that was so much in question in the later empire. That opinion overrode all others. The enumeration of the purposes of marriage -proles) fides) and sacramentum-each provided different opportunities for a renewed emphasis on the authority of the husband. Others might have expressed more nuanced notions of men's marital rights, but all were in general agreement with Augustine that marriage could be described as "a leind of friendly and genuine union of the one ruling and the other obeying."ls4 Even within a general framework of the devaluation of marriage, the domination of men remained.

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FAMILIES AND FRIENDS

In discounting marriage and the sexual relations that stemmed from it, orthodox Christian writers also undermined much of the basis of family life. The repercussions were felt especially in the subversion of the affectional relations within families and between parents and children. Although familial affection was assumed, Christian leaders exhorted members of the Christian community to ignore their loyalties to their families and to find emotional support and companionship in friendships. Friendship provided a replacement for the intimacy of marriage and the affection of family life without the dangers of sex. Friendship also provided the key to the rescue of paternal authority even within a general intellectual environment of the renunciation of sex and marriage. Christian writers assumed familial affection. Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine all wrote of the love between parents and their children. 185 Breaches of such affection were equally counted as unnatural. Ambrose wrote about a father who sold his children into slavery to pay his debts; it was an action within the limits of traditional patria potestasJ Ambrose admitted, although he condemned it as heartless. 186 Still, Christian writers made it clear that the individual owed greater love to God than to any family member. Following the statement attributed to Jesus that "if any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters . . . he cannot be my disciple;' Christian writers advocated an extreme emotional detachment from family ties. 187 Ambrose insisted that "one who has God as his portion should care for nothing except God;' even if it should require a "renunciation of family, and a kind of alienation from dear ones."188 Augustine went so far as to suggest that in the same woman a good Christian [husband] loves the being that God has created, and ... wishes her to be transformed and renewed, while he hates the corruptible and mortal relationship and marital intercourse .... He loves her insofar as she is a human being, but ... hates her under the aspect of wifehood. 189

Jerome argued that the Biblical command "Honor thy father" applied only "if you do not separate yourself from your true father [in Heaven]."190 The important relationship was the one of obedience to God, who was given all of the absolute power of the ancient paterfamil'las. Christian writers often used Biblical examples as models of detachment from family life and obedience to God. Abraham was typically presented as the ideal of the man who loved God more than his family, be-

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cause he had been willing to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's command. Cyprian praised him for this gesture: Thus Abraham pleased God because, in order to please God, he neither feared to lose his son nor refused to commit parricide .... The fear of God and faith ought to make you ready for all things. Though it should be the loss of private property, though it should be the constant and violent affiiction of the members by wasting diseases, though it should be the mournful and sorrowful tearing away from wife, from children, from departing dear ones, let not such things be stumbling blocks for you. 191

Other stories from the lives of the patriarchs functioned in much the same way. When discussing Rebecca's favoring of Jacob over Esau, Ambrose began by arguing that parents should love all children equally, but ended by admitting that "with that pious mother, God's mysterious plan was more important than her offspring."192 The lives of the early Christian martyrs also presented similar models of the renunciation of family. Martyrs were always represented as dispassionately detached from their families of birth. For example, the anonymous Latin passion ofIrenaeus, bishop of Sirmium in Pannonia who was martyred in about 300, included the following scene: lrenaeus's relatives arrived and when they saw him under torture they began to entreat him. His children kissed his feet and begged, "Father, have pity on yourself and on us!" Then the married women [of his household] urged him to yield, weeping for his youth and his good looks. He was hard pressed by the weeping and mourning of all his relatives, the groans of his servants, the wailing ofneighbors, and the crying of his friends .... But, as has been said, he was gripped by a much stronger passion, keeping before his eyes the words of the Lord, who said: "Whoever shall deny me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven." And so, despising all of them, lrenaeus made no reply to anyone: for he was in haste to attain the hope of his heavenly calling. 193

The lesson was meant not only for men but also for women. In the account of the martyrdom ofPerpetua at Carthage, part of which was possibly written by Perpetua herself, her father played a key role. Nonetheless, the demands of her religion voided his authority over her: "Daughter;' he said, "have pity on my gray head - have pity on me your father, ifl deserve to be called your father, ifl have favored you above all your brothers, ifl have raised you to reach this prime of your life. Do not abandon me to the reproach of men. Think of your brothers, think of your

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mother and your aunt, think of your child who will not be able to live after you are dead.''l94

"This was the way my father spoke out of love for me;' the autobiographical portion continued, "kissing my hands and throwing himself down before me and weeping."195 The whole point of these tender depictions was to highlight the fact that while affection existed within families, true Christians must reject its demands. In this context, the contrast is sharp between Irenaeus as a Christian pateifamiliasJ who preferred true religion to his family and Perpetua's father as a traditional pateifamiliasJ who did not. In place of familial affections, Christian writers emphasized the bonds that joined all members of the Christian community. In the Latin translation of the martyrdom of Phileas of Thmuis in Egypt, also from about 300, for example, the anonymous author described how all those around Phileas "begged him to have regard for his wife and concern for his children;' but that "it was like water wearing away a rock;' since Phileas "rejected what they said, claiming that the apostles and the martyrs were his kin.''l96 An elaborate symbolic genealogy gradually took shape, derived from Biblical passages interwoven with contemporary experience of family life, in which God played the father and pateifamiliasJ exercising his authority over Christ his son and the Christian Church as the bride of Christ, she who was, in turn, mother to an extended household of angels, saints, martyrs, and living Christians. But as brides of Christ, Christian bishops might also assume the role of mother to their local communities. "Do not reject the instruction of your mother;' Paulinus ofNola recommended to Licentius, referring to Augustine of Hippo; "he is anxious to give you suck and nourishment from the breasts of the spirit as well, if only you will allow his teaching to guide you as a mother's hand.''l97 ''As soon as the Son of God set foot on earth;' Jerome said plainly, "He formed for Himself a new household. 198 Similarly, the discouragement of affection between family members was replaced by a greater devotion to the bonds of friendship. Foremost among these friendships were the ties between two men. Male friendships had always held an esteemed place in Roman culture; misogyny and the low status of women had also encouraged men to depend upon each other for companionship and intellectual development instead of upon women. 199 Christian texts of late antiquity often described male pairs in intimate partnerships. The benefits provided by one friend to another contributed to the moral and spiritual edification of both, as well as to their mutual support. Augustine used male friendship to discuss why

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God had created Eve for Adam; the purpose must have been sexual, he argued, because a woman would not have been a suitable companion except for sex. "How much more closely in cohabitation and conversation are two friends [amici~ male friends] together;' he said, "than a man and a woman?"200 Examples of such male friendships abound. Pontius, biographer of Cyprian of Carthage, described just such a relationship between the bishop and one Caecilius: [Cyprian] had a close association [contubernium~ "sharing the same tent;' also a term used for concubinage and slave marriages] among us with a just man, and ofpraiseworthy memory, by name Caecilius, and in age as well as in honor a presbyter, who had converted him from his worldly errors to the acknowledgment of the true divinity. This man [Cyprian] loved with entire honor and all observance, regarding him with an obedient veneration, not only as the friend and comrade of his soul, but as the parent of his new life. And at length [Caecilius], influenced by his attentions, was, as well he might be, stimulated to such a pitch of excessive love, that when he was departing from this world, and his summons was at hand, he commended to [Cyprian] his wife and children; so that him whom he had made a partner in the fellowship of his way of life, he afterwards made the heir of his affection. 20l

The love shared by two male friends was often mentioned. Prndentius, in his poetic account of the martyrs Emeterius and Chelidonius, used simi1ar language of affection to describe their friendship ("faithful comradeship had ever united them") and the strength it gave them to endure their tortures. 202 Many of the martyrs were remembered in male pairs: Marian and James, N abor and Felix, Gervasius and Protasius, Sergius and Bacchus. 203 It is interesting that friendships should be linked so often to martyrdom, but it added to their idealized nature. John Cassian, before his establishment of an ascetic community in southern Gaul in the early fifth century, had traveled to Egypt with a companion, Germanus. He described their friendship as being "joined not by a fleshly but by a spiritual brotherhood;' and "linked by an invisible bond.m04 Even the married Paulinus of Nola could wax poetical on his friendship with Severns. "You, I say, are the greater and better part of me. You are my rest and joy. You are a pillow for my head, and a dwelling for my mind.mos A man might have several of these close friendships over the course of a lifetime. Jerome, for example, shared a home with a man named Bonosus in Rome during his studies there. The two later moved to Trier together as "raw recruits" in the heavenly army, according to Jerome, who

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linked their friendship with the manliness of militarism (Trier was a military frontier headquarters of the later Roman Empire, so Jerome was playing on the theme of being "shipped to the front:' although neither he nor Bonosus were actual soldiers).206 Jerome later shared a similar relationship with Rufinus before some unknown incident ruptured the friendship.207 The two became bitter enemies, each dismissing the other's literary efforts and each accusing the other of sexual vice and of heresy. Jerome called a third man, Innocentius, "the half of my soul:' using the classical metaphor for male friendships, a phrase coined by Horace, and one used by many other men in late antiquity to describe their friendships with other men. 208 Augustine had his share of such friendships, as recorded in his Confessions: first, before his conversion, with an unnamed fellow Manichaean in North Mrica; then, after his conversion in Milan, with Alypius (the same man who enjoyed the violence of the arenas), with whom he lived and whom he called "the brother of my heart [frater cordis mei]."209 While such friendships between Christian men were intended to promote their spiritual development, they sometimes degenerated into sinful alliances. The possibility always existed, for example, that these friendships would become sexual relationships, given the longstanding cultural tradition of pederasty, and because of the fluid sexual interests of many men of antiquity, especially unmarried men. Valerian of Cimelium in Gaul recognized this possibility, saying that some men "to excuse away the odium of this detestable error, pretend that it is fun [laetitia]" to engage in sex with their male friends, "if those can be called friendships." He continued: "of two such men I do not know whom to call more unfortunate: the one who lives by deforming someone else, or the one who has prostituted his body to wantonness and handed it over to mockery."210 A sexual friendship seems to have existed between Augustine and his first companion, he later regretted: I cared for nothing but to love and be loved. But my love went beyond the affection of one mind for another, beyond the arc of the bright beam of friendship. Bodily desire, like a morass, and adolescent sex welling up within me exuded mists which clouded over and obscured my heart, so that I could not distinguish the clear light of true love from the murk of lust.... I muddied the stream of friendship with the filth of lewdness and clouded its clear waters with hell's black river oflust. 211

Equally, men's friendships were sometimes the occasion for carousing and sexuallibertinism, as seems to have been typical for adolescent males and as happened with Jerome, for instance, whose youthful companions

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became associates in his debauchery.212 The vehemence of the Christian denunciations of sex outside of marriage, especially of sex between males described at the beginning of this chapter may have been related to the encouragement of these friendships as alternatives to marriage. The supplanting of marriage with these friendships may also help to explain the creation at some unknown date of specific Christian rituals to honor them. 213 In some sense, what the Christian proponents of male friendships were offering to men through these literary models and rituals was a form of spiritual pederasty not unlike spiritual marriage, intended for the support and edification of males but without the corrupting influence of sexual relations. Christian men who eschewed marriage might also form close friendships with women. It has been argued that the Christian view of the virtue of the sexless life allowed for the possibility of friendships between men and women in a way unseen among other religions or philosophies of late antiquity.214 In the eastern Mediterranean, these unions had often tal<en the form of sexless cohabitations between male and female "celibates; the individuals in such unions were known in Greek as syneisaktoi~ "those brought together:' and in Latin, as subintroducti. Bishops of the Eastern churches repeatedly condemned even sexless cohabitation; but it continued nonetheless. 215 In the West, relationships of this sort also existed' although perhaps not to the same extent, and were equally condemned by the Western authorities. Jerome railed against the women involved in such relationships (although not in this instance against the men involved), calling them "unwedded wives:' "new types of concubines:' and even "one-man harlots."216 He demanded that individuals .involved in these relationships separate at once. 217 The orthodox encouragement of spiritual marriages was in some ways a concession to the strength of such nonsexual companionships between men and women, but spiritual marriages had the advantage in being rooted in cultural traditions of marriage rather than friendship. More acceptable to the orthodox fathers were the sort of arrangements that Jerome praised when he spoke of Fabiola's arrangement with Pammachius, which I mentioned at the start of this chapter, an arrangement of mutual support but not of cohabitation. It was also the type of relationship that Jerome himself enjoyed with the woman he called "my Paula."218 Jerome instructed the widow Paula and her daughters in the Christian faith, and she in turn probably financed his studies and literary career. They traveled together to the holy sites of Palestine and Egypt, and eventually established monastic communities near each other at Bethlehem, but they never lived together. 219 Not only did Jerome participate in

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a lifelong correspondence with Paula, but he also wrote to various members of her family to encourage and instruct them in much the way that any stepfather might. 220 The young woman who died while under Jerome's spiritual guidance, it should be added, was one of Paula's daughters. He was their spiritual paterfamilias. Jerome's relationship with Paula and her children demonstrated that a man did not have to give up the domestic affairs of family life or the authority of a husband and father when he renounced marriage; he simply elevated them to a different plane. Again, there were concerns that these friendships between men and women might deteriorate into clandestine sexual relationships. It was rumored about Jerome's friendships with women. 221 Jerome in turn spread rumors about the association of his former friend, Rufinus, with various women whom Jerome mocked as "women of ill repute" (mulierculae) and Amazons. 222 He called Rufinus "a Cato publicly but a Nero privately."223 Jerome condemned the cohabitation of sexually continent couples in principle as flirting with disaster and thought it better that even married couples wishing to initiate spiritual marriages should separate. 224 Fears of the clandestine sexual nature of such friendships between men and women also presumably encouraged legislators to restrict intimacy between women and their spiritual advisors. One law ordered that "ecclesiastics or men of the churches or whoever that want themselves to be known by the name of [sexual] continents should not enter into the homes of widows or minor women."225 In sum, while Christian friendships might satisfy the personal longing for emotional intimacy, their participants had to guard themselves constantly against a sexual involvement that might destroy the lofty ideal of the celibate lifestyle. The dangers of sex always remained. Even the rare examples of friendship between Christian women merited admonition against sexual involvement. 226 Jerome's letters to Paula's family and friends in Rome are important artifacts for the ways in which the role of spiritual advisor offered an authority comparable to that of husband and father for Christian men. Jerome set himself up as an advisor on marital questions, even though he himself had renounced marriage, and wrote often to women with advice on matters sexual. A letter survives that he wrote to a young widow named Furia, the sister of a son-in-law of Paula, who was considering remarriage. Jerome urged her not to "return like a dog to its vomit" and reenter the realm of the sexually active. 227 Instead, because she had borne no children to her deceased husband, she should rather "grieve your loss ofvirginity in vain:' and "malce a virtue of necessity."228 He challenged her in hostile tones:

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Why plead [concern for] your patrimony as an excuse [for remarriage], or the insolence of your slaves [managed by a woman alone]? Confess your shame. No woman talces a husband in order not to sleep with him. And if it is not your sexual urge inciting you, what a great insanity it is to prostitute your chastity in the manner of a whore in order to increase your wealth, and for the salce of a thing vile and perishable, to let your sexual integrity [pudicitia], which is precious and eternal, be polluted? 229

Jerome might have been anxious about Furia's spiritual welfare, but he relied on the worst Roman stereotypes of wanton women to express his concerns. Jerome's letter to Oceanus about the deceased Fabiola with which I began this chapter details the same problems involved in the remarriage of widows. Fabiola had been a political ally of Jerome's, but one who had been criticized for having married twice, so his defense of her required him to downplay the scandal of her actions. I have already described how Jerome had impugned the character of her first husband. Jerome also ex-c cused Fabiola's moral accountability for her remarriage and even presented it as the most sensible choice for a woman in her position (although again relying on the same nasty stereotype of women): She was an adolescent, and could not be loyal to her widowhood. She saw that the law of her members was refusing the law of her mind, and that she was pulled chained and captive toward sex. She judged it better to confess openly her frailty, and to undergo the rather wretched cloud of marriage, than under the glory of being a one-man woman [univira], to act lilce a whore. 23o

Finally, and most importandy, he showed that she had repented of her carnal wealmess: After the death of her second husband she changed herself: she wore sackcloth, she acknowledged publicly her error, and with the whole of Rome watching, at the Easter vigil in the former Lateran Palace . . . she stood among the ranlcs of the penitents, and with the bishop, priests, and the whole people crying with her, and with her hair disheveled, her face pale, and her hands and neck filthy, she submitted. 231

Fabiola's life after her second husband's death, her extravagant charity and care of the poor, provided further proof of the sincerity of her repentance. In freeing herself of the marital authority of a husband, Fabiola was required to submit herself even more fully to clerical authority. That, I be-

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lieve, is crucial to understanding Jerome's relationship to the women to whom he wrote. It also sheds light on the general implications of the renunciation of marriage for men's authority-because the power that the male clerical hierarchy claimed over Fabiola was as absolute as that claimed by any Roman husband. It did not matter whether women married or not, because we see in Jerome's letters to unmarried or widowed women how one type of masculine authority might readily supplant another. Indeed, the sort of patriarchal spiritual authority that Jerome claimed might be extended far beyond what was possible to Roman men in the late ancient household to anyone willing to listen and obey. Men's declining private control of women in the household might be shored up by their control in the public sphere of religion. The liberty that widows like Fabiola might have exercised was sharply curtailed by their very piety, even if that piety included the renunciation of future marriages. Indeed, the moral exhortations of spiritual advisors like Jerome helped to undo any real effects of the financial independence of widows in the later empire. The same moral authority wielded over women could also be used to control men, who were as much obliged to obey clerical authorities as were women. In the end, men's familial authority was rescued by its redirection into clerical authority, an authority not limited by a decliningpatria potestas. Not without reason were Christian writers so vociferous in their denunciations of sexual transgressions, as described at the start of this chapter, because these very denunciations were a means to assure the transference of familial to clerical authority. Clerics acted as any Roman paterfamilias might have wished to do, seeking to direct and correct the behavior of those individuals in his charge, especially their sexual behavior. The same might be said of the copious correspondence of Augustine or Paulinus or any other of the Latin Christian writers, as examples of the transference ofpatriarchal power from husbands to spiritual advisors. Because the men of the ecclesiastical hierarchy functioned as God's representatives, they were also authorized to act as surrogate fathers on God's behalf, as patresfamilias of the Christian household. Ambrose recognized his patriarchal status: For I love you, whom I have begotten in the Gospel, no less than if you were my own true sons. For nature does not malce us love more ardently than grace. We certainly ought to love those who we think will be with us forever more than those who will be with us in this world only. 232

The paternal authority that celibate men relinquished could be supplanted to a certain degree through spiritual authority as Christian leaders and teachers.

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Men of the ecclesiastical hierarchy seemed anxious to defend their . manliness as ersatz fathers. After all, they were men who chose not to participate in the traditional family structure, as much as they might duplicate that structure within the family of Christians. Ambrose claimed, for example, that a man's childlessness was no evidence of a lack of virility: We recognize that it happens that both infirm men have children, and strong men have none; slaves have them, but not masters; the poor have them, but those who are powerful do not.... Men should themselves understand instead that to have children or not to have them has nothing to do with potency fpotentia] but with paternal property fpaterna proprietas], and that to procreate is not according to the power of our will but is [only] according to a condition [qualitas] of the body. 233

"My seed [semen] is a hundred times more fertile;' Jerome claimed in a similar but particularly self-conscious comment on a parable of Jesus, which he related to his childlessness. 234 In the final count, however, the transference of the patriarchal structure ofthe Roman family to the Christian community allowed these men to become patriarchs of a family that never died. The Christian leaders and writers of late antiquity were quite literally "the fathers of the Church;' a term that was first used by Vincent of LCrins in the third decade of the fifth century and has been used ever since to describe them. 235 Still, the admission of sexual vice among Christians reminds us that the sexual code that patristic writers advocated was never wholeheartedly adopted even by the men for whom it was crafted. The fathers were not universally obeyed. Some men, even those who expressed a wish to live by the standards set by the Christian authorities, fell against their will into the very sexual involvements they tried to avoid, seduced by the ancient traditions of a freer male sexuality, as Augustine confessed ofhis own adolescence. Others denied that such a sexual self-denial was required of them as Christians, among them men like Jovinian. Still others claimed to follow the new moral code but secretly continued lives of sexual vice, men such as Cyprian decried in describing the abhorrent sexual practices of married couples. Regardless of their actions, however, sexuality illustrated a host of male concerns in late antiquity: men's ties to the classical heritage, their commitment to the Christian religion, their adherence to the right set of beliefs about human nature, and their obedience to ecclesiastical authority. In the end, Christian men enjoyed the best of all possible worlds in an era in which men's marital relations had been brought into question. They might renounce marriage altogether as part of a heroic self-sacrifice,

C

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still participating in the male control of women by means of moral exhortation and ecclesiastical sanction. Even if they did marry, however, they might find support for their authority in the Christian concerns about sex and fidelity within marriage and in the metaphor of husband as Christ. The traditional language of manliness and unmanliness aided in the popularization and assimilation of these cultural innovations, and their configuration as part of a new masculine identity, even as it defined the points of separation between pagans and Christians and between heretics and the orthodox. Christian pronouncements about sex and marriage thus provided a crucial component of the later Roman transformation of masculinity.

CHAPTER SEVEN

liTHE MANLINESS OF FAITH" Sexual Difference and Gender Ambiguity in Latin Christian Ideology

The preceding chapters have shown how the new Christian ideology of masculinity depended on the paradox that Christian men were manliest when they abandoned the pursuits that ancient Roman tradition had long considered manly-participation in war and politics, in sex, marriage, and family life-and pursued divergent paths to manliness. But manliness remained the end to which men strove, even if it might be delineated in different ways - as interior warfare, as ecclesiastical politics, as sexual and marital renunciation - and even if it might be redefined as Christian virtue. The reverse also held true, as we have seen, and Christian writers denounced effeminacy in men, an age-old association between vice and unmanliness newly cast as Christian sin. The implications of these ideas will be addressed in this chapter. Orthodox Christian writers firmly supported the age-old Roman belief in the inferiority of women and the superiority of men, a belief that helped to reassert the privileges of the group long holding power, men of the Roman aristocracy. In order to maintain this belief, however, orthodox Christian writers were obliged to repudiate the ambiguous gender traditions and genderless ideal of groups within earliest Christianity, a stance that also required them to limit the value and influence of Eastern Christian culture for Western Christians. The reaffirmation of the belief in men's superiority and women's inferiority also forced Western Christian writers to deal with virtuous Christian women among them, that is, women who challenged the longstanding connection between femininity and vice. They transformed such women into pseudomen, even if they denied such women the masculine privileges so closely guarded by "real" 206

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men. In doing so, however, they demonstrated that gender-ambiguous ideals in earliest Christianity might have some validity and purpose in orthodox belief and might be subsumed into the general paradox of Christian masculinity. MANLINESS AND HOLINESS, UNMANLINESS AND SIN

Latin Christian writers recognized that their concept ofvirtus did not correspond to the Roman tradition. I have documented numerous examples of these disjunctions in previous chapters. But Christian writers of late antiquity also taclded this problem direcdy. Ambrose ofMilan drew heavily upon these contrasts in a treatise dedicated to the subject of virtus. (Ambrose also showed his debt to both of the traditions inherited by Latin Christians in the tide of the treatise, De Jacob et vita beataJ "On Jacob and the Happy Life;' adding the name of a Biblical hero to the tide of a treatise by the classical Roman writer Sallust.) In the work, Ambrose described the virtuous man as the man who found success in less-thanideal circumstances. He wrote: What indeed is lacking to the man who possesses the good and has virtue always as his companion and ally? In what state oflife is he not most powerful? In what poverty is he not rich? In what lowly status is he not noble? In what leisure is he not industrious? In what wealcness not vigorous? In what infirmity not strong? ... In what solitude is he not in a crowd? The happy life surrounds him, grace clothes him, the garment of glory malces him radiant .... When can he appear to be downcast? His citizenship is in heaven. When can he appear not to be distinguished? He conforms himself to the likeness of the beautiful and only good; although wealc in his members, he is strong in his spirit. 1

It was a description surely crafted with the problems oflater Roman men in mind. Ambrose reassured his readers that virtuous men would receive all of the things that Roman men had always hoped for: power and wealth, honors and social distinctions. But they would only obtain these things by rejecting traditional notions of masculine accomplishment. Christian writers lilce Ambrose relied heavily on the contrasts between what was .considered ideal according to Christian standards and what was considered ideal according to the standards of the "world" or the "present age" (both suitable translations of the Latin saeculumJ and meaning both contemporary practice and the pagan and classical tradition). Christian writers used Biblical precedent to prove their point. The Beatitudes of Jesus were an important Biblical support often cited, offer-

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ing real triumph to those in apparent failure and future happiness to those in present misery. Chromatius of Aquileia contrasted secular and Christian virtus in a sermon on the Beatitudes given near the end of the fourth century. "It is the perfect virtue [virtus], brothers:' he declared, and "after the service of all justice, to receive reproaches from men on account of the truth, stricken with torments, taleing as our example that of the prophets, who, beaten by various methods for the salce ofjustice, conformed themselves to the Passion of Christ and were made worthy of rewards."2 The Biblical story of the twin brothers, Jacob and Esau, from the book of Genesis, was another opportunity for inversions of masculine expectation' as in Ambrose's treatise. God preferred Jacob (the younger of the twins and the smooth-skinned one, the one who stayed among the tents with his mother and learned to cook) to Esau (his slightly older and hairier brother, who was his father's favorite and enjoyed manly pastimes like hunting).3 Ambrose encouraged Christian men to see themselves as Jacob figures, declaring that "Jacob was the superior in virtuS."4 Further Biblical endorsement for the paradox of Christian virtue could be found in the life and teachings of the apostle Paul, who declared himself "happy to malce my wealrnesses my special boast" and "content with my wealcnesses, and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and the agonies I go through for Christ's salce:' because "[it is] when I am wealc that I am strong."5 Jerome, quoting this passage, added: "Who of us can claim for himself even the smallest part of this catalogue of virtues [virtutes] ?"6 Such Biblical examples could be endlessly multiplied. The whole of the life of Jesus as remembered in the Gospels, culminating in his ignominious death, also demonstrated how the measure of this world was not God's measure. Through all of these contrasts between expectation and reality, the importance of paradox in the Christian message is clear. Paul frequently used paradoxes to describe the Christian reality: wealrness is strength, foolishness is wisdom, and death is victory. Christian writers of late antiquity also embraced paradox. The fifth-century poet Prudentius placed words similar to those of Paul in the mouth of the martyr Romanus, called before the tribunal of a third-century pagan emperor, and thus for the benefit of all those who read his poetry. "I lrnow that you, godless man, cannot grasp the mystery;' he wrote. "You think this foolishness, you wise men of the world, but the supreme Father chose the foolish things of the world so that he who is foolish in respect of the world might be wise in the lrnowledge of God."7 It was through the use of paradox that Christian writers shaped their response to the multiple changes in Roman men's understanding of

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masculinity in late antiquity. The threat to masculinity in late antiquity posed by the growing distance between expectation and reality - between the military ideal of manliness and the actual collapse of the empire, between the centrality of political office to aristocratic identity and the political impotence of the aristocracy, between the ideal of patriarchal marital and familial authority and decliningpatria potestas-all could be reconciled through the creation of a kind of counterculture that interpreted disjunction as paradox and was invigorated by its dissociation from traditional standards rather than frustrated by it. The use of paradox allowed Christian men to claim real manliness in apparent unmanliness. The unquestioned ideal, nonetheless, remained manliness. For Christian writers to appropriate the concept of virtus was to identifY themselves with the best elements of the classical heritage. Indeed, it was to talce the parts of that heritage that were suspect or dangerous and tame them. Ambrose contrasted the qualities "associated with the female sex, such as malice of thought, petulance, sensuality, self-indulgence, immodesty, and other vices of that nature which tend to enervate the traits associated with what is distinctly masculine;' which he defined as "chastity, patience, wisdom, temperance, fortitude, and justice."8 Augustine of Hippo recommended to Christians that they look for virtus in the old philosophical moral values of prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice; in SUfi, he exhorted them to "have a virile spirit."9 But virtus was not simply the reiteration of ancient virtue. It also represented the best of what was new to the Christian message. It was holiness, conformity of the self to divine commands; accordingly, Jesus was the virtus of God. lO In the same fashion, Christian writers continued to dismiss what they did not like as unmanliness. In a discussion of the unsuitability of certain men for offices as Christian clerics, for example, Ambrose declared that a man's voice "should not be languid, nor feeble, nor womanish [femineus] in its tone." He continued: "It should preserve a certain quality and rhythm, and a manly vigor;' and added, "I cannot approve of an effeminate [molliculum] or wealc tone of voice or gesture of the body."ll There were certainly practical reasons for insisting that a cleric should have a strong and clear spealcing voice, and Roman writers had long insisted on the importance of oratorical skills in men's public presence, but the association of wealmess with unmanliness deserves comment. In explaining why a manly voice should be so important in a cleric, Ambrose said: "Let us follow nature; the imitation ofher provides us with a principle of training' and gives us a pattern of truth."12 If clerics were men, they should sound lilce men. Indeed, Ambrose drew frequently upon the arsenal of terms deriding unmanliness for a variety of purposes. When discussing

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the proper conduct of clerics, he suggested that a man could be happy only "when the patronage of pleasure or the fear of pain is despised" since "the first of these one abhors as poor and effeminate [infractum et molliculum], and the other as unmanly and weak [eviratum et infirmum ]."13 Ambrose reiterated this principle in a letter, a principle that any ancient Roman might have voiced: "Nothing effeminate [molliculum], nothing feeble attains to praise;'l4 There was more to the condemnation of unmanliness, however, than the mere manipulation of a familiar and conservative vocabulary. Denunciations of unmanliness allowed the leaders of the Christian communities - as it had for classical Roman moraliststo draw upon gender stereotypes to encourage what they considered acceptable behavior for men by calling it manly and to discourage what they considered unacceptable behavior by calling it unmanly. Let me explain by using as my example the Christian disapproval of the public spectacles. The term "spectacle" (spectaculum) covered a wide range of public performances, including the formal and classical Greek and Latin tragic and comedic theatrical plays; public religious rituals, both reenactments of pagan legends as well as dances and ceremonies in honor of a god or goddess; gladiatorial and athletic contests; performances by mimes and jugglers and acrobats, solo and in groups, impromptu and rehearsed; and street dancers, including erotic dancers. There was considerable overlap between these categories of public performers, since plays based on a pagan legend might involve a sexual performance, or festivals in honor of the gods might incorporate acrobatics or a striptease, or criminals might be executed by being cast in a performance where they were actually killed. If our sources can be believed, there was also much overlap between the categories of performers. Actors were often treated as pimps and actresses as prostitutes, as indicated in one law of 394, according to which Christian women and boys were forbidden to associate with actors, presumably because they were the most susceptible either to sexual advances from them or perhaps to abduction by them for immoral purposes. IS The disreputability of public performers did not only exist in the minds of Christians. Public performers suffered legal infamy (infamia) according to traditional Roman law. The HistoriaAugusta and the Roman history of Cassius Dio both smeared the reputations of several emperors simply by mentioning their frequent association with actors, mimes, and other performers, and then adding pimps and prostitutes to the list as if they were much the same thing. 16 Indeed, given the disdain for the spectacles among Roman writers, pagan and Christian, it is questionable to what extent the extant sources are reliable evidence for what went on at the spectacles. I7

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Christian writers worked hard to undermine the popularity of the public performances by emphasizing the gender transgressions of the spectacles. But to understand their critique, we must understand how plays were performed in late ancient Rome. First, male actors in formal plays played women's as well as men's roles and dressed in women's clothing for these roles, although there were also female actresses in the later Roman Empire for less formal performances. Second, all actors in formal roles wore masks that hid their faces. This device permitted the same actor to play different roles in the same play simply by switching masks offstage, but it also required the graceful movements of hands and bodies necessary either for the male actor to telegraph the femaleness of a character or to express emotion intended to be visible from a distance. Third, the content of some plays and performances, especially comedies and the skits of mimes and dancers, was often graphically sexual. All of these activities, Christian writers argued, were violations of men's proper gender roles and disgraceful displays of unmanliness. Even while they condemned the gender violations of the public performers, Christian writers also tried to show how the average man's enjoyment of the spectacles was equally unmanly. Tertullian dedicated an entire treatise to the problem ofpublic shows (De spectaculis). He denounced the unmanliness of the performers. "What must be the judgment of the pantomime;' he wondered, "who is even brought up to play the woman;' when in the Bible "it is declared that the man is cursed who attires himself in female garments?"18 But the performers were not the sole transgressors involved in the spectacles. ''Are we not enjoined to put away from us all immorality [impudicitia]?" he asked of his readers. "On this ground, we are excluded from the theatre, which is immodesty's own peculiar abode, where nothing is in repute but what elsewhere is disreputable."19 A century later, Lactantius repeated virtually the same sorts of denunciations, pointed both at the performers and the viewers of performances. "The shameless [impudicissimi] motions of the actors;' he argued, "what else do they teach and arouse but the passions? Their enervated bodies, softened to womanish step and effeminate apparel, belie shameless [impudicae] women with their dishonorable gestures."20 And again: What of the stage? Is it less vile? There comedy discourses of debaucheries and illicit loves, tragedy ofincest and parricide. The lewd gestures of actors, whereby they imitate loose women [infames feminae], actually teach the lusts expressed in their dances. The farce too is a school ofiniquity, in which shameful things are done by representation, so that things that are true are accomplished without any sense of shame. 21

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It is not difficult to find other Christian writers voicing similar complaints. Novatian, who wrote a treatise entitled De spectaculis in the middle of the third century, also criticized the actor as "dissolute beyond womanly softness:' calling such a man an "I-don't-know-what, neither man nor woman."22 About the same time, Cyprian of Carthage bemoaned the fact that on the stage "men emasculate themselves; all the honor and vigor of their sex are enfeebled by the disgrace of an enervated body, and he gives more pleasure there who best brealcs down the man into woman."23 As these descriptions make clear, Christian writers targeted the spectacles by claiming that they violated the traditional Roman distinction of the sexes, and that they were therefore as repugnant to watch as to enact. Any intelligent man should share their opinions, they implied. But the popular support for the spectacles belies any real support for the opinions of these writers. The continual denunciations show that these exhortations were not having the intended effect. It is interesting that most of the denunciations were directed at Christian men; we can only presume that such statements were necessary because Christian men continued to attend these performances. (It is unclear wh~ther women regularly witnessed spectacles, given the limitations on their presence in public areas.) As the Roman government became officially Christian, however, the Christian disapproval began to turn the tide against the public performances. The Christian emperors enacted laws against them. A law of 367 forbade actors from being admitted to communion in Christian churches, except at the end of their lives, after which, if they chanced to survive, they could under no circumstances return to the stage. A law of 399 banned a spring festival called the maiuma because of its indecency; another law of the same year rejected the presentation of "any spectacles ... devised to effeminate the spirit [ad molliendos animos]" on Sundays or on the emperor's birthday.24 These laws, it must be noted, apparently did not succeed in reforming or eliminating either the performances or their players. At the end of the fourth century Ambrose of Milan still contrasted "the movements of the dissolute bodies of actors" with the vigorous mannerisms of true men. 25 The limited scope of these laws also implies that the legislators knew they were acting against popular opinion and so banned only the most outrageous of offenses. Salvian of Marseilles criticized the continued popularity of the public games in the middle of the fifth century. "Indeed:' he lamented, "it would take long to spealc about all these snares now, namely, the amphitheaters, music halls,

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public processions, jesters, athletes, tumblers, pantomimes and other monstrosities, which disgust me to talk about."26 But Christian writers had another weapon in their arsenal to attack the public spectacles, which was to link the gender ambiguity of the performers to the pagan nature of the plays and festivals. "One and the same actor:' Jerome declared, "now figures as a brawny Hercules, and now relaxes into the softness of a Venus or the quivering tone of a Cybele."27 Tertullian wondered how pagans could consider any such reenactments as pious. "When the likeness of a god is put on the head of an ignominious and infamous wretch, when one impure [impurum] and trained up for the art in all effeminacy, represents a Minerva or a Hercules:' he asked facetiously, "is not the majesty of your gods insulted, and their deity defiled?"2S (The word Tertullian used for this defilement, constuprareJ from the same root as stuprumJ was a term often used for the sexual penetration of males.) For Tertullian and other Christian writers, the spectacles were unmanly and obscene because they were pagan. Salvian of Marseilles maintained that Minerva is worshipped and honored in the gymnasia, Venus in the theaters, Neptune in the circuses, Mars in the arena, Mercury in the wrestling schools .... Whatever is of an impure nature is done in the theaters. Whatever is luxurious, in the wrestling schools. Whatever is immoderate, in the circuses. Whatever is mad, in the arena pits. Here there is wantonness [impudicitia], there lasciviousness [lascivia J. Here there is intemperance, there ins anity. 29

Behind it all is the ancient rhetoric linking unmanliness and vice. But a new and revealing element has been added in the Christian rhetoric against paganism. Armed with their distaste for the spectacles, Christian writers took advantage of the opportunity to reinforce the pagan themes of the performances and to lump paganism together with unmanliness and sin. (The late ancient hagiographical theme of the conversion oEan actor in the middle of a pagan theatrical performance - as in the legend of Genesius, who is said to have become a Christian on stage in the midst of an anti-Christian play-reinforced the linlc between paganism, sin, and the spectacles. 30) Christians transformed the concept of virtus by using it to describe the paradox of Christian masculinity where true manliness might be found in apparent unmanliness. But they also still used it to distinguish manliness from unmanliness in very traditional ways and readily applied it to the persons and activities, such as public performers and the spectacles, that they

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wanted to criticize or condemn. Indeed, because they identified manliness with Christian holiness, they were also able to identify unmanliness with sin and thus also with paganism. That identification proved to them the value of the continued equation of gender and morality. MASCULINE PRIVILEGE AND CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE

I suggested in chapter 1 that manliness and unmanliness were useful categories for Roman men because they helped further the larger task of buttressing male social privilege. By labeling as "effeminate" the men who did not live up to the ideals of masculine behavior and demoting them into the category of women, the men who were in control were able to perpetuate the myth that they dominated their society and its men and women because of their moral superiority. I want to suggest now that the same motivation made manliness and unmanliness equally useful categories for Christian men. We have already seen numerous instances in preceding chapters in which Christians asserted their moral superiority by claiming greater manliness. By extending the contrast between manliness and unmanliness to a parallel contrast between Christianity and paganism, Christian men could assert their holiness and manliness as Christian men over a sinful and pagan and effeminate society. Masculine privilege rewrote itself as Christian privilege. It is clear that Latin Christian writers accepted with little apparent question the division of men into the two camps of the manly and the unmanly. Consider an episode from the Liber peristephanon by the poet Pmdentius of the martyrdom of Agnes. Agnes was condemned to death in the arena for her refusal to marry, having dedicated her life to holy virginity. Agnes's willingness to face martyrdom and sexual renunciation lent her an implicit manliness. But Pmdentius described her death as a symbolic marriage to the gladiator who was about to kill her: When Agnes saw the grim figure standing there with his naked sword her gladness increased and she said: "I rejoice that there comes a man like this, a savage, cmel, wild man-at~arms, rather than a listless, soft, womanish [mollis] youth bathed in perfume, coming to destroy me with the death of my honor. This lover, this one at last, I confess it, pleases me. I shall meet his eager steps halfway and not put off his hot desires. I shall welcome the whole length of his blade into my bosom, drawing the sword-blow to the depths of my breast."31

The episode relied both on the old-fashioned appeal of the manly gladiator and on the conventional disdain for the effeminate man. The juxta-

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position of these two masculine types, it should be noted, served no real purpose to the story ofAgnes's martyrdom. It even detracted from the sacredness of her virginity, malcing it seem as though she had refused to marry only because she had not found a suitor who was man enough. But Pmdentius wrote his poetic account of the martyrs precisely in order to popularize these legends among Roman readers, and it was important that he have his readers see familiar and appealing patterns in his poems. From even this one example, we see that Pmdentius counted on his audience's immediate recognition of the significance of the contrast between the gladiator and the perfumed youth. Christian writers knew that the success of their religion to a larger population depended on malcing it seem both conventional and attractive. Moreover, the image was probably as appealing to Pmdentius as to his readers. (Doubtless, the allusion to forced sexuality in the penetration of the sword also sprang from the same motivation, appealing to a violence and sexual titillation similar to that which the public spectacles offered.) The ability to divide human persons into two camps, one of moral excellence and the other of moral reprobation - or, in Christian terms, one of saintliness and the other of sin - and then to linlc these camps with masculine and feminine natures, proved too compelling to resist. It permitted the Church fathers and their allies to see themselves as manly in their quest for holiness and as deserving of all of the rights available in a society dominated by men. It also allowed them to disparage the persons and actions they despised, including men who were pagan or otherwise opposed to the Church fathers, as sinful and unmanly and as undeserving of the rights and authority that belonged to true men. Conventional denunciations of love of luxury were a frequent occasion among Christian writers both for the assertion of the moral superiority of men over women and for the conscious demotion of sinful men into the category of women. Pmdentius again provides a helpful illustration' from another of his poetic works (calledAmartigeniaJ The Origin of Sin, it is a lengthy disapprobation of vice intended for a Christian audience). In a section devoted to the follies offashion, Pmdentius began by associating women stereotypically with the worst of their evils: For woman, not content with her natural grace, puts on a false and adventitious beauty, and as if the hand of the Lord who made her had given her a face that was unfinished, so that she must needs further embellish it with sapphires mounted on a circlet round her brow to crown it, or surround her chaste neck with strings of glowing gems, or hang a weight of green jewels from her ears, she even fastens the little white stones from sea-shells

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in her hair to brighten it, and her braided tresses are held in place by bands of gold. It would be wearisome to detail all the profane trouble matrons take, who color the forms which God has dowered with his gifts, so that the painted skin loses its character and cannot be recognized under the false hue. Such are the doings of the feebler sex, in whose narrow mind a frail intelligence tosses lighdy on a tide of sin. 32

The purpose of this denunciation is made clear in this last verse, with Pmdentius's assurance that women were the "feebler sex" with a "frail intelligence:' and implying that their correction by men like himself was necessary in order to preserve them from sin. (Pmdentius's point about women being made in the image of God, as we will see below in the theological debate on the subject, was also not innocent of deeper meaning.) In what he attributed to women, Pmdentius is not unlike other Christian or classical writers (like Ambrose, for example, whose views on women and luxury were mentioned at the start of chapter 5). But Pmdentius also added to his harangue a claim that some men were like women in their love of extravagance. He continued: But even he who is the head and ruler of the woman's person, who governs the weale portion cut from his own flesh and bears lordship over the delicate vessel, lets himself go in indulgence. One sees strong men, no longer young, turn effeminate [moUescere ] in their self-refinement, though the creator made their bodies rude and their limbs hard with bones to stiffen them; but they are ashamed to be men. They seek after the greatest vanities to beautifY them, so that in their lightmindedness they dissipate their native strength. They love to wear flowing robes not made from sheep's fleeces but of the [silk] spoils taleen from branches of trees and fetched from the eastern world, and to overlay their hardy frames with lozenge broidery. Artifice is called in to malee yarns soaleed in decoctions of plants work diverse fancy patterns with threads of different colors. Beasts' coats are chosen for carding for their softness to the touch. One man is seen chasing hotfoot after luxuriant tunics, and weaving downy garments with strange threads from many-colored birds, another shaming himself by spreading womanish scents with perfumed paints and foreign powder. 33

There is nothing surprising in what Pmdentius said: the ostentation in dress of the upper classes of the later Roman Empire was often criticized, as we have seen. More interesting is the connection between Roman cultural tradition and Christian faith in Pmdentius's claims. Men, who should exhibit a moral superiority over women as God had intended, had instead sunlc to their level. There is an oblique reference to the myth

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ofAdam and Eve in the "lordship" of man over woman and in the "weak portion cut from his own flesh;' but also a hint of regret that effeminate wealmess was not wholly removed from men in the operation. Prudentius accordingly distanced true Christian manliness from such pleasures. "What grief to think that nature's native laws should go down;' he continued, "and her gifts be carried away captive by a tyrant passion! Every power is perverted in its action, because men turn to opposite purposes all that the Omnipotent gave them to possess."34 Nature and the Christian god worked harmoniously together to establish men's dominion over women, Prudentius argued, and in so arguing claimed that dominion for himself One might argue that Prudentius's detailed delineation of men's and women's clothing styles betrays an unbecoming fascination himself with luxury, but the accusation of effeminacy had always been used to censure in another what had to be disregarded or minimized in oneself Prudentius composed his poetry in the early fifth century, by which time Christian ideology dominated much of Roman culture and had also absorbed much of it. But the same condemnation of effeminacy, especially as expressed in excessive luxury in clothing, can be seen from the very beginnings of Latin Christian culture. This should not be unexpected. Christian men of the third century were even more acutely aware ofhow much their future success depended on convincing Roman noblemen that they were just like them, unthreatening because they shared their underlying values. Tertullian adopted this rhetorical strategy in applying the military metaphor to the Christian martyrs, as we saw in chapter 4, talcing a familiar metaphor and adapting it for his own purposes. He did the same in an odd treatise on clothing, a treatise addressed to the men of Carthage. He called it De pallio (On the Mantle) because he felt that this simple garment (pallium) associated with philosophers and with Christian ascetics was the manliest type of clothing. Tertullian began by admitting that change was the destiny of all things of nature, clothing styles included. But not all change was improvement, he added. The increasingly elaborate complexity of the traditional men's toga, he explained' required far too much effort to accomplish the desired pleated look and, therefore, too much effeminate concern for appearance. Better the unstudied and manly simplicity of a plain tunic and mantle. (In an aside, Tertullian also complained about the abandonment of the manly sandal in favor of the effeminate shoe and boot.) The lessons that Tertullian drew from these changes in style are notable and illustrate the Christian rhetoric of unmanliness. He argued that the increased concern with appearance had contributed to the disastrous

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military and political situation of the Roman Empire in his day, because it had turned men into women. The loss of manliness threatened the moral fiber of the empire. Tertullian's concern for the fate of the Roman Empire may have been sincere at this point in his career, although generally he showed little appreciation for it, but the statement was certain to strike a cord with his readers. Tertullian also used the opportunity to linlc unmanliness and paganism. He noted the shameful transvestism described in the pagan legends of the Greek heroes Achilles and Hercules and the Greek histories about the Assyrian ruler Sardanapalus. Their unmanly example, he added, was even imitated by the Roman emperors to the further detriment of the empire. Again, Tertullian obviously knew how to appeal to his audience's concerns. He probably wrote this treatise during or shortly after the reign ofElagabalus, when the disastrous effects of imperial transvestism were on many men's minds. 35 "Such garments as alienate from nature and modesty:' he concluded, should simply be mocked by other men, and so "let it be allowed to be just to eye fixedly and point at with the finger and expose to ridicule by a nod" anyone who wore them. 36 The treatise adds further evidence to the anxiety provoked by men's changing clothing styles in the later empire. There was nothing new or specifically Christian in what Tertullian argued, but he tried to show throughout his writings that divine command and Roman custom happily coincided on the matter of clothing. "1 find no dress cursed by God:' he wrote in a treatise on idolatry, "except a woman's dress on a man."37 There was indeed a Biblical prohibition against men wearing women's clothing, but it equally condemned women wearing men's clothing, a fact Tertullian must have known but ignored. 38 He was much more concerned about the effects of clothing on men, because he connected it to ancient Roman fears of effeminacy. Even in a treatise devoted to women's clothing styles (and Tertullian also found much to complain about in them, mostly along much the same lines as Pmdentius's later complaints), he was also sidetracked to spealc out against the various beautification procedures used by some men: cut the beard too sharply; to pluck it out here and there; to shave round about [the mouth]; to arrange the hair, and disguise its hoariness by dyes; to remove all the incipient down all over the body; to fix [each hair] in its place with [some] womanly pigment; to smooth all the rest of the body by the aid of some rough powder or other. 39 to

Some men would also "talce every opportunity for consulting the mirror [and] to gaze anxiously into it" over the course of the day, he continued in his aside, just lilce women. 40 Such effeminate behavior not only gave

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men the appearance and mannerisms of women, which was distressing enough to him, but it also softened their moral complexions along with their physical complexions. In this assertion we can see another attempt to combine Christian belief and Roman traditions against gender ambiguity. If Christian men were to remain strong in an age of persecution, Tertullian argued, then "such delicacies as tend by their softness and effeminacy to unman the manliness of faith are to be discarded."41 For Tertullian, the Christian man who had lost his manliness could not but fail when his virtue was tested by the threat of martyrdom. We see the conjunction of the manly image of the soldier of Christ and the unmanly image of the richly dressed, and Tertullian's larger rhetorical strategy: both placed true Christians among the manly. To claim the support of Christian ideology for their statements about manliness and unmanliness and about gender and morality, Christian writers of late antiquity added a new and powerful component to the rhetoric of gender. They took the privileges that men's moral superiority were supposed to justify and applied these privileges to themselves as Christians. After all, if Christians were the virtuous and manly ones, then the domination that belonged to men should adhere to them. To denounce as effeminate men's appearance or clothing worked because the charge was so old-fashioned (and we might add to this list of old-fashioned appeals the Christian denunciations of sexual immorality discussed in chapter 6). Other men might ignore the pleas of the moralists, pagan or Christian-and they often did, in clothing styles as in sexual behaviorbut the moralists had by definition the higher moral ground. And that higher ground gave them access to the whole range oflongstanding mental associations with the concept of virtus. The linlc between paganism and a gendered hierarchy of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority could be carried one step farther. The stigma of unmanliness drew its strength from the inferior position of women, after all, and it was in order that women as well as other men might be subordinated to men that vicious men were considered womanly. Christian writers reinforced the inferiority of women by linlcing femininity to paganism. Lactantius, in moclcing the unreasonableness of pagan philosophy, used as his example the sexual equality that Plato had imagined in his ideal government. "Plato threw open the senate to women, allowing them to serve in the wars, to become magistrates, and to hold military commands:' Lactantius wrote. "How great will be the unhappiness of that city where women fill the places of men!"42 Lactantius also offered a critique of the old pagan beliefs by linlcing them to feminine inferiority. He wrote:

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But among the gods we see that there are women, too: therefore, they are not gods. Let him who can shatter this argument. For condition so follows condition that it is necessary to admit the conclusion. And no one can shatter this argument: of the two sexes one is stronger, one weaker, for the males are more robust, the females more weak. Weakness [imbecillitas] , however, does not apply to divinity; therefore, there is no female sex [in divinity]. . . . The final conclusion . . . [must be] that they are not gods, since there are women among them. 43

Here is to be found the misogynistic extension of the linlc between religion and gendered inequality: paganism is of the stuff of women, Christianity, of men. Christian writers, attempting to show the irrationality of paganism, emphasized the underpinnings of a feminine ignorance beneath traditional religion and opposed it to the masculine truth of Christian ideology. Augustine, for instance, poked fun at the proliferation of gods in Roman belief in The City of God: But how can I give a list, in one passage of this book, of all the names of their gods and goddesses? The Romans had difficulty in getting them into the massive volumes .... They could not even find the goddess called Segetia adequate on her own, to the responsibility for the crops from start to finish. Instead, they decided that the corn when sown should have the goddess Seia to watch over it as long as the seeds were under ground; as soon as the shoots came above the ground and began to form the grain, they were under the charge of the goddess Segetia; but when the corn had been reaped and stored the goddess Tutilina was set over them to keep them safe. Would not anyone think that Segetia should have been competent to supervise the whole process from the first green shoots to the dry ears of corn?44

Not without significance did Augustine concentrate his attack on the pagan goddesses here, since they best represented the conjunction of femininity and spiritual ignorance. The leaders of Western Christianity quicldy embraced an accommodation with traditional Roman notions of the sexual hierarchy of men over women. Men of the Roman aristocracy who became Christians encouraged the linlc between virtus and the Christian religion in order to promote both it and themselves. Having accepted the links between perfection and masculinity, however, they were obliged both to defend the parallel ideas of subordination ofwomen and the denunciation of less than perfect men as no longer men. We have already seen some of the results of these ideas

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in the insistence on marital inequality and in the elaboration of a masculine clerical authority. The overall result was a blanketing of all of the innovations that Christian ideology offered in a profound reactionism that tied sexual difference to moral superiority and inferiority. THE GENDERLESS IDEAL IN EARLIEST CHRISTIANITY

Latin Christian writers perhaps assured the popularity and success of their ideas by linking them to longstanding Roman notions of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority. But they were obliged as a result to walle gingerly through multiple traditions of gender ambiguity in earliest and Eastern Christianity that ignored the differences between men and women. These traditions threatened to undermine the sexual and social divisions of male and female when Christianity reached the West, even if they had already been muffied in the course of the first few centuries after the death of Jesus. Reconstructing earliest Christianity, that is, Christianity as it existed before the third century, is fraught with difficulties and uncertainties. Nonetheless, it seems as though at least some of the earliest Christians seriously challenged the customary social roles of men and women. One of the earliest Christian statements preserved is just such a challenge, attributed to Paul and according to some scholars only quoted by him from an earlier tradition: ''All baptized in Christ, you have all clothed yourselves in Christ, and there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus."45 The statement fits well enough with what we know of earliest Christianity: an abandonment of the ritual regulations of the Jewish law, including the dietary restrictions and the circumcision of infant males (thus eroding the differences between Jew and Greek), a repudiation of wealth and the value attached to status (thus eroding the differences between slave and free), and a renunciation of marriage and the obligations of family life (thus eroding the differences between male and female). The statement hinted at a promise that in Christ, humanity would be returned to its mythical original unity and functioned as a comment on the Genesis legend of Adam and Eve (and although we tend to think of Eve as having been created from the rib of Adam, and therefore only a fragment of the original human being who began as and remained male, the myth more likely began as one of an androgynous being cut in half 46 ). It was a statement both about the past and about the future, expressing the hope that all would be restored to innocence and immortality as had existed in the days before sin and death.

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But the belief that in Christ the differences between male and female were erased could also be seen as a statement about the present, that there was no longer a need for gender roles in the community of Christians, a genderless ideal. Whether Paul intended such an interpretation of his statement is uncertain. He was remembered for his persistent attempts to end observance of the Jewish laws and circumcision, attempts that were precisely to eradicate the difference between Jew and Greek in his own day. But he also counseled married persons to remain married and unmarried persons to remain unmarried, and that implied at least a partial accommodation to existing gender roles. 47 Still, the devaluation of marriage and family life in some early Christian communities encouraged the elimination of gender differences, because there was little practical value to them when both women and men participated in communal life and sexual renunciation, such as occurred among the groups known as Encratites. 48 In the spirit of the genderless ideal, some early Christian communities accepted the full participation of women in ritual activities alongside men, as apparently among the Marcionites and Montanists. 49 It seems that already by the second century C.E. some communities were elaborating the theme of the genderless life in Christ and the rehabilitation of a fallen humanity through complex cosmologies of divine androgyny and gender ambiguity. Some of these groups are known to scholars as Gnostic Christians, a label that encompasses a wide range of Christian sects with differing beliefs derived from the religious mythology and philosophy of the eastern Mediterranean, including Jewish apocryphal writings and Greek philosophy, although the usefulness of this label has been seriously challenged. 50 Some Christians, at any rate, were imagining a cosmos filled with semidivine beings displaying a wide array of sexual characteristics. Barbelo, for example, was an androgynous semidivine being who was separated from God through sin and lost its androgyny, becoming the feminine figure of Sophia or Achamoth and giving birth to the material world. The loss of primordial androgyny represented the kind of loss of integrity that was also part of the Genesis legend of the creation of Eve from Adam. The myth ofBarbelo also implied that sexual difference was the result of sin, and the division of male from female mirrored the fragmentation of the perfect unity of the universe into multiplicity and incompleteness. It should also be noted that the sinful androgyne Barbelo became the female being Sophia, implying a link between femininity and sin, and, because Sophia was responsible for the creation of the material world, between femininity and carnality. 51 The linlc between femininity and the material world reminds us that

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we should not think that the Christian communities that sponsored these myths promoted a sexual equality along modern lines. The genderless ideal was often interpreted as meaning that women might become like men in their pursuit of Christian holiness and desire to return to perfection. 52 The equation of holiness and masculinity was part and parcel of the ancient environment of male domination in which these groups originated and from which they drew their members. Accordingly, feminine nature was also assumed to be what was sinful and irremediable in human nature (and patristic commentary on the wickedness of Eve preserved the same idea). Still, given the context of the prevalent gender ideology of antiquity, which understood women's nature as wealmess and vice, women's abdication from a feminine identity might be construed in a positive light. It has also been suggested that there might have been a real attraction for women in worshipping a divinity that contained feminine as well as masculine natures. 53 The ascetic life might also have been especially appealing to women, since sexual renunciation allowed for the renunciation of unwanted marriages and a host of troubles that existed for married women from spousal abuse to the physical dangers of childbirth. 54 It has also been suggested that by allowing women to aspire to what was perceived as masculine perfection, these Christian groups ultimately undermined the ancient foundation dividing humanity between virtuous men and vicious woman and redefined virtue in genderless terms. 55 One indication of how common it was to link holiness and maleness as part of the genderless ideal in earliest Christianity is the existence of numerous stories of holy women who dressed and lived as men, the socalled transvestite saints. The earliest such legend is that of Thecla, probably dating from the second century but which made Thecla a companion of Paul. According to the account, Thecla heard the preaching of Paul and was converted to Christianity, vowing herself to virginity and refusing to accept an arranged marriage. Her pagan parents opposed her vow, and she was obliged to flee from them dressed as a man. Still disguised as a man, she was baptized by Paul and traveled with him, preaching and converting others to Christianity, even narrowly escaping martyrdom when arrested by the local governor. There were many similar legends that appeared in the eastern Mediterranean in the following centuries, and they have been extensively studied by modern scholars. 56 In each of them, the linlc is made clear between the pursuit of holiness and the renunciation of a feminine identity, both subsumed under the rubric of being "clothed in Christ." The cross-dressing of these women is typically linlced with the

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moment of baptism, and they invariably renounce sex or marriage at the same moment, reinforcing the connections between femininity, carnality, and sin. A few of the transvestite saints are even depicted as prostitutes before their conversion, in an obvious symbolic parallelism between their feminine nature and sexual immorality, on the one hand, and their masculine nature and holy chastity, on the other. Most scholars feel that there is little historical evidence for the lives of these women who disguised themselves as men, and some scholars have dismissed the legends as retellings of literary romances or as doctored pagan myths or even as male fantasies. 57 But it must not be assumed that such women did not exist, even if the legends of the transvestite saints are not accurate reflections of the details of their lives. The phenomenon of women disguising themselves as men is common enough in later historical periods, and the freedom of action and movement that is a central theme to these stories would have been a powerful motivation (although the account ofEgeria offers the example of a woman with sufficient fuancial resources who did not have to dress as a man to travel extensively, and there are other such examples). 58 In any event, the legends themselves were real enough and offered to women at least an imagined escape from the restrictions of their gender role through a renunciation of their gender identity. And the proliferation of these legends also points to the acceptability of a certain amount of gender ambiguity as part of the Christian message. The strength of the genderless ideal in earliest Christianity can also be seen in the concerted efforts made against it. By the end of the second century, for example, additions had been made to the collected writings of Paul that "corrected" some of the unfortunate tendencies of his authentic letters. Included among these emendations were the so-called household texts, mentioned in chapter 6, that enforced the conventional lines of the social hierarchy, including masters' authority over slaves and husbands' authority over wives. A few lines may also have been inserted into one of Paul's letters to the Christian community at Corinth that addressed the issue of gender ambiguity, apparently in light of the fact that women who were virgins were uncovering their heads in the churches, and even cutting their hair short, as men did, probably as a visible sign of their gender ambiguity. Scholars have debated the authenticity of the passage, in part because it seems to contradict Paul's comments about "no more male or female in Christ." In this passage, Paul (or someone writing as Paul) affirmed the superiority of men over women by means of the issue of veiling:

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A man should certainly not cover his head, since he is the image of God and reflects God's glory; but woman is the reflection of man's glory. For man did not come from woman; no, woman came from man; and man was not created for the salce ofwoman, but woman was created for the salce of man. That is the argument for women's covering their heads with a symbol of the authority over them .... Ask yourselves if it is fitting for a woman to pray to God without a veil; and whether nature itself does not tell you that long hair on a man is nothing to be admired, while a woman, who was given her hair as a covering, thinks long hair her glory?59

The ideas expressed in this passage would have great influence on the development of a Christian ideology that emphasized the continuation of a separate and subordinate role for women. The leaders of the more conservative Christian churches attempted to undermine the strength and appeal of Christian sects that emphasized the genderless ideal with reference to such passages. Developing notions of masculine clerical authority in the second century aided them in their attempts to declare such groups heretical. 60 Still, the genderless ideal that existed among some early Christians continued into the third century and was talcen up by other Christians. Notable among these later groups was the catechetical school at Alexandria in Egypt, led in the early third century by Origen, where both women and men were educated. Origen troubled over the same issue of the reflection of God's image in human beings and the connection of sexual difference to that reflection. It is difficult to do justice to Origen's ideas in brief. It must suffice to say that Origen, influenced by N eoPlatonism, believed that the material world was only a dim shadow of what was spiritual and real, and he suggested that human beings would shed sexual difference along with other aspects of their material existence when they returned to God. Human nature was in its origins and destiny a genderless one. 61 The bridal imagery that Origen crafted and the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs as representing the intimacy of the divine and the soul that inspired the later patristic writers was part of this genderless ideal. It is possible that Origen was influenced in this line of thought by Christian writings usually described as Gnostic, which outlined in great detail the bridal embrace of the feminine and masculine divine principles, or by related rituals, even if that influence was Origen's critical response to those ideas or practices. 62 The discrediting of Origen at the end of the fourth century (a century and a half after his death) can be understood at least on some level as the continuation of a long process

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of ridding Christian ideology of its genderless ideal (more about the condemnation ofOrigen below). It must be admitted that for early Christians, "no more male or female" often meant "no more female." But even if the genderless ideal in earliest Christianity was understood mostly as a call for women to become men, the idea that women might chose to abandon their gender identity and all its limitations and restrictions was still a challenge to the sexual hierarchy. It was enough of a challenge, moreover, that it was contested and undermined as Christians accommodated themselves to and drew followers from the male-dominated societies around them. But it was a challenge that survived, even piecemeal. As the aristocratic Romans of the western Mediterranean "clothed themselves in Christ;' their leaders were obliged to tailor the gender ambiguity of the earliest traditions of their new religion to fit themselves. WOMEN BECOMING MEN IN THE CHRISTIAN WEST

The male writers of the Western churches generally followed the bishops of the Eastern churches and denounced the gender-ambiguous traditions of some of the earliest Christians as heretical. Even so, they were obliged to talce these traditions into account in formulating their own ideology of sexual difference, even if only to criticize them. Accordingly, the male Christian writers admired virtuous Christian women and were even willing to compare them to men. But they also insisted that such "honorary men" should be denied any of the privileges of actual men. In doing so, they minimized the threat that the genderless ideal posed to the sexual hierarchy and to their own masculine privilege. Already by the end of the second century, some of the Eastern Christian sects that encouraged the elimination of social differences between men and women or who held beliefs in androgynous or feminine spiritual beings had a disturbing presence in the western Mediterranean. Marcion, for example, taught for a while at Rome. The "Gnostic" Christian teacher Valentinus moved from Alexandria in Egypt to Rome in the middle of the second century and attracted a large following in the capital, and he was only one of several such teachers. Hippolytus of Rome condemned his teachings at the end of the century. Irenaeus of Lyons in Gaul also wrote against the "Gnostics" and other Christian sects that he considered heretical in the same century, noting that local incursions of their preachers were attracting converts. 63 Both critics ridiculed the gender-ambiguous elements in such Christian beliefs.64 Irenaeus also suggested that women were particularly susceptible to such errors. He added

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an ad hominem attack, repeating a rumor that one of the early female leaders of "Gnostic" Christianity had been a prostitute at Tyre. 65 The association of heresy with feminine frailty, especially a gender-ambiguous heresy, had an obvious attraction for Western Christian writers, and the charge of sexual immorality against heretics would have a long history after Irenaeus. The Montanists were also preaching at Carthage by the beginning of the third century, and Tertullian was eventually converted to their· beliefs, as were other North Mrican Christians. 66 We do not have sufficient sources, however, to know the numbers of adherents belonging to any of these sects in the Latin West. Still, we know that their ideas had penetrated somewhat in the West. An anonymous secondcentury Western writer considered orthodox wrote the following, a neat summary of the genderless ideal: "In response to someone who asked him when his kingdom would come, the Lord himself declared: 'When the two become one, when the exterior becomes like the interior, and when between male and female there will be neither male nor female.' "67 There are no examples of holy transvestites in the Latin West, that might expand our knowledge about the genderless ideal there, but an episode in the life of Perpetua, a woman who was martyred at Carthage at the start of the third century, does offer something of a parallel experience. The account is written in the form of an autobiography, with an introduction and conclusion, including the description ofPerpetua's death, added by another hand. The author recorded a dream she had while in prison awaiting death, a dream that involved her triumph over the Devil as a wrestler in the arena. She described her vision: My clothes were stripped off, and suddenly I was a man [et facta sum masculusJ. My seconds began to rub me down with oil (as they are wont to do before a contest). Then I saw the Egyptian on the other side .... We drew close to one another and began to let our fists fly. My opponent tried to get hold of my feet, but I kept strilcing him in the face with the heels of my feet. Then I was raised up into the air and I began to pummel him without as it were touching the ground. Then when I noticed there was a lull, I put my two hands together linking the fingers of one hand with those of the other and thus I got hold of his head. He fell flat on his face and I stepped on his head. The crowd began to shout. 68

The image is strilcing in its manliness as much as in its violence, but it was only a momentary gender inversion. None of Perpetua's other visions (she climbs a dangerous ladder into Heaven, she helps her long deceased younger brother get a drinlc of water) challenge the gender hierarchy in

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the same way, except in the sense that they also highlight her agency. Women's writings from late antiquity are too few to draw any firm conclusions, but we have no other examples of such gender-ambiguous visions to know whether they represented a common experience. Tertullian also gave evidence for the unsettling effects of the genderless ideal among Christians in the first years of the third century. He devoted a treatise to the criticism of Christian virgins who unveiled themselves in churches, women who perhaps wished to malce visible their gender ambiguity in ignorance or defiance of the Pauline views on veiling. Tertullian suggested that "females, subjected as they are throughout to men;' should not be unveiled for two reasons: because their visibility was a sexual temptation to men, and because men had no comparable sign of their virginity. "How, then;' he wondered, "would God have failed to malce any such concession to men;' since men were closer to God, he said, following Pauline logic, "being His own image?"69 Tertullian also condemned virginal women who cut their hair, joking that "close-cut hair is graceful to a virgin in lilce manner as that flowing hair is to a boy."7O (We know from his comments on clothing, mentioned above, what he.thought about male gender ambiguity.) He refused to admit any truth in the counterargument that virgins were no longer women, perhaps responding to articulated statements to that effect. 71 Tertullian also linked his opposition to women's appearance to their exclusion from ecclesiastical authority. "It is not permitted to a woman to spealc in the church, but neither is it permitted her to teach;' he quoted, also from Paul, then added his own prohibitions, "nor to baptize, nor to offer [the Eucharist], nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function, not to say in any sacerdotal office."72 It is possible that some Christian women in his area were doing precisely what he denounced. It is also clear that Tertullian objected to women appearing in public as men because it led to their acting in public as men, specifically, their exercising of ecclesiastical authority. It is not surprising, then, that in another treatise on women's clothing, Tertullian began by reminding women that the first human sin had been committed by Eve, that they were "the Devil's gateway;' "the first foresalcer of the divine law;' and that their social inferiority was a perpetual expiation for that sin.73 In general, Tertullian refused to accept the genderless ideal insofar as it promoted women's social equivalence to men. He refused to accept the veracity of the legend of Thecla's companionship with Paul and her transvestism, for example. 74 He also wrote against the Marcionists, complaining that their women performed some ritual functions Tertullian felt should have been reserved for men. 75 Nonetheless, Tertullian did not entirely reject the genderless ideal. He

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ridiculed, for example, the idea of some Christian groups that there were both feminine and masculine spiritual beings. 76 The spiritual world was beyond sexual difference, he maintained, because it was beyond sexuality. Rewrote: I have to return after death to the place where there is no more giving in marriage, where I have to be clothed upon rather than to be despoiled,whe~e, even if I am despoiled of my sex, I am classed with angels - not a male angel, nor a female one. There will be no one to do aught against me, nor will they then find any male energy in me. 77

The discrepancy between his statements is clear. Even while he refused to accept gender ambiguity in women, presumably because it led to women's usurpation of masculine privileges, Tertullian was willing to accept his own gender ambiguity, the idea that he might have no sexual characteristics in the life-to-come. In another treatise, on the subject of the soul (De anima), Tertullian repeated his argument that the soul was genderless, maintaining that it received sexual difference only when it received a body and that sexual difference was therefore an accident of birth. 78 Re also mocked anyone who held that sexual difference remained after death, even if that meant a masculine perfection, imagining a ludicrous life for a gendered male soul along the lines of the life of a Roman man: Must it employ itself in school studies in its passage from infancy to boyhood; play the soldier in the excitement and vigor of youth and earlier manhood; and encounter serious and judicial responsibilities in the graver years between ripe manhood and old age? Must it ply trade for profit, turn up the soil with hoe and plough, go to sea, bring actions at law, get married, toil and labor, undergo illnesses, and whatever casualties of weal and woe await it in the lapse of years? 79

There is a profound contradiction here. Even as Tertullian had argued that women should not talce up roles of public ecclesiastical authority because sexual difference did matter, he argued that Christians who believed in gendered spiritual beings were wrong because sexual difference did not matter. Perhaps Tertullian himself was aware of this contradiction, because it was at the time of these last writings that he abandoned in part his opposition to women's ritual roles, even celebrating the divine gift of prophecy in a Montanist woman and the public voice it afforded her.80 It was also perhaps because of this contradiction that he became increasingly uncomfortable with marital and sexual relations as being incompatible with the genderless life that awaited all Christians.

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Tertullian's legacy to the Latin writers after him was, therefore, a legacy of contradiction about the importance of sexual difference to Christian ideology. On the one hand, Tertullian developed some of the most lasting images of gendered religious thought, the masculine soldier of Christ and the feminine daughter of Eve, images that supported the longstanding views in men's superiority and women's inferiority. On the other hand, he refused to admit any real spiritual importance to sexual differentiation, imagining a genderless life of the soul. I can only speculate that allowing the elimination of future sexual difference was much less dangerous than allowing the elimination ofpresent sexual difference, because the latter required social as well as ideological change. We can reckon that it was unpalatable for him to have argued otherwise, not only to himself and to other male formulators and teachers of Christian ideology but also to male listeners. All of the Christian sects in Tertullian's day were threatened with extinction through persecution and all had to compete with each other as well as with other religions to gain converts, and Christian ideology had to be popular if it was to survive. Notions of male superiority and female inferiority were too deeply embedded in Roman cultural values for a religious philosophy arguing for their eradication to have succeeded in the West, even if that eradication had roots in earliest Christianity. Admitting the possibility of gender ambiguity in the soul while condemning it in the body was a means of rendering the genderless ideal of earliest Christianity quaint but harmless. We can better evaluate the contradictory legacy of Tertullian if we jump ahead to the debates that were carried on at the end of the fourth century over the place of sex and marriage in contemporary Christian life. Orthodox fathers like Ambrose and Jerome were advocating precisely that Christians should do away with the trappings of gender roles in renouncing marriage and family life, and that meant also doing away with some of the substance of gender roles in women's inferiority to men. The orthodox fathers of the late fourth century argued that customary social roles revealed the fundamental natures of men and women. Jerome said that it was a woman's "duty" or "obligation" (officium) to become a mother.81 Ambrose also suggested that "men have their duties [munera] , and women have their separate offices [officia]; the generation of human succession belongs to a woman: it is impossible to a man."82 At the same time, Ambrose and Jerome encouraged women and men to abandon these obligations and enjoined on them the excellence of virginity and celibacy. For a man, the renunciation of sex and marriage was simply to find the perfection that was inside him as a man and to realize his virtus. For a woman, in contrast, marital and sexual renunciation was to aban-

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don both her social role, her customary functioning as a daughter, wife, and mother that defined her life, as well as her ideological role, the inferior position she held in relation to men and her carnal feminine nature. ''A virgin is no longer called a woman;' Jerome stated simply. 83 To some extent, the orthodox fathers were willing to admit that virgin women were men. The word vi1lJo (virgin) was derived from vir (man), Jerome maintained. 84 Ambrose, likewise, described virtuous Christian widows with the masculine image of veteran soldiers, laying aside their arms after their long battle against the flesh. 85 He used Judith as a role model for women of his day, describing how she triumphed militarily over a man in masculine terms (although he never referred to her excellence as virtus but instead used the term honestas) meaning "honor, repute, respectability").86 And Ambrose wrote of the virgin martyr Agnes that she was "in virtue above nature;' (this time using the word virtus) so that it could also be translated "a manliness beyond her nature"), apparently meaning her feminine nature. 87 And if the virginal ideal was angelic, it was also masculine: angels, who were supposed to be beyond sexual difference, were mostly imagined as men, as can be seen in the numerous descriptions of Mary's fright at seeing a strange man in her bedroom when the angel Gabriel appeared to her. 88 A Latin translation of the legend of Eugenia, one of the holy transvestites of the eastern Mediterranean, possibly translated at the end of the fourth century by Rufinus (an associate of both Ambrose and Jerome), reiterated this connection between women's virginity and manliness. In the legend, Eugenia explained why she dressed as a man: So great is the virtue of His name, that even women standing in fear of Him might obtain a masculine dignity. Nor might either sex be found superior in faith, since the apostle Paul, who is the teacher of all Christians, says that with the Lord there is no difference between male and female, but all of us are one in Christ. His precept I have adopted with a fervent spirit, and from the confidence which I have in Christ, I did not want to be a woman, but preserving an immaculate virginity with the whole intention of my soul, I have acted in Christ constantly as men do. For I have not wealdy assumed an appearance of honor, so that as a man I might seem to be a woman, but as a woman, I have acted manfully as men do, embracing boldly the virginity that is in Christ. 89

The repetition of these Eastern legends in the western Mediterranean popularized the notion that women were capable of "ascending" to masculine virtue by renouncing sex. (There are other indications that the legends of the holy transvestites circulated in the West. The Greek name

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Pelagia and elements of her legend were translated, for example, into the Latin name and legend of Marina, both names meaning "of the sea." And the Greek legend ofEuphrosyne, a name meaning "joy;' was recast as the Latin legend of Castissima, a name meaning "most chaste?'90) Nonetheless, the orthodox fathers also clarified that women became men only in a metaphorical sense and that Roman women who were Christian should not try to imitate the holy transvestites and attempt to pass as actual men. Jerome wrote to condemn transvestite women in a letter to one of his female correspondents from 384. "Other women change their garb and put on men's dress; they cut their hair short and lift up their chins in shameless fashion;' he complained, adding that "they are ashamed to be what they were born to be-women?'91 About the same time, Ambrose said much the same, reminding women of Paul's words against cutting their hair and unveiling themselves. 92 In 390, the Western emperor Valentinian II issued a law against virgin Christian women who cut their hair, calling it "against divine and human laws" and threatening with expulsion any bishops who let such women into their churches. 93 The reasons for such condemnations are clear. If women appeared and acted in public as men, then the basis for a gender hierarchy of men over women would be destroyed, and along with it, masculine clerical privilege. So Jerome and Ambrose were also obliged to say that sexual difference both did and did not matter. This conclusion was similar to their consensus on marriage, as I argued in chapter 6, where they were also obliged to maintain that marriage both did and did not matter, and was neither to be praised insofar as it did not matter nor condemned insofar as it did matter. Within a few years, the orthodox fathers were obliged to correct themselves and say that sexual difference mattered even in a spiritual sense and was part even of the life-to-come. The turnabout happened because of a dispute involving Origen's ideas. Both Jerome and Ambrose had borrowed heavily from the ideas of Origen, including his belief in the ultimate disappearance of gender difference. At the end of the fourth century, however, Origen's ideas came under attack and were condemned as heretical, at first only in Egypt and then throughout the Mediterranean. His unique adaptation of Platonic body-soul dualism was felt to undermine the ascetic rehabilitation of the body, both in the sense of the ultimate goodness of the body and in the spiritual usefulness of asceticism, and to ignore the belief that human beings were made in the image of God. 94 Ambrose died about the time that the controversy erupted, but Jerome found himself at the epicenter of it. Among its other results, the controversy turned Jerome and Rufinus from friends to bitter enemies.

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We can see the effects of the Origenist controversy on Jerome's ideas about sexual difference in the life after death. Before the controversy, Jerome's opinion on the subject had been that the glorified soul was masculine, an opinion that did not follow Tertullian's but that fit with the general patristic consensus that holiness was male. After death, human beings would become like the angels (something Origen had also believed), and that meant bodies without sexual difference, glorified and masculine bodies. 95 After the controversy, Jerome was forced to reverse his opinion. "Just as among angels there is neither male nor female:' he had once said, "so let us also, who shall be as angels, begin to be right now on earth what has been promised shall be in heaven." But such remarks later required clarification. "When I say: 'Let us begin to be here on earth: I am not doing away with the nature of the sexes; but I am doing away with lust and copulation between husband and wife."96 Within a few years, Jerome was even putting his old ideas in the mouth of his opponent in order to discredit him. "Will there be sexual difference between male and female or not?" he claimed to have asked Rufinus about the afterlife. "If there will be, then it follows that there will be marriage and sex and reproduction. If there will not be, if sexual difference is suppressed, then it is not the same bodies which will rise Up."97 The reasons for Jerome's about-face are clear. Rufinus had claimed that Jerome could not have believed that the human body was made in the image of God, if human beings created both male and female were indistinguishable by sex in the afterlife. Accordingly, Jerome was forced to argue that women remained women in the next life. Jerome complained that women who disagreed with his revised position "talce pleasure in seizing their breasts, patting their bellies, pointing to their loins, thighs, and smooth chins and saying: 'What does it benefit us if this frail body rises again?"'98 But the implications of Jerome's revised position were revolutionary. The presence of women in the afterlife meant either that wealcness and imperfection existed there, something impossible to admit, or that women were capable of perfection as women. The latter opinion was equally unthinkable, because it undermined the association between perfection and masculinity and the theoretical basis for male superiority. It was a critical moment for the Christian ideology of gender and sexual difference. It meant that the words "in Christ, there is no male or female" could not be safely removed to a future existence, but had relevance for present existence and might be used as an argument for women's assumption of social equality. Augustine of Hippo, who entered the debate about sexual difference at the beginning of the fifth century and thus after the debate had begun,

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showed the same inconsistencies that the Origenist controversy had brought to light. He condemned Origen's teaching that sexual difference was the result of sin and that it would disappear in the life-to-come. 99 His The City ofGod;, written years after the Origenist controversy, contained a lengthy discussion of sexual difference in the afterlife. "Some people suppose that women will not keep their sex at the resurrection; but, they say, they will all rise again as men:' he wrote. "For my part, I feel that theirs is the more sensible opinion who have no doubt that there will be both sexes in the resurrection?'lOO Nonetheless, Augustine had written about a decade earlier (but still after the condemnation of Origen) that women were made in the image of God only to the extent that they were human and not female. He exhibited obvious discomfort in reconciling the two views, both ofwhich were based on Biblical precedent: [Genesis] says that human nature itself, which is complete in both sexes, has been made after the image of God, and it does not exclude women from being understood as the image of God .... How then did the apostle Paul] declare that man is the image of God, and consequently is forbidden to cover his head, whereas a woman is not, and on this account is commanded to cover hers? The solution, I think, lies in that which I already said when discussing the nature of the human mind: the woman together with the man is the image of God, so that the whole substance is one image. But when one distributes functions and she is assigned as a helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone, she is not the image of God. However, in what pertains to man alone, he is the image of God just as fully and completely as he is joined with the woman into one. 101

In other words, to the extent that what defines a woman per se (that is, whatever is female, including the female parts of her body) and is not shared by a man as part of their common humanity, it is not in the image of God. In contrast, whatever defines a man (both what is human about him and what is male) is in God's image. This solution to the exegetical problem even allowed Augustine to reinforce the command about veiling. "Because the woman differs from the man by her bodily sex:' he said, "she can in conformity with religious custom symbolize by her corporeal veil ... that the image of God does not remain except in that part of the human mind in which it clings to the contemplation and inspiration of the eternal values."102 Having defended the spiritual inferiority of women, however, Augustine was also required to defend how he could believe that women would continue to exist in the life-to-come (and here we have to jump back to

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his remarks in the The City of God to see how he extricated himself from that dilemma). Women in Heaven, he suggested, would be unlike women on Earth. "All defects will be removed from those bodies:' he suggested, although "their essential nature will be preserved:' because "a woman's sex is not a defect; it is natural."103 They would still be women, but unrecognizable as such, because even their genitals would be transformed, removed as markers of imperfection. Augustine refused to talce the 'logic of eternal sexual difference to its logical conclusion, that it implied women's and men's spiritual equality, and continued to argue for the inferiority of women to men. Even in comments on the original sin of Adam and Eve, Augustine suggested that the Devil "no doubt start [ed] with the inferior of the human pair:' thereby implying that the inferiority and wealmess of women even existed before sin and was not, as Tertullian suggested, the consequence of sin.104 For Augustine, the "neither male nor female in Christ" meant only that "women too have some virile quality whereby they can subdue feminine pleasures, and serve Christ;''l05 Sexual difference might be part of God's design for humanity, Augustine concluded, but it did not require sexual equality. It is interesting to see how Jerome and Augustine reconciled these seemingly opposite beliefs about perfection and sexual difference. Their response, indeed, seems to have been an even greater insistence that women ought to pursue manliness in their pursuit of holiness. On the surface, this attitude seems a blatant disregard for the implications of their own arguments, but perhaps it was not. Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine all corresponded with aristocratic women and encouraged them to begin or continue lives of consecrated, that is, permanent asceticism. The dedicated ascetic life for women of the upper classes was still a novelty in the western Mediterranean at the end of the fourth century. Ambrose's sister Marcellina and Jerome's friend Paula were among the first aristocratic women in Rome to adopt the ascetic life in the late fourth century. In contrast, it had been known in the eastern Mediterranean at least since the beginning of the century and probably earlier. 106 In the East, female asceticism was an organic institution, growing out of the same environment that produced the genderless life of sexual and marital renunciation and often linked with the heretical sects of Christianity that forbade sex and marriage. In the West, in contrast, female asceticism was as much a product of patristic encouragement as it was an expression of women's spirituality, although it was obviously both. I would suggest that the orthodox fathers supported female asceticism at least in part as a practical resolution to the contradiction between perfection and sexual difference brought to the surface by the Origenist controversy (although

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their initial support for it predated the controversy and began in a general encouragement of virginity; so their support was not solely a response to this intellectual dilemma). Even if Jerome and Augustine were forced to admit that "no more male or female" meant real spiritual equality between men and women, female asceticism helped to take the sting out of that admission. The ascetic ideal for women meant that women were encouraged to remain secluded within the household environment in disciplined and restricted lives. (The ascetic ideal for men meant something else altogether, as we will see in chapter 8.) Ascetic women were repeatedly exhorted to become men and praised for having become men, and it was implied that this transformation was happening in the here-and-now. But these ascetic women were men who were removed from public life and subjected to the paternal clerical authority I described in chapter 6. They were men without social privilege. The exhortation to asceticism was addressed especially to aristocratic women, whose political connections and access to wealth meant that they were lileeliest to influence ecclesiastical affairs. The Church fathers were even willing to extend to virgins the title they themselves proudly wore, brides of Christ. It might seem an odd thing to do, given the political power that the image had provided for the Christian bishops, but in so doing, the Church fathers were able to tap into a conservative rhetoric about the behavior appropriate to married women and, thus, to virginal brides of Christ. Some were able to recommend that Christian virgins wear bridal veils, finding yet another reason to dissuade virgins from unveiling themselves in the churches. 107 And some were even able to appeal to the jealousy of their collective husband, Jesus, who did not Wee to see them going about in public, as a means of enforcing women's seclusion. 108 In a treatise on virgins, Ambrose exhorted his sister and her companions to follow the example of Mary, the mother ofJesus, who was the first and best model of consecrated virginity: there was "nothing forward in her words, nothing unseemly in her acts;' and "she was unaccustomed to go from home, except to church?'109 Drawing from the Biblical episode in which the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, he noted that "when saluted she kept silence, and when addressed she answered' and she whose feelings were first troubled afterwards promised obedience?'110 Ambrose also drew heavily on the Song of Songs to impress upon his female readers the intimacy they would have with Christ as his brides. Jerome repeated much the same sort of exhortations with the same references to the bridal metaphor in his letters to Christian virgins (such as the one to Eustochium: "do not seek the Bridegroom in the streets"lll), as did Augustine in his writings on virginity. If men shared

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the honorific title of bride of Christ with women, in other words, it was in order to avoid sharing a public voice with them. Excellent examples of the transformation of the ascetic life of women are provided by the two Melanias, Melania the Elder (born about 340) and her granddaughter, Melania the Younger (born about 380). Both women were of the senatorial class at Rome, but both abandoned their wealth and status for ascetic lives as Christian widows, and both eventually established themselves at Jerusalem. The elder Melania was among the first circle of ascetic noblewomen in Rome, which included Marcellina and Paula. She was a close companion to Rufinus and sided with him in the Origenist controversy, to Jerome's great displeasure, who had earlier described her as a second Thecla. 112 Paulinus ofNola praised the elder Melania after she stayed with him and his wife in her travels: "What a woman she is, if one can call so virile a Christian a woman!"113 The younger Melania followed closely in her grandmother's footsteps, but one can see how the opportunities for ascetic women had been restricted in the generation that separated them. She had desired to remain a virgin from her childhood, we are told in the account of her life, but was married by her parents' wishes. She eventually persuaded her husband to renounce sex and transform their marriage into a spiritual one (it is important, of course, that she was presented as negotiating such an arrangement with her husband, rather than initiating it through a unilateral vow). The account of Melania the Younger's life, written about the middle ofthe fifth century by Gerontius and circulating in both Latin and Greek versions, also insisted on her spiritual manliness. "In truth, she had been detached from the female nature:' he exclaimed, "and had acquired a masculine disposition, or rather, a heavenly one."114 The more detailed record of the younger Melania allows us to see what exactly that supposed manliness entailed. Gerontius noted her piety and her humility and assured his readers that Melania never uncovered her head, "even for a short while."115 Gerontius was unable to avoid mention of how many times Melania had left her monastery, although he did add that she "struggled mightily" with her decision to do so, but she even traveled as far as Constantinople and preached in public against the teaching of N estorius: "she did not cease tallcing theology from dawn to dusk."116 (The mention of a woman preaching, even orthodox ideas, was presumably necessary to clear Melania of possible charges of sympathy to N estorian ideas, given her friendship with the Eastern empress Eudocia. 117) Virtually all mentions of holy women from the early fifth century - all written by men - include an avowal of their spiritual masculinity. Ausonius wrote of his aunt: "The feminine sex was always hateful to you, and

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out of it sprang a love of consecrated virginity."1l8 Prudentius in his Peristephanon referred to the martyr Eulalia's "holy courage" and "bold spirit" when "female as she was she challenged the weapons of men."1l9 But it was always a masculinity without practical result. It did not even have visible consequence, since patristic writers in the early fifth century continued to insist that virgins remain veiled in the churches. Paulinus of Nola claimed both that a virgin woman "leaves behind the boundaries of her womanlywealcness, and aspires to human perfection;' but she should still cover her head, because "she becomes pregnant with the spirit;' (presumably, this spiritual pregnancy undercut her claim to virginal status ).120 The implications of this rhetoric are clear. It did not matter that sexual difference might continue to exist in the afterlife, because any woman who merited the eternal reward had already become a man. According to this logic, there were still no women in Heaven. The exact nature of masculinity and femininity and its relation to other aspects of human existence and even to human destiny and salvation was obviously a matter of no small debate among Christians of late antiquity. But Latin Christian writers showed little enthusiasm for conceptualizing a genderless humanity as some of the earliest Christians had done. Rather, their writings continually reaffirmed the separate identities of men and women and perpetuated the conflation of sexual and moral dif-. ferences. Even when they admitted that the gender-ambiguous traditions of earliest Christianity meant that women might achieve a manliness of sorts, they undermined that tradition by withholding from manly women any of the benefits associated with masculine identity. Still, the patristic praise of the manliness of consecrated virgins gave evidence that gender ambiguity continued to find a place in late ancient Christianity. SANCTITY AND GENDER AMBIGUITY

The ability of Christians to defend the manliness of their faith and to perpetuate the gender hierarchy was critical to their eventual success among the aristocracy of the later Roman Empire. Even within this intellectual environment, however, alternative understandings of the effects of Christian ideology on gender roles and sexual difference existed, and existed even in the West. The repeated condemnations of virginal women who refused to wear veils in the churches or who cut their hair short because they no longer saw themselves as women, into the fifth century, for example, hints at an ineradicable opposition by some Christian women to the patristic views on feminine identity. An equal challenge was the willingness of some Christian men to aclcnowledge that the tradition of "no

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more male or female" meant that in order to pursue holiness as Christians they would have to abandon their masculine identity. The patristic model of Christianity proved successful, I have argued, because it was conservative in the truest sense of the word, preserving the classical tradition of a hierarchy ofmen over women and the clear-cut distinction between the two, a tradition otherwise brought into question by the many social changes of late antiquity. Men were attracted to Christianity because they found in it a means to reaffirm their manliness and to reclaim their separateness from and domination of women. But not all men were attracted for this reason. The men who became Montanist Christians, for example, did so knowing that it allowed for a prophetic equality of men and women, and it is possible that they were attracted to it for that reason, or at least not prevented from joining the movement by the idea. The same attraction might have existed for men who converted to Christian groups that espoused a gender-ambiguous cosmology or that advocated the elimination of gender differences by the eradication of sex and marriage. We should not think that all Christian men were as ardent as the Church fathers in explaining away the implications of a genderless Christianity. But numbers were what counted, and the numbers of men and women able and willing to dissociate themselves from the Roman cultural traditions of the hierarchy of men over women were fewer than those unable or unwilling to do so, and ultimately insufficient to prevail in the West. I have also argued that behind the manliness that Christian ideology offered was a paradox. It was a manliness that embraced much of what had long been considered unmanly: refusal to participate in war or to marry and avoidance of secular political office and sexual pleasure. Christian leaders fabricated a variety of metaphors to depict the paradox, some manly, like the soldier of Christ, others unmanly, like the bride of Christ. In some regard, then, all Christian men identified themselves in a genderambiguous fashion. We can only begin to imagine, for example, what a writer like Ambrose thought or felt about his masculine identity as he more than hinted at the erotic pleasure ofbeing a bride of Christ and then used the image to describe himsel£ Or when Cyprian praised the soldierlike bravery and manliness of the martyr while in hiding. It might even be said that the assertion of Christian manliness was a deflective strategy on the part of the Church fathers. It might be argued that they were particularly anxious to defend their own manliness in the face of real uncertainty about it because of the choices they had made about their own lives, refusing to engage in violence or secular politics or to marry. Equally, it might be suggested that they were quick to point out the un-

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manliness of other men's decisions about their lives for the same reasons. Even if true, the anxiety of the Church fathers about their manliness only identifies them as men of their time, troubled as so many men were by the changing social realities of their day. (We might compare, for example, the same uneasiness about living up to Roman manliness that pervaded the depiction of Elagabalus in the HistoriaAugusta and even the depiction of Julian by Ammianus Marcellinus.) There are legends that survive, however, that do not avoid but embrace the apprehension about Christian masculinity in late antiquity: the legends of holy transvestites who were men. They are in many ways literary parallels to the many stories of women who become men and might even have been a literary response to them. Both groups of legends share numerous features, including a practical rather than theological initial justification for the cross-dressing, which is, nevertheless, given a spiritual explanation after the fact, and the frequent association of the change of clothing with the religious transformation of baptism or approaching martyrdom. The stories also share certain elements with classical pagan legends of transvestite male heroes. 121 The legends of holy men-whobecome-women are more than examples of an interesting literary genre or curious transpositions of pagan myth, however; they recall in a pious and didactic fashion the reversal in masculinity that Christianity generally encouraged. They also highlight the similarities and differences between Eastern and Western Christianity (and it is noteworthy, in this regard, that while both stories come from Western sources and attempt to understand the changes to masculinity in an identifiably Roman context, both are also derived from Eastern sources, apparently, and set in the East, the region that Latin writers believed to be the home of the gender-ambiguous traditions of Christianity and of effeminate practices in general). The first example of holy male transvestism is that found in the legend of the martyrdom of Sergius and Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus were said to have been soldiers who served in the Roman army under the Western emperor Maximian and were martyred by him in 309. 122 Like the several other military saints, they show themselves to be true soldiers of Christ when they refused to engage in actual warfare. According to their legend, the two men refused to sacrifice to Zeus before a battle. The anonymous hagiographer recorded the result of their refusal: The emperor's countenance was transformed with anger; immediately he ordered their belts cut off, their tunics and all other military garb removed, the gold torcs taken from around their necks, and women's clothing placed

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on them; thus they were to be paraded through the middle of the city to the palace .... But when they were led into the middle of the marketplace the saints sang and chanted together ... this apostolic saying: "denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, and putting off the form of the old man, naked in faith we rejoice in you, Lord, because you have clothed us with the garment of salvation, and have covered us with the robe of righteousness; as brides you have decked us with women's gowns."123

There is a key difference, of course between this legend and those of the holy female transvestites: here the cross-dressing is coerced rather than voluntary. Nonetheless, the men's easy acceptance of their new gender identity and their immediate identification of it with God's design links it again to the legends of transvestite women. (The name Bacchus for one of the soldiers also links the story to pagan legends of cross-dressing, because more than any other ancient god, Bacchus was associated with transvestism. ) The story of Sergius and Bacchus can be linked in several ways to the Christian model of a paradoxical masculinity. Using the general prejudice against effeminacy, the pagan persecutors attempted to humiliate the men - or at least, this is how the hagiographer described it - by embodying their religious perversity as gendered perversity, emphasizing the irrationality and unnaturalness of both. Through their Christian faith, however, they managed to invert these symbols and interpret the gendered abasement as religious exaltation. Their cross-dressing did not embarrass them but proclaimed their status as brides of Christ. The pastiche of Biblical phrases they quoted, especially from the book of Isaiah (which in fact ends with the words "like a bride adorned in her jewels"), 124 all focused on the radical nature of Christian transformation. Moreover, they all highlighted the disruption in Christianity of traditional expectations of manliness and unmanliness. In this way, the legend reinforced many of the more general themes of Christian masculinity. The second example of saintly male transvestism comes from Ambrose's hand. Unlike the previous example, for which we do not know either the source of the tale or its author, we have here an account transmitted by one of the central patristic writers who apparently considered it edifying enough to repeat. Ambrose admitted that he was relating the legend from another source but named neither the source nor the story's protagonists. 125 Just as interesting, Ambrose included the story in the treatise he addressed to his sister and other consecrated virgin women (De vi1;ginibus); he obviously thought it appropriate enough for them to

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read. It follows his endorsement of the example of Thecla, the best known and earliest of the female transvestite saints, whom Ambrose managed to enlist as a model of holy virginity without bothering to mention her cross-dressing; perhaps thinking of the one story reminded him of the other. According to Ambrose's version ofthe legend, a virgin ofAntioch during the time of persecutions had refused to marry and was suspected of secret Christian beliefs. Faced with the choice of sacrificing to the pagan gods or being placed in a brothel, she chose the latter, relying on God's protection. ''A great rush of wanton men is made to the place;' Ambrose continued, and the first chosen to enter her room was "a man with the aspect of a terrible warrior."126 Ambrose drew upon the violent reality of the soldier here (and the image also anticipates the brutal sexuality also seen in Prudentius's depiction of the gladiator in the martyrdom of Agnes). But the soldier turned out to be a fellow Christian and suggested to the frightened woman: Let us change our attire, mine will fit you, and yours will fit me, and each for Christ. Your robe will make me a true soldier, mine will malce you a virgin. You will be clothed well. I shall be unclothed even better that the persecutor may recognize me. Talce the garment which will conceal the woman, give me that which shall consecrate me a martyr. Put on the cloalc which will hide the limbs of a virgin, but preserve her modesty. Talce the cap which will cover your hair and conceal your countenance. 127

At this point, Ambrose interrupted his tale. "Let the characters be also considered;' he recommended, "a soldier and a virgin, that is, persons unlike in natural disposition, but alike by the mercy of God."128 The virgin made her escape, and thinking it was the soldier who had departed, a second man described as "more shameless" entered the room to talce his turn. (Perhaps he was "more shameless" because he was seeking to have sex with an actual man, even ifhe thought that the man was a woman; latent in this story is the familiar horror at the sexual penetration of an adult male, as well as the familiar fascination with the sexual violation of an unwilling virgin, both only narrowly averted.) Ambrose continued: But when he took in the state of the matter with his eyes, he said, "What is this? A maiden entered, now a man is to be seen here .... I had heard but believed not that Christ changed water into wine; now He has begun also to change the sexes. Let us also depart hence while we still are what we were .... I came to a house of ill fame, and see a pledge of honor. And yet I go forth changed, for I shall go out chaste who came in unchaste."129

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There is almost a burlesque quality to the legend. Eventually both the soldier and the virgin were executed and both achieved the elevated status of martyrs. Nothing could point out more clearly the eventual triumph that Christianity promised for those who accepted its paradoxes, including its paradox of gender identity (and there is even perhaps an intended irony of genres, bawdy tale as hagiography, to reinforce the strength of the paradox). It seems clear that the focus ofAmbrose's story was the woman and the embodied manliness of her spiritual virtue. But the willingness of the soldier to be feminized for virtue's salce is surely as interesting, as is Ambrose's willingness to repeat the tale: elsewhere he denounced crossdressing, saying that nature abhorred it.130 There is an obvious parallel with the themes of the legend of Sergius and Bacchus, although here the man's cross-dressing was voluntary and not coerced. The juxtaposition of usual notions of manliness and unmanliness can be demonstrated by the man's celebration of his transvestism, that his wearing of women's clothing will malce him a true soldier, that it will clothe him in Christ, and that it will prepare him for martyrdom. Again, the story is set against other radical transformations: water into wine and disrepute into honor. That Ambrose could celebrate a legend about a man who dressed himself in women's clothing and elsewhere could compare himself to a bride, at the same time as he denounced the cross-dressing of actors and refused to admit clerics with effeminate mannerisms, says much about the Christian ideology on masculinity. Even within a context of reactionary ideals and a desire to return to the hierarchical gender roles of Roman antiquity, Christian ideology provided an opportunity for improvisation and innovation. The stories of the saintly men who wore women's clothing were not intended to blur the boundaries between the sexes but to reinforce the lines ofsexual difference by the ironic juxtaposition of appearance and reality. The men's profession in both stories underscored that irony: soldiers were manly enough that they could afford to be made to wear women's clothing and still be men. In turn, the men's martyrdoms reiterated their manliness even as it returned them both to the spiritual status of soldiers. (The cross-dressing of the virgin in the story uses this juxtaposition a bit differently: her sentencing to a brothel was intended to dissolve her masculine virtus into feminine wantonness, but her escape in men's clothing rescued that manliness, and her martyrdom confirmed it.) The stories of the Christian male transvestites should remind us that the manliness of Christian faith was not a simple thing. Even while they condemned unmanliness in men, Christian leaders exhorted men to do much that was unmanly. And while they refused to extend to women any

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of the social rights that belonged to men, they ptaised holy women as spiritual men. Finally, even while they forbade holywoinen to" appear in" public dressed as men, they sanctioned stories of holy" menwhodr~sed" " "as women. It only remained to find an apt symbol for °encapsuhiting th<::~" . complexities of Christian masculinity. °

CtIAPTER EIGHT

IIEUNUCHS FOR THE SAKE OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN" Castration and Christian Manliness

In part 1 of this book, I argued that the presence of eunuchs in the Western Roman Empire in late antiquity functioned as a powerful reminder of the many changes facing men of the Roman aristocracy, in both public and private life. But the eunuch also served as a potent symbol of the conversion of the empire to Christianity, and in this chapter I will discuss the importance of that symbol. Christian writers denounced the castration of men as typical of all that was immoral and effeminate in pagan culture. At the same time, the authority of Jesus' saying that Christians should "malee themselves eunuchs for the salee of the kingdom of Heaven" required a radical rehabilitation of the symbol of the eunuch. Latin writers condemned early Christian experiments with physical self-castration, because of its disturbing gender ambiguity, but encouraged a tamed notion of spiritual castration. By the end of the fourth century, Latin Christian writers even represented the new ideal of masculinity, the monle, as a type of manly eunuch. As a result, the eunuch served as a symbol not only of the dangers of traditional Roman masculinity but also of its Christian transformation. THE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO PAGAN CASTRATION

Christian writers resolutely opposed the popular use of eunuchs in late antiquity. Jerome ridiculed the overly refined Christian women of his day who were carried in litters by eunuchs because they "could not bear the unevenness of the streets.''! One noblewoman even brought her eunuchs with her into St. Peter's Basilica, he noted with disgust. 2 Christian writ245

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ers also seem to have shared the same n~gative stereotypes about the char~ acters of eunuchs that other Romans did. When.a eunuch official of the ~mperor Valentinian II threatened the life ofAmbrose during the ofamous. dispute over the control of a basilica at Milan, Ambrose replied acerhlY:.o :.00 . o "then I will suffer as bishops do, you will act as eunuchs do:'3 If a Chrisr- .· . ian noblewoman rejected an association with eunuchs, the Church fa..: thers counted it as a sign of her holiness. Jerome praised his dear friend Paula for rejecting her former habit of being carried on a litter by eunuchs and traveling instead astride a donkey, and mentioned it in letters to other female acquaintances, doubtless as an example to them. 4 "Their separation from men was so complete:' he wrote of Paula and her ascetic female associates, "that it separated them even from eunuchs, so as to give no occasion to evil tongues, who are accustomed to tearing down the saints in order to reassure the del.iriquent?'5 Similarly, Jerome praised Christian virgins who refused to bathe with eunuchs. 6 Behind .these comments was the widespread fear that eunuchs were no guarantors of women's sexual purity. Accordingly, Jerome counseled a female correspondent to choose her eunuch servants on the basis of their good morals, not their good 100ks. 7 It was not the presence of eunuchs in family life or even in public office that most, horrified Christian writers, however. Even more disturbing was their presence in Roman religion, as the eunuch priests of the Mother of the Gods (Mater Deum). The mythology of the worship of the Mother of the Gods is complicated, as complicated as most ancient myths, and several scholars have attempted to untangle the threads of the origins and regional variations of the cults associated with the Mother of the Gods. 8 Suffice it here to say that at the heart of the religion was a goddess, usually known as Cybele from the Phrygian version of the cult, but in the syncretic environment oflate antiquity also identified with Egyptian Isis, Syrian Astarte and Babylonian Ishtar, Carthaginian Tannit (also known in Roman times as Caelestis), and a host of Greek goddesses including Rhea, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hera, and thus also with Roman Ceres, Venus, and Juno. The Mother of the Gods was believed to control both agricultural and human fertility; she was also responsible for the erotic passions that made human fertility possible, and her abundant fecundity had even aided in the multiplication of the gods (thus her title as "Mother of the Gods"). Also associated with the Mother of the Gods, at least by the classical era, was her male consort. Again, he was usually known as Attis from the Phrygian myth, but also identified in late antiquity as Egyptian Osiris, Syrian Tammuz and Babylonian Dumuzi, or Greek Adonis, and also as Greek Dionysus and Roman Bacchus. We should not think of °

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all of these pairs of gods and goddesses as the same cult, to· be sure, but .. Roman writers of late antiquity did tend to consider them as ethnic and local variations on a general mythological theme. 9 . Variants ()f these cults existed in the western Mediterranean from ear· liestantiquity. Already in the sixth century B.C.E., Phoenician settlers at · Carthage had irrlported ~lements of the cult of a great goddess from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to North Mrica, and when Romans · settled in the region, they added Roman elements to it. The cult of the Great Mother (Magna Mater) was brought from Asia Minor to Rome in 204 B.C.E., although it does not seem to have thrived. But the cult seems to have grown in popularity especially in late antiquity. Worship of the Great Mother, by then more often referred to as the Mother of the Gods, was reintroduced in the second century C.E. and spread throughout the western provinces of the empire with Roman imperial patronage. The emperor Elagabalus was also said to have encouraged the cult in the third century, as did Julian in the fourth century. It only disappeared at the beginning of the fifth century C.E. with the general decline of public paganism. 10 The mythological motifs associated with the Mother of the Gods and her consort are equally complicated, but numerous ancient writers attest to an overall pattern. A fundamental component was the theme of castration. According to some versions of the myth, the consort eventually rejected the love of the Mother of the Gods and loved another, and in anger she castrated him ( according to other versions, he castrated himself out of regret). It is usually said that he died of his wound, but because of her love for him she restored him to life, although he remained a eunuch. Again, complex layers of different, ancient legends were overlaid one upon the other. (According to the Egyptian myth, for example, Osiris was killed by an evil third party, Seth, who dismembered his body as well as castrated him and then hid the parts of his corpse; when Isis determined to restore him to life by reassembling his body parts, she was unable to locate his genitals.) The myth of the Mother of the Gods and her consort was reenacted each spring with rites of death and lamentation followed by rites of restoration to life and rejoicing. The timing of the rites also coincided with the springtime fertility of the Earth. The mythological theme of castration was also used to explain the presence of eunuch priests who figured prominently in the ritual worship of this network of cults. During the annual spring rites, a few inspired acolytes (or perhaps only a few selected ones) castrated themselves in public, after which they became special priests of the goddess. These eunuch priests were calledgalli in Latin, although no one seemed to know

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why. Some said that it was because of the presence of Celts, also called Galli in Latin, in Asia Minor, where the Attis cult originated; others said, it was after the river Gallos, also in Asia Minor; the name did allow for:;i· pun with "roosters;' also galli in Latin, especially a compari-5on between: the crowing of roosters and the high-pitched voices of eunuchs; 11 'The .. presence of eunuch priests was until recently often disreg~ded or at leastunderemphasized by modern scholars of the cults, some of whom ' claimed that the practice had died out by the later empire-arguing, for the most part, that the Roman laws against castration were responsible for this decline. The self-castration of devotees of the Mother of the Gods might have been only a minority experience, but it continued to exist throughout the later history of her cult and demonstrates how Roman law could sometimes be ignored with impunity. It is true that the castration honored in the myth and reenacted by followers was spiritualized in meaning by some pagan intellectuals, among them the emperor Julian, who saw the myth of castration as a symbol of the need to cut oneself off from material and carnal realities in order to approach higher things. 12 But the notion of spiritual self-castration could easily have coexisted with actual physical self-castration. Various explanations have been given for the relationship of castration to the worship of the Mother of the Gods. The priests' self-castration was seen even'in antiquity as a symbolic sacrifice of individual fertility in order to enhance the fertility of the community and even of the cosmos, and as a sacred reenactment of the spring harvest. The gallus-to-be took a siclde or sharpened stone, perhaps an agricultural symbol, and in an ecstatic frenzy severed his genitals on the Day of Blood (Dies sanguinis) March 24). 13 The agricultural connection perhaps also explains the felling of a pine tree that occurred during the annual rituals. Lilcewise, both ancient and modern scholars have seen the priests' self-castration as a pledge of their sexual purity. 14 The priests' self-castration may also have been part of a renunciation of masculine identity, however, and associated with their personal dedication to a feminine deity. After their castration the new eunuchs adopted women's clothing, or at least clothing identified as women's, even if it had originated in ritual costume, including wearing a veil and jewelry and growing their hair long. According to one source, the newly self-made eunuch ran through the streets with his severed genitals in his hand, and threw them at a doorstep; the women of that household were obliged to give him some of their clothing, which he adopted as his own. IS We must allow for inaccurate descriptions as well as regional variations in the rituals of the religion, but this brief overview is necessary in order to understand the Christian reaction to the worship of the

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Mother of the Gods, since Christian writers tended to lump all of these .. rituals and cults together 'as one. To begin, it must be said that Christian writers were obviously famil- . : :iar with the details of .the myth. They might have witnessed the public . : self-castration of the priests or public reenactments of the Attis legend ip. theatrical performances,. sometimes includillg the actual castration of a prisoner sentenced to participate in the show (and an example of the rea. sons for their denunciation of the spectacles). 16 "The Mother of the Gods loved a beautiful young man;' Lactantius explained, "and having caught him.with a mistress she turned him into a half-man [semivir] by cutting off his genitals [virilia]; and therefore his sacred rites are now celebrated by eunuch priests [galli sacerdotes]:'17 A century earlier, Tertullian had asked: "Why is a male mutilated in honor of the Idaean goddess, unless it be that the youth who was too disdainful of her advances was castrated, owing to her vexation at his daring to cross her 10ve?"18 In the fifth century, Prudentius asked the same question: "Why does the Berecynthian priest mutilate and destroy his 10ins?m9 In these descriptions, the Christian writers gave no indication that these priests had c(,'1Sed to castrate themselves. Without exception, Christian writers used the castration ritual to confirm the depravity of pagan religion. Lactantius, who wrote at length against the sacrilege of paganism generally, described the public rituals in honor of the Mother of the Gods as "insanity" and made it clear that what revolted him was the violation of men's bodies through castration. "Men themselves malce propitiation with their own sex organs;' he suggested, and ''with such mutilation they malce themselves neither men nor women."20 Tertullian also mocked the gender ambiguity of the eunuch priests in his polemical writings against the pagans; they were "a third sex, and made up as it is of male and female in one."21 Augustine ridiculed the "amputation of virility" in the cult of the Mother of the Gods, in his attack on the pagan gods in The City ofGod) in which "the sufferer was neither changed into a woman nor allowed to remain a man.,,22 The familiar rhetoric against the blurring of sexual boundaries was called into action to denounce the self-castration of the eunuch priests. Perhaps the most interesting denunciation of self-castration by a Christian writer was that of Prudentius in his Liber peristephanon on the Christian martyrs. Prudentius saw the castration of the eunuch priests as proof of the violence of paganism. He imagined a conversation between the soon-to-be martyr Romanus and the pagan emperor Galerius, and had Romanus ask: "Shall I go to Cybele's pine-grove? No, for there stands in my way the lad who emasculated himselfbecause of her lust, and

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by a grievous wound cutting the parts of shame saved himself from the unchaste goddess' embrace, a eunuch for whom the Mother has to l~ent in many a rite."23 Hidden in this passage is an ambivalent praise qf the action, since by castrating himself, Attis has· preserved himselffrom the goddess' "unchaste embrace" (and we will see that Christian writers felt a certain ambivalence about castration). But Pmdentius also had. Ro- . manus offer a lengthy critique of the castration ritual: There are rites in which you mutilate yourselves and maim your bodies to malce an offering of the pain . . . and it is the barbarity of the wounds that earns heaven. Another malces the sacrifice of his genitals; appeasing the goddess by mutilating his loins, he unmans. himself and offers her a shameful gift; the source of the man's seed is torn away to give her food and increase through the flow of blood. Both sexes are displeasing to her holiness, so he keeps a middle gender between the two, ceasing to be a man without becoming a woman. The Mother of the Gods has· the happiness of getting herself beardless ministers with a well-ground razor!24

Behind this literary attack on pagan castration placed in the mouth of a Christian martyr was a defense of martyrdom. Martyrdom was also a bloody act of self-sacrifice believed to earn salvation, but Pmdentius contrasted the Il)artyrs' unwilling sufferings with the eager sufferings of the eunuch priests: "But this blood of ours flows from your barbarity [and not from our own] ."25 The passage also implied a sharp contrast between the manly self-sacrifice of the Christian martyrs as soldiers of Christ and the unmanly sacrifice of the eunuch priests. The dangerous gender ambiguity of the eunuch priests was also exhibited in their sexual behavior, at least as reported. The sexual aspect of the cult of the Mother of the Gods has also been neglected by historians, but, in their defense, it is also unclear in the sources. Worship of the Mother of the Gods seems to have involved in some places and at some times what is often called sacred or cultic or temple prostitution, ritual sexual activity performed by female priestesses acting as sacred prostitutes. The practice should not be too surprising in a cult that had fertility at its heart, but even ancient writers contradict each other about the ritual, so the extent or nature of sacred prostitution cannot be known. 26 It is sometimes also maintained that after their castration, the eunuch priests also offered their sexual services to male worshippers at the shrines, as sacred male prostitutes alongside the sacred female prostitutes. Again, the practice is not inherently illogical. Eunuchs preserved the youthful attributes ofmale adolescent beauty longer than other males (although we cannot know at what age the eunuch priests castrated them-

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selves), and sexual activity with young males as well as females seems to .. have been part of the sexual repertoire of many adult males in the ancient Mediterranean. . . Evidence for- sexual activity on the part of the eunuch priests, however, . remains vague. In the middle of the second century, the pagan writer Apul~ius had" mocked th~ sexual indulgence and gender ambiguity of the eunuch priests in hisMetamorphosesJ although he seemed genuinely sym. pathetic to the worship of the Mother of the Gods. He called the eunuch priests cinaedi (men who enjoyed being penetrated sexually), and included an episode in which they seduced a local farmer's son more for fun than for religious reasons. He also alluded to their renunciation of masculine identity, having them call each other "girls" (puellae) in private. 27 Nonetheless, Apuleius is one of the few sources to describe in other than hostile tones the supposed sexual activity of the eunuch priests, and even he was writing satire. It is possible that the eunuch priests did not act as sacred prostitutes, and that writers inimical to the cult libeled them in what they knew would be a damaging manner, borrowing their details from the general sexual repertoire of vices attributed to eunuchs (described in chapter 3). It is also possible that the eunuch priests did act as sacred prostitutes, and the reluctance to mention the fact in sources favorable to the cult betrays the general discomfort of Roman writers to admit the sexual penetration of adult males, even castrated males and even in the service of religion. In the end, while we cannot be certain about what practices existed, we can know what representatives of interested groups chose to believe or to assert existed. For Christians who denounced the cult, the sacred prostitution of the eunuch priests was evident enough and constituted proof of the perversity of paganism. Paulinus ofNola claimed that "the brothel ofVenus together with the madness of Bacchus were divinities for the wretched, and lust allied with insanity celebrated wicked ceremonies in foul rituals."28 Firmicus Maternus condemned the priests of the Carthaginian goddess, to whom he referred by her Latin epithet Caelestis ("the Heavenly One"). His denunciation is worth quoting and discussing at length. He began by addressing the gender ambiguity of the eunuch priests, relating their intermediate position between male and female to the general "middleness" of the pagan cult: Animated by some sort of reverential feeling, they actually have made this element [air] into a woman [Caelestis]. For, because air is an intermediary between sea and sky, they honor it through priests who have womanish voices. Tell me, is air a divinity if it looks for a woman in a man, if its band

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of priests can minister to it only when they have feminized their faces, rubbed smooth their skin, and disgrac~d their manly sex' by do.rining . women's regalia?29

He continued by alluding to sacred prostituti
He returned again to the eunuchs' dressing as women, linking the feminine appearance and their feminine sexual activity together with the deficiency of their pagan beliefs: They nurse their tresses and pretty them up woman-fashion; they dress in soft garments; they can hardly hold their heads erect on their languid necks. Next, being thus divorced from masculinity, they get intoxicated with the music of flutes and invoke their goddess to fill them with an unholy spirit so that they can ostensibly predict the future to fools. What sort ofmonstrous and unnatural thing is all this? They say they are not men, and indeed they aren't; they want to pass as women, but whatever the nature of their bodies is, it tells a different stOry.31

The expression "monstrous and unnatural thing" [monstrum prodigium] refers to a portent of evil. In other words, the eunuchs attempted to tell fortunes to gullible pagans, but their own bodies were a bad omen. Firmicus Maternus had been a pagan and an astrologer before his conversion and knew the language of paganism well, but his hostility to his former beliefs might have clouded his accuracy about the activities that went on at the shrines of the goddess. The passage formed part of a polemical attack on paganism itself "Ponder too what sort of divinity it is which finds it such a delight to sojourn in an impure body;' he asked, '~hich clings to unchaste [impudici] members, which is appeased by the contamination of a polluted body?"32 Firmicus Maternus was not the only Christian to offer lurid (if questionable) details about sacred prostitution and the eunuch priests in de-

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votion to the Mother of the Gods. Augustine of Hippo also devoted several sections of The City of God to "the obscene practices of this depraved cult;'33in which "effemjnates [moUes] consecrated to the Great Mother, :who violate every canon of decency in men and women" could be seen . "iIi the streets "and squares of Carthage with their pomaded hair and pow~ dered. faces; gliding along with womanish languor."34 He denounced the sexual violations of the cuit as gender violations: "for men to be treated . as women is not in accordance with nature; it is contrary to nature."35 But his attack was also part of a larger critique of traditional Roman religion and .against those who believed they were worshipping a god "by the commerce of prostitution, by the amputation and mutilation of sexual organs, by the consecration of effeminates, by the celebration of festivals with spectacles of degraded obscenity."36 The eunuch priests provided further proof of the irrationality of pagan belief and the insanity of those who "should try to convince anyone that they perform any holy action through the ministry of such persons [homines] ?'37 It should be noted that Christians were not the only ones who objected to this cult and its supposed sexual depravities. Augustine quoted from Seneca to demonstrate how respectable Romans had always condemned such unnatural practices. 38 It is true that there had always been a certain scandalous quality to the cult of the Mother of the Gods from the time of its first arrival at Rome. Equally scandalous in late antiquity was the association of the emperor Elagabalus with the cult. We have already seen how Elagabalus's reputation suffered at the hands of historians; here is another important reason for that disgrace. Before his assumption of the imperial honors, Elagabalus had been High Priest of the Sun God at Emesa in Syria (he was named Elagabalus after the god and, because it was a sun god, also as Heliogabalus; his actual imperial title was Varius Avitus Bassianus Marcus Aurelius Antoninus). Shortly after his arrival at Rome, Elagabalus attempted to unite all of the pagan religions into one cult, one of the first attempts at unifying religious practice across the Roman En1pire. (Constantine's official support for Christianity proved more successful, but he also did it by assimilating the Christian god to a sun god, Sol Invictus~ "the Unconquered Sun?') As part of that attempt at unification, Elagabalus had married the chief vestal virgin (a sacrilege, according to traditional Roman standards) and had a symbolic rite performed in which his Sun God was married to the Mother of the Gods. The gods' marriage lasted no longer than Elagabalus's brief reign. Still, the association ofElagabalus with the worship of the Mother of the Gods and its cultic prostitution may shed some light on the emperor's reported actions. Historians described the emperor Elagabalus as want-

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ing to become a eunuch priest himself I~ is possible that he did. According to the HistoriaAugustay he tied up his genitals in a symbolic or actual· att~mpt at castration, and if he thought of himself ~s a sort ofgaltus; it might help to explain his supposed transvestism and his willingness.Oto be sexually penetrated or at least help to explain the historians' impugning him with such actions. The claim that he associated with prostitutes and performed as one himself may also be an intimation, accurate or not, of his encouragement of sacred prostitution as part of his syncretic religioUs reforms. In any case, the association of Elagabalus with the cult of the Mother of the Gods lent both a further unsavory reputation. 39 Again, we must be careful not to mistake the distaste of writers, either pagan or Christian, for an accurate reflection of the details of or popular support for the cults. The poet Claudian, for example, in order to discredit the status of eunuchs everywhere in his polemic against Eutropius, asked a question that he must surely have known to obe disingenuous: "Have we ever seen a temple built or altars raised to a eunuch god?"40 Nor must we assume that the Roman writers shared the feelings of all Roman men toward the cults or toward the eunuch priests. It is possible that while men of the upper classes denounced the obscenity of the eunuch priests and their religion, men of the lower classes found in their visits to the shrine a lJ-seful sexual or spiritual outlet. Tertullian, for example, complained of "the vulgar superstition of popular idolatry" that took the cult seriouslyY Indeed, the vehemence with which the literate members of Roman society denounced the worship of the Mother of the Gods may reflect their exasperation at the popular support for the cult. After all, someone was attending the shrines and participating in the processions that so dismayed the authors of our sources. Augustine complained that even decent Christians could not avoid seeing the revolting displays of the eunuchs as they passed by in the streets and being thereby corrupted, but this complaint was perhaps in part to excuse his own admission that as a young man he had "thoroughly enjoyed the most degrading spectacles" of the Mother of the Gods. 42 For Christian writers, the condemnation of the pagan eunuchs could become the focus for a panoply of other critiques: the blurring of the sexes following from an abandonment of what was natural, the irrationality of pagan belief and practice, the violence of the Roman spirit, or the obscenity of sexual license. The polemic against pagan eunuchs thus formed an integral part of a more general Christian critique of traditional Roman culture that we have seen endlessly repeated. Pagan writers perhaps worried that the eunuch represented the worst features of the later Roman man; Christian writers assured them that he did.

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BIBLICAL TRADITIONS ON CASTRATION

Christians who condenmed the eunuch priests had yet another basis for· . _.
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ritual violation also used to describe what the qJdeshzm did and the mourning ritual for Tammuz. 46 .It is not necessary here to discuss in further detail these ancientcon.-· demnations or their precise meanings. Instead, we need only point to the fact that Latin Christians, in translating and reading these texts, extrapolated from them about the worship of the Mother of the Gods in their· own day. Key to this understanding was Jerome's translation of the passages in question above. To begin, he translated the Hebrew proper name Tammuz as Adonis, in an obvious belief that both were merely localized names for the same god. 47 More important, he consistently translated the Hebrew term qJdesh"im with the Latin ejfeminati~ hardly a literal translation but one again that tied the Biblical descriptions to the eunuch priests of his day.48 Indeed, in one of his Biblical commentaries, he justified his translation: "These men are the ones who are nowadays at Rome the servants of the Mother- not of the gods, but of the demons, the ones they caligalli."49 The term tiPabhah he translated as abominatio (abomination; literally, something "ill-omened"), which implied a ritual or religious violation. 5o Perhaps he did not understand the historical setting of these terms (or perhaps he understood them better than some modern scholars), but in either case, his use of these terms provided an authoritative precedent fo.r the Christian denunciation of the eunuch priests and their religion. Christians, however, had an even more authoritative precedent for the condemnation of the eunuch priests in certain passages from the Biblical writings of Paul. Foremost among these passages was one in Paul's Letter to the Romans. It has generally been seen as a condemnation of homosexuality, but if situated in its proper historical context, it seems likelier that the passage was tied to the specifics of the eunuch cult. Paul wrote of the pagans: they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a worthless imitation, for the image of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds and reptiles. That is why God left them to their filthy enjoyments and the practices with which they dishonor their own bodies .... That is why God has abandoned them to degrading passions: why their women have turned from natural intercourse to unnatural practices and why their menfolk have given up natural intercourse to be consumed with passion for each other, men doing shameless things with men and getting an appropriate reward for their perversion.... And so they are steeped in all sorts of depravity, rottenness, greed and malice, and addicted to envy, murder, wrangling, treachery and spite. 51

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Here were all the elements of the standard Christian invective against the . eunuchs and their cult: a repudiation of paganism in general, followed by : a condemnation of the gender violations of the cult of the. fertility god- . . '. :~ess. (the "practices with which they dishonor their own bodies"), fol. lowed in tUrn by an attack against sacred prostitution (the "unnatUral practi~es" of the women,~d the men "consUmed with pass~on for each other") and against castration (the "appropriate reward for their perver. sion"), and ending with all the usual vices attributed to eunuchs. In other words, since the priests of the goddess acted Wee women they deserved the castration that turned them into women. This context for Paul's statements is virtually unrecognized by modern Biblical and historical scholars, but it fits the details of his denunciation better than the explanations usually given. 52 The gender violations of the cult - especially the men acting as women - were the primary focus of the critique. Seen in its proper context, it also functions as a Pauline reiteration of the Biblical book of Wisdom, with which it shares many similarities. 53 Jerome noted the connection between this passage and cultic prostitution and with the qJdeshim, however, and asked: "What is more shameful than for men to be coupled with a cult of prostitutes, and to immolate the sacrifices of their lust with effeminates ?"54 (It should also be noted that Paul did not condemn sexual activity between women in this passage, as is usually understood, but rather cultic prostitution by women. 55) The gender ambiguity of the eunuch priests provided a powerful symbol for the perversion of religious beliefs, and Paul and other writers ineluded in the Christian Bible exploited this symbol for other purposes. Because of the animosity toward eunuchs and the unmanliness that eunuchs represented, Paul linked castration to circumcision-another genital mutilation that he rejected-in various passages. In a debate over the necessity of circumcision for Christian men, a practice that he opposed, Paul wrote to his supporters: "Tell those who are distUrbing you I would like to see the knife slip [when they circumcise each otherJ."56 Elsewhere, he warned his readers to "Beware of dogs!" and to "Watch out for the cutters !" adding that "We are the real people of the circumcision:' ''without having to rely on a physical operation."57 It is even possible that Paul meant "eunuchs priests" and "the men who frequent them" when he added malakoi and arsenokoitai to his lists of sinners. The author of the Biblical book of Revelation included "dogs" among those who would be denied entrance to Heaven, alongside the impure and the worshippers of idols. 58 Jerome dutifully translated the term "dogs" with the Latin canes)

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which is how he also translated the HebJ;"ew kelebhimy and he must have appreciated the connection of "dogs" and "sacred male prostitutes" or it ... w~uld have been a meaningless punishment.. '. . .... There was an equally strong alternative Biblical tradition, however, that viewed the eunuch not as a despised symbol of apostasy but as a laudatory symbol of self-sacrifice and familial and sexual renunciation .. This coun- . terimage was attributed to the earliest Christian message and to Jesus himself The Gospel ofMatthew, for example, had Jesus respond to a question on the advisability of marriage by saying: "There are eunuchs born that way from their mother's womb, there are eunuchs made so by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone accept this who can."59 This tripartite categorization of eunuchs was not unique to Jesus. We might recall the Roman jurist Ulpian's division of eunuchs into three categories. 60 The Mishnah, which shared with Jesus a Hellenized Jewish perspective, also divided eunuchs into three categories: congenital eunuchs, eunuchs made so by men, and persons of indeterminate anatomical sex, possibly hermaphrodites. 61 Jesus'mention of "eunuchs born that way" is likeliest to have been a reference to men with congenitally undeveloped sex organs. The nature of such men and especially their rights in marriage were the subject of some discuss~on in the Mishnah. 62 The "eunuchs made so by men" likely identified those men castrated for administrative positions in royal or imperial courts, who were certainly commonplace in the eastern half of the Roman Empire in Jesus' day. The presence ofsuch eunuchs in Hebrew history is a fact for which there are many Biblical attestations. 63 The mention of either ofthese groups ofmen in a discussion ofmarriage is relatively unproblematic from the standpoint of interpretation. The final category, the "eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the kingdom of heaven:' is much more difficult to interpret. At the very least, it represented a radical call for a departure from marital obligations, which would have been in keeping with other sayings of Jesus on the family, including ones found in the Gospel of Matthew. 64 It may also form part of a general Matthean rhetoric ofJesus as the Messiah, because it echoes a passage from the Biblical book of Isaiah in which the requirements of marriage would no longer be paramount in the future kingdom of Israel. According to Isaiah: Let no eunuch say, ''And I, I am a dried-up tree." For Yahweh says this: To the eunuchs who observe my Sabbaths, and resolve to do what pleases me and cling to my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my wails, a

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monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be effaced. 65

': We know that -other early Christians considered this futUre that Isaiah . , imagined to' have arrived with Jesus. The baptism of the Ethiopian eu. nuch by -apostle Philip recorded in the Biblical Acts of the Apostles was said to have ~egun with the eunuch's reading from the· book of Is aiah. Rather than ~e record of a historical incident, the baptism was prob, ably meant to symbolize the new inclusiveness of the Christian community, a sign ofthe arrival of the Messianic era as anticipated by interpreters of Isaiah, when eunuchs and foreigners would be welcomed (the Ethiopian eunuch was of course both).66 But Jesus' statement encouraging his followers to "malce themselves eunuchs for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven" might well have meant more than the renunciation offamily or fulfillment of a Messianic prophecy. It has already been suggested that Jesus' statement was his ironic response to critics who insulted his followers by accusing them of being like thegalli because of their celibacy (or perhaps because of their fondness for itinerant begging).67 But if Jesus was familiar with thegalli and their selfcastration as a religious practice, then it is at least possible that his words were intended literally and that he was recommending to his male followers that they physically castrate themselves. Even if these are not the authentic words ofJesus, the same interpretive possibility remains in that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was recommending that male Christians castrate themselves by attributing the sentiment to Jesus. In fact, it is yet another extravagant gesture of renunciation found in the Gospel of Matthew, much like Jesus' call to abandon all wealth and to rid oneself of concern for food and clothing, and just as unclear as to whether it was meant literally or figuratively.68 Finally, it fits well if just as ambiguously with another admonition of Jesus, also found in the Gospel of Matthew and also in a discussion oflust:

the

If your right eye should cause you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one part of you than to have your whole body thrown into hell. And if your right hand should cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one part of you than to have your whole body go to hell. 69

In the end, we cannot know how these statements were intended. But even if they were intended as hyperbole and even if they were wrongfully attributed to Jesus by his followers, they circulated in an authoritative

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manner as the words of Jesus and in a social environment in which actual self-castration took place in public in the gwse of religious devotion. Readers of Biblical texts in late antiquity who believed in the au~or~ ity"of those Biblical texts could turn to any number of passages.tha(cop'demned eunuchs and castration as religious unorthodoxy and sin. But: the same readers could turn to other passages that depicted eunuc:hs and cas- . tration as symbols of orthodoxy and devotion. It remained to individual Christians, with the help oftheir spiritual advisors who claimed to be able to interpret Biblical texts correctly, to decide how to interpret these conflicting passages. PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL CASTRATION

Some early Christians, perhaps not too surprisingly, took Jesus at his word and made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of Heaven. The presence of eunuchs in the households of late antiquity and among religious devotees of pagan cults perhaps made castration seem both familiar and reasonable. Christian eunuchs shared much with the galli. The orthodox leaders of the Christian churches, however, condemned physical selfcastration and worked hard to promote a figurative meaning for Jesus' e..xhortation as a call to chastity. At stalce was the Christians' claim to manliness, which ~ould have been lost in the gender ambiguity of the eunuch. We cannot know how many Christian men decided to castrate themselves or have themselves castrated, believing that they were obeying the instruction of Jesus. The earliest reference comes from the mid-second-' century writings of Justin Martyr. Writing at Rome, Justin mentioned an anonymous Alexandrian Christian who sought government permission to have himself castrated (his request was denied; castration was, after all, forbidden within the Roman Empire). Interestingly, Justin did not express either surprise or disapproval of the man's proposal. 70 The Traditio apostolica attributed to Hippolytus of Rome and dating from the early third century also mentioned Christian men who castrated themselves but ordered them to be removed from the community of Christians, a statement that assumed them to be already present in the community. 71 At the first general meeting of Christian bishops after Constantine's edict of toleration, at Nicaea in 325, the first official declaration ordered the removal from clerical office of men who castrated themselves. Curiously, the edict did not forbid self-castration altogether to Christian men, only the self-castration of clerics, and even made exceptions for castrations done by barbarians or as part of health measures. Again, the edict assumed that there were already eunuch clerics. 72

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Probably the most famous example of a voluntary Christian eunuch . . was Origen of Alexandria. Eusebius described what happened in his historicalaccount (again, an account translated into Latin by Rufinus for the· .:, .benent of Western .Christian,s). He wrote: He committed:an act characteristic of an immature and youthful mind, yet, notwithstanding, including abundant proof offaith and self-control. For he took the words, ".There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of Heaven;' in too literal and extreme a sense, thinking both to fulfill the words of the Savior and also, since although youthful in years he discoursed on divine subjects with women as well as with men, to avoid all suspicion of shameful slander in the minds of unbelievers. 73

Some have questioned the reliability and accuracy of the account; others have lent support for it. 74 On the one hand, it is often suggested that Origen's general appeal to a figurative and allegorical understanding ofScripture would preclude his own literal interpretation ofJesus' words. On the other hand, it is also possible to see behind Origen's self-castration the same Neo-Platonic impulse to cut oneself off from the carnal and material world that pagans such as Julian used in interpreting the myth of Attis and in justifying the actions of the galli. Certainly, men who lived after Origen believed that he had castrated himself, men like Jerome, who praised him for it. "So much did he flee from pleasure;' Jerome wrote, "that, with zeal for God but not with proper understanding, he cut off his genitals with a knife."75 The words recall those ofEusebius, who also praised Origen's faith and self-mastery at the same time as he criticized his youthfulness and immaturity. Both are evidence for a grudging support for the ideals that motivated self-castration, if they are also recognition of its wrong-headedness. Both point to the ambiguous relationship between the Christian tradition and castration. (Origen's self-castration may have played a role in his eventual disrepute. Epiphanius of Salamis, who led the opposition to the religious philosophy of Origen and was instrumental in the condemnation ofOrigen's ideas, also denounced a group of Christian men, whom he called Valesians, for practicing self-castration. 76) We cannot know how many men, like Origen, thought castration a good solution to a practical or spiritual problem. The legends that circulated among early Christians also provide some evidence for the existence of Christian eunuchs. Many of the women who dressed themselves as men (mentioned in chapter 7) introduced themselves as eunuchs, a handy explanation for the higher pitch of their voices, their beardless faces, and the shape of their bodies. The guise does not seem to arouse any curiosity or suspicion. Jerome, who condemned such

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disguises, called such women eunuchinae~ "eunuchettes."77 Some of these holy transvestites were also said to travel with eUnuch companions. At . least in legends, then, eunuchs filled the Christian countryside. But' the pr~sence of eunuchs in these tales goes beyond pretend~d ones. Ill. the apocryphal Acts of John, a young Christian man is so troubled by lust that he cuts offhis genitals with a siclde and throws them at the doorstep' of the woman with whom he is obsessed (in the legend, the apostle John condemned the man for his deed).78 The use of a siclde recalls the pUblic self-castrations of thegalli-, as does the flinging of the amputated genitals before a woman's house. The similarity between these Christian legends and the myths of the galli may not be coincidental. One of the first scholars to write about the female transvestite saints, in fact, believed them all to be mere retellings of legends associated with the Mother of the Gods recast as pious Christian stories. Such reformulations explained the frequent association of these women with prostitution, transvestism, and eunuch companions. (Pelagia, for example, abandons her life as a prostitute for a life as a "holy eunuch"; Domna is converted by her eunuch slave 1ndes, and after she adopts male dress, they begin lives of asceticism together). Even the names of the transvestite saints were epithets given to the goddess: Pelagia and Marlp.a (of the sea), Anthusa (the flowery one), Porphyria (the purple one), even Matrona (motherly)?9 Most scholars have rejected this interpretation, but the parallels are worth noting and might have provided mental connections between the religion of the Mother of the Gods and Christian gender ambiguity, if nothing else. (I might add, at' this point, the late ancient association of the god Bacchus with the goddess Cybele-for example, their shrines were placed together in the same temple at Rome in the second century C.E. - as a possible reason why the name Bacchus was given to the transvestite soldier-martyr in the legend discussed at the end of chapter 7: it linked Christian legend, at least in the mind, with the transvestism of the galli. 80) We can do nothing more than speculate about a connection between Christian ideology and the cult of the Mother of the Gods, of course, but there are certain striking parallels. Both Attis and Jesus died and were restored to life, events commemorated in springtime rites of mourning and rejoicing. Contemporaries may themselves have recognized similarities between the two divine figures. Hippolytus claimed that a heretical sect of Christians called the N aasseni worshipped Attis alongside Christ and even used Paul's condemnation of the practices of the eunuch cult in his Letter to the Romans as a veiled command. 81 Augustine said that a priest of Attis had referred to himself as a "Christian in a Phrygian cap:' refer-

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ring to the unusual headpiece worn by Attis in pagan images but also .. making the connection between the two gods. 82 (There were also grow-. ing resemblan~es in late antiquity between Mary, declared to be the ... :. mother of God [materdeiJ" and the pagan Mother of the Gods [mater d~umJ in m~re than name alone; perhaps not coincidentally, the Basilica of Sapta Maria Maggiore. in Rome was built over the site of a temple to Cybele.)83 Even if there is no truth to the claim of pagan influence on Christian ideology, the resemblances between the two religions reveal shared concerns about the purpose and goal of human existence. It reminds us that in both religions, castration carried a deeper meaning than simply the avoidance of sin. We cannot know the minds of men who "made themselves eunuchs for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven:' except what we can reconstruct from the counterarguments of their opponents. In some Christian circles, self-castration may have expressed a belief in the ultimate human restoration to original existence as angels, a return from multiplicity in male and female to unity in androgyny. In other Christian circles, self-castration may have been seen as the return to sexual innocence such as existed before the fall of Adam and Eve and thus to deeper intimacy with God. It is also possible that Christian self-made eunuchs saw in their actions a means to realize the gender and social ambiguity of earliest Christianity (as we will see, their opponents accused them of renouncing their masculinity). As eunuchs, they were able to embody not only the "no more male or female" in Christ, but also- because most ancient eunuchs were slaves, and since circumcision was precluded for a man without genitals-they also embodied "no more slave or free" and "no more Jew or Greek?' Genital mutilation as a religious rite was not unfamiliar to men of the eastern Mediterranean: Jews, Egyptians, and Syrians all practiced male circumcision. Castration merely took the practice one step farther. (Roman judicial punishments also regularly used bodily mutilation, so it was not that unusual a concept. 84) The strength of the religious meanings behind castration may have given to Christian eunuchs a spiritual authority that we can only begin to imagine. In an age that idealized the willingness to shed one's own blood for the salce of religion in the glorification of the martyrs, self-castration may not have seemed either too strange or too demanding (and recall the linlc theorized by Prudentius between self-castration and martyrdom). Moreover, in the same way that martyrdom was admired by Christians because it showed a courage greater than most were capable of and lent to those willing to suffer it a charismatic authority unequalled by others, men willing to castrate themselves might have been respected and obeyed

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precisely because their behavior was atypical. They may well have been among those men granted a spiritual status as holy "outsiders" who played a key role as patrons of local communities (a position not. that much different from that played by thegalli). 85 The many li.agiographical. stories of holy eunuchs from late antiquity, some said to have been castrated by angels sent from God (and many of them remembered as mar- . tyrs), are one indication of just how attractive and powerful the image of the holy eunuch was. 86 There are echoes of some of these ideas in the words of the orthodox Church fathers of the West. They also admired the dedication to selfsacrifice that inspired the eunuchs and advocated the same goal of sexual renunciation. The ideal of the Christian euImch did appeal to them. Physical castration encouraged the genderless ideal, however, and challenged the Christian men who desired to preserve their authority and privilege as men, and so they could not support it. Moreover, they belonged to the Roman cultural tradition that despised eunuchs as unmanly men, and even if they might admire the courage of conviction behind Christian self-castration, we cannot imagine (and we must presume that neither could they) that their followers would have accepted the eunuch ideal. 87 Neither, we must also presume, were the orthodox Church fathers as individuals prepared to accept the idea that they were required physically to "castrate themselves for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven:' Christian self-castration was a dangerous practice, because it threatened the eventual success of Christianity among the Roman aristocracy, and it had to be eliminated, even if it had the authority of Jesus behind it .. The advocates of self-castration were proselytizing in the West, it seems clear from the frequency and directness of rebuttals to the idea. The challenge the orthodox Church fathers faced was to spiritualize the exhortation of Jesus that his followers malce themselves eunuchs, and to eliminate the practice of castration, and still claim to be true to the Christian message. They already had an excellent precedent for such a metaphorization in the elimination of the practice of circumcision. Paul and his Christian followers had rejected the notion that circumcision was binding on Christian men, or at least on gentile converts to Christianity, despite its divine commandment in the Hebrew Bible. Instead, Paul had argued that circumcision was an interior metaphor for the "cutting away" of sin. Using the same exegetical tool (and perhaps also borrowing from the comparison between circumcision and castration in Roman law), the orthodox Church fathers of late antiquity advocated that men undergo an interior and spiritual castration-but only an interior and spiritual castration. 88

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Tertullian was the earliest of the Latin Church fathers and, as in other ways,.provided the framework for later discussions about Christian eu. nuchs, Tertullian was probably led to explain the nature ao.d purpose of· . : :~hriscian.self-castration because of the numbers and openness of the pa: gahgalli at Carthage.( as fellow North Mricans Firmicus Maternus and AugUstine of Hippo late~ attested). His earliest remarks linked castration to marital renunciation, as the themes were linked in· the Gospel of . Matthew, but he did not specify whether this castration should be understood metaphorically or literally.89 More interesting and more detailed were the remarks Tertullian made on castration in his treatise on women's clothing (De cultu ftminarum). We have already seen in chapter 7 how he was distracted there into an aside on men's unmanly concern for their appearance and how it made virtual women of them. From there, he turned to the subject of Christian castration. Following a paraphrase of Paul's comments discouraging marriage, he added: ''Are there not many, withal, who so do, and seal themselves up to eunuchhood for the salce of the kingdom of God, spontaneously relinquishing a pleasure so honorable and as we know permitted?"90 Curious that one type of unmanliness, concern for appearance, should malce him think of another type, castration. Curious also the word "spontaneously" (sponte), oddly used in this passage, implying a sudden thought to renounce sex rather than a wellplanned decision, unless that castration was meant literally, in which case the spontaneous nature of the act was similar to the actual self-castration of the galli on the Day of Blood, when they acted out of the religious enthusiasm of the moment. Tertullian continued this line of thought. "We are trained by God for the purpose of chastising, and so to say emasculating the world. We are the circumcision-spiritual and carnal-of all things; for both in the spirit and in the flesh we circumcise worldly principles."91 His point seems to have been (and he has strayed a long way from a discussion of women's clothing) that eunuchs symbolized ridding oneself of the flesh in the same way that Christians were to repudiate worldly things, as a preparation for their heavenly reward. Tertullian's remarks demonstrate how precarious an exegetical symbol the eunuch could be. His language seems to imply that Christian men must rid themselves of masculine status and identity in their "emasculation of the world;' a thought in keeping with his idea that sexual difference would be erased in the world-to-come. The image of the eunuch also fit with his larger rhetorical strategy, since in apologetic works directed at pagans he generally argued the manliness of Christians, such as the soldier of Christ image, but in works directed at fellow Christians he admitted the gender ambiguity in Christian ideology. Again, finally, he

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implied that this castration happened both "in the spirit and in the flesh;' leaving open the possibility of physical self-castration. In his later, Montanist writings, TertuUian repeated some of the uses. of the themes already present in his earlier writings. Christiansmust"~a~­ trate" themselves from the traditional Roman liberties of repeated marriage. 92 In his work on the resurrection of the dead, he wonqered ''What· purpose can be served by loins, conscious of seminal secretions, and all the other organs of generation in the two sexes;' after the glorification bf the body in the life-to-come. 93 Tertullian seemed at this point willing to talce his ideas about eunuchs even farther. Jesus himself, he insisted, was "more perfect on this account as well as on others, that He was more entirely pure - and He stands before you, ifyou are willing to copy Him, as a voluntary eunuch in the flesh."94 Christ in fact "opens the kingdoms of the heavens to eunuchs, as being Himself, withal, a eunuch."95 What did it mean for Tertullian to refer to Jesus as a eunuch, and a eunuch "in the flesh;' and a model because ofit? Tertullian was obviously arguing thatJesus spoke about himself when he spoke about "those who castrate themselves for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven;' in all of the ambiguity that his words implied. There may be more behind his language. It has been suggested (albeit on slim evidence) that Montanus of Phrygia, the founder of the Montanist Christlan movement, was a convert from worship of the goddess Cybele also based in Phrygia, and himself a eunuch and formergallus. 96 If this is true, and if (as has also been suggested) he incorporated elements of his former belief system into his Christian movement, the image of Jesus as a eunuch may have been part of the Montanist theology. The prophecies of the Montanists, it has been noted, might also be echoes of the prophetic utterances of the priests of Cybele (or at least, both might have appealed to the same expectations of followers). Still, Tertullian's attitude toward Christian castration was decidedly mixed. He mocked his theological rival, Marcion, as no better than a eunuch in his total ban on sex. "Is any beaver more self-castrating;' he asked (alluding to an ancient myth that a beaver will chew off its own testicles and spit them at a pursuing enemy), "than this man who has abolished marriage?"97 He ridiculed Marcion's admiration for physical eunuchs, asking "can anyone indeed be called abstinent when deprived of that which he is called to abstain from?"98 Such a question casts real doubt on whether his earlier ambiguous statements did support physical castration, but he might also have changed his mind on this subject as on others. Even in his later writings, Tertullian maintained a certain ambiguity on the subject of castration. According to Mosaic law, he argued, the sex-

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ual continence of "eunuchs and barren persons used to be regarded as ig. . nominious;' while in the Christian era he rejoiced that they "not only have lost ignominy, but have even deserved grace, being invited into the . : : kingd~nl of heavens."99 He both questioned the effectiveness of cas. 'tration for removing'sexual desire but also praised those persons, "both of men arid' women, whom nature has made sterile, with a structure which cannot procreate;' 'seeing the latter as a foretaste of the absence of sexual desire in Heaven. loo (The last statement was made in the same treatise in which he ridiculed Marcion as a eunuch.) Although Tertullian's opinions about castration were his own, and his association with the Montanists undermined the authority of his opinions for later Latin Church fathers (who never, for example, referred to Jesus as a eunuch), the ambiguous attitude toward castration was present in all of their writings. To explain their double-mindedness, we must recall the double heritage of Roman men who became Christians. As Christians, they were obliged to hold eunuchs in high regard, according to the saying of Jesus. They might see the self-made eunuch as an appropriate symbol for the individual's sacrifice of sexual desires. The social hostility toward eunuchs might also provide an analogy for understanding the opprobrium of the pagans toward Christians, since both were tainted with a certain unmanliness. They might even borrow from contemporary social roles of eunuchs in the imperial households and transpose themselves into a divine household as cherished servants and powerful associates of God. But as men of the Roman aristocracy, they despised eunuchs. They viewed eunuchs as an intermediate sex inhabiting a no man's land between the sexes. They also refused to admit the abdication of masculine and elite status that eunuchs experienced and resented the illegitimate nature of the status and authority that powerful eunuchs of their own day exercised. The challenge was to formulate a type of eunuch who would remain true to Jesus' exhortation but who would avoid the trap of Roman unmanliness. The Latin Church fathers wrote often about eunuchs for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven. They might have felt compelled to do so by the visible presence of eunuchs all around them in the households of the wealthy and perhaps also by the insistence of their ideological need to affirm Christian manliness. As a body, they interpreted the Biblical passages that might support self-castration in a metaphorical manner, divorcing them from the reality of castration. They both affirmed the truth of those passages and denied the consequences of those passages. Accordingly, they distinguished between unmanly eunuchs who castrated their bodies and manly eunuchs who castrated their spirits but left their

the

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bodies intact. Depending on the rhetorical needs 'of the moment, they offered a host of alternative meanings for the "eUnuchs who have made . th~mselves that way for the salce of the kingdom ofHeaven." Spiri~al' e:tInuchs might be virgins, continent persons, men or women in sexless'max-: riages, or widows. lOl The variety of interpretations, all related to sexual renunciation, and the willingness of the Church fathers .to refer to' women as well as to men as spiritual eunuchs, merely highlights the real exegetical imperative behind the statements: eunuch must mean ariything but a castrated man. (We must assume that the extension of the image of castration to women, according them an identity as eunuchs, was a much less dangerous gender ambiguity than the gender ambiguity of physically castrated men.) According to such fluid definitions, being a eunuch could function as shorthand for anything related to a good Christian life. "When you ... made yourself a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven's salce:' Jerome wrote to one man, ''what else did you seek to achieve than the perfect life?"I02 Indeed, Jerome implied that one would not receive the reward ofHeaven unless one made oneself a eunuch for its salce. I03 The assimilation of the symbol of the eunuch to Christian perfection, of course, linked it paradoxically to Christian manliness. The image of a spiritual eunuch was well suited for expressing the complexity of Christian masculinity, the belief that a man might :find true manliness in apparent unmanliness. Men should also find the true perfection of spiritual castration in avoiding physical castration, the orthodox Church fathers concluded. The importance of asserting Christian manliness in this whole debate about castration can be seen in patristic comments against castration. Ambrose of Milan wrote at length on the subject, oddly enough in a treatise on Christian widowhood, but drawn perhaps by the linlc with marriage and his discussion in the preceding section on the difference between things divinely commanded and things only recommended. He said: And there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves ... [but] bywill and not by necessity, and therefore great is the grace of continence in them, because it is the will, not incapacity, which makes a man continent. For it is seemly to preserve the gift of divine working whole .... The case is not the same of those who use a knife on themselves, and I touch upon this point advisedly, for there are some who look upon it as a state of virtue [locus virtutis] to restrain guilt with a knife . . . but then consider whether this tends not rather to a declaration of wealmess than to a reputation for strength .... No one, then, ought, as many suppose [utplerique arbitran-

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tur], to mutilate himself, but rather gain the victory: for the Church gath.ersin those who conquer, not those who are defeated.... For why should the. means of gaining a crown and of the practice of virtue [usus virtutis] be . lost· toa who is. born to honor, equipped for victory? How can he .. through coUrage of soul. castrate himself? 104

man

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Note Ambrose's comment, "as many suppose;' a recognition that physi. cal self-castration'. was still practiced and admired in the Christian churches at the end of the fourth century. Ambrose responded by claiming for men who did not castrate themselves all of the traditional symbols of masculine success: strength, victory, honor, and courage. Ambrose's point was not simply that real eunuchs were unmanly and wealc but that metaphorical eunuchs were manly and brave fighters. Jerome implied the same, referring to metaphorical eunuchs for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven as real men and as soldiers of Christ. 105 The idea of the eunuch who does not castrate himself also required the patristic writers to undermine other Biblical passages that supported Christian self-castration. (In their comments, we can perhaps hear the echoes of exegetical arguments in favor of self-castration.) John Cassian, the leader of an ascetical group of men whom we will meet again in the next section of this chapter, argued against a literal interpretation to Jesus' command to cut off those parts of the body that cause us to sin. "The blessed Apostle is not forcing us by a cruel command to cut off our hands or our feet or our genitals;' he wrote; "He desires, rather, that the body of sin, which indeed consists in members, be destroyed as quicldy as poss~ble by a zeal for perfect holiness?'l06 Salvian of Marseilles also interpreted the same saying to mean "not that any man should deprive himself of his limbs;' but that we should be ready to cut off"certain intimacies of domestic relationships" for the salce of our salvation. l07 Valerian argued that "to pluck out one's eye is this: to correct one's vices, to extinguish the desires of the flesh, and to check lasciviousness of life by pursuing disciplinary control?'l08 Elsewhere, Valerian suggested that to castrate oneself was to violate God, because it was "to maim a human body, which He made to His own image and raised to a dignity which appears like His own."109 (For Valerian, the image of God apparently included male genitalia.) Valerian made these points in homilies intended to be given in front of congregations so that they would not be misled in their understanding of these words. This allegorical understanding of Christian Scripture, ironically of the same sort that Origen had championed, permitted the distancing of Christian leaders from the physical mutilations that such passages at first glance encouraged.

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Orthodox writers were also obliged to.undermine the apparent use of certain Biblical men as role models for Christian self-castration. These individuals included John the Baptist and the prophet Elijah who .wer.e both said to have "girded their loins" in the Biblical accounts of.their. lives. Advocates of Christian self-castration apparently used them as examples of holy eunuchs, possibly by understanding the "girding of the . loins" as a reference to one method of castration, the tying up of the scrotum. The comments of the orthodox writers on these individuals seem unusual, certainly, unless we interpret them as their response to an alternative viewpoint now lost. Jerome, for example, felt obliged to defend the manliness of the men who had girded their loins in the Bible. He wrote: "With your loins girt;' Scripture says, and to the apostles Christ gives the command: "Let your loins be.girt about and your lamps burning." John [the Baptist], too, wears a leather girdle about his loins; and there was nothing soft or effeminate [mollis atque muliebris] in Elijah either, but every bit ofhim was hard and virile (he certainly was a hairy man); he, too, is described as having worn a girdle ofleather about his loinsYo

Elijah's hairiness, it must be presumed, was proof enough that he was no eunuch. When Ambrose recounted Elijah's flight from the wicked queen Jezebel, he was also quick: to defend the prophet's courage and manliness: "To be sure, it was not a woman that such a great prophet was fleeing:' Ambrose wrote, "and it was not death that he feared." Rather, Ambrose concluded, "he was fleeing worldly enticement and the contagion of filthy conduct and the impious acts of an unholy and sinful generation."lll (Ambrose had identified himself as Elijah to the empress Justina's Jezebel, so it was particularly urgent that he defend Elijah's manliness.) Even in this distancing from physical self-castration, there was real ambivalence in the writings of the orthodox Church fathers. Jerome, while discounting the interpretation of "girding one's loins:' nonetheless felt that "in his assaults on men ... all the Devil's strength is in the loins."1l2 (That Jerome should have used virtus for "strength" in this statement merely compounds this ambivalence, since it could also be understood as "the Devil's manliness.") Positive images of Biblical eunuchs also undermined their absolute condemnation. Christian writers appropriated the image of the Ethiopian eunuch as an Everyman figure, for example, and often used the story as the springboard for discussions of baptism. 1l3 Jerome suggested that he and his friends travel to the fountain where Philip was supposed to have baptized the eunuch, which might mean that

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it was something of a tourist stop in late antiquity.114 Jerome, in writing . _of the Biblical incident, referred to "the holy eunuch:' then corrected himseH: "or rather the man, since that is what scripture calls. him." 115 Else: :'Yhere, he wrote that the Ethiopian eunuch deserved the name of man be: cause of the "-vigor of his. faith?'116 The same ambivalence can be seen in Augu~tine's exegesis on Eiblical passages rehiting to castratiop. Referring to Paul's cursing of the advocates of circumcision, Augustine offered the _opinion that Paul was in fact "wishing them well in a most elegant and indirect way:' because he was exhorting them to become "eunuchs for the salce. of the kingdom of Heaven?'117 Peter Chrysologus mentioned the conversion of Paul in a sermon and claimed oddly that "a eunuch, one might say, was born on that road, in that he castrated human foolishness for the service of humanity." Chrysologus continued, again differentiating actual from metaphorical castration. "As unwilling chastity is called to the court of the king" in the figure of physical eunuchs in imperial service, he noted, so too is called "voluntary and vowed chastity to the glory of the heavenly court" in spiritual eunuchs, "and is advanced to the presence of the eternal king and transfers obedience to him?'l1S The ambivalence that all of these writers exhibited, I believe, stems from the fact that they wholeheartedly supported the goal of castration-complete and permanent sexual renunciation-while they denounced the means to that end, because it belied the manliness of Christian men. So they repeated the image again and again and lent authority to it by doing so, but always clarified that it was a metaphorical one. The leaders of the Western churches also discounted the stories that were circulating in the Eastern churches of holy eunuchs castrated by angels. There is only one similar story of a holy eunuch that can be found in the writings of a Western author, that of the Egyptian monlc Serenus as told by John Cassian (and, significantly, told about a man of the East). Cassian wrote: There came to him an angel in a vision of the night. He seemed to open his belly, pull out a kind of fiery tumor from his bowels, cast it away, and restore all his entrails to their original place. "Behold:' he said, "the impulses of your flesh have been cut out, and you should lmow that today you have obtained that perpetual purity of body which you have faithfully sought."1l9

Cassian, who had spent time with monks in Egypt, had obviously heard the legend in the East. But he seemed distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of circulating it among his Western readers: "Let it suffice to say briefly:' he wrote, "that this came from the grace of God, which was be-

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stowed on the man in question in a remarkable way.',120 Cassian also made . it clear that what was praiseworthy about Serenus's behavior was that he . had waited for God to act. He had not attempted to 'perform th~ deed :. hllnself, "believing that God could far more easily uproot the urges .of¢'e flesh that human skill is unable to draw out either by potions or medicines . or surgical instruments?'121 In the hands of Cassian, then, a ca~tration leg-· end became a manifesto against self-castration, and Serenus's saintly perfection was revealed not in his physical attributes but in his interior disposition. (The priority of the interior over the exterior was typical of Cassian's thought. 122) Part of the orthodox response to Christian castration was also to emphasize the grotesque and ridiculous nature of self-castration among the galli in order to malce it seem less of a holy action. It is no coincidence that Christian writers are our most detailed late ancient sources for the cult of· the Mother of the Gods and her eunuch priests. The pointed comments made by Augustine of Hippo that no one should think they were worshipping a deity through self-mutilation or "that they perform any holy action through the ministry of such persons" may have been as much directed at fellow Christians as at pagans. 123 The language recalls Augustine's criticism of the Valesian Christians who advocated self-castration, as "thinking. that they ought to serve God in this way.''l24 When Firmicus Maternus as'ked his contemporaries to "ponder too what sort of divinity it is which finds it such a delight to sojourn in an impure body;' he may well have intended advocates of Christian castration to ponder it as ~uch as pagan priests. 125 "When the troop of you draws near the judgment seat of God;' he continued, "you will bring with you nothing that the God who created you can recognize. Reject this great and calamitous error, and abandon at last the inclinations of a profane heart. Do not take your body which God created and condemn it by the wicked law of the Devil:'126 Minucius Felix also exclaimed: "He whose shameful parts are cut off, how greatly does he wrong God in seeking to propitiate Him in this manner! Since if God wished for eunuchs, He could bring them as such into existence, and would not malce them so afterwards:' He continued, again alluding to the extent of the practice: "The very multitude of those who err affords to each of them mutual patronage;' and "the defense of the general madness is the multitude of the mad people:H27 In sum, the leaders of the Western Christian churches rejected physical castration because of its many connotations of unmanliness. The challenge for writers of the patristic period was both to remain true to what they believed to be the teaching of Jesus, that Christian men must malce themselves eunuchs, and their own desire to retain a masculine identity.

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The challenge was to construct a manly eunuch. The separation of the , , ideal of castration from its reality provided the key for the reconciliation of these seeming opposites. The creation of a distinct group of manly eu" : : p.uchs~ separ;:tted from 'the rest of men by a lifestyle of manly perfection, , 'took this symbolism one step further. M'ONKS AS MANLY EUNUCHS

Christian writers willingly identified the holiest of Christian men as spiritual eunuchs, as can best be seen in discussions of the evolving institutions of male monasticism in the Western Roman Empire in late antiquity. This new ascetic lifestyle appeared in the West in the second half of the fourth century, another import from the East, just at the time when the rhetoric of the new Christian masculinity was becoming established. Its supporters argued that it was a representation of the ideal Christian life and a model of perfection. But the monle also embodied many of the central issues of late ancient masculinity also central to the lives of eunuchs. Monasticism arrived relatively late to the western Mediterranean, but the combination ofwithdrawal from the responsibilities of the world and the discipline of the body that the monastic movement offered to men found its admirers. Latin-speaking Christians began to visit the desert communities of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria in the last decades of the fourth century. Some stayed and founded their own communities, like Jerome did at Bethlehem, after he left Rome in 385; By the end of the fourth century and into the early fifth century, however, Latin-spealcing monastic communities were established throughout the western Mediterranean (islands and forests being the closest isolation comparable to the deserts in the East, although many groups simply lived on country estates belonging to their founders). Augustine participated in an early ascetic corrununity near Milan in northern Italy, then another in North Mrica at Thagaste, before becoming bishop of Hippo in 391. John Cassian, who had spent time in several Egyptian communities, set up a community based on the same pattern in the early :fifth century at Urins, an island near Marseilles. 128 Jerome, Augustine, and John Cassian all wrote to encourage the monastic ideal among Roman men. They did so by appealing to the very issues that most attracted the male aristocracy in late antiquity: renunciation of war, public office, sexual relations, and family life. There was a certain gender ambiguity in the abandonment of all of the things that made the Roman male a man, in living a life that embodied

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the paradox of Christian masculinity. Advocates of the monastic life ad- . mitted obliquely that monks had relinquished part of their masculine . identity in abdicating their masculine social role. "Go then and so~ve in yoUr monastery, free from all stain of defilement:' Jerome .urged: we monle Rusticus, "that you may come forth to Chr.ist's altar as a virgin steps from her bower."129 The monle was the bride of Christ, in other words, se- . cluded and virginal. A monle was the contemplative Mary to her active sister Martha, John Cassian argued, attributing the sentiment, as he did ill of his assertions, to a holy Egyptian monle (and since this Mary was also identified as Mary Magdalene, implicitly linlcing the idea again to the bride of Christ). 130 The monle's willingness to be secluded from public life and to renounce marital authority even demonstrated his humility, because it also implied his acceptance of a feminine status. The male ascetic could be compared to a woman, just as the female ascetic could be compared to a man. Both were a sign that in Christ there was no more male or female:' and a representation of the genderless ideal of earliest Christianity. But the advocates of monasticism insisted that the gender ambiguity of monks should not be pushed too far. Augustine's words to a group of monles made their gender identity a point of discussion, because they seem to have insisted on visible markers of their genderless status. He mocked the '~anliness of monles who refused to cut their hair, in defiance of the Pauline precept that for a man to have long hair was a disgrace. He wrote: cC

How lamentably ridiculous is that other argument, jfit can be called such, which they have brought forward in defense of their long hair. They say that the Apostle forbade men to wear their hair long, but, they argue, those who have castrated themselves for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven are no longer men [iam non suntviriJ. 0 astonishing madness! ... They have heard, or at least have read, what was written: "For all you who have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor freeman, there is neither male nor female." Yet they do not know that this was said according to the concupiscence of carnal sex, because in the interior man, where we are renewed in the newness of our minds, there is no sex of this sort. Therefore, let them not deny that holy people are men because they do nothing of a sexual nature. 131

We should not miss the fact that Augustine was opposing what was apparentlya developed exegetical tradition. He complained that these longhaired monks also compared themselves to the men called N azirites among the ancient Hebrews, men like Samson, who did not cut their hair

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in accordance with vows talcen to God. They even countered the Pauline .. argument that long hair ·was a disgrace to men. "'We assume this dis- . grace;. they say, 'because of our sins;"132 Augustine implied that these . : :mbnlcs' wore .their hair. long in order to symbolize their renunciation of : masculine identity, living.out"the genderless ideal as eunuchs for the salce of the. kingdom ofHeav~n. (There is also likely an element of class prejudice in Augustine?s criticism, since men of the Roman aristocracy prided . themselves on their appearance; Augustine was trying to get these monles to act more like respectable persons) .133 The gender ambiguity of monks is key to understanding their symbolic role in late ancient society, because the identities of monlcs are intertwined with the identities of eunuchs. It is entirely possible that some of the earliest monIes in the East were self-made eunuchs; they were known for their feats of asceticism and their disregard for the body. The lifestyle of the earliest monlcs shared real similarities with that of thegalli in their renunciation of sex and status, in their itinerancy, and in their spiritual power. Even while Christian leaders vociferously condemned castration, then, they encouraged men to become monks and to become part of a social group with an identity very much like that of eunuchs. In part 1, I argued that physical eunuchs acted as men in both public and private life but were resented for doing so because they were not really men, at least according to the standards of the male aristocracy. MonIcs, in contrast, refused to act as men. But they did so not because they were beneath these roles and responsibilities, they insisted, but because they were above them. They symbolized a radical assumption of a new masculine identity by an abdication from that identity. They were manly eunuchs. The manliness of monIcs is apparent first of all in their relationship to the military identity of Roman men. "When you forsook military service and made yourself a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven's salce;' Jerome wrote to a reluctant monlc named Heliodorus, who had abandoned a career as a soldier for the ascetic life but then hesitated to talce the final step, ''what else did you seek to achieve than the perfect life?"134 Jerome continued by alluding to the rigors of the monastic life, rigors that had always typified the vita militaris: Are you frightened by the thought of toil? No athlete gains his crown without sweat. Are you thinking about food? Faith feels not hunger. Do you dread bruising your limbs worn away with fasting on the bare ground? The Lord lies by your side. Is your rough head bristling with uncombed hair? Your head is Christ. Does the infinite vastness of the desert seem terrible? In spirit you may always stroll in paradise .... Is your skin

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rough and scurfy without baths? He who ?as once washed in Christ needs not to wash again. 135

Jerome accused Heliodorus of unmanly cowardice ill his rduciance, . something quite unbecoming in a soldier. "What business have you, pampered soldier, in your father's house?" he thundered. "Where now are the rampart, the trench, and the winter under canvas? Lo, the trumpet sounds from heaven! Lo, our general fully armed comes forth arriid the clouds to subdue the world!"136 Ironically, Jerome was using this military language to inspire Heliodorus to end his career as a soldier and to begin a better career. Writers oflate antiquity had considered it problematic for eunuchs to engage in warfare because they were no longer men; Christian writers condemned military activity on the part of monks but for a very different reason: because they were more than men. Leo the Great denounced the monle "who abandons his state and throws himself into military service" because he was giving up "better thingS?'137 Desertion from the monastic life, like desertion from the military life, would not be permitted. But monles were obliged to refrain from warfare not because they were unsuited to it but because it was unsuitable for them. At the same time, monks fought in the front lines of the spiritual war against the J;>evil and against sin. John Cassian returned again and again to this theme. Each profession has its hardships, he said, and monles must endure bodily deprivation the way that soldiers must endure war. 13B Temptations are like skirmishes that prepare the monle for major b~ttles against evil. 139 Monles, like soldiers, must both fight with the right hand and shield themselves with the left hand.140 Monles were ideal spiritual soldiers exactly because of their refusal to participate in war, and by the fifth century the title of "soldier of Christ" was most often reserved to monles. 141 An excellent example of the monastic soldier of Christ was Martin of Tours , as presented by Sulpicius Severus. Only by abandoning a military career did Martin find the real strength to conquer all kinds of demons and natural forces; as a soldier of Christ he was even unable to be wounded.142 (Martin was made bishop of Tours and was no ordinary monle, but Sulpicius took great pains to document how he continued to live the monastic ideal even after his consecration as bishop .. Indeed, Sulpicius noted, Martin was superior to most bishops because his monastic discipline helped him to resist imperial honors. 143 ) The vita militaris that Sulpicius claimed for monles, nonetheless, also returns us to the ambiguous manliness of monles. The military metaphor was used to justify the prohibition against monks' association with wornen. "No women should enter into the camp of men," Martin is sup-

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posed to have said, relying on his experience as a soldier; "an army be.. comes contemptible if its cohorts of men are mingled with a horde of wornen?'l44 Even an innocent visit to one's mother col,l1.d be a trap, . . Jerome warn.ect one monk, because he might catch sight of her slave '. girls, and "the ba,ser their soCial condition, the easier they are brought dowu?'l45 The eXhortations were intended to provide a manly image of self-discipline for monks: But the reluctance of the saintliest of monks to . come into the pres~nce of women also points to a underlying contradiction in the monastic life. Having castrated themselves for the salce of the kingdom ofHeaven, what danger should women have been to them? But just as Romans wondered whether eunuchs could associate closely with women without sexual entanglements, they wondered whether monks could. The company of women should have been unproblematic to men who had renounced sex, but in refusing to admit women into the presence of monks and in avoiding the temptations that would follow, Martin and Jerome were not only being practical. They were also identifYing monlcs as manly eunuchs, men who might be permitted to socialize freely with women because they were eunuchs but chose to avoid them because of their manly sense of restraint. In public life, monlcs also represented the new ideal man. Advocates of monasticism often recorded how men of the highest nobility abandoned their wealth and honors to lead ascetic lives. Sulpicius Severns said of the monlcs who attached themselves to Martin: Noone there possessed anything of his own, everything was shared.... Noone drank any wine unless illness forced him to do so. Most of them were dressed in camel-skin garments: they considered the wearing of any softer material to be reprehensible. This is all the more remarkable since many of them were said to be noblemen who had been brought up in a very different way but had voluntarily adopted this life of humility and endurance. 146

By abandoning the ostentation and ambition of their peers, Sulpicius implied, these men found true riches and unending fame. Jerome used the occasion of his hagiographical account of the life of Paul of Thebes to ask pointed questions of his contemporaries, Christian men who refused to accept the ascetic ideal: I would lilce to ask those who own so much land that they do not know it all, those who cover their homes in marble, those who thread the wealth of whole estates on one string, "What did this old man ever lack, nalced as he was? You drink from jeweled cups but he was satisfied with the cupped

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hands that nature had given him. You weave gold into your tunics but he did not even have the shabbiest garment belonging to your slave. But then, paradise lies open to him, poor as he was, while hell will welcome you in . . your golden clothes. He was clothed with Christ despite his nalcecm;ess::" you who are dressed in sillcs have lost the garment of Christ. 147

Jerome's comments are a reminder to us that not all men accepted the standards set by advocates of monasticism. Indeed, the advocates had to work hard to appeal to men. When compared with "the fruitless and criminal sadness of this world:' John Cassian argued that what the monle. gained what would be the envy of any Roman nobleman. He suggested: Whoever has rejected one house for the sake of Christ's love will possess innumerable dwellings as his own in monasteries everywhere in the world, and they will be his own houses as ifby right. Thus he will also be endowed with manifold property in houses and fields. For how will a person not receive a hundredfold and, if it is permitted to add something to our Lord's words, more than a hundredfold, if he relinquishes the unfaithful and forced service of ten or twenty servants to be supported by the voluntary attention of as many persons who are free and noble?148

The Roman aristocrat who became a monle gained more than he lost, advocates of monasticism assured men, on a material as well as spiritual plane. Monles also gained a new freedom. Unlike the men of the world,_ who were required to submit themselves in an unmanly fashion to the authority of superiors, the obedience that men as monles owed to the abbot as leader of the monastic community was liberating. At least, advocates of the monastic life made the claim that it was. Jerome told a monle that he should fear his abbot "as ifhe were a master:' and declared obedience "the highest and only virtue" for monle.s. 149 Nonetheless, monastic life was not generally described in unmanly servile metaphors. Cassian suggested that "he who submits his own will to his brother's will acts the stronger part than he who is more obstinate in defending and holding on to his own opinions."lSO When Augustine described his decision to talee up the ascetic life and thus to abandon his incipient political career, he made it clear that he considered his former secular life and ambitions as servitude. "1 was held fast:' he wrote, "not in fetters clamped upon me by another, but by my own will, which had the strength of iron chainS?'lSl When he left for the country estate at Cassiciacum where he established an ascetic community, he wrote of "my release from the profession of rhetoric?'lS2 The submission to authority that Roman men resented as unmanly could

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be cut short by the freedom of entrance into a monastery. Even the cleri.. cal life did not offer the same degree of withdrawal from the world as did the monastic life . .As eunuchs for the sale.e of the kingdom of Heaven, who had cut them.' selves off from wealth and status, the monle. avoided the fatc of physical eunu~hs, who were felt to crave power and possessions inordinately, and whose elevation to honors and political office was criticized. The differ. ence was the monle.?s free relinquishment of masculine authority. ''N ecessity male.es another man a eunuch;' Jerome declared, "my will [voluntas] male.es me one:'153 Unlike the emperor's eunuchs, the monle was no servile outsider resented as unworthy of influence and power but a man of nobility who, in freely relinquishing his social ranle. and assuming a servile ranle, deserved then to be reinstated with honors and privileges. By the begirming of the fifth century, monles became more and more desirable for positions of leadership in the Western churches, invited out of their monasteries to be consecrated as bishops, even if they usually demonstrated an appropriate humility in only reluctantly receiving such offices. 154 The monastic eunuch enjoyed a public authority and masculine status that that the imperial eunuch could not. The flight from marriage and the family also offered monles an opportunity to be manly eunuchs. Iflate ancient writers had condemned physical castration in part because eunuchs were unable to participate as men in family life, the same abdication from familial responsibilities was accounted an advantage to monles. Jerome, for example, criticized the reluctant monle Heliodorus for too great an attachment to his family of birth. "Though your little nephew hang on your neck;' he insisted, "though your mother with disheveled hair and torn raiment show you the breasts that gave you suck, though your father fling himself upon the threshold, trample your father underfoot and go your way, fly with tearless eyes to the standard of the Cross:' Jerome continued at length on this theme. "Your widowed sister clings to you today with loving arms, the house-slaves, in whose company you grew to manhood, cry 'To what master are you leaving us ?'" Jerome hoped to move his readers with the poignancy of these images. "Perhaps your foster mother with sagging breasts and wrinlded face may remind you of your old lullaby and sing it once again:' But the depth of familial affection only lent weight to Jerome's conclusion: "The love of Christ and the fear of hell easily breale such bonds as these:'155 John Cassian related the story of an Egyptian monle, Theonas, who had abandoned his wife of five years to enter a monastery. When he returned home to urge her to embrace the monastic life with him, she refused, saying that he would be responsible for her sin-

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ning by deserting her again, but he maintained that his renunciation of the world was necessary and left. Cassian admitted that the story was not" " perhaps the best example for men to follow, saying that "Imyselfhave not: offered my own viewpoint in this matter but have presented afactu31 hls- " tory in simple narrative form;' adding that no Qne could argue witli. the holiness ofTheonas. ls6 The renunciation offamily reinforced the separation of monastic communities from the larger society around them. The monasteries were felt to constitute a new family and an ideal household of brothers under the leadership of a benevolent father. "The superior of the monastery you will ... love as a father;' Jerome counseled the monle Rusticus, and "what precepts he gives you will believe to be wholesome for yoU?'lS7 John Cassian related an appalling tale to this effect, of a father who entered a community of Egyptian monles with his eight-year-old son. In order to teach the man a lesson about renunciation of family, the abbot had the other monks persistendy mistreat the boy in his father's presence. His unfortunate son was "exposed to the blows and slaps of many;' Cassian wrote, "so that his father never saw him without his cheeks marked with the dirty tracks of tears?' The father endured in silence the suffering that the maltreatment of his son caused him, and even willingly attempted to drown the boy when commanded by the abbot, before being prevented from so doing according to plan. When the abbot died, the father succeeded him.ISS The point was clear, if disturbingly made: by ignoring the responsibilities of his physical paternity, the man made himself worthy to be the father of the whole community. If physical eunuchs were believed to feel no love or familial affection, according to hostile rumor, monles openly admitted that they aspired to equal indifference. Finally, the elimination of sexual desire also both obscured and highlighted the differences between monks and eunuchs. Monles like Jerome were most anxious to distinguish themselves from the castrated pagans, because the latter were chaste only because of a "perpetual disability" and not because of deliberate choice. ls9 Nonetheless, the effects of the monastic lifestyle on men's sexual desires can be seen in John Cassian's instructions to monlcs on nocturnal emissions. He wondered whether complete removal of sexual desires could ever be achieved, when even the saintliest of monlcs had either sexual thoughts while awake or nocturnal seminal emissions and sexual dreams while asleep. Cassian acknowledged that "there are occasionally some who, even without any effort of mind, because of either the equilibrium of their bodies or their mature age, are rarely soiled or indeed polluted by the emission of this fiuid?'160 The limited diet that Cassian recommended for monles (mosdy bread and water,

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a diet also shared by thegalli) would have helped to avoid this problem, , , because according to modern studies such a diet caused chrQnic and sometimes even permanent impotence. 161 With careful and constant fast- ' . :ing, Cassian suggested, the individual would become "formed by the pu: dry of chastity itself,' so that when even the natural movernents of the flesh ~ad become dead, he never again suffered that obscene flux."162 But Cassian also felt that a man's body could never be an accurate judge of his , inward character, because it betrayed even his most pious intentions. He pointed to the buildup of urine in the bladder during sleep that caused erections even in eunuchs and in boys far too young to have sexual thoughts, and to nocturnal seminal emissions among even the most pious of adult monks. 163 The presence of sexual desire in a man, even if only in involuntary seminal emissions, did not betray his wealmess but his manliness, Cas sian maintained, since he was being forced to continue the struggle against his own body. He was a soldier of Christ with his loins girded for daily (and nightly) battle. 164 Sexual desire was an internal war in which lust fought against patience for the human soul; in this warfare, the patience of the monlc. was his only defense. 165 It was precisely in the waging of this war, though, that the monlc. proved his manliness. Cassian even questioned the manliness of the few men untroubled by sexual thoughts, offering the opinion that "it is one thing to attain to peace by passive good fortune and another to be worthy of a triumph thanlc.s to one's glorious virtues [virtutes ]:' and that in the case ofmen untroubled by sexual desires, "there is more that is worthy of pity than of praise."166 The manliness of the monlc. was proved in his endless struggle to renew his spiritual castration. Being eunuchs did not require monlc.s to abandon their manliness; it enhanced it, rather, because the constant comparisons between monlc.s and eunuchs also revealed their great differences. Framers of the monastic ideal took up all of the scattered threads of castration and the Christian religion in late antiquity and wove them into a seamless whole. I am not suggesting that all Christian men aspired to be monlc.s; indeed, many Christian men seemed content to remain in the world, despite the exhortation of their leaders to flee from it, and some men even protested the presence of monlc.s in their midst. 167 By the beginning of the fifth century, though, monasticism was the undisputed champion of the new masculine ideal, and even men who did not live up to that ideal had to recognize its symbolic force. Indeed, in bringing together so neatly all of the changes that had affected Roman aristocratic men in late antiquity - their withdrawal from war and political life, and their refusal to marry and engage in sex-men involved in the monastic movement may have helped

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to cement these changes into place. Monasticism created a visible group . that claimed its enthusiasm for and wiilingness· to live up to the ideals newly established for men. Their easy appropriation of the idep.ti~es· . crafted for Christian men in late antiquity-soldiers of Christ~ brides.of.:.. Christ, eunuchs for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven - affirmed their . assumption of the new ideal. In larger terms, the physical.eunuchhad .. symbolically demonstrated the disintegration of the traditional model of masculinity. The monle, in contrast, proved the success of the Christian ideology of masculinity, embracing its paradox of manliness in unmanliness, even if it was a eunuch's embrace.

Conclusion

"Small minds cannot deal adequately with great subjects; if they venture beyond their strength they fail in the attempt; and the greater the theme, the more completely is he overwhelmed who cannot find words to express its magnitude."l Jerome began his consolatory letter to Heliodorus on the death of his nephew N epotian with these words. They are a timely reminder to me and to my readers that a subject as deep and as complex as gender identity can never be fully understood or wholly examined in one book or by one author. I have tried to convince my readers that a new ideology of masculinity was forged in the period betWeen the beginning of the third century and the middle of the fifth century of the common era. That new masculinity required a reinterpretation of Roman traditions of gender and sexual difference through an incorporation of old and new elements. Such a reinterpretation was both imperative as a result of the social changes of late antiquity and possible with the help of a Christian ideology that was itself transformed in the process. As Roman men became Christians, in other words, Christianity became a religion for Roman men. I chose Jerome's letter on the death ofNepotian to conclude my book for another reason. Nepotian, as Jerome remembered him to his uncle, represented the new ideal man. The praise of the dead is often exaggerated, and in Jerome's painful recollections of his friend we have reason to doubt the accuracy of the reflection. "Where is he, the inspirer of my labors, whose voice was sweeter than a swan's song? My heart is numbed, my hand trembles, my eyes are misty, my tongue stammers. All that I say seems voiceless, for he no longer hears."2 Jerome's grief might have been 283

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real enough, but it also depended for its ~xpression on classical models of . lost male friendship. As in so many of his writIngs, Jerome integrated Christian teaching and classical modes of thought. Here, in orcler. to ',' d~monstrate the extent of his grief, he presented it as'defying bothhls, :..' . faith and Stoic reason. "Though 1 struggle and try to fight against them, . . the tears still run down my cheeks, and in spite of virtue's teaching [prae": '. cepta virtutum] and our hope of the resurrection a passion of regret is brealcing my fond heart."3 Indeed, throughout the letter of consolation, Jerome blended classical and Christian images and cultural references, giving a new voice to ancient sentiments, as was so typical of the Christian writers of late antiquity. Also typical, according to Jerome, was the life that Nepotian led. Like so many men of his day, Nepotian was inspired by the military ideal. He had been a soldier in the imperial palace, and struggled to reconcile his Christian beliefwith his military service. "While he was a soldier at court, beneath his military cloale and white linen tunic his skin was chafed by sackcloth;' Jerome wrote, implying that he lived an ascetic life with a discipline not shared by many soldiers. "He only wore a sword-belt that he might succor the widow and the fatherless, the wretched and the oppressed."4 But lilce so many men of his day, Nepotian renounced his soldier's career" thereby rejecting a literal understanding ofthat military ideal of masculinity. "When N epotian laid aside his soldier's belt and changed his dress;' Jerome noted, "he gave all his army savings to the poor. For he had read the words: 'If thou wilt be perfect, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor and follow me."'5 Also lilee so many men of his day, N epotian became a cleric. He was made a presbyter not from ambition but in utter humility, Jerome assured Heliodorus, echoing a familiar trope of ecclesiastical office. "How he sobbed and groaned;' Jerome wrote, "complaining that he could not bear his burden and alleging that his youth unfitted him for the priesthood .... His refusal showed him worthy of the ranle he did not wish to take; all the more worthy indeed because he proclaimed his unworthiness."6 Despite his noble lineage, N epotian did not aspire to secular office but dedicated himself to public service in the churches, and in this decision N epotian was also lilce so many other men in late antiquity, exercising in ecclesiastical service the public patronage that in a previous generation of men would have been exercised in politics. Still, Jerome alluded to N epotian's distinguished ancestry even while pretending to discount it. "1 for my part in praising N epotian's soul shall not trouble about the fleshly advantages which he himself always despised, nor shall 1 boast of his family, that is, of the merits of others."7 N epotian's attitude of humil-

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ity made him a pious spiritual son to the uncle who was his bishop (and "to whom Jerome was writing), and thus Nepotian participated in the " spiritual household bei,ng formed in late antiquity. "In public he recog" : :nized you as a "bishop, at home he treated you as a father:' Jerome wrote; "'''widows and "Christian virgms" he honored as mothers, and exhorted as sister~, with chastity."g Even in his daily life, Jerome portrayed Nepotian as the ideal man. " "His fasts he regulated:' Jerome insisted, "as a"charioteer does his pace, by the weariness or the vigor of the body:' using the ancient and manly metaphor of the body as a chariot and the mind as a charioteer. But N epotian did not distract himself from his faith by attending dangerous public performances or frivolous sporting games. "His chief topic of conversation and his favorite form of entertainment was to bring forward some passage from the scriptures for discussion." In short, "by constant reading and long meditation he had made his mind a library of Christ."9 ("Myself too he sometimes quoted," Jerome could not resist adding; "he would always hold my book in his hands, devour it with his eyes, fondle it at his breast, and repeat it with his lips. In bed he would frequently undo the roll and fall asleep with the dear page upon his heart."l0 The erotic appeal of learning was something that Jerome understood well.) Jerome depicted himself and Nepotian as joined in intimate friendship, again so typical for Christian men in late antiquity, intimate enough that Jerome claimed that N epotian had left him his only tunic as a keepsalee. "We cannot have him in the body, but let us hold him fast in remembrance:' Jerome concluded in the final lines of his letter. "We cannot speale with him, but let us never cease to speale of him."ll As part of the consolation in his letter, Jerome assured Heliodorus that N epotian in death had been spared the many anxieties of men. "He who has escaped from this world's light is not so much to be lamented as he is to be congratulated on having been saved from such great evils:' he wrote. 12 He listed all of the disasters that had befallen even the emperors in Nepotian's lifetime: premature deaths in battle, deaths brought about as God's punishment for sin, political assassinations, and the attacks of pretenders to the throne. Private citizens also suffered. "The head ofRufinus:' Jerome noted, using one of the most powerful ministers of state under Theodosius I as his example, "was carried on a pike from Constantinople, and to shame his insatiable greed his severed hand begged for coins from door to door."13 Rufinus had fallen to the machinations of the eunuch grand chamberlain Gainas, in another scenario typical for late antiquity. Nepotian's death also spared him the predations of the barbarians.

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"For twenty years and more the blood of Romans has every day been shed:' Jerome lamented in his letter, "by Goths and Sarmatians, ·Quadi- ... ans and Alans, Huns and Vandals and Marcomanni."When Jerome wrote . these words, the sack of Rome was still more than a decade intbe future, ." so the worst was yet to come. "How many matrons, how many of God's virgins, ladies of gentle birth and high position, have been made the sport of these beasts!" Jerome exclaimed, again demonstrating a certain fascination with sexual violence. "Bishops have been talcen prisoners, presbyters and other clergymen of different orders murdered. Churches have been overthrown, horses stabled at Christ's altar, the relics of martyrs dug up?' Jerome could not help but insert a line from Virgil into his lament: "Sorrow and grief on every side we see, and death in many a shape?' The barbarian invasions were an indictment of the manliness of Roman men. "The soldiers of Rome, who once subdued and ruled the world, now are conquered by these men, tremble and shrink in fear?H4 But, Jerome added, "the Roman world is falling, and yet we hold our heads erect instead of bowing our neclcs?'15 The collapse of the political order did not affect the men whose primary allegiance lay in the world-to-come, another familiar refrain oflate antiquity. Jerome's letter was poignant; he intended it to be so. The decomposition of the l\oman body politic was mirrored and repeated in N epotian's death; both were events that challenged the perception of the way things should have been. "Behold, with us the order of things is changed, and nature has lost her rights in bringing this disaster upon US?H6 Jerome's words remind us why Roman men were so aIL-uously looking for a new ideal and so willing to accept the changes that religious and cultural conversion required of them. Their world was in crisis. The old order no longer functioned. The best means to rescue themselves was to grab at a new order of things. Lilce most of us, the Roman men of late antiquity would not have revised their worldview if the necessity of circumstances had not mandated such a revision. In his work on the end of the ancient world, Robert Markus argued that the western Mediterranean in late antiquity was the scene for just such a transformation, because it lay in the midst of what he called an "epistemological crisis?' He described it as follows: Such a crisis occurs when established traditions have become sterile and are seen to lead intellectually to a dead end; when the use of hitherto accepted ways of thought "begins to have the effect of increasingly disclosing new inadequacies, hitherto unrecognized incoherencies, and new problems for the solution of which there seems to be insufficient or no resources within

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the established fabric ofbelie£ " Such a crisis is resolved by the adoption of a "new and conceptually -enriched scheme;' which can simultaneously deal with the sterility or incoherence produced by its predecessor,. account for - the jxeviol).s 'difficulty in doing so, and carry out these tasks "in a new way . which exhibits some fundamental continuity of the new conceptual and theoretical stru~tures with the shared beliefs in: terms ofwhich the tradition of~nquiry had been defuied up to that point.'m

Although Markus was speaking in general terms about the conversion of the Romans to Christianity, a better encapsulation of the dilemma oflate ancient masculinity could not have been written. Roman men became Christians because they saw in Christian ideology a means of surmounting the gap between ancient ideals and contemporary realities. The men of late antiquity believed that their ancient counterparts had been martial conquerors, great statesmen, and commanding husbands and fathers. When compared with these ancient heroes, they could only be dismal failures. Christian ideology offered them an opportunity to recover their sense of greatness. AB Christians, they could see themselves as indefatigable conquerors against evil, honored statesmen of the Church, and exacting spiritual fathers. The new masculine ideal presented itself to them both as a repudiation of the classical heritage and as its ultimate fulfillment. "That immortality of the soul:' Jerome wrote in his letter on the death ofNepotian, "and its existence after the dissolution of the body, which Pythagoras dreamed, Democritus would not believe, and Socrates discussed in prison to console himself for his conviction, that is now the common philosophy:' and "the whole world with one voice cries out, 'Christ."'IS The appeal that Christian ideology held for Roman men happened as no coincidence, but because its message had been carefully molded by successive generations of Western Christian intellectuals, from Tertullian to Augustine, who were themselves men living in the midst of the changes and challenges to the masculine ideal. The new masculine ideal, it must be appreciated, did not change the social order to any meaningful extent. It was not intended to do so. The men of the Roman upper classes labored to return themselves to the power they felt had slipped from them. I began by arguing that the Roman social order depended on the strict separation of the sexes, which permitted an equally strict gender hierarchy of men over women. As men of the Roman elite became Christians, they worked hard to maintain in place the separation of the sexes and the gender hierarchy that stemmed from it. If early Christians believed in a genderless and sexless ideal, an

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image of "no more male or female" and even perhaps of being "eunuchs for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven:; these beliefs did not survive the. Christian encounter with Roman culture except ill the 1110st limited. of··· meanings. In the final tally, the men of the Roman aristocracy we.t~ .Qot interested in offering their adherence to a religious system that chal- . lenged their authority; they already felt displaced from real power ill -late .. antiquity. Instead, they converted to Christianity only on their own terms. I do not mean to say that there were no sincere Christians among the men of the late ancient Roman aristocracy. Rather, it is to say that the more the Christian message adapted itself to the social order to which these men belonged, the more wholeheartedly they embraced it. Some men chose radical means and made real personal sacrifices to express the depths of their commitment to their religion, abandoning wealth or sexual pleasures for its salce. But like most of us, they found it easier to offer their allegiance to a value system that sustained their Qwn sense of themselves, and that meant their sense of their superiority, even if it was a superiority in the self-sacrifice ofmartyrdom or asceticism. The exclusion of women and the men of the lower classes from any positions of public authority within the churches is only the most obvious example of the truth that as the men of the Roman aristocracy took the reins of power in the Christian religion, they used it mostly to their own advantage. The Chri~tian ideology that belonged to the men of the Roman upper classes was not the only ideology that existed in late antiquity and not the only value system that competed for supremacy. The first oppositioJ,1 was from the pagan religions, which had previously enjoyed the support of the Roman aristocracy and which had the weight of custom behind them. Christian ideology borrowed elements of the more successful of these opposing belief systems, but some segments of the Roman aristocracy remained committed pagans throughout the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. For them, the advantages of Christian ideology were not apparent or, perhaps, did not outweigh the advantages that either the familiar ideas of the traditional Roman religions or other Eastern religions offered. For them, Attis or Mithra might have seemed preferable to Christ. 19 Variations of Christian ideology also competed with the ideology of the Roman aristocrats for adherents. The men of the Roman upper classes found a means of discrediting these variations, meeting together in councils and denouncing them as heresies or schisms, but heresies and schisms seldom disappeared when they were condemned. Instead, the variations of Christian belief were driven underground or beyond the borders of the Roman Empire but found ways of continuing themselves. Hidden connections linlced the Montanist Christians whom Tertullian

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joined in the beginning of the third century with the Christian confessors who denounced the reinstatement of Cyprian of Carthage in the middle of the third centUry, with the Donatist Christians who refi;tsed to accept· . ~. :Caecilianas l?ishop of Carthage in the early fourth century, and with the . CircUmcellians who harassed the Catholic churches and priests of North Mrica in the early fifth ct:ntury. These hidden threads of connection were sometimes used against iridividuals to charge them with heretical beliefs . (as Priscillian ofAvila and Augustine of Hippo were accused of being secret Manichaeans), but the accusations reluctantly admit to a continuing dissent from orthodoxy among Christian intellectuals. Neither the pagan nor the heretical opposition had sufficient means or numbers to unseat the orthodox, however, and this fact suggests that the orthodox held something that made them better able to deal with the "epistemological crisis" of men in late antiquity. As I have tried to show in this book, that something was their accommodation to the gendered hierarchy. . The opposition to the orthodoxy of Christian ideology also reminds us that the masculine ideal as generated by Jerome and other Christian intellectuals was more proscriptive than descriptive. In his letter of consolation on the death ofNepotian, for example, Jerome hinted that Nepotian was praiseworthy because he was unlike other Christian holy men. "Let others add coin to coin, fastening their claws on married ladies' purses and hunting wealth by flattering attentions:' Jerome scolded; "let them possess wealth in the service of a poor Christ such as they never had in the service of a rich devil .... Our dear Nepotian tramples gold underfoot, books are the only things he desires."20 The admission that there were clerics who sought out the wealth of pious women for their own gain belied the image of honesty and humility that writers tried so diligently to claim for clerics. Obviously, not all clerics were respectable men, and here the possibility is admitted that some men exploited the new Christian ideology for their direct personal gain. Nor could Jerome help but to include comments designed to impress in the mind of his reader, Heliodorus, the didactic importance of the image he had created of the deceased Nepotian. Heliodorus was, after all, the same individual whom Jerome had urged to become a monk and to abandon his family, in a letter written more than twenty years earlier and one I mentioned in chapter 8. 21 Heliodorus had become a bishop instead, and Jerome reminded him obliquely of his lapse from the monastic life. "For his salvation you left the east and the desert:' Jerome wrote, "desiring ... to preserve your dear little nephew. He is the child of whom I once used the prophetic words, 'though your little nephew cling to your neck.'''22 There was perhaps more than a hint of chiding in Jerome's com-

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ments that followed that suggested that N epotian had felt more of a commitment to the ascetic life of monastiCism than had his unde, Heliodorus. After all, Jerome believed that the ascetic ideal was the highest aspiration of Christian men. "Every day he burned either to go to . $:e monasteries of Egypt, or to visit the saintly companies of Mesopotamia, or at least to take up his dwelling in the lonely spaces of the D.almatian is- . lands .... But he could not bring himself to desert his episcopal uncle."23 Buried in Jerome's praise is an implied criticism: N epotian had not made the final step toward masculine perfection, in Jerome's eyes, because he had not become a monle. Also peculiar in Jerome's letter is the complete absence of any reference to Nepotian's sexual habits. Jerome was far too concerned with sexual renunciation as an indicator and guarantor of human perfection for this absence to have been an oversight. We must at least speculate that Jerome had a good reason for suppressing such information: probably, because Nepotian was married and perhaps also the father of children (we might suspect that Jerome would have praised the spiritual nature ofNepotian's marriage had he been married without children). Like all men who fell short ofmasculine perfection, N epotian could not fully live up to the new ideal for men. Jerome felt it better to avoid mention of the unpleasant truth that ev~n men who aspired to the new ideal did not always succeed in achieving it. Married men, who probably remained the vast majority of Christians among the men of the later Roman aristocracy, provided one indication that the new masculine ideal was not suited to everyone. (Jerome's acquiescence to the lesser ideal of Christian marriage in omitting references to N epotian's sexual behavior was very much linked to the fact that he, lik:e other shapers of Christian ideology, needed the support of this silent majority of married men.) As Jerome demonstrated in his letter of consolation, the inability of any man to live up to the masculine ideal could always be wielded as a formidable ideological weapon or even merely hinted at. While going on at length about his unending grief at the loss ofNepotian, Jerome was able to warn Heliodorus about the consequences of his extravagant grief He offered this advice: Take care not to commit any act which those who wish to blame you may seem right in censuring, or which would force those who wish to imitate you to do wrong. Use all your strength, and even more, to overcome the softness [mollitia] of your heart, and check the copious flood of your tears lest your great love for your nephew be taken by unbelievers as showing despair ofGod. 24

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Jerome's suggestion that Heliodorus had reduced himself to mollitia in . his grief was perhaps an implied criticism not far removed from the one . he had made twenty years earlier, that Heliodorus loved pis fainily too much and ~at'his attachment to them reflected badly on him as a man. °The new m~sculine ideal could separate the real men from the pretenders, the manly from °the unmanly, those deserving of privileges and honors from those undeserving, as much as the old ideal could. Orice again, the usefulness of Christian ideology in perpetuating the familiar lines ofRoman privilege was much of its appeal. Christian belief worked to the benefit of the male aristocracy who crafted it; they made sure that it did. There were even women of the later Roman aristocracy who supported the new masculine ideal. Indeed, the conversion of the Roman elite to Christianity could never have been accomplished if women had not also supported the ideal. Perhaps Roman women were not all as enthusiastic about their support as men might have wanted them to be. Maybe they did not consider their Christian husbands as acting in the place of Christ for them (as Paulinus ofNola urged his readers) or did not regard their husbands as their masters (as Augustine claimed his mother Monica felt). But they did support it, even if their support was nothing more than their own reluctant accommodation to a male-dominated society. Women listened to the advice of the men who advised them and followed it (Paula and her daughters heeded Jerome's exhortations to them about the ascetic life, even resulting in the death of one of them). In the end, the women who resisted masculine authority proved as ephemeral as the men who supported sexual equality. They continued to be there, including the women who refused to wear veils from Tertullian's to Augustine's day, but not sufficiently strong in numbers to effect their agenda or to redirect the course of Christian ideology. We have so few examples ofwomen writers from late antiquity that we can do no more than speculate about the response of women of the Ro, man aristocracy to Christian ideology; virtually all oftheir responses were mediated through male writers. Proba, a woman of the senatorial aristocracy who lived probably in the middle of the fourth century, did leave a single lengthy poem. The poem is a cento) the name given to a poem comprised entirely of lines and portions of lines from a favored poet rearranged for a new theme. Proba's work was a compendium of Biblical stories, especially the Creation of the world and episodes from the life of Jesus, composed of phrases and lines from Virgil. But if Perpetua's account of the dreams before her martyrdom (quoted in chapter 7) had involved some rebellion against the strictures of men's superiority over women, Proba's writing shows nothing similar. In her retelling of the sin

o

o

:

0

o

o

o

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°

of Eve , for example, Proba used the following verses: ''And you, most remorseless wife, not unaware of wrong, 'of all these evils the origin and cause, you shall atone for your egregious sins;'25 Proba might have been . limlted by the availability of suitable verses to use in her composition·, but there is nothing here to indicate that she thought other than along t:he most conservative of gendered lines. Among the episodes Pro ~a included· from the life of Jesus was the episode in which a rich, young man asleed Jesus what he must do to be saved. She put this response into the mouth of Jesus: "Learn, boy, to despise wealth and malce yourself worthy even of God, and you will be able to understand what manliness [virtus] is;'26 It is a neat recapitulation of the new masculine ideal, but it is nothing more. The only really interesting comment in Proba's poem comes at its beginning. Proba recorded how she turned away from remembering the typical accomplishments of men after her conversion. She wrote: I have catalogued the different slayings, monarchs' cruel wars, and battle lines made up of hostile relatives. I sang of famous shields, their honor cheapened by a parent's blood, and trophies captured from no enemy; bloodstained parades of triumph "fame" had won, and cities orphaned of so many citizens, so many times. I do confess. It is enough to bring these errors back to mind. 27

We have seen this motif before. Here Proba was insisting that Christian belief required a certain distance from usual notions of masculine perfection, the heroism of the ancients, as many Christian writers insisted: But she seemed not to see any requirement other than to establish a new notion of masculine perfection. If she had renounced the accomplishments of men, she gave little sign of it in the single poem of hers that survives. (In her defense, it should be noted that if she had written a more controversial poem, it might not have been preserved.) What I am arguing here and have been throughout the boole appears to run counter to the dominant historiography on gender and Christianity in late antiquity. The last few decades have seen a number of scholars who have argued that women enthusiastically converted to Christianity because of the advantages it offered them. In pioneering articles, Jo Ann McN amara and Rosemary Radford Ruether described asceticism as a liberating lifestyle for Roman women in the fourth and:fifth centuries, freeing them from the constraints of family life, valuing them as individuals, and even promoting a sexual equality between men and women, and therefore a lifestyle willingly embraced. 28 Scholars after them expanded their thesis and argued that Christian ideology itself was particularly at-

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tractive to women. Flore Dupriez, for example, suggested that "Chris. . tianity honored the so-called 'feminine' virtues: gentleness, patience, love of others, forgiveness freely given, submission to divine will. We know· . ~.: how many women responded with enthusiasm to this ideal, less novel for ~ 'them than for men.":l9 In another early article, Anne Yarbrough argued that women' of the Roman aristocracy were, on the whole, earlier converts'to Christianity because of the attractiveness of its teaching, and that aristocratic men tended to be converted only by already converted female relatives, mothers or wives or sisters. 3o Anne Ewing Hickey argued in a monograph that the conversion of aristocratic Roman women to Christian belief and their adoption of the ascetic life permitted them to better reconcile the realities of their own lives with ancient cultural ideals of women, ideals lilce that ofpudicitia reshaped as Christian virginity or that of the univira expressed as Christian widowhood. 31 On the whole, this early scholarship offered the period of conversion as a positive experience for women, and some scholars continue to hold this position. Joyce Salisbury, for example, lists the purported benefits for women in Christian conversion as chapters in a recent monograph that compares the teachings of the Church fathers and the legends of women saints: freedom from social expectations, freedom of thought, freedom of movement, freedom from gender identification. 32 Other scholars have significantly revised the picture painted by the earliest scholars on women in late antiquity. Perhaps the first scholar to move in this direction was Jo Ann McN amara, who in a monograph described a gradual movement away from a religious ideology that was liberating for women to a repressive and male-dominated one. 33 And Averil Cameron has criticized the whole search "for a kind of early Christian feminism" amid "texts that are in the main highly misogynistic?' She has suggested that women's advancement in late ancient Christianity happened only at the cost of their feminine identities: For Christian women themselves an acute contradiction presented itse1f between the opportunities that were genuinely present for them now and which they had not enjoyed before and the paradox that in order to realise them they must deny their sex - a situation reflected in the literature, especially in written saints' lives, by the recurring theme of the female ascetic who is said to be "like a man:' or who is even represented as dressing in men's clothes. 34

Indeed, the scholarly literature on the female transvestite saints (to give one example) has gradually moved from praise of a radical form of women's liberation from social restraints to a much more careful descrip-

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tion of its symbolic effects, effects that are ambiguous at best. Elizabeth Castelli says on the subject that "the possibility that women can 'become male' ... reveals the tenuousness and malleability of the naturalizeci categories of male and female:' although she notes that "the 'transcenden~e of gendered differences" happens "only by reinscribing the traditional gender hierarchies of male over female, masculine over feminjne.:"35 . Other reappraisals have talcen place. Kate Cooper has reexamined the texts that indicate women's influence .in conversion to Christianity in light of the familiar literary trope of imputing women's influence on men's actions rather than as historical fact. 36 Using epigraphical evidence, moreover, Michele Salzman has found no reason to continue to believe that women of the Roman aristocracy converted to Christianity sooner than their male counterparts. 37 And in a superb monograph, Kate Cooper demonstrates that the legends of women saints are more about the relationship of the individual to the social order th~ about personal fulfillment. Cooper also argues that the ascetic life provided a means for women's social advancement unrelated to their identities as women: ascetic practice became a way for non-aristocratic women to claim a kind of religious authority that was enhanced by its senatorial associations. Further, since not all aristocratic women could claim the dignity of ascetic virtue, deftly publicized ascetic achievements may have allowed some individuals to trump their social betters .... The performance of ascetic rigors served as an economical and reasonably decorous way to announce one's high moral standing.... Here class, not gender, was the obstacle. 38

These recent studies are useful reminders that women's conversion to Christianity happened always as a complicated negotiation between the desire for .individual accomplishments and the social realities that aided or hindered those accomplishments. For women, conversion to Christianity was always a glass both half-full and half-empty. But the issue at stalce for these scholars has always remained the advantages or disadvantages that conversion to Christianity offered to women. In this book, I was .interested in see.ing what conversion to Christianity made available or denied to men. The research done by these historians of women .in late antiquity has helped me to ground my research firmly in the dynamic of gender relations. If male leaders of the Christian churches denied women the right to fill ecclesiastical offices, for example, then they must have understood something in the role of the cleric as being inalterably masculine. Likewise, ifmale writers considered women who renounced sex as becoming like men and transcending the boundaries of sexual difference, then crossing sexual boundaries must

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have been considered possible, and if sexual renunciation was the means .. to accomplish it, it must also have been seen as masculine in nature. There is, in effect, no contradiction between what scholars have been· . ::~aying about. women and Christianity in late antiquity and what I have ~ argued here about men. All of the things that Christian ideology is sup~ posed to have offered to women -the desire for personal fulfillment, for rejecuon of the social order, for freedom from familial constraints and . valuation as individuals - all of these things also appealed to men. All of the things that Christian ideology is supposed to have denied to women - by affirming their traditional gender roles and disallowing them to exhibit any gender ambiguity other than in a symbolic manner, by obliging them to obey unquestioningly the ecclesiastical authorities and the Biblical tradition interpreted by those authorities, by rewriting class distinctions as distinctions of piety - all of these things were also denied to men. The conversion of the Roman aristocracy to Christianity provided new benefits to both men and women and created new restrictions for both men and women. Christian ideology both preserved significant features of the traditional social roles attributed to men and women while it borrowed new aspects of the social role traditionally considered to belong to the other sex. Some Christian women might have been encouraged to consider themselves as manly if they lived up to the ideal of their faith and even to represent their manliness tangibly in their wearing of men's clothes or in remaining unveiled. In a similar way, some Christian men might have been encouraged to consider themselves as unmanly, to see themselves as "eunuchs for the salce of the kingdom of Heaven" or as "brides of Christ:' and perhaps also wished to represent that unmanliness in their own bodies, by castrating themselves or wearing their hair long. The discourses created about men, lilce the discourses created about women, "do not simply rearticulate the hegemonic gendered order, nor do they simply deconstruct it; rather, they stretch its boundaries and, if only for a moment, call it into question?'39 One significant difference remains. While the male leaders of the Christian churches interacted with women from a psychological distance because they were men, the same leaders interacted with men from a proximity as men. They encouraged the types of formulations that supported the traditional superiority of men in Roman society at least in part because it left them in positions of privilege. They perpetuated the distinction between manly and unmanly men, between those deserving of the rights of men and those undeserving of them, as a means of affirming their own superiority over other men. They gave status to some men

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while denying it to others. There was n~ real equivalent for women. The . male leaders of the churches excluded all women from male privilege,. eyen the women considered to share manly virtues. Women may have~elt ',' empowered by their conversions and may have competed. among .themselves for positions of honor or authority, but: the male leaders of the . churches resisted the power of all women at every step because they were . women, and because by denying privileges to women, the male leaders of the churches were affirming their own privileges as men. One might consider what I have been saying as a gloomy picture of Christianity in late antiquity. The new masculine ideal as crafted by the leaders of the Christian churches eradicated what was most radical about a religious movement in their reshaping of Christian ideology. In addition, the ideology that they crafted encouraged what was most to the detriment of their own society: men's flight from the military and from public office, from marriage and the perpetuation of families and family life. They expressly distanced themselves from the classical heritage of Roman antiquity, even while they borrowed frequendy from it, and thus helped to create a real divide between the classical age and their own time. One might argue that Christian ideology hastened the collapse of the whole Roman social order. It is certainly possible. But one must also consider that t4ese men crafted an ideology ofmasculinity successful enough to survive the myriad social and political changes of late antiquity. Indeed, because it was tied to Christian ideology, the masculine ideal created in late antiquity continued to find a place among the descepdant populations of the Roman Empire as long as they remained Chfistians when the empire itself had become only a memory. Medieval Christian writers continued to depict themselves in the images invented for men in late antiquity, living lives of spiritual warfare, of bridal devotion to Christ, of sexual and familial renunciation, and of spiritual castration. The influence of the masculine ideal was a two-way street. In equal measure, the themes in men's lives that the social changes oflate antiquity had first dictated continued to shape and direct the development of Christian doctrine long after the collapse of the Roman social order. Christian leaders continued for centuries to stress a militaristic image ofthemselves, the absoluteness and masculinity of their authority, and the centrality of the ascetic regime to religious piety. Christian masculinity proved a winning idea in late antiquity. Based on the paradox of a reversal of expectations, Christian intellectuals managed to preserve the manliness of men's identity. They rescued the Roman sense of virtus by providing a space in which Roman men might view themselves no longer as unmanly failures, even in the context of the de-

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clining militarism of the empire, their collapsing political and familial authority, and the restrictions on their sexual lives. Christianity's innovations the arena of masculinity can therefore be best und~rstood when . : ~et along~ide die public and private areas of social change for men of the ~ later Roman Empire. Through such concepts as a spiritual militarism, which interiorized the martial identity of the Roman male, a collegial ec~ clesiastical authodty whlch created a counterbalance to the power of the . autocratic state, an~ the renunciation of family life and sexuality through an extension of the familiar Roman ideal of self-control, Roman males could regain their sense of status and reject an effeminate image of themselves. Ultimately, this series of paradoxes, contradictions, and condemnations - in the context of the crisis of masculinity in the later Roman Empire-enabled Christianity to attract adherents, not only in late antiquity but well beyond that period. The very historical success of Christianity may be in no small part the result of such an effective reformulation of the arenas of masculinity. Finally, something should be said about the perpetuation of the Christian masculine ideal in modern times. It seems clear to me that much of the same ideological work is being done today in official Christian circles, among the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church and other episcopal churches, and among the leaders of the fundamentalist Christian churches. Christian ideology is still used to support a social hierarchy of men over women and the exclusion of women from full participation in ritual and equality in public life. The ideal for Christian men still seems to revolve on many of the same issues as it did for their forefathers in late antiquity. When to day's Christian leaders preach about cultural w;ars, they are drawing from a rhetoric that was first developed in the period of persecution. The fact that homosexuality is such a source of hatred for the leaders of the Christian churches, especially the ordination of gay clergy, is another aspect of a longstanding psychological need to defend the manliness of Christian men, and their fanatical language shares much with the denunciations of the qJdeshim andgalli, including reference to the same Biblical texts. In discussions of Christian marriage, moreover, the issues at stalce remain much the same. The determination of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to preserve clerical celibacy draws its strength from a continued belief, articulated in the late fourth century, that sexual renunciation is more perfect than sexual activity. And while the fundamentalist and Protestant churches have repudiated the early Christian emphasis on sexual renunciation, the claim that Biblical authority clearly supports the traditional nuclear family (against the grain oflate ancient readings of the Bible) requires the same sort of blatant manipulation of Christian texts

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that the Church fathers proved so adept at doing. 40 The individuals willing to resist the masculine ideology promoted by the leaders of the Christi~ churches seem as few in number as their counterparts in late ~tiq.- : uity, and will perhaps meet the same ultimate fate. . .. ~. Just as the men and women oflate antiquity were obliged to respond to social factors beyond their control, however, there are soc:ial changes' happening in the modern world, including greater sexual equality and greater sexual freedoms, that all must talce into account. The effect of these new social forces on Christian ideology in the future remains to be seen. Christian intellectuals might meet the challenge and transform the Christian message to respond to the concerns of an audience of contemporary believers as their spiritual ancestors did in late antiquity. Or enough of us might decide that Christian ideology is incapable of dealing with our "epistemological crisis;' and just as men and women of late antiquity rejected the "sterility and incoherence" of tra~tional Roman paganism, we will reject the traditions of Christian ideology on gender and sexuality for a more satisfYing system of values and beliefs.

A Note about the Notes

I have used editions readily available to scholars and thus have not felt it necessary to include the original texts in the endnotes except when editions are difficult to obtain or when the original text is critical to my argument. I have also used a combination of my own and existing translations throughout the book:. References to editions and translations are given in the endnotes where a text is quoted for the :first time, but not in subsequent references. Interested readers may look to the Primary Sources section of the Bibliography for information about editions and translations, for example, to see whether I have used an existing translation. Where no translation is listed in the bibliography, the translations are my own. Even where a translation exists and where I normally rely on it, however, I have sometimes altered the translation or substituted my own. I identify such alterations and substitutions in the appropriate endnotes, except in the case of minor changes in punctuation and spelling.

299

Abbreviations Used

AASS

ACW ANCL CCSL CSEL FC

HA LCL

NPNF PL PG PS SC

Acta Sanctorum Ancient Christian Writers Ante-Nicene Christian Library Corpus Christianorum~ Series Latina fJorpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Fathers ofthe Church: A New Translation HistoriaAugusta Loeb Classical Library Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Patrologia Latina Patrologia Graeca Patristic Studies Sources chretiennes

Abbreviations of ancient authors are from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.

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Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Monique Wittig, "The Point ofView: Universal or Particular?" Feminist Issues 3 (1983), 64. 2. On this point, see Sherry Ortner, "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" Feminist Studies 1 (1972): 5-31; Luce Irigaray, ''Any Theory of the 'Subject' Has Always Been Appropriated by the 'Masculine;" in Speculum ofthe Other Woman) trans. G. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Nancy Jay, "Gender and Dichotomy;' Feminist Studies 7 (1981): 38-56; Elizabeth Spelman, "Woman as Body: Ancient and Contemporary Views;' Feminist Studies 8 (1982): 109-31; Sheila Ruth, "Bodies and Souls/Sex, Sin and the Senses in Patriarchy: A Study in Applied Dualism;' Hypatia 2 (1987): 149-63; Eva Feder IGttay, "Women as Metaphor;' Hypatia 3 (1988): 63-86; Teresa de Lauretis, "Eccentric Subjects: Feminist Theory and Historical Consciousness;' Feminist Studies 16 (1990): 115-50; Monique Wittig, "Homo Sum;' Feminist Issues 10 (1990): 3-11; Phyllis Rooney, "Gendered Reason: Sex Metaphor and Conceptions of Reason;' Hypatia 6 (1991): 77-103. 3. Sandra Harding, "The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory;' Signs 11 (1986): 645-64; Judith Butler, "Bodies That Matter;' in Bodies ThatMatter: On the Discursive Limits ofSex (New York: Routledge, 1993). On the Mrican American experience, for example, see Leonard Harris, "Honor: Emasculation and Empowerment;' in Rahinking Masculinity: Philosophical Explorations in Light of Feminism) ed. L. May and R. Strikwerda (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992); and Paula Rothenberg, "The Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction of Difference;' Hypatia 5 (1990): 42-57. 4. Judith Butler, Bodies ThatMattet; 48. 5. Patrick Hopkins, "Gender 'freachery: Homophobia, Masculinity, and Threatened Identities;' in Rethinking Masculinity: Philosophical Explorations in Light of Feminism) ed. L. May and R. Strilcwerda (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and 301

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NOTES TO PAGES 4--II

Littlefield, 1992), 123. See also Joseph Pleck, The Myth ofMasculinityy rev. ed. . (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984). 6. Jeff Hearn and David Collinson ("Theorizing Unities and Differences. b~::- : tween Men and between Masculinities;' in Theorizing Masculinitiesyeci.H. Brod and M. Kaufman [Thousand Oales,' Calif.: Sage, 1994]) list a number of ways' in which modern men might be seen as differing from the masculine ideal. 7. R. W Connell, Gender and Power: Societyy the Person and Sexual Politics (Ox": ford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); see also Arthur Brittan,Masculinity and Power (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). The historical antagonisms between different groups of men holding differing ideals of masculinity can be seen, for example, (for ancient Greece) in John Winlder, The Constraints ofDesire: TheAnthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1990), esp. chap. 2; or (for twentieth-century United States) in Michael Kimmel, "The Cult of Masculinity: American Social Character and the Legacy ofthe Cowboy;' inBeyondPatriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasurey Powery and Changey ed. M. Kimmel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); or Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American q,ndPhilippine-American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 8. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion ofIdentity (New York:: Routledge, 1990); or Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). Both summarize and critique a broad liter- . ature on the subject of gender and sex. 9. I have not attempted to question or verify independently the dating ofpersons or works, but have generally accepted those given in biographies or editions, since only in a few places is a precise date important to this study. 10. See the excellent study by Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 11. On the later Roman nobility, see T. D. Barnes, "Who Were the Nobility of the Roman Empire?" Phoenix 28 (1974): 444-49; J. A. Schlumberger, "Potentes and Potentia in the Social Thought of Late Antiquity;' in Tradition and Innovation in LateAntiquityy ed. Franle Clover and R. Stephen Humphreys (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1989). 12. C£ Michael Satlow, "'Try to Be a Man': The Rabbinic Construction of Masculinity;' Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996): 19-40. 13. This is the conclusion of A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), chaps. 19 and 20. 14. See S. N. Eisenstadt, "Modes of Structural Differentiation, Elite Structure, and Cultural Visions;' in Dijfirentiation Theory and Social Change: Comparative and Historical Perspeaivesy ed. J. Alexander and P. Colomy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). His ideas about what he calls "institutional entrepreneurs" are summarized by Paul Colomy (477-78): "small groups of individuals who crystallize broad symbolic orientations, articulate specific and innovative goals, establish new normative and organizational frameworks for the pursuit of those goals, and mobilize the resources necessary to achieve them?' 15. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Meny Womeny and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York:: Columbia University Press, 1988), 362.

NOTES TO PAGES II-I4

303

16. Brown, Body and Societ)) 347; see also his mention that Christian virgin. ity led to gender ambiguity, (146) as well as his discussion of the image of the bride of Christ (274). , 17. "Peter Br9Wll, Power and Persuasion in LateAntiquity: Towards a Christian ,Empire (Madis<;m: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), especially chap. 2. C£ . also his The.Making of Late Antiquity (Cambrid,ge: Harvard University Press; 1978),; and "Eastern and We,stern Christendom in Late Antiquity; A Parting of the Ways;' in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of Cali,fornia Press, 1982). '. 18. Jo Ann McNamara, A New Song: Celibate Women in the First Three Christian Centuries (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1985). 19. Elizabeth A. Clark, "Ideology, History, and the Construction of'Woman' in Late Ancient Christianity;' Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994), 157, 160. 20. Clark, "Ideology, History;' 178. 21. Elizabeth A. Clark, ''Antifamilial Tendencies in Ancient Christianity;' Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1995), 380; see also "Sex, Shame, and Rhetoric: En-gendering Early Christian Ethics," Journal ofthe American Academy ofReligion 59 (1991): 221-45. 22. Rodney Stark, "How New Religions Succeed: A Theoretical Model;' in The Future ofNew ReligiousMovements~ ed. David Bromley and Phillip Hammond (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University, 1987), 13, 15. See also his application of his ideas to early Christianity in The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 23. Gerd Theissen, Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology~ Ethics~ and the World of the New Testamen~ trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992),239,244,250-51. 24. Elaine Pagels,Adam~ Eve~ and the Serpent (New York: Vrntage, 1988),99. 25. Pagels,Adam~ Eve~ and the Serpen~ xxvii. See also now Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 26. William Connolly, The Augustinian Imperative: A R.cJlection on the Politics ofMorality (London: Sage, 1993). 27. Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric ofEmpire: The Development ofChristian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 28. Maud Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rnme (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 29. Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rnme (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 30. Craig Williams, BiJman Homosexuality: Ideologies ofMasculinity in Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 31. Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York; Routledge, 1992), 16. 32. See J. Davis, "Social Creativity;' in When History Accelerates: Essays in Rapid Social Change~ Complexity~ and Creativity~ ed. C. M. Hann (London: Athlone, 1994). In Bodies ThatMatter; Butler writes that "performativity must be

304

NOTES TO PAGES I9-22

understood not as a singular or deliberate act, but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names;'· (2) and .. that "If gender is constructed, then who is doing the constructing?" (6). Cf al~o : Lois McNay's critique (in Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self [Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992]) of the "docile body'; implied-in early writings of Michel Foucault and her praise of the "autonomy of the self" described in his later writings. See also the critique of social construction by . Nancy Partner, "No Sex, No Gender;' Speculum 68 (1993): 419-43. CHAPTER ONE

1. Amm. Marc. (ed. W Seyfarth [Leipzig: Teubner, 1978]; trans. W Hamilton [London: Penguin, 1986]) 25.4.1. 2. See the exhaustive study by John Matthews, The Roman Empire ofAmmianus (London: Duckworth, 1989), esp. chap. 2; see also T. D. Barnes,Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation ofHistorical Reality (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), who has a less generous opinion of Ammianus. 3. On the philosophical school of Stoicism, see Marcia. L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. . vol. 1: Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990). On Neo-Platonism, see Stephen Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986) for a study of four influential Roman writers: Cicero, Seneca, Gellius, andApuleius. 4. See Werner Eisenhut, Virtus Romana: Ihre Stellung im rijmischen Wertsystem (Munich: WIlhelm Fink, 1973); somewhat revised by Juhani Sarsila, SomeAspects of the Concept ofVirtus in Roman Literature until Livy (JyvaskyHi: University of Jyvaskyla, 1982). The ancient Greek notion ofandreia carries similar denotations. 5. The single sex model was proposed by Thomas Laqueur, "Destiny is Anatomy;' inMaking Sex: Body and Genderfrom the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). See the more sophisticated analysis by Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution. . 750 B.C.-A.D. 1250 (Montreal: Eden, 1985); or Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), esp. chaps. 1 and 2. 6. Lactant. De opificio Dei (ed. M. Perrin, SC 213; trans. M. McDonald, FC 54) 12.16-7: "Vir itaque nuncupatus est, quod maior in eo uis est quam in femina, et hinc uirtus nomen accepit; item mulier . . . a mollitie, inmutata et detracta littera, uelut mollier:" 7. Lactant.DeopificioDei 12.14. 8. Lactant. De opificio Dei 12.12-3. I have changed "the usual sexual classification" to "the reasoning behind sexual difference:" See also Jan Blayney, "Theories of Conception in the Ancient Roman World;' in The Family in Ancient Rome: NewPerspectives. . ed. B. Rawson (London: Croom Helm, 1986). 9. See Carlin Barton, The Sorrows ofthe Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 131-32, who concludes (n. 127): "it appears that the slaughter of the hermaphrodite ceases abruptly in the first century B.C.E." See also Pliny HN 31.12 and 27.37; Diod. Sic. 32.12. For a comparison with Greek notions of hermaphroditism, see Hannelore Gauster,

NOTES TO PAGES 23-27

305

"Zu Hermaphroditen-Darstellungen in der Antike:' in Frauen Weiblichkeit . Schrift) ed. R. Berger et al.,.Literatur im historischen ProzeB, 14 (Berlin: Argu. ment-Sonderband, 1985). , . 10.-· August.,De civ, D.' (ed. CCSL 47-48; trans. H. Bettenson [London: Pen, ,gQ.in, 1972]) 1~.8. I have changed the translator's "superior" to "better." 11. AUgUs,t.Dt civ.D.16.8. 12,. Dig.' (ed. T. Momm~en and P. Krueger, trans. A. Watson [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985]) 1.5.10: "et magis puto eius sexus aesti, mandum, qui in eo pravualet." Watson unjustifiably translates in eo as "in his or her malee-up." Jane Gardner, Being a Roman Citizen (New York: Roudedge, 1993),192-93 n. 2, also inexplicably believes this law expresses "doubt whether to cta,ssify them as men or women." 13. Dig. 28.2.6: "si in eo uirilla praeualebunt." 14. Dig.22.5.15. 15. Auson.Epigr. (in The WorksofAusonius) ed. R. Green [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991]; trans. H. White, LCL) 102,103; c£ LactantiusDiv. inst. 1.17 and Epit. div. inst. 8. For an earlier version of the legend, see Ov.Met. 4.285-388. 16. The myth is discussed by M. J. Vermaseren, The Legend ofAttis in Greek andRomanArt (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966), 3-5. Alate ancient version of the myth can be found in Arn.Adv. Nat. 5.5-7. For more on the cult of Cybele and Attis in the later Roman Empire, see below. 17. Auson. Epigr. 76 (my trans.): "cuncti admirantur monstrum." 18. De physiognomia liber (ed. A. Jacques [Paris: Belles Lettres, 1981]), 90-91. 19. Dephysiognomialiber 14 (on hair), 72 (on feet), c£ 52 (on chins: rounded are unmanly, squarish are manly), and 78 (on voices: soft or sharp voices are unmanly, deep and resounding voices are manly). 20. Dephysiognomialiber 115. 21. De physiognomia liber 7. 22. CaeliusAurelianus TardarumPassionum (ed. 1. Drabkin [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950]) 4.9: "Molles sive subactos Graeci malthacos vocaverunt, quos quidem esse nullus facile virorum credit. non enim hoc humanos ex natura venit . . . sed potius corruptae mentis vitia." The treatise may be Caelius's own work, or a paraphrase or translation of a lost work by Soranus of Ephesus. See P. H. Schrijvers, Eine medizinische Erkliirung der miinnlichen Homosexualitiit aus der Antike (Amsterdam: B. R. Griiner, 1985). 23. The panegyrics are skillfully placed into a political, literary, and cultural framework by Sabine MacCormack, "The World of the Panegyrists:' in Art and Ceremony in LateAntiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). 24. H. A.Avidius Cassius 3.3. On the authorship of the HistoriaAugusta) see Tony Honore, "Scriptor Historiae Augustae:' Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987): 156-76. 25. See Fergus Millar, A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). 26. See H. W Bird, Sextus Aurelius Victor. A Historiographical Study (Liverpool: F. Cairns, 1984).

306

NOTES TO PAGES 27-30

27. Aur. Vic. Caes. (ed. F. Pichlmayr [Leipzig: Teubner, 1993]) 16.2. 28. Sid. Apoll. (ed. and trans.w. Anderson, LCL YPanegyricus dictusAthemio .. . Augusto 202-4. . 29. For a modern biography, see Anthony Birley, Marcus Aurelit,ts: A Biog- ... raphy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987). On the militaryfeatl.l.i.-es of his reign, see Graham Webster, The Rnman ImperialArmy of the First an-d SecondCenturiesA.D. (London: A. andC. Black, 1985),98-101. For literaryandthe~ maric antecedents and historical context of his writings, see R. B. Rutherford, TheMeditations ofMarcus Aurelius: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); or James Francis, Subversive Virtue: Asceticism andAuthority in the Second-Century Pagan World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), esp. chaps. 1 and 2. 30. Marcus Aurelius Ad se ipsum (ed. J. J)alphen [Leipzig: Teubner, 1979]; trans. M. Staniforth [London: Penguin, 1964]) 3.5. 31. Marcus AureliusAdse ips~tm 6.13. 32. Marcus AureliusAdse ipsum 11.18. 33. Amm. Marc. 27.7.4. 34. Onapatheiay see Colish, Stoic Traditiony 42-50. 35. Aur. Vic. Caes. 17.1. For biographical details: Michael Grant, The Antonines: The Rnman Empire in Transition (New York: Routledge, 1990). 36. H. A. Comm. (ed. and trans. D. Magie, LCLj trans. here A. Birley [London: Penguin, 1976]) 1.7. 37. H. A. Comm. 5.4 (trans. Birley). 38. H. A Comm": 1.7 (my trans.): "ore quoque pollutus etconstupratusfuit." 39. Casso Dio (ed. and trans. E. Cary, LCL) 72.36.4. 40. H. A.M.Ant. 19.7; C£Aur. Vic. Caes.16.2. 41. H. A. M. Ant. 19:2-5. It cannot be known whether the insinuations about Faustina's character should be believed. Marcus Aurelius himself (Ad se ipsum 1.17) called her "so submissive, so loving, and so artless?' C£ F. J. Dolger ("Gladiatorenblut und Martyrerblut;' Vortriige der Bibliothek "Warburg, 1923-24 [1926]: 196-214), who argues unconvincingly (210) that the Latin sublavaret (she douched) is a manuscript error for sublevaret (she lifted up [to drink]) and that Faustina possibly suffered from epilepsy, for which one of the recommended cures was to drink the blood of freshly killed gladiators. 42. For studies on the legal use of infamia: A. H. J. Greenidge, Infamia: Its Place in Rnman Public and Private Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894); and Leon Pommeray, Etudes sur Pinfamie en droit romain (Paris: Du Recueil Sirey, 1937). For infamia attributable for theft: Paulus Sent. (ed. L. Arndts, Iulii Paulli Rcceptarum Sententiarum ad filium libri quinquey in E. Bocking, ed., Corpus Iuris RnmaniAnteiustinianiy vols. 1-2 [Bonn: Adolph Mark, 1841]) 2.31.15. C£Dig. 3.2.6. See also Dig. 3.2.11 (for illicit marriage); Dig. 3.2.1-2 (for military discharge). 43. This is the focus of the discussion of infamia by Amy Richlin (''Not before Homosexuality: The Materiality ofthe Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men;' Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 [1993]: 523-73), although she is only concerned with the republican and early imperial periods. See

NOTES TO PAGES 30-32

307

also Gardner, "Behaviour: Disgrace and Disrepute;' inBeing a Rnman Citizen. Although I admire Gardner's attempt to ask why certain illicit acts and professions entailed infamia while others did not, I reject her conclusion (15;4) that infamia .was a legal concept of rights restriction unrelated to social and literary disap.·prQval. . . 44. On i.tifamoils men forbidden to act as ass~ssors, see Dig. 1.22.2; on infa~ mous .men forbidden to act ~s witnesses in trials, Dig. 22.5.3; c£ Mosaicarum et Rnmanarum legum 'collatio (ed. and trans. M. Hyamson [London: Oxford Uni. versity Press, 1913]). 9.3.1; on infamous men forbidden to bring accusations against others, Dig. 48.4.7. 45. Both women and infamous men forbidden to malce application to the magistrate: Dig. 3.1.1. On women and infamous men being forbidden to witness a will: lnst. lust. (ed. P. Birks and G. McLeod [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987]) 2.10.6. On infamous men forbidden to plead in court: Paulus Sent. 1.2.1; women forbidden to plead in court except in matters related to themselves: Paulus Sent. 1.2.2. This last privilege is also specifically denied to the authors of defamatory writings: Dig. 22.5.21. 46. For a comparison of the rights ofwomen and infamesy see Gardner, Being a Rnman Citizeny 87. Although she does not draw any conclusions from this comparison of social status, she does describe in detail (111-26) the consequences for men of such restrictions in daily life, which are remarkably lilce those of women. 47. Examples from late antiquity include: Apul.Met. (ed. R. Helm [Berlin: Alcademie-Verlag, 1970]) 7.6; the description of Zenobia in H. A. 7Jrannis triginta 15.8. 48. Late ancient examples include: H. A. Firmus Saturninus Proculus et Bonosus 12.3; Claud. Fescennina (ed. as Carminay J. Hall [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1985]) 11.31-39. 49. Important works on Roman women in the classical era include: Judith Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Rnman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Jane Gardner, Women in Rnman Law and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Gunhild Viden, Women in Rnman Literature: Attitudes ofAuthors under the Early Empire (Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1993). For an overview of Roman women in late antiquity: Gillian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Life-Styles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 50. Casso Dio 68.27.3. 51. Oribasius Collectio medica (ed. U. Bussemalcer and C. Daremberg, 6 vols. [Paris: VImprimerie Nationale, 1851-76]) 22.2.14: "E1tt OE 'trov EK'tJ..L1l8EV'tcov 'toue; 0pXEte; aVE'll 't01> 'l'a1>O'at 'tile; E1ttOtO'UJ..LtOOe; O-oOEV J..LEV 1t(10'XEt 'to O'1tEpl-lanKOV &:YYE1.0V, 01tOAA:U'tat OE. 'troY scpcov 0-0 'to O'1tEpJ..LatvEtv J..Lovov· epJ..Latov yap llV 't01>'t0 yE 'tote; o<j>POOtcrtcov 01tEXE0'8at ~O'UAOJ..LEVote;· aAAa Kat'; OVOpEta 'tE Kat, roc; elV et1tot nc;, aPPEVO'tTje;." 52. Amm. Marc. 14.6.17. 53. See Walter Stevenson, "The Rise of Eunuchs in Greco-Roman Antiquity;' Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1995): 495-511; see also Kathryn Ringrose, "Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium;' in Third

308

NOTES TO PAGES 32-35

Sex) Third Gender: Beyond Sex~tal Dimorphism in Culture and History) ed. G. Herdt (New York: Zone, 1994) on this subject for the eastern Mediterraneari and in a . later period. . 54. Paulus Sent. 5.23.13. 55. Dig. 48.8.3. 56. Dig. 48.8.4. 57. See, e.g., Nov. lust. (ed. with Cod. lust.) 9.25.1-2 [142]; ·or Nw. Leonis· (ed. with Cod. lust.) 60. 58. Cod. lust. 4.42.1; C£ 4.42.2. 59. See Judith Evans Grubbs, Law and Family in LateAntiquity: The Bmperor Constantin~s Marriage Legislation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 111-12, on the enforcement of the Augustan laws on marriage in the early fourth century. On the age of majority: Gai. lnst. 1.196. On .the right of testation: Paulus Sent. 3.4A.2. Note that this ruling conflicted with that ofGaius regarding the age of majority for eunuchs. On the right of testatory bequests to posthumous heirs: Dig. 28.2.6. On the rightto adopt children: Gai. lnst. 1.103; c£ thelater Nw. Leonis 26-7; lnst. lust. 1.11.9-10. On the right to act as legal guardians to women and minors: Dig. 27.1.15. On the requirement to marry: Dig. 28.2.6; c£ the later Nov. Leonis98. For more on the legal position of eunuchs, see Gaetano Sciascia, "Eunucos, castratos e 'spadones' no direito romano;' in Varieta giuridiche. Scritti brasiliani di diritto romano e moderno (Milan: Dott. A. Giuffre, 1956). 60. Dig. 50.16.128. 61. For a later source, see Paulus Aegineta, Compendium medici (ed. I. Heiberg [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1921]) 6.65. See also Rousselle, Porneia) 122. 62. These disfigurements are addressed by Jacqueline Long, Claudian)s In Butropium; 01) HOW; "When) and "Why to Slander a Bunuch (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press), 108-9, with references to Ralph 1. Dorfman and ReginaldA. Shipley,Androgens: Biochemistry) Physiology) and Clinical Significance (New York: Wiley, 1956) and Johan Bremer, Asexualization: A Follow-Up Study of244 Cases (New York: Macmillan, 1959). Twentieth-century medical examples of men castrated (although only by having their testicles removed) show that only a minority continue to feel sexual desire; studies of men who have had vasectomies (not unlike the tying up of the scrotum to sever the vas deferens) do not show any associated decline in sexual desire. The men in all of these modern studies were castrated or had vasectomies after reaching puberty, however, so we cannot draw any firm conclusions from their experiences on the effects on sexual desire of prepubescent castration (as was most often done to ancient eunuchs). 63. Casso Dio 76.14.4-5. 64. Sid. Apoll. Bpist. 3.13. He was probably describing the literary figure of the eunuch Gnatho from Terence's classical play, Bunuchus) but also probably based on a caricature of the eunuchs of his own day. 65. On erections: John Cas sian Conlationes 12.9; on sexual feelings, 12.10. 66. Tert.Adv.Marcionem (ed. and trans. E. Evans [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]) 1.29. ( 67. Auson. Bpigr. 10611. 13-7. 68. Examples abound. H. A. Gordiani tres 23.7, 24.2, 25.1; Amm. Marc.

NOTES TO PAGES 35-39

309

18.5.4, 14.11.3, 15.2.10, 21.16.16; Claud. In Eutropium 1 11. 420-la, 2 11. 191-2; Sid. Apoll. Epist. 3.1,3.10-11. 69. Amm. Marc. 16.7.4,8. Matthews (Roman Empire ofAmmianus, 25) believesthat Euthedus was one of the sources for Ammianus's history; see also his . :further remarks on eunuchs in t4e later empire (274-77). ", "70. De physiognomia tiber 40. 71. H. A. Alex. Sev. 23."7. The ambiguous translation stems from the fact that there is no Latin term that corresponds to our modern definition of gender, but genus (type) is the term from which our English wordgender is derived. " 72. Julian (ed. and trans. W. Wright, LCL) Ep. ad senatum populumque Athenarum 272D. 73. Claudius Mamertinus Gratiarum actio suo Juliano imperatori (ed. D. Lassandro [Turin: Pavaria, 1992]; trans. S. Lieu [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1986]) 19.4: "sed spadones quoque, quos quasi a consortio humani generis extorres ab utroque sexu aut naturae origo aut clades corporis separavit." 74. Claud. In Eutropium 11. 467: "alter quos pepulit sexus nec suscipit alter." CHAPTER TWO

1. Vegetius Epit. rei militaris (ed. C. Lang [Leipzig: Teubner, 1885]; trans. N. Milner [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993]) 1.1. Dating Vegetius's work is difficult, but Milner (xxv) argues that it can be placed sometime between 383 and 450. 2. Pacatus Panegyricus dictus Theodosio imperatori 33.3. " 3. Claud. Cons. Hon. (ed. as part ofCarmina) 411.396-400. He followed this advice with several examples. 4. H. A. Pescennius Niger 11.1-4 (trans. Birley). 5. H. A. Pescennius Niger 3.9 (trans. Birley). 6. Hadrian was especiaily remembered in this way. SeeB. A.Hadr. 10.2 and 5; Casso Dio 69.9.2-4. Cf. also the description of Julian by Amm. Marc. 16.5.1-5. See also J. B. Campbell (The Emperor and the RomanArmy) 31 B.C.-A.D. 235 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984],32-59), who examines other intersections between emperor and army, among them the sacramentum or oath of loyalty demanded of each soldier to the emperor (19-32), the adlocutio or imperial address to the troops (69-88), the granting of the emperor's cognomen to a specific legion (88-93), and the army's acclamatio or shouted recognition of the emperor's rule (120-28). 7. On the Germans and other non-Romans in the later Roman army: Michael Speidel, "The Rise of Ethnic Units in the Imperial Army;' Aufstieg und Niedergangderromischen Welt2.3 (1975): 202-31;J. H. W. G.Liebeschuetz, "The End of the Roman Army in the Western Empire;' in War and Society in the Roman World) ed. J. Rich and G. Shipley (New York: Routledge, 1993); Arthur Ferrill, "The Barbarians in the Army;' in Roman Imperial Grand Strategy (Lanham, Md.: University Press ofAmerica, 1991); Pat Southern and Karen Ramsey Dixon, The Late Roman Army (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996),46-52; J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Barbarians and Bishops: Army) Church) and State in the Age ofArcadius and Chrysostom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 48-85. C£

310

NOTES TO PAGES 39-40

Yann Le Bohec (Varl1ufe romaine sous Ie haut-Empire[Paris: Pica,rd, 1990], 82-107) who charts the ethnic composition of various branches of the Roman', army from the early first to the late third century C.E. " 8. See Duncan Cloud, "Roman Poetry and Anti-Militarism;' in War. and Society in the Roman World) ed. J. Rich and G. Shipley (New York: ~oucledge;',: , 1993); and Harry Sidebottom, "Philosophers' Attitudes to Warfare under the Principate;' in War and Society in the Roman World) ed. J. Rich a,nd G. Shipley' (New York: Routledge, 1993). 9. Liebeschuetz writes that ''A process ofdemilitarization affecting all classes can certainly be observed over the whole imperial period of Roman historY" ("End of the Roman Army;' 274). C£ idem, Barbarians and Bishops) 11-25; and Southern and Dixon (Late RomanArmJ; 68), who write that "There is abundant evidence to show that military service had become unpopular amongst the citizens." . 10. Claudius Mamertinus Gratiarnm actio suo Iuliano imperatori 20. 11. For later Roman history, the most complete analysis is still A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire) 284-602: A Social) Economic) and Administrative SurveJ; 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). See also Andre Chastagnol, Vevolution politique) sociale et economique du monde romain de Dioclitien aJulien. La mise en place du regime du Bas-Empire (284-363) (Paris: Societe D'Edition D'Enseignement Superieur, 1982); and Matthews, Roman Empire ofAmmianus) for several useful chapters. 12. On both the theme of invasion and the settlement of the foreigners, see Walter Go~art, Barbarians and Romans) A.D. 418-584: The Techniques ofAccommodation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). 13. On the escaped slaves of Aquitania called bacaudae) see Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 25-56; or J. F. Drinkwater, "The Bacaudae of FifthCentury Gaul;' in Fifth-century Gaul: A Crisis ofIdentity? ed. J. F. Drinkwater and H. Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 14. Paulinus of Pella Eucharisticus (ed. C. Moussy, SC 209; trans. H. Isbell [London:Penguin,1971])1l.311-20. 15. Paulinus of Pella Eucharisticus 11.328-36. 16. John Matthews (Western Aristocracies and Imperial Cour; A.D. 364-425 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975], 324) writes: "The autobiographical poem of Paulinus is cast in the form of an extended prayer of thanksgiving; yet it is pervaded by, and does not always try to disguise, a profound pessimism." See also Neil B. McLynn, "Paulinus the Impenitent: A Study of the Eucharisticus)"Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 461-86. The view of Ramsay MacMullen (Soldier and Civilian in the Later Roman Empire [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963]), that civilians in the later Roman empire were forced to militarize themselves to deal with the threat posed by the political dangers, must be rejected, although he is correct in asserting that soldiers, deprived of sufficient support to wage war, were forced to fend for their own livelihood by settlement, trade, or rapine. See the conclusion of Le Bohec, Armee romaine) 271, for the third century; for the later periods, see Ralph Mathisen, RomanAristocrats in Bar-

NOTES TO PAGES 4-I-43

311

barian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993). 17. Casso Dio 62.6.4. The incident was supposed to have taken place in 61 . . C.E.; c£Tac.Ann, 14.35 .. .. 18. VegetiusEpit.rei militari! 1.28. I have changed the translator's "mankind" . for homines to "men." 19. Dig. 49.16.4.10. 20~ MacCormack, Art arid Ceremony~ 34. See her work generalIy on the place of the panegyric in later Roman culture and politics, but cf. the assessment of the . political role of the panegyrical praise of military virtues by Fran<,;ois Heim, Virtus. Ideologie politique et croyances religieuses au We siecle (Berne: Peter Lang, 1991), 277....:83. Later Roman writers themselves recognized the exaggerated nature of the genre: Julian. Or. 1.4B-C; H. A. PescenniusNiger 11.5-6. 21. Claudius Mamertinus Gratiarum actio de consulatu suo Iuliano imperatori 11-12. See also Polymnia Athanassiadi,Julian: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Routledge, 1992). Athanassiadi creatively attempts (192-225) to recreate Julian's own perception of his military role and argues that he was obsessed with the idea that his life would parallel that of Alexander the Great, an example perhaps of the utmost in a masculine military identity. 22. Claud. Cons. Hon. 311. 14b-87a, 411.518-29. 23. Sid. Apoll. Panegyricus dictusAvitoAugusto (456 CE.). For a study of this writer and the political and cultural environment in which he lived, see Jill Harries, SidoniusApollinaris and the Fall ofRome~ A.D. 407-485 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). 24. Sid. Apoll. Panegyricus dictusMaiorianoAugusto (458 C.E.). 25. Sid. Apoll. Panegyricus dictusAnthemioAugusto (468 C.E.). 26. Amm. Marc. 22.12.6. 27. H. A. PescenniusNiger 3.10 (trans. Bidey). 28. For the crucifixion of soldiers, see H. A. Avidius Cassius 4.2; for the amputation of the hands of thieving soldiers, H. A. Avidius Cassius 4.5. This may be more of a suggestion for punishment on the part of the author of the HistoriaAugusta~ rather than a record of fact, but this possibility does not affect the implication. Southern and Dixon describe (Late Roman Army~ 168-78) the lack of morale and discipline in the Roman army, especially after the Roman defeat at the battle of Adrianople in 378. 29. Amm. Marc. 27.8.9-10. 30. Nov. Valentiniani (ed. T. Mommsen and P. Meyer as part of Cod. Theod. [Berlin: Weidmann, 1905]; trans. C. Pharr [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952]) 6.1,6.2. 31. Dig. 49.16.3.1,4,10-11. 32. Dig. 49.16.4.13-15. 33. See Dig. 49.15.19.4,8 for the laws on desertion. 34. Nov. Valentiniani 15.1. Southern and Dixon (LateRomanArmy~ 81) suggest that "by the early fifth century it was apparently standard legal practice for officers to appropriate some of the rations consigned to their men." See Southern and Dixon also (62-63) on rations and supplies and salaries.

312

NOTES TO PAGES 4-3-4-6

35. Claud. Cons. Stil. 2, 11. 1476-8. 36. Amm. Marc. 14.10.4-5. 37. Lactant. De mortibus persecutorum (ed. and trans. Creed [Oxford:·. Clarendon Press, 1984]) 47. The battle was that of Ergenus .in.313 .. 38. Lactant. De mortibus persecutorum 47. .. 39. Julian. Or. (trans. Wright) 1.37A. The battle was that of Myrsa in 353. . 40. Dig. 49.16.6.7. 41. Vegetius Epit. rei militaris 3.26. 42. VegetiusEpit. rei militaris 3.12. 43. Dig. 49.16.6.3. I have removed the translator's parentheses from around "his fellow." 44. Dig. 49.15.18. 45. Dig. 49.15.2 (my trans.) "turpiter amittantur." On the invalidity of the wills of prisoners of war, see Dig. 28.3.6; on thepostliminium~ seeDig. 49.15.4. 46. On Mithraism, see Manfred Clauss, Mithras. Kult und Mysterien (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1990); Robert Turcan, Mithra et le mithriacisme (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1993); idem,Les cultes orientaux dans Ie monde romain (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1989). On the spread of the cult in the Roman emprre and the role of the army: M. J. Vermaseren, "Mithras in der Romerzeit;' in Die orientalischen Religionen im Riimerreich (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981); C. M. Daniels, "The Role of the Roman Army in the Spread and Practice of Mithraism;' inMithraic Studies: Proceedings ofthe First International Congress ofMithraic Studies~ vol. 2, ed. J. R. Hinnells (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975). For epigraphical evidence of the, Mithraic cult in the West, see Manfred Clauss, Cultores Mithrae. Die Anhangerschaft des Mithras-Kultes (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992). On Commodus's devotion to the cult, see H. A. Comm. 9.6. On Julian'S devotion to the cult, seeAthanassiadi,Julian~ 52-88; disputed byTurcan,Mithra~ 42, and Rowland Smith,Julian~s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action ofJulian theApostate (New York: Routledge, 1995), 124-71passim. 47. See John Hinnells, "Reflections on the Bull-Slaying Scene;' inMithraic Studies~ vol. 2. The taurobolium was also used in the cult of Magna Mater (see chap. 8). 48. This interpretation is suggested by R. L. Gordon, "Mithraism and Roman Society: Social Factors in the Explanation of Religious Change in the Roman Empire;' Religion 2 (1972): 92-121. 49. On the gladiatorial games, see Keith Hopkins, Death and RentmJal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-30; Michael Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition~ Violence~ and Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987). 50. This point is argued by Patrick Le Roux, "Vamphitheatre et Ie soldat sous l'Empire romain;' in C. Domergue et al., eds., Spectacula: Actes du colloque tenu it Toulouse et it Lattes les 26~ 27, 28 et 29 mai 1987 (Paris: Imago, 1990). 51. Monique Clavel-Uveque, IlEmp'ire en jeux: Espace symbolique etpratique sociale dans le monde romain (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1984). As Clavel-Uveque indicates (162-73), the spatial dominance of the amphitheatres in most Roman cities is a symbolic marker of their cultural dominance.

r

NOTES TO PAGES 46-49

313

For the archeological record, see Augusta Honle, Riimische Amphitheater und Stadim: Gladiatorenkampft und,Circusspiele (Zurich: Atlantis/Antike Welt, 1981). 52. H. A.Maximus et Balbinus 8.5-7 (trans. Magie).

,53. 'Dig. 3.2.4. " 54. H. A. M. Ant. 11-.4; 27.6. According to one source, the emperor Marcus , AUrelius did,not: ev~n permit the contests to use real weapons: Casso Dio 72.29.3. See also HoDle, ''Amphitheater und Gesellschaft:' in RifmischeAmphitheater. 55: H. A. Comm. 2.9 (trans. Birley), c£ 11.10; Casso Dio 73.15-21. 56. Casso Dio 62.17.3; C£ Suet.Ner. 4. 57. H. A.Alex. 37.1 (trans. Magie). 58. On the attitude toward Greek culture by classical Latin authors, seeA. N. SherWin-White, Racial Prejudice in Imperial Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 71-86; J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London: Duckworth, 1979), 30-54. 59. H. A. Tyr. trig. 16.1 (my trans.): "homo omnium delicatissimus et prorsus orientalis et Graecae luxuriae." 60. H. A. Alex. Sev. 28.7. Severus Alexander was supposed to have tried to distance himself from his predecessor, Elagabalus, who had brought many Eastern customs to Rome (see the discussion below). 61. Amm. Marc. 17.9.3: "Asianum appellans, Graeculum et fallacem." 62. Julian.Mis. 339A-B. 63. Claud. Cons. Stil. 3 passim esp. atll. 160b-1. 64. Pacatus Panegyricus dictus Theodosiani imperatori 33. C£ Sid. Apoll. Panegyricus . .. Maioriano ll. 419-30. 65. H. A. Valeriani duo 1.3-4. 66. On shrewd political maneuvers, see Amm. Marc. 29.4.1; alternative to war, Amm. Marc. 14.6.4; on short-sighted imperial leadership, Amm. Marc. 14.10.14 (from a speech attributed to Constantius IT to his troops, who agree to a treaty between the Romans and the Alamans); on capitulation, Sid. Apoll. Epist. 7.7 to Graecus, passim but esp. at 7.7.4; on lack of financial support, Sid. Apoll. Panegyricus . .. Avito ll. 306b-311. 67. H. A. Probus 15.2,5-6 (trans. Magie). 68. See, for example, the Huns as described in Claud. In Rufinum 1 ll. 323-31, in Amm. Marc. 31.2.1-12, or in Sid. Apoll. Panegyricus ... Anthemio ll. 241, the last ofwhom calls them "barbarous even to barbarians." The savagery of the northerners was also a theme of classical Latin literature: Sherwin-White, Racial Prejudice) 1-61. For the same theme in writers of the later empire, see also Thomas Wiedemann, "Between Men and Beasts: Barbarians in Ammianus Marcellinus:' in Past Perspectives: Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing) ed. 1. Moxon et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 69. Sid. Apoll. Panegyricus . .. Avito ll. 235b-240. I have changed the translator's "thee" to "you" and "thou didst" to ''you did." 70. Claud. Cons. Stil.passim butesp. at Ill. 188-92; 2,ll. 240b-45. C£ idem, Cons. Hon. 6 ll. 242-64. On the barbarian commanders, see John Michael O'Flynn, Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1983).

Sev.

314

NOTES TO PAGES 49-51

71. De physiognomia liber 9, 79. For ethnic differences as perceived by Romans of earlier periods, see Balsdon, Romans andAliens~ esp. chap. 14·. 72. Sid. Apoll. Epist. 1.2.1-3 . . 73. Amm. Marc. 31.5.14. 74. What follows in this section owes much to Jones, Later Ro-fnan Empire.\.:.· For more specific studies, see Stephen Williams, Dio'detian and the Roman Recov- . ery (London: Batsford, 1985), esp. chap. 8; Chastagnol, L'evolution politique) sd- . ciale et economique; P. S. Barnwell, Emperor., Preftcts and Kings: The Roman West) 395-565 (London: Duckworth, 1992), esp. chaps. 2-5; and Eugen Cizek,Mentalitesetinstitutionspolitiquesromaines (Paris: Fayard, 1990), esp. chap. 9. 75. For example, see the brief remark by Paul Veyne: "in identifying a person it was customary to indicate his [sic] place in civic life, his political or municipal titles and dignities, if any. These became a p~ of a man's identity:" In "The Roman Empire;' in From Pagan Rome to Byzantium) ed. P. Veyne, trans. A. Goldhammer, vol. 1 ofA History ofPrivate Lift) gen. ed. P. Aries and G. Duby (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 105. On the need for gender in an analysis of political power, see Wendy Brown, "Finding the Man in the State;' Feminist Studies 18 (1992): 7-34. 76. Many of these puppet rulers were descended from the Roman nobility, providing some evidence of continuing authority, but many were also the result of intermarriage with powerful German families and owed their positions to these latter connections. See Alexander Demandt, "The Osmosis of Late Roman and Germanic Aristocracies;' in Das Reich und die Barbaren) ed. E. Chrysos and A. Schwarc:z; (Vienna and Cologne: Bohlau, 1989). 77. On the exaltation oflater emperors, see Andreas Alfoldi, Die monarchische Reprasentation im romischen Kaiserreiche (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970); MacCormack, Art and Ceremony; Heim, Virtus) passim but esp. 187-218, 307-47. 78. For a list of later Roman officeholders, see Timothy Barnes, The New Empire ofDiocletian and Constantine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). M. T. W. Arnheim (The SenatorialAristocracy in the Later Roman Empire [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]) argues that the Christian emperors, in order to buy support for their religious reforms among the mostly pagan western aristocracy, were required to reverse the tide of ever greater exclusion of noblemen from the highest offices in the empire (49-102), but he concedes (98) that "an emperor could appoint whomsoever he wished to any particular post." Matthews (WesternAristocracies) also gives evidence for the continuation of the western aristocracy in positions of authority in the fourth century, especially, he writes (1-31), governorships, consulships, and the office ofpraeftctus urbi (prefect of the city [of Rome]). He also documents the fluctuating influence of the old nobility, however, which during the reigns of several emperors was eclipsed by the military elites, especially during the reigns of Valentinian I (32-55) and Theodosius I (88-100). 79. See Brown, Power and Persuasion) 3-34. Brown confines his analysis to the Eastern Empire, but his conclusions also hold true for the Western Empire, as a study of nobles in the government of :fifth-century Gaul suggests: see Ralph Mathisen, "Gallic Traditionalists and the Continued Pursuit ofthe Roman Ideal;'

NOTES TO PAGES 5I-53

.

315

in Roman Aristocrats. C£ Brown's earlier comments (Making of Late Antiqu,ity) on the overemphasi~ of the idea of "decline" in the later Roman provincial aristocracy and the overreliance on the epigraphical record . . 80. See Brown, Power andPers1tasion) 35-70. '. 81. On the ranking of the lat;er Roman nobility, see Jones, Later Roman Em.pire) 523-62;.·Henrik Lohken, Ordines Dignitatum. Untersuchungen zur formalen IVJnstituierurig'der spiitantiken Fuhrungsschicht (Vienna and Cologne: Bohlau, 1982):' . . 82. Matthews (Western Aristocracies) 9) writes that "Office was regarded as an encumbrance, accepted with reluctance and laid down with relief" For the relation of public expenditures and political power in earlier Roman history, see Paul Veyne, Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism) trans. B. Pierce (London: Penguin, 1990). On the declining population, see below. 83. Cod. Theod. 6.4.17. Constantine's law on the subject is not extant but is mentioned here. 84. The early imperial law known as the senatus consultum Velleianum denying women permission to plead in court was reaffirmed by Constantine (Cod. Theod. 9.1.3). It was confirmed again by Theodosius I (Cod. Theod. 2.12.5). We even have examples in which Valentinian III refused women's rights of advocacy in two specific cases (Nov. Valentiniani 8.1 and 8.2). For an analysis of the senatus consultum Velleianum) see J. A. Crook, "Feminine Inadequacy and the Senat'USconsultum Velleianum/' in The Famiry in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives) ed. B. Rawson (London: Croom Helm, 1986). On the duties of the praetor, Charles Coster (The Iudicium Quinquevirale [Cambridge: Medieval Academy ofAmerica, 1970; orig. publ. 1935], 5) writes: "The sole duties attached to these offices at the time ... were the giving of games and theatrical performances and the undertalcing of public works, all at the expense of the officeholders. But these expenses were very great indeed, so great that after A.D. 361 it was made obligatory to give ten years' notice to nominees for the praetorship." This is not entirely true. For example, the praetor had the right to emancipate individuals from their paterfamilias (a right confirmed in Cod. Theod. 6.4.16). Antti Arjava (Women and Law in Late Antiquity [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996],252) talces it as understood that women would only have inherited the financial obligations to the position and not the judicial ones. 85. See Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (31 B.G.-A.D. 337) (London: Duckworth, 1977), 341-55. Millar writes (341): "at least up to the third century matters of imperial policy could still be debated in the senate" and (350): "It is thus apparent that, so far as our evidence shows, senatus consulta embodying legislation, embassies to the senate and decisions by the senate on the affairs of provincial communities all came to an end in the second half of the second or the first half of the third century." C£ Arnheim (SenatorialAristocracy) 32) who writes that "By the third century the Senate as an institution had no power worth mentioning." For details on the functioning and activities of the senate, see Richard Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 86. On the provincial nobility in the Senate and its enlargement, see Andre 27~53)

316

NOTES TO PAGES

53-54

Chastagnol, "I.?evolution de l'ordre senatorial aux HIe et IVe siecles de notre ere;' Revue historique 496 (1970): 305:-14. For examples ofnew senatorial families, see· Hagith Sivan, Ausonius of Bordeaux: Genesis of a GallicAristQcracy (New York:: Routledge, 1993); M. K. Hopkins, "Social Mobility in the Later RomanEm~ pire: The Evidence of Ausonius;' Classical Quarterly 55- (1961): ,23949;-',:_ B. Twyman, ''Aetius and the Aristocracy;' Historia 19 (1970): 480-503. The ex- . tension of senatorial privilege to the provincial nobility was only made possible' . by the grant of Roman citizenship to all free persons living within the empire in 212 C.E. 87. On the political decline of the city of Rome, see Jones, Later Roman Empire~ 329; Matthews, Roman Empire ofAmmianus~ 235. On the decline of thelegislative powers of the senate, see Jones,Later RomanEmpire~ 471-73; Matthews, WesternAristocracies~ 305. Matthews does argue for some ad hoc powers of diplomacy exercised in the political crises of the fifth century, but these must be seen as individual roles rather than institutional, since he concedes (WesternAristocracies~ 388) that much of their power rested on "their possession of the most durable of all sources of influence, landowning and patronage." . 88. On the decurionate, see Jones, Later Roman Empire~ 543-52, 712-66; Chastagnol, INvolution politique~ sociale et economique~ 278-302; Peter Garnsey, ''Aspects of the Decline of the Urban Aristocracy in the Empire;' Aufstieg und Niedet;gangderrijmischen Welt 2.1 (1974): 229-52. 89. On women not being responsible as sole heirs, see Cod. Theod. 12.1.137; women's sons responsible as heirs, Cod. Theod. 12.1.178. This is specifically a repudiation of the previous law. On women's husbands responsible as heirs, see Cod. Theod. 12.1.124. There were only two other areas in which men were obliged to talce up their wife's profession: the first was breadmalcing (Cod. Theod. 14.3.2, 14.3.14, 14.3.21), the second was the collection offish for purple dyes (Cod. Theod. 10.20.5). For more on the hereditary professions, see A: H. M. Jones, "The Caste System in the Later Roman Empire;' Eirene 8 (1970): 79-96. 90. Nov. Majoriani 7.1-2. Jones (Later RomanEmpire~ 747) believes this law was designed to thwart the designs of those decurions who cohabited rather than married so that they might bequeath their estates to their children but would not have to pass to them their curial obligations. For Roman traditions on marriages between persons of differing social status, see P. R. C. Weaver, "The Status of Children in Mixed Marriages;' in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives~ ed. B. Rawson (London: Croom Helm, 1986). 91. According to alawof371 C.E. (Cod. Theod.12.1.74), sons butnotdaughters could retain the senatorial rank. In 382 C.E., this law was revoked (Cod. Theod. 12.1.93). In 393 C.E., the privilege was restored (Cod. Theod. 12.1.132). 92. On the expansion of the provincial administration, see Jones, Later RomanEmpire~ 42-43; Williams,Diocletian~ 104-6. On thecomites~ see Jones, Later Roman Empire~ 104-7. Constantine established a new Senate in Constantinople and elevated to its ranlcs a whole group of new men from among his political allies, again about two thousand in number. The Senate of Constantinople was an even more honorific assembly than that of Rome, but its members still enjoyed one of the highest political ranlcs in the empire. On the Senate of Constantinople,

NOTES TO PAGES

54-59

317

see Jones, Later Roman Empire) 132-33; Liebeschuetz, Barbarians and Bishops) 132-45. 93. On the later Roman civil service, see Jones, Later Roman Empire) . ,563-606; Chastagnol, IJevolution politique) sociale et economique) ' 186-205. For - ,'.fll
318

NOTES TO PAGES 59-62

balus survives. On Sardanapalus and other legends of ancient Mediterranean transvestites, see Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, "Mythology and History' , in the Ancient World;' in Cross Dressingy Sexy and Gender (Philadelphia: Univ:er-; sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1 9 9 3 ) . ' ' 110. Herodian (ed. and trans.c. R. Whittalcer,LCL) 5.5.5. Ill. Another example of the luxurious appearance of the later Roman nobility is provided by Auson. Epigr. 26; against clothing of gold or gold thread, Cod. Theod. 10.21.1,10.21.2; against clothing of purple, Cod. Theod. 10.21.3. On the use of the jeweled diadem for imperial coronations, see MacCormack, Art'and Ceremony, chap. 3; see also Ann Stout, "Jewelry as a Symbol of Status in the Roman Empire;' in The World of Roman Costumey ed. J. Sebesta and L. Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994). 112. Claud. Cons. Hon. 411. 585b--92. I llave changed the translators "thy" to "your;' and his "adorns" to "enlivens;' according to the more recent edition of the text. 113. Claud. lnRufinum 211.343-7. 114. H. A.Maximini duo 28.5 (trans. Magie). 115. Julian Or. 2.98D. 116. Amm. Marc. 20.4.17-8. 117. Pacatus Panegyricus dictus Theodosio lmperatori (ed. D. Lassandro [Thrin: Pavaria, 1992]; trans. C. Nixon [Liverpool: Liverpool University, 1987]) 13.1-4. 118. Pacatus Panegyricus dictus Theodosio Imperatori 14.1 (my trans.). 119. Amm. Marc. 14.6.17: "mulitudo spadonum?' 120. Hi~ron. Epist. (ed. J. Labourt, 8 vols. [Paris: Belles Lettres, 1949-63]; selected letters ed. and trans. F. Wright, LCL) 22.16: "eunuchorum greges," 54.13: "spadonum exercitu;' 130.4: "eunuchorum ... cateruas?' 121. H. A.Aurel. 49.8 (trans. Magie). 122. There has been much written on the political role of the eunuch in late antiquity. See especially Dirk Schlinlcert, "Der Hofeunuch in der Spatantike: Ein gefilirlicher Aussenseiter?" Hermes. ZeitschriJtfor klassische Philologie 122 (1994): 342-59; see also Keith Hopkins, "Eunuchs in Politics in the Later Roman Empire;' Proceedings ofthe Cambridge Philological Society 189 (1963): 62-80; revised as "The Political Power ofEunuchs;' chap. 4 in idem, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Peter Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven undFreigelassene in dergriechisch-rijmischenAntike (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980), especially chap. 7, "Die Hofeunuchen im Romischen Reich im 4. Jahrhundert." 123. Amm. Marc. 14.6.17. 124. Cod. lust. 4.42.1: "in orbe Romano eunuchos fecerit." 125. Cod. lust. (ed. T. Mommsen [Berlin: Weidmann, 1954]; trans. S. Scott, The CivilLaWy vols. 12-15 [Cincinnati: Central Trust, 1932]) 4.42.2. 126. Amm. Marc. 16.7.5. 127. See Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaveny esp. "Prosopographie der Hofeunuchen;' 181-233; see also Shaun Tougher, "Byzantine Eunuchs: An Overview, with Special Reference to Their Creation and Origin;' in Womeny Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantiumy ed. Liz James (New York: Routledge, 1997), who includes some late ancient sources.

NOTES TO PAGES 63-65

319

128. See Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven) chap. 6. 129. Casso Dio 76.14.4-,-5. 130. H. A.Alex. Sev. 66.4 (trans. Magie). 13L H. A.Alex. Sev. 23.4-6 (trans. Magie) . .132. H. A:4Iex. Sev. 66.3 (trans. Magie), cf. 45.5. See Hopkins ("Eunuchs in Politics;' 76}whowrites:"the tension between.an absolutist monarch and the other powers of the state; th~ seclusion of a divine emperor behinq a highly formalized court ritual; the need of both parties for intermediaries; the exploitation . by eunuchs of this channel for the appropriation to themselves of some of the power of controlling the distribution of favors; the non-assimilability of eunuchs into the aristocracy; the cohesive but non-corporate nature of their corps; and the expei-tise which resulted from the permanence of their positions as compared with the amateurish, rivalrous and individualistic strivings of aristocrats: all these factors in combination and in interaction can account for the increasing power with which eunuchs were invested, and the continuity with which they, as a body, held it." 133. See the detailed study of this office by Helga Scholten, Der Eunuch in I(aiserniihe. Zur politischen und sozialen Bedeutung des praepositus sacri cubiculi im 4. Und 5.]ahrhundertn. Chr. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995), including a prosopographical appendix listing all holders of the office in the fourth and fifth centuries (205-42), replacing earlier studies and lists of names by Guyot (Eunuchen als Sklaven) 130-76), Rodolphe Guilland (Recherches sur ies institutions byzantines) 2 vols. [Berlin: Akademie, 1967] 1.176-8), and J. E. Dunlap, The Office of the Grand Chamberlain in the Later Roman and Byzantine Empires (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1924). 134. Raised from clarissimus to illustris} see Cod. Theod. 7.8.3; raised from iliustristo eminentissimus} Cod. Theod. 6.8.1. 135. Claudius Mamertinus Gratiarum actio Juliano Augusto 19.4. 136. H. A. Gordiani tres (trans. Magie) 25.1: "nisi di onmipotentes Romanum tuerentur imperium, etiam nunc per emptos spadones velut in hasta positi venderemur." Since hasta was the pole set up to indicate a slave auction, I have changed the translator's "as though under the hammer" for in hasta positi to "as though we were the slaves." 137. Alan Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court ofHonorius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 126. 138. On Claudian and his career, both political and literary, see Cameron, Claudian) esp. chap. 6, for the political situation, and chaps. 10 and 11, for Claudian's literary models. On politics, see also Liebeschuetz, Barbarians and Bishops} 87-153. On literature, see also Annette Eaton, The Influence of Ovid on Ciaudian (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1943); and Severin Koster, Die Invektive in der griechischen und romischen Literatur (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1980), esp. "Gegen Eutrop;' 314-51. A detailed commentary on the poem may also be found by Helge Schweckendick, Ciaudians Invektive gegen Eutrop (In Eutropium): Ein Kommentar (Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 1992), and by Long, Claudian}s In Eutropium. The edict exiling Eutropius also survives: Cod. Theod. 9.40.17.

320

NOTES TO PAGES 66-69

139. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. lSl-S. 140. Claud. In Eutropium 1 1. 10: "ostentaturanus titulumqueeffeminat anni." . 141. Claud. In Eutropium 1 11. 296b-Sa: "quodcumqrie uirorum est decus;. eunuchi scelus est." I have replaced the translator's "emasculate" with ~'eunuth." "142. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. 320-1a. 143. Claud. In Eutropium 111.497-9. 144. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. 493b-4a: "nam quae iam belli geramus / mollibus auspiciis?" I have replaced the translator's "eunuch" for molliswith "effeminate." 145. Claud. In Eutropium 1 11. 242b-4,252-62. I have replaced Magie's "There follows companies of foot, squadrons like their general" and his "face bleached whiter by the sun" with my own "The troops are mutilated, squadrons like their amputated leader" and "face filthier in the sun;' according to Hall's emendation of Platnauer's text. On the emendations, see also Schweckendiek, Claudians Invektive~ S3-4. 146. Claud. In Eutropium 11. 2S1a: "arma relinque uiris." 147. Guilland (Recherches~ 1.170) generalizes from the Byzantine evidence, but his comments are likely applicable to the earlier period: "les basileis estimaient prudent de confier Ie commandement en chef de leurs armees a des eunuques .... Un eunuque victorieux n'etait pas acraindre, alors qu'un general victorieux pouvait toujours devenir un pretendant redoutable. Les soldats, cependant, ne semblent pas avoir eu grande confiance dans ces strateges eunuques qu'on leur imposait et qui, Ie plus souvent, d'ailleurs, les conduisirent ala defaite." 14S. Amm. Marc. 14.10.5. 149. Amm. Marc. 14.11.2-3, lS.3. 150. Amm. Marc. 15.3.2. 151. Amm. Marc. 20.2.3. 152. Amm. Marc. 20.2.4. 153. Julian Ep. ad senatum populumque Athenarum 272D; Amm. Marc. 22.3.12; Cod. Theod. 9.40.17. Arbitio, tried for attempted usurpation, was acquitted (Cod. Theod. 16.6.1). 154. See Cod. Theod. 9.40.17; Long, ClaudianJsInEutropium~ 160-62. 155. Amm. Marc. 22.3.12; see also lS.4.2-6 for more of the intrigues ofEusebius. 156. Claud. In Eutropium 2 11. 113b-4a (my trans.): "numquam corrupta rigescent / saecula?" Platnauer's translation reads: "Will this corrupt age never learn true manliness?" 157. Claud. In Eutropium 211. 137-9: "quod et armati cess ant et nulla uirilem inter tot gladios sexum reminiscitur ira?" I have reworded this last phrase, which Platnauer translates awkwardly as "that manly indignation reminds us not oftheir sex whose many thighs bear a sword!" ISS. Claud. In Eutropium 211. 5S0-3. I have changed the opening "'Tis" to "It is." 159. This point is made by Long, Claudian)sInEutropium) 254.

NOTES TO PAGES 70-71

321

CHAPTER THREE

, 1. For more detailed information on Roman marriage, see Susan Treggiari, RiJmanMarriage: Iitsti Coniugesfrom the Time of Cicero to the Time,ofUlpian (Ox- ' , :ford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Jean Gaudemet, Le mariage en occident: Les moeurs "et Ie droit ,(Paris: Du Cerf, 1987);M. Humbert, Le remariage a llime (Milan: 'Dott; A. Guiffre, 1972); arid Percy Corbett, The lliman Law ofMarriage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930). On Roman women and the law, see Arjava, Women and Law; Jean Gaudemet, "Le statut de la femme dans l'Empire fomain;' Receuils ,de la Societe Jean Bodin pour fhistoire comparative'des institutions 2 (1959): 193-222; and Yan Thomas, "The Division of the Sexes in Roman Law;' inA History of Women in the West) vol. 1: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints) ed. P. Schmitt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). On the family, see Grubbs, Law and Family) and "'Pagan' and 'Christian' Marriage: The State of the Question;' Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 361-412; Brent Shaw, "The Family in Late Antiquity: The Experience of Augustine;' Past and Present 115 (1987): 3-51, and idem, "Latin Funerary Epigraphy and Family Life in the Later Roman Empire;' Historia 33 (1984): 457-97. 2. See J. A. Crook, "Patria Potestas;' Classical Quarterly 17 (1967): 113-22. Men under the age of majority were also provided with a temporary tutor (guardian); the tutor performed for a woman and a minor male all of the administrative tasks of which they were legally incapable. Persons under the legal authority of another were called alieni iuris (under the law of another); independent men were known as sui iuris (under one's own law). In what follows, "patriarchal" is used as the adjectival form ofpatria potestas. 3. See Richard Saller, "Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience in the Roman Household;' inMarriage) Divorce) and Children in Ancient RiJme) ed. B. Rawson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 4. Following generally on the early feminist analysis of Simone de Beauvoir, Ledeuxiemesexe (Paris: Gallimard, 1949) vol. 1,147: "C'estleconflitdelafamille et de l'Etat qui definit l'histoire de la femme romaine?' 5. See Suzanne Dixon ("The Sentimental Ideal of the Roman Family;' in Marriage) Divorce) and Children in Ancient RiJme) ed. B. Rawson [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991]) on the "sentimental ideal" of the Roman family. See Treggiari (RnmanMarriage) 229-61) on love between husbands and wives. See also Erniel Eyben ("Fathers and Sons;' inMarriage) Divorce) and Children in Ancient llime) ed. B. Rawson [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991]), who argues for an ideal of fatherly strictness, neither too harsh nor too indulgent. Saller ("Corporal Punishment") argues that the feeling of fathers for their wives and children, called pietas (piety), distinguishes these ties from the absolute control of the father over slaves in the household. 6. Treggiari (RiJman Marriage) 253-61) looks at letters between husbands and wives from the classical period for evidence both of romantic ties and of women's responsibilities. She writes (258): "It is impossible in any of these letters from husbands to wives to find the domineering tone that Rome's original patriarchal institutions might lead us to expect?' Cf. Jane Phillips, "Roman Mothers and the Lives of their Adult Daughters;' Helios 6 (1978): 69-80.

322

NOTES TO PAGES 7I-72

7. Suzanne Di..'Con, The Roman Family (Baltimore: Jolms Hopkins University Press, 1992), 19-24.. . . . . 8. The role of a woman's blood relatives, viz. herpateifamilias~ in the decp.n"~ of the marriage cum manu was first proposed by way of explanation. by de Beai.l~.· , .. voir (Deuxieme sexe~ vol. 1, 1). For a detailed discussion, see S. B. Pom<;roy, '~The',:' Relationship of the Married Women to her Blood Relatives in Rome;' Ancient 80- . ciety7 (1976): 215-27. Pomeroy argues that the rights of the father won oUt over' the rights of the husband, because the high rates of female infanticide meant far more men of marriageable age than women, and this gave fathers greater powers of negotiation in marriage contracts than prospective husbands. 9. In a marriage cum manu~ the husband or his paterfamilias gained full possession of a woman's dowry. In a marriage sine manu~ he only had the right of usufructus (i.e., the use of the income from .her property). The dowry served as a woman's inheritance from her family of birth; this may be surmised from the lex Voconia of the late republic, confirmed in the early empire as the ratio Voconiana~ which denied to men the right to leave large inheritances to their daughters. See J. A. Crook, "Women in Roman Succession;' in The Family inAncientRome: New Perspectives~ ed. B. Rawson (London: Croom Helm, 1986); and Arjava, Women andLa~ 62-73. Arjava (123) argues that the absence of references to marriage cum manu in the Theodosian Code means that only the marriage sine manu continued to exist after the start of the fourth century. 10. On choice of marriage partners and divorce, see Susan Treggiari, "Consent to Roman Marriage: Some Aspects of Law and Reality;' Classical Views 26 (1982): 34,44. 11. Fo~ detailed analyses of the Augustan legislation, see P. Csillag, The Augustan Laws on Family Relations (Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6, 1976); Leo Raditsa, ''Augustus' Legislation Concerning Marriage, Procreation, Love Affairs and Adultery;' Aufstirg und Niedergang der Rihnischen Welt 2:13 '(1980): 278-339; and Angelilca Mette-Dittmann, Die Ehrgesetze des Augustus. Eine Untersuchung im Rahmen der Gesellschaftspolitik des Princeps (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991). 12. This law, the lex de maritanda ordinibus~ applied to women between the ages of twenty-five and fifty and to men between the ages of twenty-five and sixty. The maximum delay between marriages was two years; a minimum dday of ten months was also required for women to certify paternity in case of pregnancy, called the tempus lugendi. Men may have been required to become betrothed almost immediately upon reaching the age of twenty-five or after the end of a first marriage, and a betrothal could last no more than two years. C£ A. WallaceHadrill, "Family and Inheritance in the Augustan Marriage-Laws;' Proceedings of theCambridgePhiioiogical80ciety 207 (1981): 58-80, who argues that unmarried and childless persons were still permitted to leave their estates to natural heirs but were denied rights of testation. 13. This was sometimes called the ius trium liberorum (the right of three children) because a woman living in the city of Rome who bore three children was freed from the tutela. Other Italian women and freedwomen, too, could be granted this privilege, but were required to bear four children, and women of the

NOTES TO PAGE 72

323

provinces were required to bear five children to receive the benefit. John K. Evans (Wary Women) and Children,inAncientRome [London: Routledge, 1991], 13) argues for a connection between population and women's legal emancipation: the , numerous wars in which,the greatly enlarged empire was involved resulted in a -,', m:uch higher mortality rate for men, which made such legal enactments a practical solution tc? 'the'shortage of male guardians. ~im Parkin (Demography and Roman !iociety TBaltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992], ~16-19) notes that it is unclear whether tIlls law referred to children ever boni or children who survived to adulthood, but Arjava (Women and Law; 77-84) believes that it referred to children ever born, because "the general level of fertility in the Roman empire had to be relatively high" given infant mortality rates, and that at a result "most ordinary women would have attained the ius liberorum . . . without difficulty." 14. See Susan Treggiari, "Divorce Roman Style: How Easy and How Frequent Was It?" inMarriage) Divorce) and Children inAncient Rome) ed. B. Rawson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 15. Dig. 23.1.13 (forbids the betrothal of a man by his pateifamilias without his consent-a woman's consent seems not to have been necessary), 23.2.2 (requires the consent of both parties to be married as well as their patresfamilias), 23.2.3 (allows a pateifamilias to oblige two of his grandchildren to marry even without their consent, since they are both under his authority), 23.2.21 (forbids the marriage of aman by hispateifamilias without his consent), and23.2.22 (considers a marriage that has taken place as having involved the consent of the husband, even if forced upon him by his pateifamilias) and therefore valid). 16. Bequests to mothers were made possible by the law known as the senatus consultum Tertullianumj the law stipulated that the mother must have ius liberorum. Bequests by mothers were made possible by the law lmown as the senatus consultum Orfitianum. For examples of these laws in, action, see Liselot Huchthausen, "Kaiserliche Reskripte an Frauen aus den Jahren 117 bis 217 u.Z.:' in Eirene. Actes de !aXIIe Conference internationale d)etudes classiques (Amsterdam: AdolfM. Haldcert, 1972); and Edoardo Volterra, "Les femmes dans les 'inscriptiones' des rescrits imperiaux;' in E. von Caernrnerer et al., eds., Xenion. Festschriftfor P. J Zepos (Athens: C. Katsikales, 1973). See also detailed discussion for late antiquity by Arjava, Women and Law; chap. 3. 17. See A. Boalc,Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1955); updated by Pierre Salmon, Population et depopulation dans PEmpire romain (Brussels: Latomus, 1974). See also Parkin (Demography) 67-68), who questions the methods ofBoalc and Salmon but arrives at similar conclusions himself (120). 18. In classical Roman law, valid marriages (justae nuptiae) could only happen between two Roman citizens according to the laws of conubium. While cohabitation between individuals ineligible to marry was permitted, as in the case ofRoman citizens and non-Roman inhabitants of the empire (peregrini), it was an inferior arrangement, called "non-valid matrimony" (matrimonium non justum) if the husband lacked the rights of conubium) and "cohabitation" (contubernium) if the wife lacked conubium. No marriage payments were permitted except in valid

324

NOTES TO PAGE 73

marriages. After 212, all of these regulations were abandoned, although conubium was still denied to members of the lower classes, and. so cohabitation be:tween men of the upper classes and women of the lower classes continued t.o be: referred to as contubernium. , .,', 19. On the traditional dowry (dos) in earlier periods, see Treggiari, 'Roman',' Marriagey 323-64; Suzanne Dixon, "Polybius on Roman Women and Property;' AmericanJournalofPhilology 106 (1985): 147-70; and Richard Saller, "Roman'. Dowry and the Devolution of Property in the Principate;' Classical Quarterly 34 (1984): 195-205. The betrothal gifts were variously called donatio ante nuptias (gift before marriage), sponsalicia la1lfitas (betrothal donation), dona nuptialia (nuptial gifts), or dona sponsalicia (betrothal gifts). Justinian consistently replaced the various terms with donatio propter nuptias (gift on account of marriage), by which it is best known in the Roman legal. histories. Such a system is called a "bride price" in traditional anthropological literature, although many recent discussions prefer the more neutral term "reverse dowry;" 20. It is implied that the traditional dowry is still well in place in 363 in a law of Julian (Cod. Theod. 3.13.2). Nonetheless, a law issued in 439 mandated that while a woman still had to bring into the marriage what was called a dowry, it might in fact even be "given back" from the property given to her father as her betrothal gift (Nov. Theodosiani 14.3). A law of 458 specifically refused to permit the dowry to be larger in value than the betrothal gifts (Nov. Majoriani 6.9). A law of 452 specifies the equal amount of the two payments (Nov. Valentiniani 35.9). Moreover, the wife's family rarely gave betrothal gifts to the couple (c£ Cod. Theod. 3.5.6). All of this had the result that while marriages still involved payments called dowries, the flow of money is reversed from the ancient dotal custom. 21. Until recently, few historians even documented the shift; see now Grubbs, Law and Familyy 156-71; and Arjava, Women and Law., 52-62. Both Grubbs (158) and Arjava (57) see it as the result of the influences of'eastern Mediterranean customs on late ancient law. David Herlihy (Medieval Households [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985], 14-22), one of the earliest to note the shift, attributes it to high rates of female infanticide, widely divergent ages of marriage between men and women, and the prevalence of perpetual virginity by Christian women. 22. The law permitted an aristocratic family to give even a fundus Italicus (Italian foundation-estate), usually the ancient home property, as a betrothal gift (Cod. Theod. 3.5.8). 23. Cod. Theod. 3.13.3. 24. Cod. Theod. 3.8.2, cf. Nov. Valentiniani 35. The only condition under which she lost her rights to the property was if she remarried within a year of her husband's death (Cod. Theod. 3.8.1). For an example of the law in action, see Elaine Fantham, ''Aemilia Pudentilla: Or the Wealthy Widow's Choice;' in WomeninAntiquityy ed. R. HawleyandB. Levick (New York: Routledge, 1995). 25. Gai. Inst. 1.190, c£ Dig. 16.1.2; 2.13.12. See also the discussion by Arjava, Women and Law., 231-43. 26. Cod. Theod. 2.17.1. The tutela mulierum is mentioned two years after the enactment of the law above in a second law, Cod. Theod. 3.17.2.

NOTES TO PAGES

73-74

325

27. Cod. Theod. 3.17.3. The adults referred to in the law may be thefuriosi (imbeciles) and prodigi (spe,ndthrifts) traditionally provided with guardians and not nec~ssarily women. Corbett (Roman Law ofMarriage;, 47) sees this law as the . . terminus ante qu.em of the tutela perpetua mulierum. Arjava, after some debate .. ',(Tifomen and'Law., 112..:..18), agrees (261) that "the disappearance of tutela muli~rum .. ; ~an probably be dated to the fou~ century." 28: On contracts, see Cod. Theod. 2.16.3. The law was issued l?yTheodosius II; in·the same year; he elevated his sister Pulcheria to the title of augusta;, an hon. orary name given only to a handful of women in the later empire; see Kenneth Holum, Theodosian Bmpresses: Women and Imperial Dominion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Although there is no specific evidence to this effect, it is possible to speculate about a relationship between the political success of Pulcherria and the legal improvement of women's status. On guardians, see Cod. Theod. 3.17.4. The mother had to promise not to remarry, and ifshe declined the responsibility or wished to remarry, only a male relative could be chosen: Nov. Theodosiani 11.2. This law was enacted in the West by Valentinian II when he was only nineteen years of age and greatly under the influence of his mother, Justina. Again, one might speculate about Justina's personal role in extending women's jurisdiction over their sons, since at this time, a female regent was as yet virtually unprecedented in Roman history and without real legal approval. These laws generally contradict the thesis of Suzanne Dixon ("Injirmitas sexus: Womanly Weakness in Roman Law;' Tijdschriftvoor Rechtsgeschiedenis 52 [1984]: 343-71) that as the tutela perpetua mulierum disappeared, it was replaced by philosophical concepts of the wealcness of women to the same social effects. 29. While no one disputes the wide age range between Roman husbands and wives, there has been considerable debate on exact ages of marriage. See M. Durry, "Le mariage des filles impuberes aRome;' Revue des Etudes latines 47 (1955): 17-25; opposed by J. Reinach, "Puberte feminine, et mariage romain;' Revue historique de droitfranfais et etranger 10 (1956): 268-73; but supported by M. K. Hopkins, "The Age of Roman Girls at Marriage;' Population Studies 18 (1965): 309-27; opposed again by Brent Shaw, "The Age of Roman Girls at Marriage: Some Reconsiderations;' Journal ofRoman Studies 77 (1987): 30-46; but supported again by Richard Saller, "Men's Age at Marriage and Its Consequences in the Roman Family;' Classical Philology 82 (1987): 21-34; and Treggiari,RomanMarriage;, 398-403. For examples, cf. R. Etienne, "La demographie des familles imperiales et senatoriales au We siecle apres J.-c.;' in Transformations et conflits au We siecie ap. J-c. (Bonn: RudolfHabelt, 1978). 30. Cod. Theod. 8.16.1. See also the discussion by Grubbs, Law and Family;, chap. 3. 31. Nov. Majoriani 6.5: ''viduitatisque captantes lascivam vivendi eligunt libertatem." 32. Hieron.Bpist. 127.3 (ed. and trans. Wright), cf. 22.16, 38.4, 54.7, 54.18. 33. Nov. Severi 1. 34. Cod. Theod. 8.18.4. The text as extant is corrupt. See also the discussion by Arjava, Women and Law;, chap. 2, although he concludes (262-63) that ''whether we want to say that patria potestas was 'eroded' in late antiquity remains

326

NOTES TO PAGES 74-75

a matter of taste." See also idem, "Paternal Power in Late Antiquity:'Journaloflliman Studies 88 (1998): 147-65. . 35. Cod. Theod. 8.18.3, 3.13.3, 8.18.6, 8.18.7, 8.19.1, C£ Nov. Valentiniarlc~ 35.1. The father still retained usufruct as long as his children were rrllnors,."al- . though if he emancipated them from his patria potestas) relinquishing a1).legalju-:',:: risdiction over them and appointing a third party as guardian to them, he was per- '. mitted by law to retain one-third of his wife's estate as compensation, Cod. Theod. ' . 8.18.1; 8.18.2. 36. Cod. Theod. 2.24.2. This is in many ways a corollary of the laws specifying ownership of a woman's dowry as being her children's, so that as long as she had children, she could not alienate her dotal property. 37. Cod. Theod. 8.19.1. Such property was still referred to anachronistically in some laws as peculium) the ancient legal ter.r~ for property in the use of one person but the actual possession of the pateifamilias (c£ Cod. Theod. 1.34.2). 38. Nov. Theodosiani 14.8 .. He did have usufruct of such properties if his grandchildren were minors: Cod. Theod. 8.18.9,8.18.10. 39. Here the occasion is specified as an unfair gift of property to one of the children and to the exclusion of the others, Cod. Theod. 2.21.1. 40. Cod. Theod. 4.6.3. This law was adjusted by a number of successive emperors: Cod. Theod. 4.6.4 (permitting one-twelfth to illegitimate children, onefourth if there were no legitimate children); Cod. Theod. 4.6.5 (rescission of 4.6.4; restoration of 4.6.3); Cod. Theod. 4.6.6 (rescission of4.6.5; restoration of 4.6.4); Cod. Theod. 4.6.7 (rescission of 4.6.6, permission to illegitimate children to take up to one-eighth of estate by testament) ; Nov. Marciani 4.1 (rescission of Cod. Theod. 4.6.7; restorationof4.6.3 banning all inheritance byillegitimatechildren). If there were no legitimate children, the estate was to be absorbed by the imperial fisc: Cod. Theod. 4.6.2. Before these laws were enacted, a man was free to divide his estate between his legitimate and illegitimate children as he wished. 41. On Christian influence, see Jean Gaudemet, "Les transformations de la vie familiale au Bas-Empire et l'influence du Christianisme:' llimanitas 4 (1962) : 58-85, and idem, "Tendances nouvelles de la legislation familiale au IVe siecle;' in Transformations et conftits au We siecie ap.J-c. (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1978). 42. Cod. Theod. 4.1.1; C£ Dig. 27.10.4 of two centuries earlier, where equal love (pietas) for both parents is expected of children, although their authority (potestas) is not equal. 43. Cod. Theod. 3.8.2. 44. Cod. Theod. 3.16.1. The phrase levi obiectione (for trivial reasons) actually comes from the interpretatio of the law, probably added at the time of the publication of the Cod. Theod. in 438 C.E. 45. Pharr (Theodosian Code) 77) translates medicamentaria as "sorceress," and there is a possibility that the medical practice might be mixing magic potions, which were known to be made in late antiquity. James Brundage (Law; Sex; and Christian Society in Medieval Europe [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987], 94) talces it in a similar sense as "having administered poisons." Grubbs (Law and Family, 229) also mentions that the term could refer to the performance

NOTES TO PAGE 76

327

of magic as well as "homicide by poison;" But the interpretation of Clark (Women in Late Antiquity) 22) seem,s best to me; she writes that "A medicamentaria (the Latin equivalent of the Greek pharmalzeutria) . used suspect drugs and perhaps , spells,' but her purpose might be anything from murder to abortion to the treat. ,', m,ent of infertility or unrequited love;" On the use of contraceptives in antiquity, Keith Hopl~s, "Contraception in the Roman Empire;' Comparative Studies in Society and History 8 (1965.): 124"":51; John Noonan, "Contraception in the Roman Empire;' in Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theolo, gians and Canonists),2d ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). See also the comments by contemporaries about such potions and the women who used them: Hieron. Epist. 22.13, Min. Fel. Oct. 30.2. 46. Pharr (Theodosian Code) 77) translates medicamentarius as "sorcerer;' Brundage (La}v, Sex) and Christian Society) 94) as "poisoner;' and Grubbs (Law and Fami/x 229), as "preparer of poisons;" See also Tert. De exhortatione castitatis 12. 47. As in the classical period, we can suspect that attempts by men to seize control of their wife's dowry led to some false prosecutions. See TIeggiari, Roman Marriage) 297. 48. See Mireille Corbier, "Divorce and Adoption as Roman Familial Strategies (Le Divorce et l'adoption 'en plus');' in B. Rawson, ed., Marriage) Divorce) and Children in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); and Keith Bradley, "Remarriage and the Structure of the Upper-Class Roman Family;' in Marriage~ Divorce~ and Children inAncient Rome~ ed. B. Rawson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 49. Historians have also typically assigned this law to Christian influence: see V. Basanoff, "Les sources chretiennes de la Loi de Constantin sur Ie repudium (Cod. Theod. III, 16, 1 a. 331) etle champ d'application de cette loi;' in Studi in onore di Salvatore Riccobono nelXL anno selsuo insegnamento (Palermo, 1936); Jean Gaudemet, Mariage en occiden; 70-83; or M. Humbert, "L'hostilite du legislateur chretien a l'egard du remariage: La rupture avec les traditions classiques;' in R£mariage it Rome. This has been reevaluated recently; Christians differed on the acceptability of divorce at all, and no one viewpoint on divorce was universally accepted at this time. See especially Judith Evans Grubbs, "'Pagan' and 'Christian' Marriage"; see also Roger Bagnall, "Church, State and Divorce in Late Roman Egypt;' in Florilegium Columbianum: Essays in Honor ofPaul Oskar Kristellet; ed. K-L. Selig and R. Somerville (New York: Italica, 1987); and M. Verdon, "Virgins and Widows: European Kinship and Early Christianity;' Man 23 (1988): 488-505. See also Grubbs's careful consideration of this question in Law and Family) chap. 7; she concludes (339) that "rather than a real transformation of family structures, what we are seeing in late antiquity is the perspective of the non-elite and less cosmopolitan parts ofthe Empire;' and that "the mores implicit in Constantinian law had persisted all along;' but appeared in law only in late antiquity because of the increased influence of the provincial aristocracy at Rome. 50. Bagnall ("Church, State and Divorce;' 43) argues that there is no evidence that Julian'S law was ever repealed, and so "as far as we know" it remained in force until 421, when another divorce law was issued (Cod. Theod. 3.16.2). The

328

NOTES TO PAGES 76-79

law of 421, however, should be understood as a clarification of divorce laws, since it deals with couples who separate and remarry for other than the acceptable rea- . sons. In the version of the law as published by Justinian, the death penalty is also: specified as the punishment for adultery by either party, but this is.al:in()st-cc~~r-.·, tainly a later interpolation (Cod. lust. 9.9.29). Contrast Bagnall's opiI¥on~with',:. that of Gaudemet (Mariage en occiden~ 79) who does not believe that Julian'S law overturning Constantine's restrictions existed at all, since it is not included in any , . legal compilation of the period, but only mentioned by a Christian polemicist. C£ also Grubbs's detailed discussion of these laws in Law and Family., chap. 5. 51. Nov. Theodosiani 12.1. Theodosius II might have changed his mind about this in 450, since he seemed to revert to the Constantinian rules in a law not preserved in the Theodosian Code but extant in Cod. lust. 5.17.8. See also Clark, Women in Late Antiquity., 24; Grubbs, Law a'!l-d Family., 236. 52. Nov. Valentiniani 35.11. 53. Paul Veyne, "La famille et l'amour sous Ie Haut-Empire romain;' Annales: Economies., SocietesJ Civilisations. 33 (1978): 35-63; reprintedinLasocitteromaine (Paris: DuSeuil, 1991); Evans, War; WomenandChildrenj and Foucault, TheHistory ofSexuality., vol. 3, The Care ofthe Selj; trans. R. Hurley (New York: Vrntage, 1986), esp. part 3. Foucault writes (95): "The reflection of the use of pleasure that was so directly linlced to the close correlation between the three types of authority [over oneself, over the household, and over others] was modified in the very course of this elaboration [of an ethics of self-mastery]. A growth of public constraints and prohibitions? An individualistic withdrawal accompanying the valorization pf private life? We need instead to thinlc in terms of a crisis ofthe subject, or rather a crisis of subjectivation -that is, in terms of a difficulty in the manner in which the individual could form himself [sic] as the ethical subject ofhis actions, and efforts to find in devotion to self that which could enable him to submit to rules and give a purpose to his existence." See also the critique ofVeyne and Foucault by Kate Cooper, The Vi1lfin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), chap. 1. 54. See especially on this question Jean-Joseph Goux, "The Phallus: Masculine Identity and the Exchange of Women;' differences 4 (1992): 40-75; in general, see Foucault, Care of the Selfi Williams, Roman Homosexualityj Eva Cantare11a, Bisexuality in the Ancient World., trans. C. 6 Cuilleanam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); see also the fascinating analysis by Amy Richlin, The Garden ofPriapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 55. Amm. Marc. 25.4.2-3. 56. On Julian's character, see Amm. Marc. 25.4.1; on Julian's vita militaris., Amm. Marc. 25.4.4; on Julian's skill and authority in war, Amm. Marc. 25.4.10-12. 57. Amm. Marc. 25.4.4; on Julian as philosopher, see Athanassiadi,julian. 58. Claud. Cons. Hon. 411. 261b-262a. 59. Iambl. DevitaPythagorica (ed. and trans. J. Dillon andJ. Hershbe11, Society of Biblical Literature, Texts and Translations, no. 29 [Atlanta: Scholars, 1991]) 9 [48].

NOTES TO PAGES 79-82

329

60. Iambl.DevitaPythagorica 31 [210]. 61. Iambl. De vitaPythagorica 31 [209]. 62. Iambl. De vitaPythagorica 17 [78]. 63.' ,Oribasius Collectio medica (ed. U. Bussemaker and C. Daremberg, 6 vols. ,'.fP~is: EImpriffierie Nationale, 1851-76]; trans. with discussion in Rousselle, . Porneia, 14) 22.2,20-22: ~'~tU 1tav'to~ 'to1.v'uv 'tou'to'U ytVOJ..lEVO'U Kat 1tav'tOlV rocrn:EP EV xoPcP J..lE'taOtOOv't(.OV UAA:ftAOt~, axpt 'tocrOU'tO'U KEvou0'9m 'ta Ka'tU OAOV 'to ~0~v aYYEta 'tE Kat J..lOpta' avaYKatoV EO''ttv axpt 1tEp clV EJ..l1tATlcr9f1 'to 1.O'X'UpO, 'ta'tov. Ou J..lOVOV OE "'tft~ 901t(ooo'U~ uypo'tTl'tO~ a<j>mpci.0'9m 1tC10't 'tou ~CPO'U 'tOt~ J..lEPEO't O''UJ..l~''O'E'tm Ka'tU 'tOU~ 'tOto{)'tO'U~ KatpOU~, aAAU Kat 'tou 1tVEUJ..la'tO~ 'tou ~O)'ttKOU' Kat yap Kat 'tou'tO EK'trov ap'tTlptrov EKKEvou'tm J..lE'ta 'tft~ O'1tEpJ..la'tOEtoou~ uypO'tTl'tO~, roO''tE OUOEV 9a'UJ..laO''tov a0'9EVEO''tEPO'U~ a1to'tEA.et0'9m 'tOU~ AaYVEUOV'ta~, a<j>atpO'UJ..lEVO'U~ 'tou O'c.OJ..la'to~ a1tav'to~ EKa'tEpa~ 'troy UAroV 'to EtAtKPtvEO''tEPOV. IIpoO'EPXOJ..lEVTl~ OE 'tft~ ;,oovil~, 11 'tt~ au'ti\ Ka'ta au'ti\v ou't{J)~ EO''ttV 'tKavll OWAUEtv 'tOV ~{J)'t1.KOV 'tOVOV, roO''tE i\OTl 'ttVE~ U1tEPTl0'9EV'tE~ a1tE9avov, OUOEV E'tt 9a'UJ..laO''tov a0'9EVEO''tEPO'U~ a1tO'tEAci.0'9m 'tOU~ a<j>pOOtO'ta~ov'ta~ aJ..lE'tpo'tEPOV."

64. Oribasius Collectio medica 6.37. C£ idem, Synopsis (ed. U. Bussemalcer and C. Daremberg, 6 vols. [Paris: EImprimerie Nationale, 1851-76]) 5.l: "Hic denique salutaris virginitas conprobatur, ut etiam in feminis, sic denique [et] viris." This passage is found only in the Latin translation of Oribasius and not in the Greek original, and is possibly an interpolation by the ancient translator, a possibility that does not affect the importance of the sentiment. C£ Soranus Gynaecia 1. 32, for a discussion of the healthfulness ofvirginity among ancient Greek physicians. 65. Caelius Aurelianus Gynaecia 42. 66. H. A. Pescennius Niger 6.6 (trans. Birley). 67. Amm. Marc. 14.6.22. 68. See, for example, the description of Valentini an I by Amm. Mar. 30.9.2. See also now Williams, Roman Homosexuality, chap. 3, on classical notions ofpudicitia. I am grateful to Craig Williams for providing me with a copy of his dissertation, "Homosexuality and the Roman Man: A Study in the Cultural Construction of Sexuality" (Yale University, 1992) and with it, much food for thought when I formulated my argument for this section of my chapter. 69. A detailed discussion of this can be found in Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 262-319. She does suggest (263) that while "grammarians identify the adulterer with the married man, the word is more generally used of any illicit lover and especially of the lover of a married woman" and (163-64) that "the juristic usage is closer to the norm in making adulterium an extra-marital sexual relationship of a married woman." 70. See discussions in Foucault, Care of the Sel£ part 5; and in Rouselle, Porneia, chap. 5. 71. Dig. 48.5.14 (13). This law was known to Augustine, who referred to it in a discussion of adultery (De adulterinis coniugiis 2.8). 72. A. Souter, Glossary ofLater Latin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964),254. Latin had imported the verb moechari several centuries earlier for the action of

330

NOTES TO PAGES 82-84

adultery (in its classical sense), but the noun moechia was apparently first used by Tertullian, and used in the new sense. See chapter 6 for contrasting examples in ' usage between adulterium and moechia. . 73. Cod. Theod. 11.36.4. Grubbs (Law and Familyy 217) calls it "biZarrelail:.. , guage" and "colorfully worded;' and notes that it is "the only time in ~e Theo- dosian Code the word sacrilegus is used in regard to a sexual offence." 74. Julian Or. 1.47A. 75. Julian Or. 1.46D. 76. SeeTreggiari,RomanMamagey 233 n. 19. 77. Hor. Sat. (ed. and trans. D. Fairclough,LCL) 1.2.116-9: "namque parabilem amo Venerem facilemque." Historians of Roman slavery are particularly reticent about this aspect of human exploitation. See the discrete mentions in Alan Watson, RDman Slave Law (Baltimore: John~ Hopkins University Press, 1987), 119; and Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 28, 49, 138. Longer discussions can be found by Jerzy Kolendo (''Esclavage et la vie sexuelle des hommes libres a Rome;' in Index: Quademi camerti di studi romanistici/International Survey ofRoman Law 10 [1981] : 288-97); and Marcel Morabito (Les realites de Pesclavage dYapres Ie Digeste [Paris: Belles Lettres, 1981], 191-201), both of whom nonetheless only concentrate on sexual relationships between male masters and female slaves. For relationships between male masters and male slaves, see Beert Verstraete, "Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Male Homosexual Relations in Ancient Rome;'Journal ofHomosexuality 5 (1980): 227-36; and Williams,RDmanHomosexualitx 30-38. 78. This/discouragement of the sexual use of slaves is noted by Verstraete ("Slavery;' 235), who mistal,enly attributes it to "the triumph of the erotophobic ideology of the Christian church." The same conclusion is again wrongly reached by Arjava, Women andLa-,,~ 258. 79. Paulinus of Pella Eucharisticus 11.159-68. 80. On the issue of the slave's consent, see the odd wording in Dig. 11.3.2. 81. See Gardner, Women in Roman Lawy 117-20. 82. Cod. Theod. 9.24.1. 83. Denise Grodzynski, "Ravies et coupables: Un essai d'interpretation de la loi IX,24,1 du Code Theodosien;' Melanges de Pecole franfaise de Rome: Antiquite 96(1984):697-726. 84. Judith Evans Grubbs, "Abduction Marriage in Antiquity: A Law of Constantine (CTh IX. 24. 1) and its Social Context;' Jottrnal of Roman Studies 79 (1989): 59-83, and idem, Law and Famil)'y 183-93. 85. Cod. Theod. 9.24.1. 86. Cod. Theod. 9.1.1. 87. Dig. 48.8.1. 88. Cod. Theod. 9.8.1. The law is unclear whether the guardian of the girl is supposed to have deflowered her or whether he simply did not guard her virginity from other men, or perhaps the law was meant to punish him in either instance. See Grubbs (Law and Famil)) 193-202), who also suggests the possibility that the law was meant to prevent a guardian from forcing a marriage with his ward and thus laying claim to her property.

NOTES TO PAGES

8+-86

331

89. Paulus Sent. 1.13.5; C£ Dig. 11.3. On the recognition of the humanity of slaves, see Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome) chap. 7. 90. Dig. 1.18.21. 91. Dig. ~.-18.21. I' have replaced the translator's "perversion" for eversio .. '. w~th"overturning." . 92. See 1-y1orabito, Rialitis de Pesclavage) 191--:-201. Roman legal tradition gave all children the social status .of their mother, and this was confirm~d in later Roman law (Cod. Theod. 14.7.1). See Grubbs, Law and Familx chap. 6. 93. See below, ~hap. 6, for Salvian of Marseilles's charged description of the houseHold in which the female slaves usurp the place of the mateifamilias. C£ also the extant fragment of a law of Constantine that forbids a man from keeping a concubine in his household while he is married (Cod. lust. 5.26.1; on this law see also Grubbs, Law and Family) 298-99). 94. Dig. 1.6.2 (my trans.). 95. Dig. 1.6.2. I have changed the translator's "wrongdoing" for iniuria to "injury;" Cf. Mosaicarum et Romanarum legum collatio 3.3.1. 96. Cod. lust. 9.9.25(24) (my trans.): ''Etsi libidine intemperatae cupiditatis ... cum ancillam comprehendisse." 97. Cod. Theod. 12.1.6. See Grubbs, Law and Family) 277-83. 98. Dig. 18.1.56; 18.7.6; 21.2.34; 37.14.7; 40.8.6. See Morabito, Rialitis de l)esclavage) 191-93. 99. On the Roman prostitution offemales, see Catherine Salles,Les bas-fonds de Pantiquiti (Paris: R. Laffont, 1982), 125-228; Evans, Wa1; Women) and Children) 137-42. On the Roman prostitution of males, see Cantarella, Bisexuality) 101-221; Williams, Roman Homosexuality) 38-47. 100. H. A.Alex. Sev. 24.4 (trans. Magie). It is impossible to confirm whether prostitution was prohibited by Philip the Arab, as implied here, since that life is missing from the extant HistoriaAugusta) but there is no confirming evidence for such a prohibition. 101. H. A. Heliogab. 26.3-5. 102. H. A.Alex. Sev. 24.3. See Thomas McGinn, "The Taxation of Roman Prostitutes;' Helios 16 (1989): 79-110. 103. Cod. lust. 4.56.1. 104. Nov. Theodosii 18.1. 105. Cod. Theod. 15.8.2. 106. Souter (Glossary) 258) lists it as a synonymformulierarius (of a woman) that does not clarify its meaning. Corbett (Roman Law ofMarriage) 244) believes the word meant a flirtatious husband, which seems implausible except perhaps to a historian writing in 1930. Pharr (Theodosian Code) 77) believes it means a sexually unfaithful husband, and Brundage (Law., Se.'C) and Christian Society) 94) concurs, translating it as adulterer. Treggiari, who translates the term as "the husband's womanizing" (RomanMarriage) 319), uses the term as the basis for her argument on the "double standard" oflate Roman law on adultery. Grubbs (Law andFamily) 228) also translates the term as "womanizer;' and adds (257-79) that its unusual terminology suggests that it was drafted by someone unfamiliar with legal language.

332

NOTES TO PAGES 87-88

107. On Roman pederasty, see Cantarella, Bisexuality)· and Williams, Roman Homosexuality)· both refer in detail to the earlier bibliography. . 108. Most of the secondary literature on premodern sexuality emphasizes ~e : importance of notions of social dominance ill sexUality over questiollsofsexual . orientation; see, e.g., Robert Padgug, "Sexual Matters: Rethinking Se~alit:Yin History;' Radical History Review 20 (1979): 3-23.' C£ also the reply by John . Boswell, "Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories;' Salmagundi 58-59 . (1983): 89-113; both essays reprinted in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian P~ ed. M. Duberman, et al. (New York: New AmericanLibrary, 1989). See also Richlin (''Not before Homosexuality") for a lengthy discussion of this question. 109. Tert. (Opera) ed. CCSL 1-2; trans. A. Roberts andJ. Donaldson,ANCL 11-3) Ad nat. 1.16.15: "utitur Graeco:" 011 Greek pederasty, see esp. Kenneth Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); see also Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality) vol. 2, The Use of Pleasure) trans. R. Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1985); Cantarella, Bisexuality. On the Roman depiction of pederasty as a Greek custom, see Williams, Roman Homosexuality) chap. 2. There existed an elaborate vocabulary in Latin to describe sexual practices. See Holt Parker, "The Teratogenic Grid;' in Roman Sexualities) ed. J. Hallett and M. Skinner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 110. Modern historians differ as to how to interpret the law. Michael GrayFow ("Pederasty, the Scantinian Law, and the Roman Army;'Journal ofPsychohistory 13 [1986]: 449-60) sees it as prohibiting the sexual penetration of free-born youths. Williams (Roman Homosexuality) 120-24) argues that it prohibited stuprum in general terms. Richlin (''Not before Homosexuality;' 569-71) believes that it forbade sexual passivity in adult males. Ill. Examples of classical uses of these terms include Cic. Cat. 2.25 (onpudicitia as virtue); Cic. Phil. 2.3,44-5 (on impudicitia as effeminacy); Suet~ luI. 52 and Sen. Dial. 7.13.3 (on pudicitia and impudicitia as sexual dominance and passivity). See the discussions by Williams, Roman Homosexuality) esp. chap. 3; Cantarella, Bisexuality; Jonathan Walters, "Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought;' in Roman Sexualities) ed. J. Hallett and M. Skinner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); and Rabun Taylor, "Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome;' Journal of the History of Sexuality 7 (1997): 319-71. 112. H. A. Heliogab. 5.3 (trans. Birley): "Romae denique nihil egit aliud nisi ut emissarios haberet, qui ei bene vasatos perquirerent eosque ad aulam perducerent, ut eorum conditionibus frui posser:" I have replaced the translator's "those who had particularly large organs" for bene vasati with "those who were 'well hung;" both here and in the passage following. 113. H. A. Heliogab. 8.6-7 (trans. Birley): "Lavacrum publicum in aedibus aulicis fecit, simul et Plautini populo exhibuit, ut ex eo condiciones bene vasatorum hominum colligeret. idque diligenter curatum est, ut ex tota penitus urbe atque ex nauticis onobeli quaererentur. sic eos appellabant qui viriliores videbantur:" 114. H. A.Alex. Sev. 6.3-5 (trans. Magie). 115. Aur. Vic. Caes. 23.2: "Hocimpuriusneimprobaequidemautpetulantes

NOTES TO PAGES 89-90

333

mulieres fuere." Most modern biographies ofElagabalus are equally prurient; see Robert Turcan, Htliogabale et Ie sacre du soleil (paris: A. Michel), 1985. 116. Casso Dio 80.5.5: "mJ-tlKa A.EAE~E'tat Kat yap livopisE'tO Kat E811A.1NE'tO , Kat E1tpa't'tEV K~l, E1tacrx,EV EKa'tEpa aaEA.yea'ta'ta." I have replaced the translator's ,',~'appeared'bofi? as man and as woman" with "appeared both as manly and as unmanly;"', , ' , 117. H.'A. Heliogab. 5.2 (trans. Birley): "per cuncta cava corp,oris libidinem recipientem?" ' ' 118. H. A. Comrn. 5.11 (trans; Birley): "omni 'parte corporis atque ore in sexum utrumque pollutus?' The phrase "even his mouth" is absent from Birley's translation. 119. H. A. Comm. 1.7 (trans. Birley): "ore quoque pollutus et constupratus fuit?' On this double defilement, cf. the description of a lewd woman by Auson. Epigr. 75: "molitur per utramque cavernam." 120. H. A. Comm. 5.4: "puberibus exoletis." See below on the conventions of pederasty. 121. H. A. OpelliusMacrinus 2.1 (my trans.). 122. H. A. OpelliusMacrinus 2.3-4 (my trans.). 123. Cantarella, Bisexuality~ 155-62. Her complicated hypothesis is that "during the Empire male passivity spread to the point where it caused considerable worries for legislators, inducing them to issue repressive measures which grew more and more severe as time went on" (155). It is ultimatelyunconvincing, as is her idea (155-56) that the reason for this was that "Some of the most prominent people in the political life of the city-military generals and popular leaders, men whose virility was certainly not open to question on other countswere behaving sexually like women." She offers Julius Caesar as an example of this "new man" (158): "Caesar, then, offered the Romans an unusual sexual image: a man who remained virile even ifhe happened to assume the subordinate position now and again -a man who was such a he-man that he could afford to turn passive once in a while?' According to her, his example "served merely as an excuse which allowed all those who were breaking the ancient precepts secretly . . . to come out of the closet, as it were" (162). 124. See Richlin, Garden ofPriapus~ and idem, ''Not before Homosexuality"; Edwards, ''Mollitia: Reading the Body;' chap. 2 in Politics ofImmorality. 125. See Joseph Wilson, "The Entitlement of the Usurpers of the Roman Empire from Augustus to Domitian;' (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1982), 17-20, whose remarks also hold true for later emperors. 126. AmmMarc. 31.9.5: "hancTaifalorumgentem ... acturpemobscenae uitae flagitiis ita accepimus mersam, ut apud eos nefandi concubitus foedere copulentur maribus puberes aetatis uiriditatem in eorum pollutis usibus consumpturi. porro si qui iam adultus aprum exceperit solus uel interemerit ursum immanem, colluuione liberatur incesti?' This is incautiously talcen as evidence of pederasty among Germans by Bernard Sergent, Ilhomosexualite initiatique dans PEurope ancienne (Paris: Payot, 1986), chap. 9. See also the similar remarks ofEusebius (Pmeparatio evangelica 6.10.27, quoted and discussed by Brent Shaw, "Ritual Brotherhood in Roman and Post-Roman Societies;' TI-aditio 52 [1997], 335).

334

NOTES TO PAGES 91-94

127. H. A.Heliogab. 31.7; cf. Cyprian Delapsis 6. 128. Classical sources are discussed in detail by Williams, Roman Homosexu~ alityy passim. Cantarella (Bisexualityy 124) also offers an explanation for the shame; of fellatio: "Fellare meant doing something which was exactly the opposite. ·of what a Roman male ought to do. Instead of talcing his own pleasure; a -':Ilarl performing fellatio placed himself at the service of another man's enjoyment." That a man might place himself at the service of a woman seems an equally powerful cul:" .. tural disincentive to cunnilingus. On the endless sexual satire involving these activities, see Richlin, Garden ofPriapus. 129. Auson. Epigr. 74. I talce the wife's membra (members) to be her fingers, rather than any other body part, as the likeliest explanation for humorous sense of the epigram (I should note that this poem is left untranslated in the LCL). 130. Auson.Epigr. 85. 1nLatinslang,lingere (toliclc) could refer to the action either of fellatio or cunnilinctus. See J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 134-35. 131. Auson. Epigr. 82, 83, 84. 132. Dig. 3.1.1: "eum, qui corpore suo muliebria passus est." Included in the section on infamia (see above, chap. 1), Watson unjustifiably translates the phrase as "catamite." 133. Dig. 4.2.8: "Quod si dederit ne stuprum patiatur uir sed mulier, hoc edictum locum habet, cum uiris bonis iste metus maior quam mortis esse debet." Watson unjustifiably translates uiris bonis as "decent people." 134. Paulus Sent. 2.26.13: "Qui voluntate sua stuprum fiagitiumque impurum patitur'l dimidia parte bonorum suorum multatur, nec testamentum ei ex maiore parte facere licet." This opinion is only reconstructed from the si..'Cthcentury Lex romana Visigothorumy but was attributed to the jurist Paulus. 135. Paulus Sent. 2.26.12: "Qui masculum liberum invitum stupraverit, capite punitur." See also the discussion of this opinion by Richlin, ''Not before Homosexuality:' 561-66. 136. Cod. Theod. 9.7.6; for a possible alternative interpretation ofthis law, see below. 137. Auson. Epigr. 43 (my trans.). 138. Dig. 48.5.9 (8): "cum aliena matre familias uel cummasculo"; 48.5.35 (34): "uidua uel uirgine uel puero." I talce these definitions as later than the following: 48.5.6: "in uirginem uiduamue"; 50.16.101: "in uiduam." Cantarella (Bisexuality, 143-44) believes the cum masculo in the first definition to be a sixthcentury alteration of the phrase cum puero. Women could also be found guilty of stuprum: see Arjava, WomenandLaWy 217-27. 139. Casso Dio 68.7.4. 140. Aur. Vic. Caes. 13.10. 141. H. A. Hadr. 14.7 (my trans.): "etnimia voluptas Hadriani." 142. Aur. Vic. Caes. 14.7-9. 143. H. A. Carus et Carinus et Numeriantts 16.1 (trans. Magie). I have changed the translator's "constant" to "frequent." 144. Auson.Epigr. 73. 145. Paulus Sent. 5.4.14; cf. Dig. 47.11.1.

NOTES TO PAGES 94-97

335

146. Tert. De monogamia 12; Auson. Epigr. 99; Pmdent. Perist. 101.214. Note that they are all Christian writers . John Boswell (Christianity) Social Tolerance) · and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Ettrope from the Beginning of the Chris. tianEra to theFo~meenth Centu,;y [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980],63·..7~) even suggests that the law might have been a legal fiction of the third century C.B. backdateq. to the republican era, but this is not probable (see above). 147. Chud. Cons. Hon. ~ ll. 560-4a. C£ another poem, in which Claudius compares Honorius with Adonis, the example par excellence of the handsome · adolescent: Claud. Fescennina dicta Honorio augusta et Mariae (ed. J. Hall, Carmina [Leipzig: Teubner, 1985]) 11. 148. H. A.M.aximini duo 27.1 (trans. Magie). 149. Ps.-Auson. In puerum flrmosum (ed. as part of The Works ofAusonius) LCL; my trans.) 13: "factus es, 0 pulcher, paene puella, puer." I am grateful to Dr. Robert Babcock for the suggestion about the interpretation of the last phrase. 150. Auson. Epigr. 53. 151. Auson. Epigr. 108: "Si cuperes alium [n.b.], posses, Narcisse, potiri; nunc tibi amoris adest copia, fructus abest." C£ 109: "Quid non ex huius forma pateretur amator [n.b.], ipse suam qui sic deperit effigiem?" Cf. also 110. 152. Nemesianus Bucolica (ed. H. Williams [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986]) 4ll. 38 ("Meroe formosa"), 72 ("formosus lollas"), 4-5 ("parilisque furor de dispare sexu"). 153. Oribasius Col/ectio medica 6.38. See also Rousselle, Porneia) 14. 154. Dig. 48.5.9 (8), see above. Cantarella (Bisexuality) 143-44) believes the phrase stuprum cum masculo to be an alteration from the era of Justinian of the phrase stuprttm cum puero) which is significant. Cantarella (Bisexuality) 188-89) writes that "the ancient recognition of male bisexuality was disappearing in any case [even before the conversion of the Mediterranean to Christianity]: the new rule was heterosexuality based on reproduction. Christian preaching then took its place in this framework, and found that the ground had been made still more fertile by Stoic teaching, which exhorted individuals to control their passions, dominate their impulses, and channel their sexuality towards procreation. Within a vision oflife where the spirit, in order to be free, had to dominate the flesh, sexuality could only be understood in this manner, and homosexuality was therefore condemned." 155. Marcus Aurelius Ad se ipsum 2.10. 156. Claud. Cons. Hon. 4.11. 250-1; on lust as an animalistic emotion, c£ Marc. Aur.Adse ipsum 4.28; lamb1. De vitaPythagorica 31[213]. 157. De physiognomia liber 106, 112. 158. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. 98b-9. 159. Casso Dio 76.14.4-5. 160. JulianMisopogon 352B. 161. Hieron. Epist. 107.11 (my trans.): "ne uirgo Christi cum eunuchis lauet ... quia alii non deponant animos uiromm:' 162. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. 105-9. 163. Lactant. De mortibus persecutorum 38.2; see also Gmbbs, Law and Family) 199-201.

336

NOTES TO PAGES 97-100

164. Hieron.Epist. 22.16; 54.13; 66.13; 108.7. On women in public, cf. one law of Constantine, where matrons [matresfamiliae] are not required to "appear in " public, even if charged with a crime (Cod. Theod. 1.22.1). " 165. Hieron.Epist.l08.20 (my trans.). " 166. Claud. In Eutropium 11. 104: "nutritoremque puellae." 167. Tert.Ad uxorem (trans. Le Saint) 2.8.4: "Pleraque et genere no biles et re beatae passim ignobilibus et mediocribus simul coniunguntur aut adluxuriam iri-" uentis aut ad licentiam sectis." The CCSL has changed the sectis (mutilated) of ms. A unnecessarily to selectis (chosen). C£ Hieron. Epist. 128.4. 168. Cod. Theod. 9.9.1. On sex between noblewomen and their slaves, seeArjava, Women andLaWy 225-27; on sex between noblewomen and eunuchs, see Stevenson, "Rise of Eunuchs." 169. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. 79b-89 .. 170. E.g., Peter Browe, Zur Geschichte der Entmannung: Eine Religions- und Rechtsgeschichtliche Studie (Breslau: Miiller and Seiffer, 1936), who calls the idea ekelerrt;gender ("nauseating") and passes over it in his survey of the history of castration (45). C£ Boswell, Christianity) Social Tolerance) 82, and idem, Same-Sex Unions in Pre-ModemEurope (New York: Villard, 1994), 80-81, who uses the marriage of Nero and Sporus as an example of the social acceptance of homosexual relationships, but does not mention that Sporus was a eunuch. Boswell (Christianity) Social Tolerance) 67 n. 25) briefly mentions castration in the Roman world, but does not tie it to sex between men. Two exceptions are Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven) 59-66, on what he calls Lustknaben (pleasure-boys); and David Greenberg, The C.onstruction ofHomosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 120-23. The latter writes (123): "When performed early in life, castration prolonged the boyish beauty the ancients considered desirable; consequently eunuchs were in great demand as homosexual partners." See also early discussion in Richard Millant, Les eunuques atravers les ages (Paris: Vigot, 1908), 133-36. 171. Paulus Sent. 5.23.13;Dig. 48.8.3. 172. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. 360b-70. I have changed Platnauer's purposefully archaic "thou wouldst" to "you would." Long (Claudian)s In Eutropium) 142) writes: "Practically every word in the speech Claudian concocts bears a double meaning." See also Schweckendiek, Claudians Invektive) 94-96), for more on the erotic euphemisms in this passage. 173. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. 62-3. Platnauer (1.142 n. 1) believes thatstabulum (post-house) may be a veiled reference to prostibulum (brothel); but Schweckendiek (Claudians Invektive) 70) believes it to be a military establishment. 174. Claud. In Eutropium Ill. 64b-76a. I have changed "thou;' "thee;' and "thine" in Platnauer's translation to modern English. Long (Claudian)s In Eutropium) 123) calls this passage "a hilarious burlesque of the deserted woman of elegy and epyllion." 175. Casso Dio 67.2.3, c£ Stat. Silv. 3.4, Mart. Epig. 9.11,13,16,36. 176. Casso Dio 62.28.3: "'tel 'tE. a'A'Aa roc; yuvan:t au'tcp eXPTt'to." 177. Casso Dio 62.28.3: "e~E.'AE.'UeEpcp YE.yaf..lllf..lEvoc;, Kat 1tpol.Ka aU'tql Ka'tu

NOTES TO PAGE IOI

337

cruyypaiJv EVEt~E, Kat 'toue; ya~o'Ue; affiv 01l~oat
have removed the translator's quotation marks from the word . "married" as there is nothing in the original Greek to suggest the undermining of the terril. . . 178. Cass: Dio 62.13.1. Cassius also noted and commented upon Nero's . marr:iage as ",,:lfe".to the freedman Pythagoras (Gass. Dio 62.13.1). See also discussions in Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, 82, and idem, Sa1'f/-e-Sex Unions, 80-8i. . 179. On Nero, see Suet. Ner. 28, C£ Tac.Ann. 15.38. Keith Bradley (Suetonius'Life ofNero: An Historical Commentary [Brussels: Latomus, 1978], 161-62) suggests that it may have been a Mithraic ceremony that only appeared to be similar to a wedding, but this is not how it is described. On Titus, see Suet. Tit. 7. 180. Aur. Vic. Caes. 5.5-6. On Aurelius Victor's view of Nero, see Waltraud Jakob-Sonnabend, Untersuchungen zum Nero-Bild der Spiitantike (Hildesheim: alms-Weidmann, 1990), 5-40. 181. Cod. Theod. 9.7.3: "Cum vir nub it in feminam, femina viros proiectura quid cupiat, ubi sexus perdidit locum, ubi scelus est id, quod non proficit scire, ubi Venus mutatur in alteram formam, ubi amor quaeritur nec videtur, iubemus insurgere leges, armari iura gladio ultore, ut exquisitis poenis subdantur infames, qui sunt vel qui futuri sint rei:' See also Boswell, Same-Sex Unions, 86 n. 163, and idem, Christianity, Social Tolerance, 123 n. 9. 182. Pharr (Theodosian Code, 231) implies that it condemns homosexual imitations of marriage and offers the unclear reading for the phrase: "When a man 'marries' in the manner of a woman, a woman about to renounce man:' Boswell (Christianity, Social Tolerance, 123) says that by means of it "gay marriages, which had hitherto been legal (at least de facto) and well known, were outlawed in a curiously phrased statute which some authors have regarded as entirely facetious:' He does not indicate which authors believe this, but it is the opinion ofD. S. Bailey (Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition [London: Longmans, 1955], 71), who also ascribes it to W. G. Holmes (The Age ofJustinian and Theodora: A History of the Sixth Century A.D. [London: George Ball, 1912]). Holmes writes (vol. 1, 121) that the phrasing of the law "almost suggests that it was enacted in a spirit of mocking complacency." Holmes probably means the reference to marriage as mocking, however, which Boswell (Same-Sex Unions, passim) talces seriously. In his earlier work, Boswell translates the law equally vaguely as "When a man marries a woman who offers herself to men:' In his later work, Boswell situates the law within changing social customs (Same-Sex Unions, 85-87) and writes (85): "the tendency toward more and more ascetic public morality, and insistence on traditional sex roles, produced . . . an extravagantly worded and highly propagandistic law forbidding same-sex weddings - at least those involving traditional gender roles:' He revises his translation: "When a man marries (a man) as if he were a woman:' 183. Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 245-52; Boswell, Same-Sex Unions, 53-107. 184. Cod. Theod. 2.1.3. This law was issued in 357. 185. Nov. Majoriani 9.1. This law was issued in 459.

338

NOTES TO PAGES IOI-7

186. A law of Constantine I preserved in the Cod. lust. (4.42.1) does use the expression eunuchi facere (to make eunuchs); but the wording ofmany of the laws . in this code was revised at the time of its compilation; the same expression is also: used in the law of Leo I (Cod. lust. 4.42.2) and is perhaps also an interpolation there. . 187. Nov. Leonis (trans. Scott) 60: "mutilent, et cteaturam aliam, quam qualis . conditoris sapientiae placuit, in mundum intro'duceret intendant." . 188. Cod. Theod. 9.7.6: "Omnes, quibus flagitii usus est virile corpus muliebriter constitutum alieni sexus damnare patientia, nihil enim discretum videntur habere cum feminis, huiusmodi scelus spectante populo flammae vindicibus expiabunt." I have removed the parentheses from the last phrase in Pharr's translation. 189. Bailey's interpretation (Homosexua~it)) 72) is closest to the mark. CHAPTER FOUR

1. Hieron.Epist. 127.12 (trans. P. SchaffandH. Wace,NPNF 6). I have reworked the translator's punctuation. C£ idem, Commentarii in Ezechielemy praefatio (ed. PL 25) andEpist. 123.15-6,165.2. 2. Ambrose De excessufratris Satyri (ed. CSEL 73; trans. H. de Romestin, NPNF 10) 1.32. 3. Sid. Apoll. Pan~yricus . .. Avito 11.532-8. The address was delivered in 456. See also R. P. C. Hanson, "The Church and the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire;' in Studies in Christian Antiquity (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1985). 4. SalvianDegubernationeDei (ed. CSEL 8; trans. J. O'Sullivan,FC 3) 7.6; cf. 4.12-4. I have replaced "fornication of Goths" for fornicatio apud illos with "fornication among them." 5. SalvianDegubernatione Dei 7.23. Salvian also claimed (6.12-5) that the attacks of the barbarians were no worse than the morals of the Roman population. 6. August. De excidio urbis Romae sermo; idem, Sermo 296 (ed. PL 38). See also the analysis by Theodore de Bruyn, ''Ambivalence within a 'Totalizing Discourse': Augustine's Sermons on the Sack of Rome;' Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993): 405-21. 7. August. De civ. D. 1.1,7. C£ SalvianDegubernatione Dei 7.1. 8. August.Deciv.D. 3.14. C£ Tert.Apol. 25; Min. Fel. Oct. 25.1-2; Ambrose Hexameron 5.12.52. Elsewhere (Contra FaustumManichaeum 22.74-8) Augustine described the lust for domination as more generally human, and war as something that God permitted to show that even earthly good things were given only at His disposal. 9. August. De civ. D. 19.7. Those authors who emphasize Augustine'S role in the development of the Christian concept of just war include Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Reevaluation (New York: Abingdon, 1960), chap. 6; Frederick Russell, The Just War in theMiddleAgesy Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, ser. 3, vol. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), chap. 1 ; Joseph Joblin, L'(glise et laguerre. Consciencey violencey pouvoir (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1988), chap. 3.

NOTES TO PAGES I07-9

339

10. ActaMaximiliani (ed. H. Musurillo, TheActsofthe ChristianMf,r,rtyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]) 1.3: ''Non possum militare ... Christianus sum." C£ 1.2: "mihi non licet militare, quia Christianus sum." , l1.Sulpicius.Severus 'Vita sancti Martini (ed. J. Fontaine, SC 133; trans. ,,:9.' Walsh et al:, FC 7) 4.3: "pugnare mihi non licet." For dating of the incident, ,see'Walsh; 108 n.l. , 12. Tert. 'De idololatria '19 .1-3; idem, De coro~a 11. See also S~ephen Gero, ''}.;Iiles' Gloriosus: The Christian and Military Service according to Tertullian;' Church History 39 (1970): 285-98. 13. Hippolyrus Traditio apostolica 16. This is an extremely problematic text; issues ofits dating, authorship, and a comparative analysis with other early church regulations can be found in C. John Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War (1919; reprint, New York: Seabury, 1982), 119-28. 14. The classic work arguing for a tradition of early Christian pacifism is Cadoux, Early ChristianAttitude to War. Modern representatives ofthis school include Bainton, ChristianAttitudes~ esp. chap. 5; and G. S. Wmdass, "The Early Christian Attitude to War;' Irish Theological Quarterly 29 (1962): 235-47. The classic argument for Christian antimilitarism as opposition more to idolatry than to bloodshed is Adolf Harnack, Militia Christi. Die christlichen Religion und der Soldatenstand in der ersten drei Jahrhunderten (Tiibingen: J. c. B. Mohr, 1905); for more recent scholarship arguing the same, see John Helgeland, "Christians and the Roman Army, A.D. 173-337;' Church History 43 (1974): 149-63. Emphasizing the shift from pacifism to militarism in Christianity after Constantine is John Friesen, "War and Peace in the Patristic Age;' in W. Swartley, ed., Essays on War and Peace: Bible and Early Church (Elkhard, Ind.: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1986). 15. Edward Ryan, "The Rejection of Military Service by the Early Christians;' Theological Studies 13 (1952): 1-32, sensibly argues for differing opinions among Christians. 16. On the presence of Christians in the Roman army of the second and third centuries, see Helgeland, "Christians and the Roman Army"; Jean-Michel Hornus, It Is Not Lawfulfor Me to Fight: Early Christian Attitudes Toward Wary Violence~ and the State~ trans. A. Kreider and o. Coburn (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 1980), chap. 4. Heim (Virtus~ 229-66) emphasizes the importance of a religious solidarity between the emperor and his troops, whether pagan or Christian. For excerpts from several accounts of military martyrs, see John Helgeland, et al., Christians and the Military: The Early Experience (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), chap. 9. 17. August. Epist. 189.4 (addressed to Boniface); c£ idem, De libero arbitrio 1.4. 18. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 25 (addressed to Crispianus). 19. Leo the GreatEpist. (ed.PL 54; trans. E. Hunt,FC 34) 167.14. 20. See discussion in Hornus, It is Not Lawful~ 190-93. 21. Tert. De patientia 1.7. An extended discussion of the concept of patience in Tertullian can be found by Claude Rambaux, Tertullien face aux morales des trois premiers steeles (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1979), chap. 6; and Jean-Claude Fredouille,

340

NOTES TO PAGES 109-13

Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1972), chap. 7. 22. Cyprian De bono patientiae (ed. CCSL 3a; trans. R. Deferrari, FC 36) 12. I have changed the translator's "anyone" for unusquisque to "any man." 23. Cyprian De bono patientiae 20. 24. Cyprian De bono patientiae 12,16. 25. On the perfection of the martyrs, see Marcel Viller, "Martyre et petfection;' Revue d)ascetique et de mystique 6 (1925): 3-25. On the willingness of Christians to face death, see Arthur Droge and James Tabor,ANoble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians andJews inAntiquity (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), esp. chap. 6. 26. Cyprian De bono patientiae 16. 27. Cyprian De bono patientiae 12. 28. CyprianAdDemetrianum (ed. CCSL 3a; trans. R. Deferrari, FC 36) 17. The translator has "though" for quamvis where I have used "however." 29. EusebiusHistoriaecclesiastica (ed. G. Bardy, SC 31 and 41; trans. R. Deferrari, FC 29) 5.1.35. 30. Sulpicius Severus VitasanctiMartini 4.4. 31. Cyprian Ad Demetrianum 17. 32. Tert.Apol. 37.5. 33. Sulpicius Severus VitasanctiMartini 4.5. 34. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 18.7. 35. The second-century author of the first letter to Timothy, writing under the name of the apostle Paul, used the phrase (1 Tim. 2.3: "KUAO<; O''tunIDTIl<; XptO''tou 'IllO'oU;' translated in the Latin Vulgate as "bonus miles Christi lesu"). On the military metaphor, see also Rom. 6.13; 2 Cor. 10.3-4; 1 Thess. 5:8. See A. Jaubert, "Les sources de la conception militaire de l'Eglise en 1 Clement 37;' Vigiliae Christianae 18 (1964): 74-84; E. Nielson, "Laguerre consideree comme une religion et la religion comme une guerre;' Studia Theologica 15 (1961): 93-112; and Raymond Hobbs, "The Language of Warfare in the New Testament;' inModelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies ofthe New Testament in Its Context) ed. Philip Esler (New York: Routledge, 1995). 36. Tert.Apol. 50, c£ idem, De oratione 19. 37. Tert. Ad martyras 3.1-3. I have changed the translator's testudo) left untranslated, to "shed" (the testudo was a tortoiseshell, and by analogy, a temporary arch-shaped structure), and "powers" for Pirtus to "manliness." 38. The suggestion was first made by Harnack,Militia Christi) 58-59. See the more recent works by Emilienne Demougeot, '''Paganus; Mithra et Tertullien;' in Studia Patristica) vol. 3, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, vol. 78 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1961); and W. Rordorf, "Tertullians Beurteilung des Soldatenstandes;' Vigiliae Christianae 23 (1969): 105-41. 39. Tert. De praescr. haeret. 40.4: "si adhuc memini Mithrae." 40. Harnack (Militia Christi) 52) links Tertullian's usage to his father's occupation. T. D. Barnes (Tertullian:AHistoricalandLiteraryStudy [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971], chap. 3) also reviews the evidence but disputes its reliability.

NOTES TO PAGES II3-I6

341

41. Suggested by Demougeot, "'Paganus: Mithra et Tertullien:' 357. 42. Tert. De corona 15. 43. Tert. Scorpiace 6.9. In another place, Tertullian stressed the theme ofindividual salvation in defending the military images of the Old Testament to Marcion, the leader of a group of Christians who rejected the sacred quality of the writings of the Jewish Bible. Tert. Adv. Marcionem 4.20. See above, chap. 2, for more on the Mithraic religion. 44. See Stuart Hall, "Women among the Early Martyrs:' inMartyrs andM.artyr(}logies~ Studies in Church History, vol. 30, ed. D. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); Chris Jones, "Women, Death, and the Law during the Christian Persecutions:' in M.artyrs and M.artyrologies~ Studies in Church History, vol. 30, ed. D. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); and W. H. C. Frend, "Blandina and Perpetua: Two Early Christian Heroines;' in Town and Country in the Early Christian Centuries (London: Variorum, 1980). 45. EusebiusHistoria ecclesiastica 5.1.17-9. 46. Paulinus of Nola Epist. (ed. CSEL 29) 29.6: "feminam inferiorem sexu uirtutibus Martini Christo militantem." 47. Tert.Adscapulam 5.1-2. 48. Adolf Kolping (Sacramentum Tertullianeum [Regensberg: Regensbergsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1948]) provides a detailed list of classical uses of the term, as well as uses in early Latin translations of the Bible; see also Dimitri Michaelides (Sacramentum chez Tertullien [Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1970]), who points to the links between the uses of the term as military oath, as dedication or consecration to a purpose, and as a ritual sign of such a dedication in the mystery religions. 49. See discussion in Maarten Jozef Vermaseren, Mithras~ The Secret God~ trans. T. Megew and V. Megew (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963), 129-36. An exemplary text of such a 1vIithraic initiation is discussed by F. Cumont, ''Un fragment de rituel d'initiation aux mysteres;' Harvard Theological Review 26 (1933): 151-60. 50. Tert.Ad martyras 3.1, c£ idem, Scorpiace 4. 51. Tert. De patientia 8.2. I have replaced the translator's "outrageousness" for inprobitas with "outrage." 52. Passio sanctorumMontani et Lucii (ed. and trans. H. Musurillo, TheActs of the ChristianM.artyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]) 4.3-5. 53. Passio Iuli Veterani (ed. and trans. H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian M.artyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]) 2.2. C£ Lactant. Div. inst. 5.19.25. 54. The heroic stance of the martyrs in the Liber Peristephanon has been noted and compared in style and content with various classical poets by nona Opelt, "Der Christenverfolger bei Prudentius;' Philologus III (1967): 242-57; and Anne-Marie Palmer, Prudentius on theM.artyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), chap. 5. A historical context is given by Jacques Fontaine, "Le culte des martyrs militaires et son expression poetique au IVe siecle: I.;ideal evangelique de la nonviolence dans Ie christianisme theodosien;' Augustinianum 20 (1980): 141-71. For a general treatment ofPrudentius's works, their influences, and contexts, see Palmer, Prudentius on theMartyrs Michael Roberts, Poetry and the Cult oftheM.arJ•

342

NOTES TO PAGES II6-I9

tyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); and Martha Malamud,A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). 55. Prudent. Perist. (ed. and trans. H. Thomson, LCL) Ill. 37-9. 56. Prudent. Perist. 11. 34. 57. Prudent. Perist. 111.106-7. I have replaced "virtue" for virtus with "manliness." 58. Prudent. Perist. 211. 501-4. 59. Prudent. Perist. 5 11. 541-4. I have changed "thou dost" to "you" and "thy" to "your." 60. Prudent. Perist. 511.293-4. 61. Tert. De animo 55: "non in mollibus febribus et in lectulis, sed in martyriis?' 62. Prudent. Perist. 1011.69-70. 63. Prudent. Perist. 10 11. 801-3. I have replaced the translator's "want of manly" for non virile with "unmanly" and "delicate" for moUes with "effeminate." 64. Leo the Great Sermo in natali sancti Laurentii martyris (ed. R. Dolle, SC 200) 85.4. 65. CyprianAdFortunatum (ed. CCSL 3; trans. R. Wallis,ANCL 13.2)praefatio 2. The differences between an actual martyr and a potential martyr are not always clear in early Christian usage; several scholars have examined the terminology of martyrdom. See H. A. M. Hoppenbrouwers (Recherches sur la terminologie du martyre de Tertullien aLactance) Latinitas Christianorum Primaeva, vol. 15 [Nijmegen: Deldcer & Van de Vegt, 1961]) who discusses inter alia the use of the term miles Christi in Tertullian (71-73), Cyprian (149-51), and anonymous, mid- andlate-third-century acts of the martyrs (161, 175-76). 66. Cyprian Ad Fortunatum 13. 67. Cyprian De lapsis (ed. and trans. M. Bevenot [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971]) 2, c£ idem, Epist. 10,39,58,76. 68. For details and consequences of Cyprian'S flight, see Peter Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1974); and Michael M. Sage, Cyprian) Patristic Monograph Series, 1 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1975). See also the discussion below. For more on the image of the soldier of Christ in the writings of Cyprian, see Jose Capmany Casamitjana, c.Miles Christi) en la espiritualidad de san Cipriano (Barcelona: Casuileras, 1956); and EdelhardHummel, The Concept ofMartyrdom according to St. Cyprian of Carthage (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1946). Hummel notes (24), apparendy without irony, the view of Cyprian that a Christian could be prepared for martyrdom even when he flees from persecution. On this theme, see also Oliver Nicholson, "Flight from Persecution as Imitation of Christ: Lactantius' Divine Institutes N.18, 1-2;'Journal of Theological Studies 40 (1989): 48-65. It should be noted that Cyprian refused to flee in the next round of persecutions and was killed. 69. Tert. De fuga in persecutione 10.2. I have replaced "pierced with a javelin" for amissus with "lost" and "has a safe skin" for salvus with "has safety." 70. NovatianEpist. 30.6.

NOTES TO PAGES II9-22

343

71. Leo the Great Sermo 36.3, cf 40.2,18.1-2, and 39. 72. Commodian Instructiones (ed. J. Durel [Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1912]) 2.21: ''Nunc si benefactis uinceris, martyr in ilio." See also Edward Malone, The Monk and the Martyr: TheMonk as the Successor ofthe Martyr (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1950), chap. 2. We are not certain when Commodian lived and wrote, but his use of the image of martyrdom in this way may help to confirm a date for him in the period after the persecutions. 73. Ambrose Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 1.14, cf idem, De Helia et ieiunio 1.1. Tertullian was the first to refer to Christ as a military commander with the term imperator (Tert. De exhortatione castitatis 12, De fuga in persecutione 10); used also by Cyprian (Epist. 15.1 and 31.4-5) and Lactantius (Div. inst. 6.8). 74. Hilary ofArIes Sermo de vita sancti Honorati (ed. M. -D. Valentin, SC 235) 38.4. 75. Cyprian De zelo et livore (ed. CCSL 3a; trans. R. Deferrari, FC 36) 2. See also Hummel, Concept of Martyrdom~ 56-90; Capmany Casamitjana, Miles Christi~ 255-85. 76. See Henry Ansgar Kelly, The Devil at Baptism: Ritual~ Theology~ and Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), chap. 6. 77. Hippolytus Demonstratio de Christo et Antichristo (ed. PG 10); see also (under opera dubia) Oratio de consummatione mundi~ ac de Antichristo~ et secundo aduentu Domini nostri Jesu Christi. See Gregory Jenles, The Origins and Early Development of the Antichrist Myth (Berlin: W de Gruyter, 1991), esp. 81-83; Bernard McGinn,Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994); and Horst Dieter Rauh, Das Bild desAntichristimMittelalter (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1973), 102-52. 78. Peter Chrysologus Sermo (ed. CCSL 24a; trans. G. Ganss, FC 17) 12.3; cf 38 (on the endurance ofwrongs) , 101 (on resisting fear of physical death), 116 (on warfare against vice), and 133 (on the apostle Andrew as a warrior in the heavenly army). Cf Valerian Homeliae 15 and 16 (on the heroic example of martyrs), Leo the Great Sermones 18 and 39 (on the daily battle against vice), and idem, Sermo in natali ... Machaebaeorum (on the example of the seven Maccabean brothers). 79. CommodianInstructiones 2.22, cf 2.12. 80. Prudent. Psychomachia 11. 14-8. I have changed "thou thyself dost" to "you yourself" and "Thee" to "you." See also the discussion in Malamud, Poetics ofTransformation) chap. 3. 81. Hieron. Dialogus adversus Pelagianos (ed. CCSL 80; trans. J. Hritzu, FC 53) 3.1. 82. Hieron. Tractatus in Marci evangelium (ed. CCSL 78; trans. M. Ewald, FC 57) 9, cf idem,Homilia 90, August. Sermo 210.2. 83. M. C. Pietri, "Le serment du soldat chretien. Les episodes de la militia Christi sur les sarcophages;' Melanges d~archeologie et d)histoire 74 (1962): 649-64. 84. Sulpicius Severus Vita sancti Martini 4.3: "Christi ego miles sum: pugnare mihi non licet." In a letter to Sulpicius Severus, his admirer Paulinus of Nola (Epist. 1.9) repeated this image back to him: "Tu uero miles Christi."

344

NOTES TO PAGES I22-27

85. ActaMarcelli (ed. and trans. H. Musurillo, TheActs ofthe Christian Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]) 4.3. 86. Peter Chrysologus Senno 170. 87. Tert. Ad martyras 1. See also August. De civ. D. 22.9 and Leo the Great Sermo 54.4 de passione for other examples highlighting this paradox. 88. Ambrose De viduis (ed. F. Gori [Milan: Bibliotheca Ambrosiana, 1989]) 8.49. For more on Ambrose's attitude toward actual war, which he justified by separating the physical and spiritual realms, see Louis Swift, "St. Ambrose on Violence and War;' Transactions and Proceedings of the American PhilologicalAssociation 101 (1970): 533-43; and Fran<;ois Heim, "Le theme de la 'victoire sans combat' chez Ambroise;' inAmbroise de Milan: XVIe centenaire de son election episcopale) ed. Y.-M. Duval (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1974),267-81. 89. August. Epist. (ed.PL 33; trans. W Parsons,FC 18 and 30) 189.5. 90. August. De patientia (ed. CSEL 41; trans. L. Meagher, FC 16) 3.3, 5.4. 91. August. De patientia 8.10. See also the analysis by Peter rver Kaufman, ''Augustine, Martyrs, and Misery;' Church History 63 (1994): 1-14. 92. See DonatistMartyr Stories: The Church in Conflict in Rnman NorthAfrica) ed. Maureen Tilly (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996). On the Circumcellions and Donatists, see W H. C. Frend, "Circumcellions and Monles;' Journal of Theological Studies 20 (1969): 542-49, reprinted in Town and Country in the Early Christian Centuries (London: Variorum Reprints, 1980); Henry Chadwick, ''Augustine on Pagans and Christians: Reflections on Religious and Social Change;' inHistory) Society) and the Churches: Essays in Honor ofOwen Chadwick) ed. D. Beales and G. Best (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), reprinted in Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Early Church (London: Variorum, 1991). 93. August. Epist. 88.8. 94. August. Epist. 88.1. 95. August. Epist. 111.1. 96. August. Epist. 111.2. 97. August. Epist. 111.6: "sed quales ad se exeant Dominus attendit in servis suis." 98. August. De excidio urbis Rnmae senno 4. See also idem, Epist. 127 and 228 for Augustine's reactions to the barbarian invasions. CHAPTER FIVE

1. Cyprian De lapsis 6. 2. August. De utilitate ieiunii (ed. CCSL 46; trans. M. Muldowney, FC 16) 2. 3. Valerian Homilia (ed. PL 52; trans. G. Ganss, FC 17) 6, c£ Paulinus of Nola Epist. 13.17. 4. Ambrose De Tobia (ed. and trans. L. Zuclcer,PS 35) 5.19. 5. Ambrose De Tobia 5.19. 6. AmbroseDeNabuthae (ed. and trans. M. McGuire, PS 15) 1.1. For a study of the issues of social inequality in Ambrose's De N abuthae) see Vincent Vasey, The Social Ideas in the Works ofSt. Ambrose: A Study on De N abuthe (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1982). The Biblical story ofNaboth is in 1 Kings 21. 7. AmbroseDeNabuthae 13.54.

NOTES TO PAGES I27-32

345

8. Ambrose De Nabuthae 5.25. 9. Ambrose De Nabuthae 11.49: "non tibi cohabitet Iezabel." 10. Ambrose De fUga saeculi (ed. CSEL 32.2; trans. M. McHugh, FC 65) 5.25. 11. Ambrose De fUgasaeculi 7.38. 12. AmbroseDefUgasaeculi 6.32. 13. Ambrose Epist. 28. See also W H. C. Frend, "Paulinus of Nola and the Last Century of the Western Empire;'Journal ofRDman Studies 59 (1969): 1-11, reprinted in Town and Country in the Early Christian Centuries (London: Variorum,1980). 14. See Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris; Mathisen, RDman Aristocrats-, chap. 9. 15. SalvianDegubernatione Dei 3.10. I have translated curiales as "decurions;' left by the translator in the Latin. 16. Paulinus ofMilan VitasanctiAmbrosii (ed. .and trans. M. Kaniecka,PS 16) 2.5. See Emilien Lamirande, Paulin deMilan et la (CVitaAmbrosii.-') Aspects de la religionsous Ie Bas-Empire (Paris: Desclee, 1983). 17. Paulinus of Milan VitasanctiAmbrosii 3.6-9. C£ Ambrose Epist. 63.65, Rufinus Historia ecclesiastica 11.11. For biographical details, see Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose ofMilan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), who offers a different scenario for Ambrose's elevation to the office of bishop. Even Paulinus noted that Ambrose had declared in his boyhood that he would become a bishop (Vita sanctiAmbrosii 4). 18. AmbroseDepaenitentia (ed. R. Gryson, SC 179) 2.8.73. 19. Paulinus of Milan Vita sancti Ambrosii 41. 20 . Nov. Valentiniani 3.1. 21. A good overview of this history of suspicion is presented by Klaus Wengst, Pax RDmana. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1986). See also more specific studies for Tertullian's view on the Roman government and its authority: Charles Guignebert, Tertullien. Etude sur ses sentiments al'egard de l'Empire et de la societe civile (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901); or Richard Klein, Tertullian und das rijmische Reich (Heidelberg: C. Wmter, 1968). 22. Lactant. De mortibus persecutorum (ed. J. Creed [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984]) 52, cf. idem, Div. inst. 1.1, Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 10. See also Heim, Virtus) 307-47. Jaroslav Pelilcan (The Excellent Empire: The Fall of RDme and the Triumph of the Church [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987]) believes this to be the perspective mostly of Eastern Christian writers. 23. Prudent. c. Symm. 211.709-14. I have changed the translator's "power" for imperium to "empire." On the use of dragon-standards, see Southern and Dixon, Late RDman Army) 126. The Christian military standard called the labarum had been first made and used by Constantine, according to Eusebius (De vita Constantini 1. 31). 24. AmbroseExplanatioPsalmi 35.25, c£ August. De civ. D. 5.26, idem, ContraFaustumManichaeum 22.76, RufinusHistoria ecclesiastica 11.33. 25. Ambrose Defide 2.16.139-42. 26. Ambrose De obitu Theodosii 47-8, cf. Rufinus Historia ecclesiastica 10.8, Paulinus of Nola Epist. 31.4-5, andSulpicius Severus Chron. 2.31-5. Jan Drijvers

346

NOTES TO PAGES I32-35

(Helena Augusta: The Mother ofConstantine the Great and the Legend ofHer Find~ ing ofthe True Cross [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992]) believes that all of these Western sources for the legend, as well as later Eastern sources, were derived from a local legend not ultimately based in fact, but in the attempt of a bishop ofJerusalem to insinuate himself with Constantine's imperial descendants. 27. Ambrose De ohitu Theodosii (ed. and trans. M. Mannix,PS 9) 48. 28. Ambrose Epist. (ed. CSEL 82; trans. H. de Romestin, NPNF 10) 57.7; c£ Leo the Great Epist. 156.3. See G. W. Bowersock, "From Emperor to Bishop: The Self-Conscious Transformation of Political Power in the Fourth Century A.D.;' Classical Philology 81 (1986): 298-307. Despite serious problems ofreligious partiality, see also Claudio Morino, Church and State in the Teaching of St. Amhrose trans. M. J. Costelloe (WashingtonD.C.: Catholic University ofAmerica, 1969). 29. According to Eusebius (De vita Constantini 4.24), Constantine thought of himself as a bishop of sorts with jurisdiction over what was external to the Christian churches, as the other bishops held authority over matters within the Christian churches. 30. Ambrose Epist. 17.1. I have added "a military" to "owe service" for militare. 31. Ambrose Epist. 20.19. Whether Ambrose actually dared to speale these words to Valentinian II is unknown; the words come from a letter about the incident that Ambrose wrote to his sister, Marcellina, a consecrated virgin living in Rome. 32. Paulinus of Milan VitasanctiAmhrosii 23. 33. AmbroseEpist. 40.22. The Biblical story is from 2 Sam. 7.1-17. 34. Ambrose De ohitu Theodosii 34, c£ Rufinus Historia ecclesiastica 11.18. 35. SalvianDeguhernationeDei 2.4. The Biblical episode is related in 2 Sam. 12.1-15. 36. August. Confessiones (ed. CCSL 27; trans. R. Pine-Coffin [London: Penguin, 1961]) 13.32.47. The Biblical story of Adam and Eve is found in Gen. 3. 37. August. De Genesi ad litteram (ed. CSEL 28) 8.23.44. 38. Ambrose De paradiso (ed. PL 14) 2.11: "in figura mulieris sensum animi mentis que constituens, quam at0"811crtv vocant Graeci: decepto autem sensu praevaricatricem secundum historiam mentem asseruit, quam Graeci vouv vocant. Recte igitur in Graeco vouc; viri figuram accepit, at0"811crtC; mulieris." C£ also Paulinus ofNolaEpist. 23.11. The idea was derived from Philo Legum allegoricum 3.161. See Richard Baer, Jr., PhiloJs Use of the Categories ofMale and Female (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 38-39, for more on Philo; see also Pagels,Adamy Evey and the Serpent 64-65, for a general discussion; and David Hunter, "The Paradise of Patriarchy: Ambrosiaster on Woman as (Not) God's Image;' Journal ofTheological Studies n.s. 43 (1992): 447-69, for gendered notions of domination in the writings of Ambrosiaster. 39. See Drijvers, Helena; Godfrey Turton, The Syrian Princesses: The Women Who RuledR.iJmey A.D. 193-235 (London: Cassell, 1974); S. I. Oost, Galla PlacidiaAugusta: A Biographical Essay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Holum, ''Aelia Pulcheria Augusta;' chap. 3 in Theodosian Empresses. y

y

NOTES TO PAGES 135-38

347

40. Paulinus of Milan VitasanctiAmbrosii 12. 41. August. Confessiones 9.7.16 (my trans.): "ad cohercendam rabiem femineam, sed regiam." 42. Rufinus Historia ecclesiastica (ed. PL 21; trans. P. Amidon [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997]) 2.15. 43. Ambrose Epist. 22.10. Also on Ambrose's role in the development of the cult of saints, see Antoon Bastiaensen, "Paulin de Milan et Ie culte des martyrs chez saint Ambroise;' in Ambrosius Episcopus) ed. G. Lazzati (Milan: Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1976), vol. 2, 143-50; or Lamirande, Paulin deMiIan) chap. 9. 44. Robert Markus, The End ofAncient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),97-106,139-55. Ambrose's discovery of Protas ius and Gervasius took place in 386. In 393, Ambrose discovered at Bologna the remains of the martyrs Vitalis and Agricola, which he had transferred to the church there, and in 395 he discovered and transferred to another church in Milan the remains of the martyrs N azarius and Celsus (see Paulinus of Milan Vita sancti Ambrosii 32-3). At the same time and perhaps for not unrelated reasons, Ambrose condemned the visits of Christians to cemeteries to honor the dead there (see August. Confessiones 6.2.2). C£ Sulpicius Severns De vita Martini 11, where Martin as bishop correctly identified relics revered by the local population as those of a martyr as belonging to a former criminal. 45. See Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God)s Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (Boston: Beacon, 1994), esp. chap. 7. The marital metaphor itselfwas used earlier in the Biblical writings of the Hebrew prophets Hosea (2.19) and Isaiah (62.5). 46. Origen Homeliae in Canticum Canticorum. For differing views on Origen's relationship to contemporary Jewish exegetical traditions, see Roger Brooks, "Straw Dogs and Scholarly Ecumenism: The Appropriate Jewish Background for the Study of Origen;' and Paul Blowers, "Origen, the Rabbis, and the Bible: Toward a Picture ofJudaism and Christianity in Third-Century Caesarea;' in Origen ofAlexandria: His World and His Legacy) ed. C. Kannengiesser and W Petersen (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University, 1988). The modern editor of the work (Olivier Rousseau, SC 37.2) suggests that Origen may have heard of the allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs from Hippolytus, whom he heard preach at Rome, but it is impossible to say how much Origen borrowed from Hippolytus, since the latter's commentary on the Song of Songs survives only as a fragment. There are some early Christian uses of the marital metaphor recorded in the Bible (e.g., Eph. 5.22-33 and Rev. 21.2.9; note that they are both from the last generation of Biblical writings), and in the second-century Shepherd ofHermas) but none are tied directly to the Song of Songs. See also E. Ann Matter, The Voice ofMy Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University ofPennyslvania Press, 1990),20-34. 47. Ambrose De mysteriis (ed. CSEL 73; trans. H. de Romestin, NPNF 10) 7.37-40, c£ 9.55-7. 48. Ambrose De patriarchis (ed. CSEL 32.2; trans. M. McHugh, FC 65) 4.22: "deferentes copulam gratiae nuptialis."

348

NOTES TO PAGES I38-43

49. Ambrose De Isaac vel anima (ed CSEL 32.1; trans. M. McHugh, FC 65) 8.72: "ita ergo haec uel incumbebat in Christo uel supra ipsum sese reclinabat aut certe, quoniam de nuptiis loquimur, iam quasi tradita in Christo dexteram in thalamum ducebatur sponso." 50. Ambrose De Isaac vel anima 6.51: "aperi ipsam te mihi ... et adimplebo te." 51. Ambrose Epist. 41.14-5 : ''Non habet synagoga osculum, habet ecclesia quae expectavit, quae dilexit, quae dixit: Osculetur me ab osculis oris sui. Diuturnae enim cupiditatis ardorem quem adventus dominici expectatione adoleverat osculo eius vole bat stillanter extinguere, hoc explere sitim suam munere .... Osculatur ergo Christi qui confetto; cored enim creditur ad iustitiam, ore autem confessio fit ad salutem. Osculatur autem pedes Christi qui evangelium legens domini Iesu gesta cognoscit et pio miratur affectu ideo que religioso osculo velut quae dam deambulantis domini lambit vestigia. Osculemur Christum communionis osculo, qui legit intellegat." I have tried to remove the use of the masculine or feminine pronouns from the translation where the Latin does not indicate sex, except in direct references to the Church as "she;' and replaced "readeth" with "reads." 52. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 41.1-2: "uirgo sapiens, quae ... sponsi expectat aduentum. . . . Ergo mens nostra fertilis deo et uitae fructus operibus bonis pariat. sit spiritus uirgo, ut nulla saeculi corrumpatur inlecebra et ab omni labe uitiorum integer maneat." C£ 23.37. 53. August. Confessiones 1.13.21, 4.4.9, 4.15.26. 54. Hieron. Epist. 22.7 (trans. Mierow). I have replaced the translator's "helpless state" for infelicitas with "unhappiness." Cf. also Peter Chrysologus Sermones 93 and 95. The Biblical episode is in Matt. 26.6-13. 55. Ambrose Epist. 41.14, idem,De Isaac vel anima 3.9, OrigenHomeliae in Canticum Canticorum 2.2. 56. Connolly, Augustinian Imperative) 58. See also W Elledge, "Embracing Augustine: Reach, Restraint, and Romantic Resolution in the Confessions;' Journal for the Scientific Study ofReligion 27 (1988): 72-89. 57. August. Confessiones 9.9.19. I have replaced the translator's "served as her lord" with "served as lord;' since the Latin is ambiguous as to whether "her lord" or "the Lord" is meant, and both meanings are possible. 58. Anne-Lene Fenger, Aspekte der Soteriologie und Ekklesiologie beiAmbrosius vonMailand (Berne: Peter Lang, 1981), 105-11. See rather Elizabeth A. Clark, "The Uses of the Song of Songs: Origen and the Later Latin Fathers;' inAscetic Piety and WomenJs Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1986),387-427, who examines the changing contexts of Origen's, Ambrose's, and Jerome's uses of the bridal metaphor. 59. Hieron. De viris illustribus 67, idem, Commentarius in Ionam prophetam 3.6/9, August. Sermo 312.2-4. See also G. W Clarke, "The Secular Profession of St. Cyprian of Carthage;' Latomus 24 (1965): 633-38. 60. Prudent. Perist. 1311.21-32. Clarke ("Secular Profession;' 637 n. 4) argues that this is the result of a confusion between Cyprian of Carthage and Cyprian of Antioch.

NOTES TO PAGES I4-3-4-7

349

61. Palmer (Prudentius~ 236) adds that the account "has the advantage both of supplying the bishop with some interesting details for his early life (about which little was otherwise known), and of highlighting by contrast the Christian achievements of his later years." Malamud (Poetics of Transformation~ chap. 5) notes the gender ambiguity in the description of Cyprian. 62. See Hinchliff (Cyprian of Carthage) and Sage (Cyprian) for details of Cyprian's career; see Sage (Cyprian~ 377-83) for the dating of Cyprian's treatises. 63. Cyprian De lapsis (trans. M. Benevot) 2,4, c£ idem, Epist. 10, full ofmilitary metaphors for the martyrs, but also with several references to mater ecelesia~ "mother church." 64. Cyprian Delapsis 4. 65. Cyprian De lapsis 18. 66. Cyprian Delapsis 35. 67. Cyprian Epist. (ed. CSEL 3.2; trans. M. Benevot [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971]) 49.1. The presbyters had appealed to Rome for a ruling on Cyprian's authority after his return from hiding. 68. CyprianEpist. 66.8, cf. 66.1. 69. Cyprian Epist. 59.5. 70. CyprianDe ecelesiae catholicae unitate (ed. and trans. M. Bevenot [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971]) 21. 71. Cyprian De ecelesiae catholicae unitate 4-5. 72. The passage in question is admittedly problematic because there are two versions of it, the other of which spealcs of the "primacy" (primatus) of Peter. It has been argued that the passage quoted here represented a later clarification of the text by Cyprian himself, who removed the language of primacy because of the abdication of authority to Rome it implied. On this point, see Hinchliff, Cyprian ofCarthage~ 107-12. See J. E. Merdinger, Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), who also includes discussions based on the writings of Tertullian (chap. 2), Cyprian (chap. 3), and Optatus (chap. 4). See also Robert Eno, The Rise of the Papacy~ Theology and Life Series, vol. 32 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1990), who discusses (57-65) Cyprian's ambiguous role in the primacy of the papacy, and idem, Teaching Authority in the Early Church~ Message of the Fathers of the Church, vol. 14 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1984), chap. 9, for examples of early references to Roman ecclesiastical authority. See also Henry Chadwick, "Pope Damasus and the Peculiar Claim of Rome to St. Peter and St. Paul:' in Neotestamentica et Patristica: Eine Freundesgahe~ Herrn Prof Dr. Oscar Cullmann iiherreicht (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), reprinted in History and Thought of the Early Church (London: Variorum, 1980); and Jean Gaudemet, IlEglise dans PEmpire romain (IVe- Ve steeles)~ vol. 3 of Histoire du droit et des institutions de PEglise en occident~ ed. Gabriel Le Bras (Paris: Sirey, 1958),408-51. C£ Optatus De schismate Donatistarum 2.2,4-5 for similar comments; but also TertullianDe pudicitia 21, who rejected an episcopal interpretation of the authority of Peter. 73. Ambrose Explanatio psalmorum 40.30. Ambrose clearly did not intend by this comment a papal type of authority, which would also have undermined his authority as bishop of Milan. C£ idem,De incarnationis dominicae sacramento 32.

350

NOTES TO PAGES I47-50

74. Leo the Great, bishop of Rome from 440 to 467, greatly elaborated papal authority. He was, for example, the first bishop of Rome to talee the title ofpontiJex maximus) a title used by earlier Roman emperors to assert their status as protector of all Roman cults and rites. During the same period, the bishops assembled at the ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451 also recognized Rome as the head of the Western churches. Even then, Peter remained the masculine symbol of outward authority for the bishops of Rome. 75. Cyprian Epist. 55.8. I have changed "self-effacement" for verecundia to "modesty." 76. Cyprian De ecclesiae catholicae unitate 10. 77. CyprianEpist. 67.5. On the selection process of bishops , see Henry Chadwicle, "The Role of the Christian Bishop in Ancient Society;' in Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Early Church (London: Variorum, 1991); and Luce Pietri et al., "Peuple chretien ou plebs: Le role des laleS dans les elections ecclesiastiques en occident;' in Institutions) societe etvie politique dans Pempire romain auIVe siecle ap. ]-G.) ed. Michel Christol et al. (Rome: Ecole Fran~aise de Rome, 1992). On the selection process of bishops at the end of our period, see Richard Hanson, "The Church in Fifth-Century Ga~;' in Studies in Christian Antiquity (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1985). 78. Sulpicius Severus VitasanctiMartini 4.9.1. 79. Possidius ofCalamaSanctiAugustini vita (ed. PL 32; trans. F. Hoare, The Western Fathers [New York: Harper & Row, 1965]) 4. 80. Nov. Majoriani 11.1. 81. Paulinus of Milan VitasanctiAmbrosii 3.11. 82. Optatus De schismate Donatistarum (ed. CSEL 26; trans. M. Edwards [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997]) 1.16,19. 83. Optatus De schismate Donatistarum 1.10. C£ August. Contra Faustum Manichaeum 15.1, where the "bride of Christ" is the collective Church and heretics are adulterers. On women and heresy, see Virginia Burrus, "The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius and Jerome;' Harvard TheowgicalReview 84 (1991): 229-48. 84. See also Elizabeth A. Clark, "Patrons, Not Priests: Gender and Power in Late Ancient Christianity;' Gender and History 2 (1990): 253-73; and Jill Harries, '''Treasure in Heaven': Property and Influence among Senators of Late Rome;' inMarriage and Property) ed. Elizabeth M. Craile (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1991),54-70. 85. Tert. De virginibus velandis 9.1, c£ idem, De baptismo 17; Didascalia et constitutiones apostowrum 3.6,9. Tertullian did believe that women might prophesy with authority, at least in this last period of his career (see Tert. De animo 9; idem, De exhortatione castitatis 10), but this belief was declared heretical by later writers (see below, chap. 7, on the Montanists). 86. McNamara (A New Song) 122) writes: ."The Council of Nimes condemned women for presuming to claim admission to the diaconate. The Council of Carthage forbade them to be ordained as presbyters. The first Council of Nicaea condemned deaconesses who wore habits suggesting that they were clergy." On this subject, see McNamara, A New Son~ passim; Karen Torjesen,

NOTES TO PAGES ISO-52

351

When Women Were Priests: Women)s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper, 1993). 87. See Elizabeth A. Clark, ''Ascetic Renunciation and Feminine Advancement: A Paradox of Late Ancient Christianity:' Anglican Theological Review 63 (1981): 240-57; reprinted in Ascetic Piety and Women)s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity) Studies in Women and Religion, vol. 1 (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1986); and idem, ''Authority and Humility: A Conflict of Values in Fourth-Century Female Monasticism:' Byzantinische Forschungen 9 (1985): 17-33; reprinted inAscetic Piety and Women)s Faith. 88. See J. Ysebaert, "The Deaconesses in the Western Church of Late Antiquity and their Origin:' in Evlogia: Melanges offerts aAntoonA. R. Bastiaensen a Foccasion de son soixante-cinquieme anniversaire) ed. G. J. M. Bartelinlc, A. Hilhorst, and C. H. Kneepkens (Bruges: Abbatia Sancti Petri, 1991),421-36. 89. Confirmed by Nov. Marcionis 5, cf. Cod. lust. 1.2.13. 90. Cyprian Epist. 63.14. See John Laurance, Prie~ as Type of Christ: The Leader ofthe Eucharist in Salvation History according to Cyprian ofCarthage) Theology and Religion, ser. 7, vol. 5 (Berne: Peter Lang, 1984), which includes a lengthy section on sacerdotal authority (195-221). See also R. P. C. Hanson, "Office and the Concept of Office in the Early Church:' in Studies in Christian Antiquity (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1985), who writes (127-28) that the "increasing emphasis upon the importance of [sacerdotal] ordination finds its climax in the thought of Cyprian of Carthage." For a general history of the development of roles of clergy and laity, see W H. C. Frend, "The Church of the Roman Empire (313-600):' in The Layman in Christian History: A Project of the Department on the Laity of the World Council of Churches) ed. S. Neill and H.-R. Weber (London: SCM Press, 1963), reprinted in Town and Country in the Early Christian Centuries (London: Variorum, 1980). 91. See Ariadne Staples, From Good Goddess to Vestal Viwins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (New York: Routledge, 1998). Ramsay MacMullen, "Women in Public in the Roman Empire:' Historia 29 (1980): 208-18, confirms this view from the evidence of inscriptions, noting that virtually all references to women as holders of cultic religious titles denoting offices, even honorific ones, are from the Eastern Empire. 92. August. Sermo (ed. PL 38; trans. M. Muldowney, FC 38) 250.1. I have replaced the translator's "learned and unlearned, poor and rich" with "the learned man and the unlearned man, the poor man and the rich man:' since the masculine singular is used in the Latin. 93. SalvianDegubernationeDei 3.7, cf. 3.2,9,4.3. 94. Peter Chrysologus Sermo 114. 95. For Ambrose on slavery, see Vincent Vasey, The Social Ideas in the Works of St. Ambrose; Ulrich Faust, Christo servire libertas est. Zum Freiheitsbegriff des Ambrosius von Mailand (Salzburg: A. Pustet, 1983). For Augustine on slavery, see Gervase Corcoran, Saint Augustine on Slavery (Rome: Institutum Patristicum ''Augustinianum:' 1985). See also Richard Klein (Die Sklaverei in der Sicht der BischiifeAmbrosius undAugustinus [Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1988]), who links slavery as a theological motif in the writings of Augustine and Ambrose to their gen-

352

NOTES TO PAGES I52-55

eral views of the human condition, and in particular, to Augustine's development of the doctrine of original sin. 96. Ambrose Epist. 63.65. 97. ValerianHomelia 14.3. 98. Cyprian Epist. 14.2. 99. Cyprian Epist. 19.1. 100. Cyprian Epist. 3.1. 101. August. Sermo 211.4. 102. August. De civ. D. 14.12. This passage is also quoted and discussed by Pagels (Adam) Eve) and the Serpent, 108) in her larger discussion of Augustine on individual moral authority (chap. 5); see also Connolly, Augustinian Imperative) chap. 4. 103. August. De civ. D. 14.13. 104. See Pagels,Adam) Eve) and the Serpent) 144-45. I do not agree with Pagels's overall argument that Augustine's view of human subjection is an innovation, however, because I see these ideas presented in Cyprian and Ambrose, as I argue above. This difference may be more of one between Eastern Christians, on whom she largely relies for evidence, and Western ones. 105. Ambrose Epist. 21.4. C£ the similar tenor in the description of Martin of Tours's exchange with the emperor Maximian (Sulpicius Severns Vita sancti Martini 20). 106. Ambrose Sermo contra Auxentium 37. See also Morino, Church and State) chap. 2; and for Augustine, Gerald Bonner, ''Quid imperatori cum ecclesia? St. Augustine on History and Society:' Augustinian Studies 2 (1971): 231-51; reprinted in God)s Decree and ManJs Destiny: Studies on the Thought ofAugustine of Hippo (London: Variorum, 1987). Bonner argues that Augustine's experience with the Donatists had made him particularly cognizant of the discrepancies between the rival authorities of church and state, but he was certainly not the only Christian writer to be thus aware. 107. See Gaudement, I!Eglise dans IJEmpire romain) 136-40 (on restrictions for slaves and freedmen, by ecclesiastical decrees, the former because directly under another's control and the latter because their former masters still had some rights over them), 144-48 (on decurions, mostly by imperial legislation), and 168-72 (on merchants, a combination of ecclesiastical decrees restricting commerce by clerics and imperial legislation malcing some professions hereditary). For the example of Gaul, see Aline Rousselle, ''Aspects sociaux du recrntement eccl<~siastique au IVe siecle:' Melanges de IJEcole franfaise de Rome: Antiquite 89 (1977): 333-70. See also the opposing viewpoint of Frank Gillard ("Senatorial Bishops in the Fourth Century:' Harvard TheologicalReview 77 [1984]: 152-75) who argues that laws against curial participation in ecclesiastical office attest to its frequency and notes that the alleged senatorial nobility of some bishops is difficult to ascertain. 108. Constantius of Lyon Vitasancti Germani episcopi (ed. SC 112) 4.22. 109. Sulpicius Severus Vita sanctiMartini 9.3. See also Clare Stancliffe, St. Martin and His Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). Stancliffe notes (112) that Martin's father rose to the

NOTES TO PAGES ISS-57

353

rank of tribune and argues (292) that much of the opposition of the other bishops to Martin stemmed from his ascetic lifestyle, still an unusual thing in fourthcentury Gaul and associated with the executed heretic Priscillian of Avila. Stancliffe admits (357) that "Martin may have encountered snobbery ... because of his social and military background" and "uncouth appearance:' 110. Hippol. Haer. 9.7. Callixtus held office from 217 to 222, and Hippolytus was the first so-called antipope. The allegations are nicely summarized by Turton, Syrian Princesses) 174-78. Ill. August. Epist. (ed. J. H. Baxter, LCLj my trans.) 34.6: "sermoneinpolitum:' 112. Hieron.Epist. 52.5; c£ Valerian Homelia 14.5. 113. See Brown, Power and Persuasion) esp. chap. 2; and Robin Lane Fox,Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century A.D. to the Conversion of Constantine (London: Penguin, 1986), chap. 10. 114. For examples of these theological and familial networks, see Stancliffe, St. Martin) esp. chap. 5; or Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), esp. chap. 1. 115. Cod. Theod. 16.2.2,16.2.10, EusebiusHistoria ecclesiastica 10.7. On the judicial privileges of the bishops, see also Gaudemet, llEglise dans PEmpire romain) 230-87. 116. Cod. lust. 1.3.21; see also Gaudemet, llEglise dans I)Empire romain) 316-17. 117. Constitutiones Sirmondianae 3,15. 118. Cod. Theod. 16.2.31, c£ Constitutiones Sirmondianae 14. Thelaw also required the same penalty for assaults of presbyters and church buildings. Capital punishment meant loss of life for the lower classes, loss of property and exile for the upper classes. 119. Implied in Cod. Theod. 16.2.39 and Constitutiones Sirmondianae 9 (probably the same original law, requiring any priests dismissed from their offices by bishops to become decurions). C£ Cod. Theod. 16.2.41 (requiring bishops to use formal procedures for such dismissals). 120. Nov. Valentiniani 23.1,35.1. See also Michele Salzman, "The Evidence for the Conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity in Book 16 of the Theodosian Code/' Historia 42 (1993): 362-78, who looks at the legal promotion of Christian clerics. 121. Eusebius De vita Constantini 1.42-3, 2.21,35-41,45-6, see also Gaudemet, llEglise dans PEmpire romain) 288-311. Cyprian implied (De lapsis 6) that some Christian bishops had acquired considerable wealth even before the era of Constantine. 122. Hieron. Epist. 7.5,52.6,11, c£ SalvianDegubernationeDei 5.10. 123. See Gaudemet, llEglise dans PEmpire romain) 451-63. The exact date of the Council of Elvira is unknown. Tertullian mentioned (De ieiunio 13) earlier meetings of Eastern bishops. 124. See Stancliffe (St. Martin) 266) for a discussion of this theme. 125. August. Epist. 33.5.

354

NOTES TO PAGES I57-62

126. Hieron. Epist. 52.7. 127. I was unable to determine the dating of purple as the color of bishops. Mary Houston (Ancient Greek) Roman) and Byzantine Costume and Decoration [London: Adam and Charles Black, 1947], 120-34) notes only that clerical dress preserved late ancient clothing styles after laypersons adopted other styles of dress. Jerome suggested (Epist. 52.9) that clerics should dress plainly, perhaps implying that many did not; he also noted (Epist. 66.6) that senators wore purple in his day, although the wearing of purple was eventually prohibited to all except the emperors (in 424, by Cod. Theod. 10.21.3, although how effectively this prohibition was enforced is unlcnown). See also Lynda Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1997), chap. 3. 128. August. De civ. D. 19.19, cf. idem, Epist. 22.8,23.3,98.8,110.5. 129. Sid. Apoll.Epist. 6.1.3. I have changed the translator's "captain" to "centurion;' "standard-bearers" to "soldiers who fight in front of the standards;' "batmen" to "military servants;' and "sutlers" to "camp-followers." 130. Sid. Apoll. Epist. 6.1.4. 131. Sid. Apoll.Epist. 7.9. I have changed the translator's "converse" to "conversation." 132. Sid. Apoll. Epist. 7.9. For more on Sidonius Apollinaris's views of the episcopacy, see Hanson, "Church in Fifth-Century Gaul." 133. Ambrose De officiis ministrorum (ed. M. Testard [Paris: Belles Lettres, 1984 and 1992] 2 vols.; trans. H. de Romestin,NPNF 10) 2.24.125. 134. See Peter Cirsis, Ennoblement ofPagan Virtues: A Comparative Treatise on Virtues in Cicero)s book De officiis and in St. Ambrose)s book De officiis ministrorum (Rome: Gregorian University, 1955), who notes the many similarities but oddly ignores their differences. 135. On humility, see Ambrose De officiis ministrorum 1.5.19; on modesty, 1.18.67. 136. August. De civ. D. 5.26. See also Robert Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Richard Dougherty, "Christian and Citizen: The Tension in St. Augustine's De ciuitate dei/' in Collectanea Augustiniana. Augustine: Second Founder of the Faith) ed. J. Schnaubelt and F. Van Fleteren (Berne: Peter Lang, 1990); and B. Paradisi, "La paix au IVe et Ve siecles;' Rccueils Bodin 14 (1961): 321-95. 137. Ambrose Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 4.28. 138. Ambrose De exhortatio vi1lJinitatis (ed. PL 16) 12.82, c£ Paulinus of Nola Epist. 1.7. CHAPTER SIX

1. Ps.-C1ementHomilia (ed. PG 2) 13.18, c£Dig. 48.5.14. 2. Cyprian Epist. 55.26. 3. Lactant.Div. inst. (ed. CSEL 19; trans. M. McDonald,FC49) 6.23. 4. Lactant. Div. inst. 6.23: "haec tamen apud illos leuia et quasi honesta sunt." 5. For bibliographical details, see J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Lift) Writings) and Controversies (London: Duckworth, 1975).

NOTES TO PAGES I63-6S

355

Hieron. Epist. 77.8 (trans. Wright). Hieron. Epist. 77.4 (trans. Wright). Hieron. Epist. 77.2 (trans. Wright). Hieron. Epist. 77.6 (trans. Wright). Hieron. Epist. 77.10 (trans. Wright; I have changed the translator's present tense of "join" and "combine" to past tense for the sake of readability). 11. Hieron. Epist. 77.3 (trans. Wright). 12. Hieron. Epist. 77.3 (trans. Wright; I have somewhat rearranged the phrases of the translation for the salce of readability). C£ Ambrose Expositio evan-

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

gelii secundum Lucam 8.5. 13. Tert. Apol. 39.11, c£ idem, De patientia 12.5, Ad uxorem 2.3, De monogamia 9.4,8, De exhortatione castitatis 9, De pudicitia 1.6-9 and 1.20-1. C£ Ambrose De fugasaeculi 6.35, idem,DeAbraham 1.2.7. See also Philip Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization ofMarriage during the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 122-26. 14. Hippolytus Traditio apostolica 15. 15. August. De libero arbitrio 1.3, Ambrose De fuga saeculi 3.15. 16. SalvianDegubernationeDei 3.8, c£ Ambrose De Iacob etvita beata 1.3.10. The Biblical reference is to Matt. 5.27-28. 17. Jesus is supposed to have said that even desiring another man's wife was equal to it, and that a wife could be dismissed for it (Matt. 5.27-8,31-2; the Greek used was porneia [1t0PVE1U, "sexual offense:' often meaning "prostitution"], a broader concept than adultery, even the wife's alone, and may have had another meaning, possibly meaning if she acted as a prostitute). Paul included adulterers in his list of individuals who could not enter Heaven, but without defining the term (1 Cor. 6.9; the Greek used is moichoi [~otxol], but here pornoi [1tOPVOt, "sexual offenders"] is included in the list presumably as a separate category). 18. AmbrosiasterAd Corinthiosprima (ed. CSEL 81.2) 7.11 ("the man is not constrained by the law in this way as the woman"), a reference that comes from Reynolds (Marriage in the Western Churchy 183) who does not also refer to AmbrosiasterAd Corinthios prima 7.4, where he stated that "neither the husband nor the wife is permitted to give their body to others." 19. Lactant. Div. inst. 6.23. This is part of a much larger discussion on adultery and married men. 20. Ambrose De Abraham (ed. PL 14) 1.4.25, c£ 1.7.59,2.11.78. For further discussion, see William Dooley, Marriage according to St. Ambrosey Studies in Christian Antiquity, vol. 11 (Washington, D. c.: Catholic University of America, 1948), esp. chap. 9. C£ Hieron. Epist. 77.3: "adultera uxor ... et uir moechus"; August. De bono conjugali 4.4, idem, De adulterinis coniugiis 1.8.8, idem, De ser-

mone domini in monte 1.16.43. 21. Pornoi are listed as sinners excluded from Heaven in 1 Cor. 6.9 and 1 Tim. 1.10. Fornicarius is probably the better translation, being derived from fornix) meaning an arched or vaulted chamber but used to refer to a brothel, so meaning one who frequents brothels. 22. Salvian De gubernatione Dei 7.4. I have changed the translator's "maids" for ancillae to "slaves."

356

NOTES TO PAGES I66-68

23. Paulinus of Pella Eucharisticus ll. 66-7. 24. Ambrose De Abraham 2.11.78,1.4.25, idem,De bono mortis 9.40. 25. Hieron. Epist. 14.5 (my trans.): "neget sacrilegium in libidine, sed is qui membra Christi et hostiam uiuam placentem Deo cum publicarum libidinem uictimis nefaria conluuione uiolauit." 26. 1 Cor. 6.9 and 1 Tim. 1. 10. Malakoi (1l0AOKOt) is a familiar term, butarsenokoitai (apcrEvoKo'i 'tat) is found nowhere else before Paul and is possibly his own invention. It is a composite of apcrEvo- (male) and KOi'tat (those who lie down with) from KOt'tT), "lying down;' used euphemistically for sex. It is linguistically possible that the word condemns persons of either sex "who lie down with males;' but the context does not support the inclusion of women who have sex with males among those prohibited, because there would be no purpose to many of the other condemnations. It is more Wcely an attempt by Paul to refer to Lev. 18.22 and 20.13 (translated in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, as "IlE'to apcrEvo<; KOt'tT)V"), also presumed to condemn both partners involved in sex between males. Paul's condemnation differs in focusing on the one doing the action rather than on the action itself, but his term may have been coined as a parallel with malakoi. See Dale Martin, ''Arsenokoites and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences;' in Biblical Ethics and Homosexuality: Listening to Scriptures) ed. R. Brawley (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1996); see also Boswell, "Lexicography and Saint Paul;' appendix 1 to Christianity) Social Tolerance)' and the replies by David Wright, "Homosexuals or Prostitutes: The Meaning of APLENOKOITAI (1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Tim. 1:10);' Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984): 125-53; William Petersen, "Can APLENOKOITAI Be Translated by Homosexuals?" Vigiliae Christianae40 (1986): 187-91 and idem, "On the Study of 'Homosexuality' in Patristic Sources;' Studia Patristica 20 (1989): 283-88. 27. On the sin of Sodom as sexual, implying that the Sodomites wanted to penetrate the angels, see August. De mendacio 7, idem, Contra mendacium 9, 22, Salvian De gubernatione Dei 1.8. See also Ambrose Epist. 63.105 for the sin of Sodom as a sin against hospitality; Hieron. Epist. 22.2 on the sin of Sodom as sex within marriage, and Hieron. Epist. 55.4 for an unclear mention of a husband who was an adulterer and a sodomite. See also the vague Biblical descriptions of the sin of Sodom at 2 Pet 2.6-8 (that Jerome translated as nefanda) "wicked things") and Jude 7 (that Jerome translated as abeuntes post carnem alteram) "going after other flesh"). 28. Ps.-Tert. Carmen aduersus Marcionem (ed. and trans. with Tertullian Opera) Ill. 19-24. 29. N ovatian De bono pudicitiae (ed. CCSL 4) 3.5. 30. SalvianDegubernationeDei 7.20. This is part of a much larger discussion (7.11-23) in which Salvian blamed the sexual sins of the Romans for the barbarian invasions. 31. CyprianAdDonatum (ed. CCSL 3a; trans. R. Deferrari,FC 36) 9. 32. August. De mendacio) idem, Contra mendacium. 33. On Nero, see Leo the Great Sermo 82.6; on Hadrian, Prudent. c. Symm.

NOTES TO PAGES I68-72

357

(trans. Thomson) 111.271-3; on Elagabalus, Auson. Caesares (ed. withEpW'r.) 1. 138 (my trans.): "Tunc etiam Augustae sedis penetralia foedas"; on Maximian, Lactant. De mortibus persecutorum 8.5. 34. Tert.Apol. 46.10, cf. Arn.Adv. nat. 1.64, Lactant.Div. inst. 1.20. Contrast this statement with Tertullian's earlier sympathetic opinion (idem,Ad nat. 1.4.6) and the comments of John Cassian (Conlationes 13.5), who obviously thought that Socrates had renounced sex. C£ also Tertullian's opinion of the Platonists (De anim.54-55). 35 .. Prudent. c. Symm. Ill. 69-70. 36. Lactant. Div. inst. 1.10-1, c£ Arn.Adv. nat. 4.26, Commodianlnstructiones 1.6, Ps. -Tert. De execrandisgentium diis) Ambrose De vir;ginibus 3.7. 37. Prudent. c. Symm. 11. 116, c£ Tert.Ad nat. 2.14.7, idem, De pallio 4, Lactant. Epit.Div. inst. 7. 38. Firmicus Maternus De errore profanarum relW'ionum (ed. CSEL 2; trans. C. Forbes,ACW 37) 6.7: "cinaedum enin eum fuisse et amatorum seruisse libidinibus ... cum semiuiro comitatu fugiens-soli enim eum secuti sunt stuprorum et flagitiorum ac libidinum socii." I have changed the translator's "homosexuals" for amatores to "his lovers" and "lackeys" for comitatus to "friends." C£ Prudent. C. Symm. 111.122-6, Lactant. Div. inst. 1.10, Commodianlnstructiones 1.12. 39. Lactant. Div. inst. 1.10, cf. Arn.Adv. nat. 4.26. 40. August. De civ. D. 4.25. 41. August. De civ. D. 2.12. I have replaced the translator's "misdemeanors" forfiagitia with "disgraces." C£ 18.13. 42. Hieron.Epist. 22.30, RufinusApologiacontraHieronymum 2.6-8, cf. also Hieron. Epist. 21.13, where Jerome condemned clerics who enjoyed reading the Latin classics. C£ also Sulpicius Severns Vita sancti Martini praefatio 1 , John Cassian Conlationes 14.12. 43. Firmicus Maternus De errore profanarum relW'ionum 12.2,4, cf. Ps.-Tert. De execrandisgentium diis) Lactant. Div. inst. 1.20. 44. August. De civ. D. 4.8, Prudent. Perist. 3 11. 81-4, Nov. Theodosii 3.1. 45. Hieron. Epist. 77.3 (trans. Wright), Tert. De praescr. haeret. 7. 46. Ambrose Liber de consolatione Valentiniani (ed. and trans. T. Kelly, PS 58; hereafter De consolo Val.) 2 (on war, which he implied was the cause of Valentinian's death), 21 (on his subjects' loyalty, where he compared Valentinian with Julian), 51 (on his desire to be baptized), and 52 (on his antagonism toward the pagans). 47. AmbroseDeconsol. Val. 58. Ambrose was quoting Cant. 5.10, and quoted from the Song of Songs at numerous places in the oration. 48. Ambrose De consolo Val. 11, c£ 12-3. 49. Ambrose De consolo Val. 17. 50. Ambrose De consolo Val. 38. 51. Ambrose De consolo Val. 74. 52. Ambrose De consolo Val. 46. 53. Ambrose De excessu fratris Satyri 1.52. I have changed the translator's pu-

358

NOTES TO PAGES I72-74

dico mentis pudore from "bashful modesty of heart" to "bashful modesty of mind?' C£ August. Epist. 151.9. 54. Hieron.Epist. 125.7 (trans. Wright), Ambrose De Helia etieiunio (ed. and trans. M. Buck, PS 19) 16(59). C£ Hieron. Epist. 54.9 (where Jerome attributed this belief to the ancient physician Galen), idem, Epist. 22.8, and idem, Tractatus de psalmo CVI 106. 55. Gerald Bonner (''Libido and Concupiscentia in St. Augustine:' Studia patristica 6 [1962J: 303-14; reprinted in God)s Decree and Man)s Destiny: Studies on the Thought ofAugustine ofHippo [London: Variorum, 1987J) attempts without real success to distinguish the use of these terms in a late ancient author whom one might most expect to have noted the difference. 56. A list of only the most recent of the best includes Erin Sawyer, "Celibate Pleasures: Masculinity, Desire, and Asceticism in Augustine:' Journal of the History ofSexuality 6 (1995): 1-29, David Hunter, ''Augustinian Pessimism? ANew Look at Augustine's Teaching on Sex, Marriage, and Celibacy:' Augustinian Studies25 (1994): 153-77; Peter Brown, ''Augustine: SexualityandSociety:'chap.19 in Body and Society) Philip Reynolds, "Augustine's Theology of Marriage:' part 3 ofMamage in the Western Church. Generally on Christian views of sexuality, see Brown, Body and Society. Joyce Salisbury (Church Fathers) Independent Vi13ins [New York: Routledge, 1992J, esp. chaps. 1 and 2) also provides an interesting point of comparison by examining the patristic theories of sexuality and their effects on women's identity. 57. August. Soliloquia (ed.PL 32; trans. T. Gilligan,FC 1) 1.10.17. 58. See August. De bono conjugali 2.2, c£ Hieron. Adv. Iovinian. 1.16,29, idem, Epist. 22.19, and Ambrose De institutione virginis et sanctae Mariae virginitate perpetua 5.36. 59. August. De Genesi ad litteram 9.3, c£ idem, De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.5. See also the discussion in Reynolds,Mamage in the Western Church) 241-51, and in Salisbury, Church Fathers) chap. 3, who calls it Augustine's "sexual revolution?' ElizabethA. Clark ("Heresy, Asceticism, Adam and Eve: Interpretations ofGenesis 1-3 in the Later Latin Fathers," in Ascetic Piety and Women)s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity [Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1986J, 353-85) argues that Augustine changed his opinion in response to the debate with Jovinian (see below on this debate). 60. August. De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.24.27. 61. August. De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.25.28. 62. August. De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.6.7, c£ idem, De civ. D. 14.15. 63. Tert.Adv.Marcionem 5.17. 64. Cyprian De zelo et livore 2. 65. Lactant. Div. inst. 6.23. 66. Hieron. Tractatus de psalmo X (ed. CCSL 78; trans. M. Ewald, FC 57), c£ also NovatianDe cibis iudaicis 4.3, Ambrose De fugasaeculi 4.17. 67. August. De civ. D. 14.17. C£ Ambrose (De excessu fratris Satyri 1.52) that his brother had in his virginity kept the sinlessness of his baptism, Jerome (Epist. 49.20) that virginity was a second birth like baptism, and the anonymous account of the martyr Felix martyred in North Mrica around 300 (Passio sancti Felicis epis-

NOTES TO PAGES I74-79

359

copi) ed. H. Musurillo, TheActs ofthe ChristianMartyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1972] 30) who at the moment of his martyrdom, thanked God for his virginity. 68. E.g., Ambrose De viduis 4.23. 69. E.g., Tert. De animo 27. 70. AmbroseDefugasaeculi 4.17, c£ idem,DeIsaacvel anima 1.2. 71. Hieron. Vita sancti Pauli primi eremitae (ed. PL 23; trans. C. White, Early Christian Lives [London: Penguin, 1998]) 3. 72. August. Contra FaustumManichaeum 22.50 .. 73. Hieron. Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei (ed. CCSL 77) 3, c£ idem,Adv. Iovinian. 1.20. 74. August. Epist. 243, cf. idem, De continentia 5.13 and 14.31. 75. Tert. De monogamia 15 (trans. Le Saint; I have replaced the translator's "boudoir" for cubiculum with "bedchamber"). 76. Tert. De monogamia 16 (trans. Le Saint): "est res uirium." Tertullian was mocking remarriage specifically; for more on his views on remarriage, see below in this chapter. 77. N ovatian De bono pudicitiae (trans. R. DeSimone, FC 67) 14. 78. Hieron. Epist. 52.13 (trans. Wright). 79. Prudent. Liber cathemerinon 1. 21. 80. Cod. lust. 11.43.1/11.44.1. For descriptions of the arena sports, see Apul. Met. 4.13 and 10.29-34; Casso Dio 66.25; H. A. Gallieni duo 8. On the Christian critique of the arena games, see Werner Weismann, Kirche und Schauspiele. Die Schauspiele im Urteil der lateinischen IGrchenviiter unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung vonAugustin (Wfuzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1972); Michel Matter, "Jeuxd'am-

phitheatre et reactions chretiennes de Tertullien ala fin du Ve siecle;' and PaulAlbert Fevrier, "Les chretiens dans l'arene;' in Spectacula: Actes du coUoque tenu a Toulouse et aLattes les 26) 27) 28) et 29 mai 1987) ed. C. Domergue et al. (Paris: Imago, 1990). 81. August. Sermo 216.6, c£ idem) De vera religione 45.83. 82. August. Confessiones 6.8. 83. Ambrose De Helia etieiunio 21.79, c£ Paulinus of Nola Epist. 24.15. 84. Hieron. Vita Hilarionis 2 (on Hilarion's disinterest in the games as a young man), 7 (on his temptations), 16 (on the episode of his curing of a charioteer), and 20 (on his blessing a charioteer's horses). 85. Tert. De spectaculis 22. 86. CyprianAdDonatum 7.

87. Prudent. Perist. 5il. 213-6. 88. Oribasius Collectio medica 50.11, John Cassian De institutis coenobiorum 6.7.2. See also Eric Dingwall, Male Infibulation (London: John Bale, Sons and Danielsson, 1925). 89. On the debate between Jerome and Jovinian, see Keily,Jerome) esp. chap. 17, Philip Rousseau, Ascetics) Authority) and the Church in the Age ofJerome and Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), and David Hunter, "Resistance to the Virginal Ideal in Late-Fourth-Century Rome: The Case ofJovinian;' Theological Studies 48 (1987): 45-64. 90. On the classical tradition, see Katharina Wilson and Elizabeth Malcowski,

360

NOTES TO PAGES I79-8I

"Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage: Misogamous Literature from Juvenal to Chaucer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Augustine noted the Latin literary tradition of marriage as misery (De civ. D. 19.5). 91. Hieron. Adv. Iovinian. 1.7,12,13, idem, Commentarii in Matheum 3.19.10. C£ also Ambrose De vi1lJinitate 33, August. Ennarationes in Psalmos (ed. CCSL 40) 149.15. 92. Hieron. Adv. Iovinian. (ed. PL 23) 1.9, c£ 1.7. 93. Hieron.Adv. Iovinian. 1.41.

94. 1 Cor. 7.25-8. 95. Matt. 22.30; Mark 12.25; Luke 20.35-6. See Hieron. Epist. 22.20. 96. Hieron.Adv. Iovinian. 1.36, c£ idem, Commentarii in epistolam ad Ephesios 3.5, Novatian, De bono pudicitiae 7.2. 97. Hieron.Adv.Iovinian.l.26, C£ also idem) Epist. 49.21 andidem,Adv.Helvidium 19; the last argues that Joseph was also a virgin, since Jerome believed that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life and so her marriage to Joseph was without sex (c£ on the same issue August. De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.11). Jerome also argued (Epist. 22.21) that most of the Hebrew prophets were also virgins. 98. Hieron.Adv. Iovinian. 1.8, c£1.16,39. 99. Hieron.Adv. Iovinian. 1.13, c£ Ambrose De vi1lJinibus 1.6.24. 100. Hieron.Adv. Iovinian. 1.3, cf. idem, Epist. 22.20. 101. Hieron. Epist. 49.2. The scene at Rome is depicted by Harry Maier, "The Topography of Heresy and Dissent in Late-Fourth-Century Rome:' Historia 44 (1995): 232-49. 102. Ambrose condemned two itinerant preachers, possibly followers of Jovinian, in a letter to the Christians at Vercellae (Epist. 63.7), written in about 396. At the turn of the century, Augustine wrote two treatises against the ideas of Jovinian (see below), and Jovinian was ordered beaten and exiled (Cod. Theod. 16.5.53, in a law probably dating from before 400). 103. See Rousseau, Ascetics) Authority. See also John Lynch, "Marriage and Celibacy of the Clergy: The Discipline of the Western Church: An HistoricalCanonical Synopsis:' TheJurist 32 (1972): 14-38, C. A. Frazee, "The Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church:' Church History 41 (1972): 149-67, and David Callam, "Clerical Continence in the Fourth Century: Three Papal Decretals:' Theowgical Studies 41 (1980): 3-50. There is some precedent in earlier Latin Christian writers: Tertullian noted the sexual purity demanded of the pagan Roman priests or sacerdotes (Ad uxorem 1.7, De exhortatione castitatis 7, 13). 104. Hieron. Epist. 22.19-20. On the "textual violence" done to Biblical texts by Christian writers of late antiquity, see Clark, Reading Renunciation) 104 and passim.

105. Hieron. Adv. Iovinian. 1.28, c£ Ambrose De Isaac et anima 1.2. 106. Hieron.Epist. 22.21, cf. idem, Epist. 151.8. 107. Hieron.Adv. Iovinian. 2.36.

108. Siricius Epist. (ed. PL 13) 7.1. 109. Ambrose Epist. 63:8,9. It can be presumed that he was writing against the ideas ofJovinian, since Jovinian had raised the issues that Ambrose dealt with in the letter.

NOTES TO PAGES I8I-84

361

110. August. De bono viduitatis 6.9. Augustine alluded to 1 Cor. 15.41-2. Clark, "Heresy, Asceticism;' is mostly on Augustine's role in the debate with Jovinian. Ill. August. De bono conjugali (ed. CSEL 41; trans. C. Wilcox, FC 27) 8.8. I have replaced "goods" for bona with "good things." C£ 23.28. 112. August. De bono coniugali 15.17: "nunc melius faciat qui nee unam duxerit, nisi se continere non possit." See Schmitt, Mariage chretieny 32-34. Cf. Hieron. Adv. Iovinian. 2.4. 113. August. De bono coniugali 17.19. I have changed the translator's "no one" for nullus to "no man." Cf. Hieron.Adv. Iovinian. 1.16,1.48. 114. August. De sancta viwinitate 23.23. 115. August. De sancta viwinitate 27.27. 116. Tert. Adv. Marcionem 5.15, c£ idem, De exhortatione castitatis 3. 117. Tert. Ad uxorem 2.8 (trans. Le Saint); I have changed the translator's "sacrifice" for oblatio to "eucharist"; as Le Saint points out (132 n. 144), the allusion is to a small cake shared by the bride and groom in the ancient Roman marriage ritual of confarreatio. Cf. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 18.5. 118. Tert. De exhortatione castitatis 12. 119. Tert. De exhortatione castitatis 9.1. 120. Tert. De monogamia 16. 121. Brown (Body and Society) best describes these groups, including Encratites (92-102), some Gnostics (103-21), and Manichaeans (197-202). 122. On the extent of Manichaeanism in the West, see Peter Brown, "The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire;' in Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (London: Faber, 1977), Fran<;ois Decret, IlAfrique manicheenneyIVe-Vesi'ecles (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1978), idem,Aspectsdu manicheisme dans F:Afrique romaine. Les controverses de Fortunatusy Faustus et Felix avec Saint Augustin (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1970), idem, "Saint Augustin, temoin du manicheisme dans l'Mrique romaine;' in Internationales Symposion iiber den Stand der Augustinus-Forschungy ed. C. Mayer and K. Chelius (Wiirzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1989); and W. H. C. Frend, "The GnosticManichaean Tradition in Roman North Mrica;' Journal ofEcclesiastical History 4 (1953): 13-26. The presence of Manichaeanism in North Mrica is attested as early as 287 C.B., when Diocletian and his fellow-emperors ordered the proconsul of Mrica to eradicate the religion there (Codex Gregorianus 14.4.1). 123. On Julian ofEclanum, see M. Lamberigts, "Julian of Aeclanum: A Plea for a Good Creator," Augustiniana 38 (1988): 5-24, Elizabeth A. Clark, "Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels: Augustine's Manichaean Past;' in Ascetic Piety and Women)s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press,1986), and Brown, Body and Society) 408-19. 124. On Priscillian, see Henry Chadwick, Priscillian ofAvila (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). Philaster of Brescia (Diversarum hereseon liber 61.5) attests to the Manichaean presence in Spain. A law of 425 C.B. also attests to their presence at Rome (Cod. Theod. 16.5.62); and on the fears about their presence there, see Harry Maier, "'Manichee!': Leo the Great and the Orthodox Panopticon;' JournalofEarly Christian Studies 4 (1996): 441-60.

362

NOTES TO PAGES I84-87

125. Ambrose Expositio evangelii Lucae 4.10, idem, De vi1lfinibus 1.7.34. 126. On the Manichaean religion and its beliefs, see Alexander Bohlig, "Der Manichaismus:' chap. 17 in Die orientatischen Religionen im Riimerreichy ed. Maarten Vermaseren (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), also S. N. C. Lieu,Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), and idem, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994). Augustine (Contra Faustum Manichaeum 6.3) described the beliefs of the Manichaeans about sex and the body; and Philaster of Brescia (Diversarum hereseon tiber 61) describes the militaristic opposition of good and evil. It should also be noted that most modern scholars do not consider Manichaeanism a branch of Christianity because it incorporated elements of other religions into its beliefs, but Christians of late antiquity did. 127. See August. Contra FaustumManichaeum 15.1. 128. Tert.Depraescr. haeret. 2.7-8. 129. Tert.Adv.Marcionem 3.5; c£ Ps.-Tert. Carmen adv.Marcionem 4 ll. 3-9. 130. Hieron. Epist. 133.3. 131. Philaster of Brescia Diversarum hereseon tiber (ed. CCSL 9) 61.3. 132. Leo the Great Sermo 16.4. These phrases are part of a much longer de-

nunciation. Cf. 24.4. 133. Nov. Valentiniani 18.1. 134. Cod. Theod. 16.5.3 (punishing Manichaean teachers), 16.5.7 (con-

fiscating Manichaean estates, prohibiting bequests and invalidating wills), 16.5.9,11 (confiscating the property of Manichaean leaders and forbidding assemblies), 16.5.18 (repeating above penalties), 16.5.35 (punishing all Manichaeans as criminals), 16.5.38 (prohibiting any discussion ofManichaean ideas), 16.5.41 (absolving from any of these penalties those Manichaeans who converted to orthodox Christianity), 16.5.43,59 (repeating all above penalties), 16.5.64 (expelling all Manichaeans from cities), and 16.5.65 (reconfirming above penalties, and prohibiting them from all branches of the imperial service except the army). 135. Cod. Theod. 16.5.6,8,11,12,13,31,34,36,58,59,60,61,65, and 16.6.7 (all against the Eunomianae [meaning "Well-Ordered (in Sexual Behavior),,]), 16.5.7,9,11 (against the Encratitae [meaning "(Sexually) Continent"] and Apotactitae [meaning "Renouncers (of Marriage )"]), all with similar penalties to those against the Manichaeans. See also Salzman, "Evidence for the Conversion:' for more on these penalties against heretics. 136. Cod. Theod. 16.1.2 (where heretics are judged as the insane) and 11.39 .11 (where they are disqualified from testifying in court). 137. August. De moribusManichaeorum 18.65. 138. E.g., Tert.Adv. omnes haereses 6. 139. August. De moribusManichaeorum 19.68. 140. Tert. De monogamia 1, c£ John Cassian Conlationes 14.11. 141. Hieron. Epist. 22.38 (trans. Wright; I have changed the translator's "Manes" to "Mani"). 142. Brown, Body and Societyy 143. See also Henry Chadwick, "The Attraction ofMani:' in Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Early Church (London: Variorum, 1991).

NOTES TO PAGES I87-9I

363

143. E.g., Paulinus of Nola Epist. 5.5, Ambrose Epist. 14.40. 144. Mark 10.5-9, Luke 16.18, Matt. 19.9. 145. Gospel of Thomas 12. 146. Col. 3.18-25, Eph. 5.21-6.9, 1 Pet. 2.18-3.7. See below, chap. 7, for more on the influence of these later additions to the Biblical corpus. 147. Eph. 5:22-32: "IlU<JTI1plOV." The plural was also used in Greek for the rites of the pagan mystery religions. See above (chap. 4) on the use of sacramentum for Christian baptism and (chap. 5) on the image of the bride of Christ. Reynolds (Marriage in the Western Church~ 280-311) suggests that Latin writers used the term sacramentum for marriage through a comparison with baptism as a divine and indelible bond. 148. Acts of Paul and Thecla 5-6. 149. August. De nuptiis etconcupiscentia 1.10.11; 1.11.13. There is an extensive secondary literature on this topic: J. Doignon, "La relationfides-sacramentum dans Ie De Bono Coniugali de Saint Augustin: Un schema de gradatio herite de Tertullien:' Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses 59 (1983):91-98, F. Gil Hellin, "Los Bona Matrimonii de san Agustin:' Revista agustiniana de espiritualidad 23 (1982): 129-85, Emile Schmitt, Le mariage chretien dans Foeuvre de saint Augustin. Une theologie baptismale de la vie conjugale (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1983). 150. Lactant. De opificio Dei 13.2. 151. Lactant. Div. inst. 5.9. 152. Lactant. Div. inst. 6.23. 153. Cyprian Ad Donatum 9. 154. Cyprian Ad Donatum 9, c£ Ambrose Enarratio Psalmi 37.33, August. De bono conjugali 11.12, idem,De civ. D. 22.22. 155. August. De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.5 (on how Adam and Eve experienced no sexual desire before their rebellion against God), 1.6 (on how the rebellion of the flesh is evidence of this rebellion against God), 1. 7 (on how the goods of marriage cannot redeem this), and 1.15 (on the requirement of procreation as justification for marriage). Cf. idem, De bono conjugali 3.3. 156. August. De bono conjugali 5.5, cf. 6.5-6. 157. August. De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.11.12. 158. August. Epist. 31.6. This letter was addressed to Paulinus ofNola and his wife Therasia, participants in such a sexless marriage. Cf. Augustine's letter to Pinianus and Melania the Younger (Epist. 124.1). See also Elizabeth A. Clark, ''Adam's Only Companion: Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage:' RecherchesAugustiniennes 21 (1986): 139-62. 159. Dyan Elliott, SpiritualMarriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 50, 55-56; see also Rousselle, Porneia~ chap. 2, on the frequent mention of married women's attempts to avoid sex with their husbands in the medical literature of late antiquity. 160. PelagiusAdmatronemCelantiam (ed.PL22; trans. David Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992]) 26. I have made some changes to the translation for the salce of readability. 161. PelagiusAd matronem Celantiam 28.

364

NOTES TO PAGES I9I-93

162. August. Epist. 262.2. I have changed the translator's "conjugal chastity" for pudicitia coniugalis to the "the sexual modesty of marriage." Cf. idem, De bono conjugali 6.6, and De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.11. 163. See above on adultery; see also the ample discussion by Reynolds on divorce (Marriage in the Western Churchy 126-31), who cites Ambrose (Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 8.5) and Augustine (De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.10.11). Christian theologians argued for the equality ofmen's and women's positions in divorce, but there remained significant differences between men's and women's rights of divorce, belying a Christian origin. 164. Tert.Ad uxorem 2.4 (trans. Roberts and Donaldson). 165. Tert. De exhortatione castitatis 4 (Paul's comments against remarriage, cf. De monogamia 3), 5 (the example ofAdam and Eve, c£ De monogamia 4), 13 (the examples of Dido and Lucretia and the pagan priests known as the pontifex maximus and fiamen dialisy c£ De monogamia 17), and 6 (the example of Abraham is rejected: since Christians do not follow his example of circumcision, they should not follow his example of digamy). 166. Ambrose De viduis 1.1, Hieron. Adv. Iovinian. 1.4, August. De bono viduitatis 4.6, idem, De bono conjugali 24.32. 167. Ambrose De excessu fratris Satyri 2.13. The PL has amasit for amisit ("lost"). See also Marjorie Lightman and William Zeisel ("Univira: An Example of Continuity and Change in Roman Society;' Church History 46 [1977]: 19-32), who see a conscious attempt by Christian writers on the subject of the univira to appeal to archaic Roman tradition. 168. AmbroseDeviduis 7.37, cf. 8.44,51. 169. Tert. De pudicitia 2: "effeminantia magis quam uigorantia disciplinam." 170. Min. Fel. Oct. 31.5. 171. Cyprian De ecclesiae catholicae unitate 6. 172. Ambrose Epist. 63.37. 173. E.g., men should choose their wives, as Isaac chose Rebecca (Ambrose De Abraham 1.9.91 and 93, August. Contra FaustumManichaeum 22.46); men should choose their wives according to their morals and not their appearance, as Abraham chose Sarah (AmbroseDeAbraham 1.2.6); and men should guard their wives' sexual behavior closely, as Potiphar should have done with his wife so that she would not have had the opportunity to attempt to seduce Joseph (Ambrose De Joseph patriarcha 5.22). 174. Ambrose De viduis 13.81, c£ Ambrosiaster Ad Corinthios prima 7.11. 175. Pelagius Ad matronem Celantiam 26. He quoted Eph. 5.23 and 1 Pet. 31. 176. Ambrose Epist. 63.107, c£ August. De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 1.30.63. 177. Elliott, SpiritualMarriagey 58. Elliott contrasts the attitude of Augustine, whom she claims wanted to maintain men's authority over their wives even within spiritual marriage, with the attitude of Paulinus, whom she claims promoted an equality of husband and wife within spiritual marriage. Elliott also uses Jerome as an example of an advocate of equality within spiritual marriage (see Epist. 71.4), but Jerome's viewpoint is more complicated than that; in the same

NOTES TO PAGES I93-97

365

letter, for example, Jerome compares his correspondent (a man, Lucinus ofBaetica) with the patriarch Joseph, in having successfully slipped from the embrace of a woman (71.3). 178. Paulinus of Nola Carmen (ed. CSEL 30; trans. Elliott, Spiritual Marriage~ 53) 2511.167-69. 179. Paulinus of Nola Carmen (trans. Elliott, SpiritualMarriage~ 53) 2511. 145-8. 180. Paulinus of Nola Carmen 2111. 247-50: "corporis victor sui." 181. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 23.24. 182. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 44.3. 183. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 25.7,23.11. He could also eloquently describe the love between husband and wife (Epist. 13.3 to Pammachius on the death of his wife Paulina). See also Augustine's comments on Paulinus's marriage (Epist. 27.2). 184. August. De bono conjugali 1.1, c£ idem, De civ. D. 19.14. 185. Examples include Ambrose Expositio euangelii secundum Lucam 1.30, idem,DeIacob etvita beata 2.2.7, Hieron. Epist. 117.4, August. De civ. D. 20.21, idem, In Iohannis evangelium tractatus 51.13, Am. Adv. nat. 1.2, Petrus Chrysologus Sermones 1-10 (on the theme of the prodigal son, filled with images of a father's love), and Salvian Epist. 4 (addressed to his parents with great affection). 186. Ambrose De Tobia 8.30. 187. Luke 14.26, c£ Matt. 10.37, Mark 10.29-30. See Elizabeth A. Clark, ''Antifamilial Tendencies in Ancient Christianity;' Journal of the History ofSexuality 5 (1995): 356-80. 188. Ambrose De fuga saeculi 2.7. 189. August. De sermone Domini in monte (ed. CCSL 35; trans. M. Kavanagh, FC 11) 1.15.41. 190. Hieron. Epist. 54.3 (my trans.), c£ idem, Homilia 85. 191. Cyprian De mortalitate (ed. CCSL 3a; trans. R. Deferrari, FC 36) 12. This episode is found in Gen. 22.1-12. C£ Paulinus of Nola Epist. 24.2, Valerian Homelia 18.2, August. Contra FaustumManichaeum 22.30-40. 192. Ambrose De Iacob etvita beata (ed. CSEL 32.2; trans. M. McHugh,FC 65) 2.2.6, cf. the theme of parental favoritism in idem, De Ioseph 2.5. 193. Passio sancti Irenaei episcopi Sirmiensis (ed. and trans. H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]) 3.1-3, cf. 4.5-7. 194. Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (ed. and trans. H. Musurillo, The Acts ofthe Christian Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]) 5. 195. Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis 5. 196. Passio beati Phileae episcopi de civitate Thmui (ed. and trans. H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1972]) 6.4. 197. Paulinus ofNola Epist. 8.1: "noli repe11ere consilia matris tuae . . . nunc etiam spiritalibus lactare et enutrire domino gestit uberibus . . . si tamen Augustini doctrina tamquam manus matris ... regat paruulum."

366

NOTES TO PAGES I97-99

198. Hieron. Epist. 22.21 (trans. Wright). On God as father, see August. Sermo 13.8.9, Ambrose De Noe et arca 94, Tert. Adv. Marcionem 2.13. On the church as mother, see Karl Delahaye, Ecclesia Mater chez les peres des trois premiers siecles (Paris: Cerf, 1964). 199. For discussions of classical models of friendship and their use by Christian patristic writers, see Pierre Fabre, Saint Paulin de Nole et Famitie chretienne., Bibliotheque des Bcoles Fran~aises d'Athenes et de Rome, vol. 167 (Paris: Boccard, 1949), Carolinne White, Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Joseph Lienhard, "Friendship in Paulinus of Nola and Augustine;' in CollectaneaAugustiniana: Melanges T.] van Bavel., ed. B. Bruning et al. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990), 279-96, Philip Culbertson, "Men and Christian Friendship;' in MenJs Bodies., Men)s Gods: Male Identities in a (post-) Christian Culture., ed. B. Krondorfer (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 149-80, and David Konstan, "Problems in the History of Christian Friendship;' Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1996): 87-113. 200. August. De Genesi ad litteram 9.5. 201. Pontius Vita et passio sancti Caecilii Cypriani (ed. PL 3; trans. R. Wallis, ANCL8)4. 202. Prudent. Perist. 11. 53: "fide quos per omne tempus iunxerat sodalitas." 203. Passio sanctorumMariani et Iacobi) Paulinus ofMilan Vita sanctiAmbrosii 14,Acta sanctorum Se1lfio et Baccho martyrorum (see the discussion of the last pair below, chap. 7). 204. John Cas sian Conlationes (ed. E. Pichery, SC 54; trans. B. Ramsey, ACW 57) 16.1, c£ Cas sian's comments about friendship generally (16.3). 205. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 32.1 (trans. Walsh): "tu es iste quem loquimur, tu inquam pars nostri maior et melior, tu requies nostra, tu gaudium; in te reclinatio capitis nostri et mentis habitatio est." Cf. also idem, Epist. 23.1 (also addressed to Severus) and 40.3 (addressed to Sanctus and Amandus and describing theirgermanitas spiritalis., "spiritual brotherhood"). Cf. also Sid. Apoll. Propempticon ad libellum 11.26-30 (about Iustinus and Sacerdos), Min. Fel. Oct. 1.1 (remembering the companion after whom he named his treatise). 206. Hieron. Epist. 3.5 (trans. Mierow). 207. Hieron. Epist. 3,4, and 5, c£ August. Epist. 73.6. 208. Hieron. Epist. 3.3: "partem animae meae." C£ August. Confessiones 4.6.11: "Bene quidam dixit de arnico suo dimidium animae suae." C£ Hor. Carm. 1.3.8: "animae dimidiummeae." 209. August. Confessiones 4.4.7,9.4.7. 210. ValerianHomelia 10.1. I have changed the translator's "this is sport" to "it is fun." 211. August. Confessiones 2.2.2 and 3.1.1. The sexual nature of this relationship has been noted by historians of homosexuality: see Boswell, Christianity., Social Tolerance., 135, or Greenberg, Construction ofHomosexuality., 224; it has also been assumed by some psychoanalytic historians: see, e.g., James Dittes, "Continuities between the Life and Thought ofAugustine;'Journalfor the Scientific Study ofReligion 5 (1965): 130-40.

NOTES TO PAGES 200-I

367

212. Hieron. Epist. 49:20, 7.3 and 7.4, idem, Homilia 86. 213. Boswell, Same-Sex Unions. As he relates (24-25), it is ultimately impossible to know whether there was a sexual element to these ritual unions, but it is certainly clear that they were part of important emotional bonds. It is uncertain whether these rituals existed in late antiquity or were later developments, but they are certainly related to the encouragement of male friendship by Christian leaders that began in late antiquity. Boswell includes several texts of such rituals in appendixes. Boswell's interpretation has been criticized by Shaw, "Ritual Brotherhood:' who sees the rituals more as political than social or emotional bonds. 214. Rosemary Rader, Breaking Boundaries: Male/Female Friendship in Early Christian Communities (New York: Paulist, 1983), Elizabeth A. Clade, "Friendship between the Sexes: Classical Theory and Christian Practice:' in Jerome) Chrysostom) and Friends: Essays and Translations) Studies in Women and Religion 2 (NewYodc: EdwinMellon, 1979), 35-106, idem, "Theory and Practice in Late Ancient Asceticism: Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine:' Journal of Feminist Studiesin&ligion 5 (1989): 25-46. 215. On these relationships among Christians of the East: Elizabeth A. Clark, "John Chrysostom and the Subintroductae/' Church History 46 (1977): 171-85, reprinted in Ascetic Piety and Women)s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1986); Susanna Elm, Vi1;gins ofGod: TheMaking ofAsceticism in LateAntiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press). 216. Hieron.Epist. 22.14 (trans. Wright): "meretricesunivirae." 217. Hieron. Epist. 117 and 128. Curiously, Jerome's VitaMalchi is the story of a saintly pair of cohabiting Christians, although forced to do so as slaves, but still together in old age (2) and pretending to be married (6). 218. Hieron. Epist. 39.2: "mi Paula." This reference comes from a letter consoling Paula about the death of her daughter Blesilla. Kelly (Jerome) 91-103) discusses his relationships with Paula, Blesilla, and other women. 219. Hieron. Epist. 108 is a funeral oration for Paula, describing their friendship. 220. Examples include Hieron. Epist. 22 (to Paula's daughter Eustochium to congratulate her on her decision to remain a virgin), 66 (to Pammachius to console him at the death of his wife Paulina, another daughter of Paula) , and 107 (to Laeta, a daughter-in-law of Paula, with advice on how to raise her infant daughter, also named Paula). 221. Hieron. Epist. 45 is dedicated entirely to refuting such accusations. 222. Hieron. Epist. 133.4, c£ idem, Dialogus adversus Pelagianos 1.26. Rufinus replied that the accusations were groundless (Apologia contra Hieronymum 2.5). 223. Hieron. Epist. 125.18 (trans. Wright). Again, note the easy familiarity with the classical Roman heritage. Jerome also worried (Apol. contra Rufinum 1.13) that Rufinus would refer to him as a Sardanapalus. 224. Hieron. Epist. 125.6. 225. Cod. Theod. 16.2.20, c£ 16.2.44, Constitutiones Sirmondianae 10. 226. One example was the friendship between Melania the Younger (see also

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NOTES TO PAGES 201-9

below, chap. 7) and the empress Eudocia (Gerontius Vita Melaniae Junioris 59). Augustine of Hippo warned a community of ascetic women that "the love between you should not be carnal but spiritual" (Epist. 211.14). See also Mary Rose D'Angelo, "Women Partners in the New Testament;'Journal ofFeminist Studies in Religion 6 (1990): 65-86, who provides a religious and social context for women's friendships and some examples from late antiquity. 227. Hieron. Epist. 54.4 (my trans.). 228. Hieron. Epist. 54.6 (my trans.), c£ the similar sentiments Jerome expressed to the widows Marcella (Epist. 38.3) and Eustochium (Epist. 22.15). 229. Hieron.Epist. 54.15 (my trans.). 230. Hieron. Epist. 77.3 (trans. Wright): "sub gloria uniuirae exercere meretricium." 231. Hieron. Epist. 77.4 (trans. Wright). 232. Ambrose De officiis ministrorum 1. 7.24. Ambrose quoted in part from 1 Cor. 4.15. 233. Ambrose Defide (ed. CSEL 78) 4.8.82-3. 234. Hieron. Epist. 22.19 (trans. Wright; I have changed the translator's "sowing" to "seed"). 235. Vincent ofUrins Commonitoria (ed. CCSL 64) 1.1,23.12,24.4. CHAPTER SEVEN

1. Ambrose De Jacob et vita beata 1.8.39. I have changed the translator's "role of life" for status to "state of life" and "handsome" for decorus to "distinguished." C£ idem, De officiis ministrorum 2.5.16. 2. Chromatius ofAquileia Sermo de octo beatitudinibus (ed. CCSL 9) 9.1, c£ Paulinus of Nola Epist. 38. 3. The story is from Gen. 25: 20-34 and 27: 1-45. These contrasts would have meant something different to the ancient Hebrew storytellers who crafted the tale, of course: they probably meant to contrast the civilized life of agriculture with the primitive life of hunting. This legend also served as the basis for patristic writers to argue that adherents of the Jewish religion were replaced in God's affections by those of the Christian religion. 4. Ambrose Epist. 63.100. 5. 2 Cor. 12.9-10. 6. Hieron. Epist. 22.40 (trans. Wright). 7. Prudent.Perist. 1011.588-90,608-10. 8. Ambrose De Cain etAbel (ed. PL 14; trans. J. Savage, FC 42) 1.10.47: "quaedam femineae sunt, malitia, petulantia, luxuries, intemperantia, impudicitia, aliaque hujusmodi vitia, quibus animi nostri quaedam enervatur virilitas. Masculinae sunt, castitas, patientia, prudentia, temperantia, fortitudo, justitia." 9. August. De libero arbitrio (ed. F. Tourscher [Philadelphia: Peter Reilly, 1937]; my trans.) 1.13; 1.2: "Virili animo esto." C£ idem, De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 1.15.25. 10. See Hieron. Homilia de nativitate Domini) idem, Tractatus de psalmo LXXXIII 8, Tractatus de psalmoXV Modern scholars have examined the Christian concept of virtus at length without linking it to manliness. See Vollcmar

NOTES TO PAGES 209-I3

369

Hand, Augustin und das klassisch rijmische Selbstverstiindnis. Eine Untersuchung uber die begriffe Gloriay Virtusy Iustitia und Res Publica in De Civitate Dei (Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 1970); Eisenhut, "Virtus in der friihchristlichen Literatur;' in Virtus Rnmana; Peter Brown, "The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity;' in Saints and Virtuesy ed. J. Hawley (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1987). 11. Ambrose De officiis ministrorum 1.19.84: "Sed ut molliculum et infractum aut uocis sonum aut gestum corporis non probo." I have removed the translator's "effeminate" before the word "gesture" in this final clause, and used it to replace the translator's word "soft." 12. Ambrose De officiis ministrorum 1.19.84. I have changed the translator's "virtue" for honestas to "truth." 13. Ambrose De officiis ministrorum 2.3.9: "alterum quasi infractum et molliculum, alterum quasi euiratum et infirmum despuit." 14. AmbroseEpist. 63.97: ''Nihilmolliculum, nihilinfractum adlaudem pervenit." 15. Cod. Theod. 15.7.12.

16. H. A. Gallieni duo 21.5-6, idem, Ijranni triginta 9, Casso Dio 64.2.1. 17. A neutral description is given by Claudian Panegyricus ... Manlio 11. 311-32. See also Richard Beacham, The Rnman Theatre and its Audience (New York: Routledge, 1991), 136-38. 18. Tert. De spectaculis 23. I have changed the translation from "His" to "the" before "judgment;' since the phrase quid de pantomino iudicabit is vague. Tertullian also suggested (25) that the shows distracted men from more important tasks. 19. Tert. De spectaculis 17. 20. Lactant. Div. inst. 6.20.29: "histrionum quoque inpudicissimi motus quid aliut nisi libidines et docent et instigant? quorum enemata corpora et in muliebrem incessum habitumque mollita inpudicas feminas inhonestis gestibus mentiuntur." 21. Lactant. Epit. div. inst. 58.5-6. 22. NovatianDe spectaculis (ed. CCSL 4; trans. R. DeSimone, FC 67) 6: "uir ultra muliebrem mollitiem dissolutus ... unum nescio quem nec uirum nec feminam." 23. Cyprian Ad Donatum 8: "euirantur mares, honor omnis et uigor sexus enemati corporis dedecore mollitur plus que ilic placet, quisque uirum in feminammagis fregerit." Cf. idemy Epist. 2.2; 3.1. 24. On communion denied to actors, Cod. Theod. 15.7.1; on the maiuma 15.6.2, replacing a law issued by the same emperors three years earlier that had permitted it if decency was respected, 15.6.1; on spectacles on Sundays or the emperor's birthday, 2.8.23: "nec quicquam, quod ad molliendos animos repertum est, spectaculorum." 25. Ambrose Expositio evangeliisecundumLucam (ed. CCSL 14) 6.8: "histrionicos fluxi corporis motus." C£ idem, De Helia et ieiunio 18(66). 26. SalvianDegubernationeDei 6.3, c£ ValerianHomelia 1.7. 27. Hieron. Epist. 43.2 (trans. Wright). 28. Tert.Apol. 15.3, c£ idem, De spectaculis 10,Arn.Adv. nat. 4.32-6. Genery

370

NOTES TO PAGES 2I3-20

ally on the Christian polemic against pagan myths, see R. P. C. Hanson, "The Christian Attitude to Pagan Religions up to the Time of Constantine the Great:' in Studies in Christian Antiquity (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1985). 29. SalvianDegubernationeDei 6.11, cf. Peter Chrysologus Sermo 155. 30. See Bertha von der Lage, Studien zur Genesiuslegende (Berlin: R. Gaertners, 1898). 31. Prudent. Perist. 1411. 67-78. See also the analysis of this legend by Malamud, Poetics ofTransformation , chap. 6; and by Virginia Burrus, "Word and Flesh: The Bodies of Ascetic Women in Christian Antiquity:' Journal ofFeminist Studies inReligion 10 (1994): 27-52, and idem, "Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric ofGender in Ambrose and Prudentius:' Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 25-46. Cf also Ambrose, De Helia et ieiunio 12.45 and Hieron. Epist. 22.38 on "perfumed men." 32. Prudent. Amartigenia 11.264-78. I have changed the translator's "it were wearisome" to "it would be wearisome." Maria Wyke ("Woman in the Mirror: The Rhetoric of Adornment in the Roman World:' in Women inAncient Societies: An Illusion of the Night) ed. L. Archer et al. [New York: Routledge, 1994], 134-51) demonstrates how women's love of adornment is an ancient Roman theme. See also Marcia Colish ("Cosmetic Theology: The Transformation of a Stoic Theme:' inAssays: CriticalApproaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts) vol. 1, ed. P. Knapp and M. Stingrin [Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981],3-14) who does not mention Prudentius'sAmartigenia) but who notes that the condemnation of luxury by Tertullian, Ambrose, and Jerome reworked a Stoic theme of the "natural" as a Christian theme of "God's design?' 33. Prudent. Amartigenia 11.279-97. 34. Prudent. Amartigenia 11. 304-7. 35. Tert. De pallio 1 (connecting the clothing styles to the decline of the empire); 2 and 3 (describing the process of change in nature); 4 (condemning the transvestism of the pagan gods and heroes and attributing it to the emperors); 5 and 6 (contrasting manly and unmanly styles). Fredouille, Tertullien) chap. 9, examines De pallio in detail and suggests that it may have been intended as satire. See above, chap. 5, for Tertullian's opinions on the Roman Empire. 36. Tert. De pallio 4.8. 37. Tert. De idololatria 16. 38. Deut.22.5. 39. Tert. De cultu feminarum 2.8.2, cf Cyprian De lapsis 6,30, idem, AdQuirinum 3.84. 40. Tert. De cultu feminarum 2.8.2. 41. Tert. De cultu feminarum 2.13: "Discutiendae sunt enim deliciae, quarum mollitia et fluxu fidei uirtus effeminari potest?' Cf idem, De paenitentia 11. 42. Lactant.Epit. div. inst. 38, cf Arn.Adv. nat. 3.8-10. 43. Lactant. Div. inst. 1.16.14-7. Lactantius also suggested (1. 8) that female gods were only necessary if divine offspring were needed, but if the gods were truly immortal, they would not need offspring to succeed them. 44. August. De civ. D. 4.8. Augustine gives other examples ad nauseam; see also Mary Daniel Madden, The Pagan Divinities and Their Worship as Depicted in

NOTES TO PAGES 22I-23

371

the Works of Saint Augustine Exclusive of the City of God) Patristic Studies, vol. 24 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1930). 45. Gal. 3.27-8. There is an extensive literature of modern commentary on this passage. See Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory ofHer: A Feminist TheologicalReconstruction ofChristian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1989), chap. 6. 46. See Wayne A. Meeks, "The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity;' History ofReligions 13 (1974): 165-208. 47. See Elaine Pagels, "Paul and Women: A Response to Recent Discussion;' Journal of the American Academy of Religion 42 (1974), 538-49, esp. 539-40. 48. See Brown, Body and Society) esp. chap. 4, for an excellent discussion of the erasure of sexual difference through sexual renunciation in early Christianity. 49. On the Marcionists, seeR. Joseph Hoffmann,Marcion: On the Restitution ofChristianity. An Essay on the Development ofRadical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century) American Academy of Religion Academy Series, 46 (Chico, Calif: Scholars, 1984) esp. 17,255-56. On the Montanists, see Christine Trevett,Montanism: Gender; Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press, 1996); esp. chap. 4; F. C. Klawiter, "The Role of Martyrdom and Persecution in Developing the Priestly Authority of Women in Early Christianity: A Case Study of Montanism;' Church History 49 (1980): 251-61; and Balfour Goree, "The Cultural Bases of Montanism;' (Ph.D. diss., Baylor University, 1980). See also McNamara,ANew Song; and Torjesen, When Women WerePriests. 50. Michael Williams, Rethinking (Gnosticism): AnA1lJument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 51. On gender and Gnostic Christianity, see the excellent overview by Anne McGuire, "Women, Gender, and Gnosis in Gnostic Texts and Traditions;' in Women and Christian Origins) ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose d'Angelo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); see also the collected essays inImages ofthe Feminine in Gnosticism) ed. Karen L. King (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988); Dennis MacDonald, There Is No Male or Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987); Rose Horman Arthur, The Wisdom Goddess: Feminine Motifs in Eight Nag Hammadi Documents (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984); and Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, Female Fault and Fulfilment in Gnosticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). 52. See Marvin Meyer, "Malcing Mary Male: The Categories 'Male' and 'Female' in the Gospel ofThomas;' New Testament Studies 31 (1985): 554-70; Frederik Wisse, "Flee Femininity: Antifemininity in Gnostic Texts and the Question of Social Milieu;' in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism) ed. Karen L. King (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). This theme existed generally in eastern . Mediterranean literature; see Kerstin Aspegren, The Male Woman: A Feminine Ideal in the Early Church (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1990). 53. See Gail Patterson Corrington, Her Image ofSalvation: Female Saviors and Formative Christianity (Louisville, Ky.: WestminsterIJohn Knox, 1992); see also Elaine Pagels, "What Became of God the Mother? Conflicting Images of God in Early Christianity;' Signs 2 (1976): 293-303; James Robinson, "Very Goddess and Very Man: Jesus' Better Self;' and Pheme Perlcins, "Sophia as Goddess in the

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NOTES TO PAGE 223

Nag Hammadi Codices:' in Images of the Femininej Sebastian Brock, '''Come, Compassionate Mother ... Come, Holy Spirit': A Forgotten Aspect of Early Eastern Christian Imagery:' Aram 3 (1991): 249-57; but see also the rebuttal by R. Joseph Hoffmann, '''De statu feminarum': The Correlation of Gnostic Religious Theory and Social Practice:' Eglise et Theologie (1983): 293-304. 54. See Virginia Burrus, Chastity asAutonomy: Women in the Stories oftheApocryphalActs., Studies in Women and Religion, 23 (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen, 1987); and Antoinette Clark Wire, "The Social Functions of Women's Asceticism in the Roman East:' in Images ofthe Feminine. 55. See Stuart Schneiderman (An Angel Passes: How the Sexes Became Undivided [New York: New York University Press, 1988]) who writes (17): "Whereas sexual identity and the ethical systems of pagans tended to see the primary division on a horizontal axis [between male and female], as in the division between right and left, Christianity substituted a vertical division in which the moral became dissociated from the division of the sexes. And one might even say that within the Christianized West this division passes for a division of the sexes .... Where all humans are unsexed in the sense that their identity is not based on being on either side of a horizontal division, equality reigns. In place of a sexual division there arises a division between the moral and the immoral, the liberated and the unliberated." 56. Hermann Usener, "Legenden der Pelagia:' in Vortriige und AUfsiitze (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1907); Marie Delcourt, "Le complexe de Diane dans l'hagiographie chretienne:' Revue de l-'histoire des religions 153 (1958): 1-33; John Anson, "The Female Transvestite in Early Monasticism: The Origin and Development of a Motif:' Viator 5 (1974): 1-32; Meeks, "Image of the Androgyne"; Vern Bullough, "Transvestites in the Middle Ages:' AmericanJournal of Sociology 79 (1974): 1381-94; Evelyn Patlagean, ":Ehistoire de la femme deguisee en moine et l' evolution de la saintete feminine aByzance:' Studi Medievali., 3d ser. 17 (1976): 597-623; Zoja Pavlovskis, "The Life of St. Pelagia the Harlot: Hagiographic Adaptation of Pagan Romance:' Classical Folia 30 (1976): 138-49; Elena Giannareli, La tipologia femminile nella biografia e nelPautobiografia cristiana del IVa secolo (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1980); Sebastian Brock, "Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition:' in Typus., Symbol., Allegorie bei den iistlichen Viitern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter; ed. M. Schmidt and C. Geyer (Regensburg: Pustet, 1981); Susan Ashbrook Harvey, "Women in Early Syrian Christianity:' in Images ofWomen in Antiquity., ed. A. Cameron andA. Kuhrt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983); Ruth Albrecht, Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintet;grund der Thekla-Traditionen. Studien zu den Urspriingen des weiblichen Monchtums im 4. Jahrhundert in Kleinasien (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986); Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women ofthe Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Benedicta Ward, Harlots ofthe Desert: A Study ofRepentance in Early Monastic Sources (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987); Peter Brown, Body and Society., 323-38; Elizabeth Castelli, "'I Will Make Mary Male': Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation of Christian Women in Late Antiquity:' in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambi-

NOTES TO PAGES 224-25

373

guityJ ed. J. Epstein and K. Straub (New York: Routledge, 1991); Salisbury, "Freedom from Gender Identification;' chap. 7 in Church Fathers; Kate Cooper, "The Bride That Is No Bride;' chap. 3 in Vi-;;gin and the Bride; Lynda Coon, "God's Holy Harlots;' chap. 4 in Sacred Fictions. 57. Delcourt ("Complexe de Diane") coined a Freudian-type term for this activity, the Diana complex, but was criticized for taking the idea at face value as an expression of female behavior. See Usener ("Legenden der Pelagia") for the legends as pagan myths; Anson ("Female Transvestite") for the legends as male fantasies; Pavlovskis ("Life of St. Pelagia") for the legends as reworkings of literary romances. 58. See E. Hunt, "St. Silvia of Aquitaine: The Role of a Theodosian Pilgrim in the Society of East and West;'Journal ofTheological Studies 23 (1972): 351-73; but see also Hagith Sivan, "Who Was Egeria? Piety and Pilgrimage in the Age of Gratian;' Harvard Theological Review 81 (1988): 59-72. There are also the examples of Melania the Elder and Melania the Younger (see below, nn. 112 and 114 for biographical details). For examples of women passing as men in early modern Europe, see R. Deldcer and L. van de Pol, The Tradition ofFemale Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989); or for U.S. history see Jonathan Ned Katz, "Passing Women: 1782-1920;' in Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.SA. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); for a historical overview, see BuUough and BuUough, Cross Dressing. Salisbury (Church Fathers) sees independence of action and movement as an important motivating factor for women in late ancient Christianity. 59. 1 Cor. 11.3-16. On the competing interpretations of Paul between the Thecla traditions and the Pastoral Letters, see Dennis MacDonald, The Legend and theApostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983). A previous generation of scholarship tended to see the passage as a later redaction, and not part of the authentic writings of Paul. In part, this opinion was derived from an apparent contradiction in the surviving text. Paul condemned women who prophesy in the churches with their heads uncovered (11.5), implying that the uncovered heads were the problem but not the prophesy, but in a later passage (14.34-5) Paul forbade women to spealc at all in assemblies, a difficulty which suggests that there has been some interpolation of the text. See the comment of Pagels, "Paul and Women;' 544; argued at length by W O. Wallcer, "1 Corinthians 11: 2-16 and Paul's Views regarding Women;'Journal ofBiblical Literature 94 (1975): 94-110; and by G. W Trompf, "On Attitudes Toward Women in Paul and Paulinist Literature: 1 Corinthians 11: 3-16 and Its Context," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 42 (1980): 196-215. See also Robin Scroggs, "Paul and the Eschatological Woman;' Journal of the American Academy ofReligion 40 (1972): 283-303. Scroggs notes (298 n. 40) that the passage also contains an internal contradiction, because if a woman's long hair acts as a "natural" covering for her head, she should not need to wear a veil but rather a man should, whose short hair does not cover his head. Scholars have more recently attempted to show how the passages might be reconciled, and mostly rejected the notion of a later interpolation: see Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), chap. 9; Mary Rose d'Angelo, "Veils, Virgins, and the

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Tongues of Men and Angels: Women's Heads in Early Christianity;' in OffWith Her Head! The Denial of Women)s Identity in Myth) Religion) and Culture) ed. H. Eilberg-Schwartz and W. Doniger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 131-64; Daniel Boyarin, "Paul and the Genealogy of Gender;' Representations41 (1993): 1-33; Antoinette Clark Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through PauPs Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Dennis MacDonald, "Corinthian Veils and Gnostic Androgynes;' in Images of the Feminine) ed. King. On the veiling of women, see Roland de Vaux, "Sur Ie voile des femmes dans l'orient ancien;' Revue Biblique 44 (1936): 397-412. 60. See Brown, Body and Society) chap. 7; Steve Young, "Being a Man: The Pursuit ofManliness in The Shepherd ofHermas;'Journal ofEarly Christian Studies 2 (1994): 237-55. 61. For a summary of Origen's ideas on sexual difference, see Brown, Body and Society; chap. 8, with references to the large secondary bibliography on Origen. N onna Verna Harrison has also discussed the transcendence of gender in Origen, on the Platonic theme of spiritual childbearing in men ("The Feminine Man in Late Antique Ascetic Piety;' published on the World Wide Web at http://www.uts.columbia.edu/ ... usqr/hamson.htm [accessed 22 July 1998]). 62. On bridal imagery in texts usually defined as Gnostic, see R. M. Grant, "The Mystery of Marriage in the Gospel of Philip;' Vigiliae Christianae 15 (1961): 129-40; Jean-Marie Sevrin, "Les noces spirituelles dans l'Evangile selon Philippe;' LeMuseon 87 (1974): 143-93: JorunnJacobsen Buddey, "'The Holy Spirit is a Double Name': Holy Spirit, Mary, and Sophia in the GospelofPhilip/' in Images ofthe Feminine. Cf. also Madeleine Scopello, "Jewish and Greek Heroines in the Nag Hammadi Library;' in Images of the Feminine (72-76) for other texts. These texts were all part of the Nag Hammadi archeological discovery, and date from the late fourth century. The bridal metaphor was taught in some Christian circles, and condemned by Irenaeus of Lyon in the late second century (Adv. haereses 1.13.3). On a "Gnostic" bridal ritual, see Buddey, Female Fault; 136-42. See also Deirdre Good, "Gender and Generation: Observations on Coptic Terminology, with Particular Attention to Valentinian Texts;' in Images ofthe Femi~ nine (36-38) for a comparison of "Gnostic" ideas and Origen (as well as Tertullian). 63. IrenaeusAdv. haereses (ed. PG 7.1) 1.13.6. 64. Hippol. Haer. 6.29-37 and 5.19; Irenaeus Adv. haereses 1.13.3 and 1.23.2. See McGuire, "Women, Gender;' 262-66; see also Luise Abramowski, "Female Figures in the Gnostic Sonde1'llut in Hippolytus' Refutatio/' in Images of the Feminine.

65. IrenaeusAdv. haereses 1.13.5 (on women's attraction to the teaching of Marcus at Rome); 1.23.2 (on Helena, an associate of Simon Magus and former prostitute). This latter rumor was repeated by Jerome (Epist. 133.4). 66. Trevett, Montanism) 69-76; she also says that "by the 170s it [Montanism] was known in Rome" (55); and that it disappeared in the western Mediterranean in the 4th century and in the eastern Mediterranean in the 8th century (223-32). Goree ("Cultural Bases;' 250-53) suggests that women had a lesser public role in Western Montanism.

NOTES TO PAGES 227-32

375

67. Ps.-Clem. Epist. quae dicitur II (ed. K. Bihlmeyer, Die Apostolischen Vater [Tiibingen: J. c. B. Mohr, 1924] 1) 12.2, cf. the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas 22. 68. Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis 10. See Joyce Salisbury, Perpetua)s Passion: The Death andMemory ofa Young Rnman Woman (New York: Routledge, 1997). On this incident, see also Castelli, "1 Will Malee Mary Male"; and F. J. Dolger, "Der Kampf mit dem Agypter in der Perpetua-Vision. Das Martyrium als Kampfmit dem Teufel;' Antike und Christentum 3 (1932): 177-88. C£ also Augustine's comments on the virtus ofPerpetua (Sermo 282.2-3). 69 .. Tert. De vi1lJinibus velandis 10. 1 have changed the translator's "brethren" forfratres to "brothers." On Tertullian and women's authority, see McNamara, ANew Song) 108-25; and d'Angelo, "Veils, Virgins." 70. Tert. De vi1lJinibus velandis 8. 71. Tert. De vi1lJinibus velandis 8. 72. Tert. De vi1lJinibus velandis 9: "nec ullius uirilis muneris." 73. Tert. De cultu ftminarum 1.1: "diaboli ianua ... diuinae legis prima desertrix." 74. Tert. De bapt. 17. 75. Tert. De praescr. haeret. 41. 76. Tert.Adv. Valent. 11.1-2,18.3,21.1,35.1-2. 77. Tert.Adv. Valent. 32.5: "non angelus, non angela." Tertullian was rebutting the Valentinian belief in a type of "spiritual procreation" after death. 78. Tert. De animo 36.2,4. For the medical and philosophical antecedents to Tertullian's beliefs, see P. de Labriolle, "La physiologie dans l'oeuvre de Tertullien;' Archives Generales de Medecine 83 (1906): 1317-28. 79. Tert. De animo 56. 80. Tert. De animo 9. 81. Hieron. Homilia 77, idem) Tractatus inMarci euangelium 5.30-43. 82. Ambrose De Cain et Abel 1.10.46, c£ idem, De officiis ministrorum 1.28.134. 83. Hieron. De perpetua vi1lJinitate beataeMariae adv. Helvidium (ed. PL 23) 20. 84. Hieron. Epist. 49.2. 85. Ambrose De viduis 14.84-5. 86. Ambrose,Deofficiisministrorum 3.13.82-5. 87. Ambrose De vi1lfinibus (ed. F. Gori [Milan: Bibliotheca Ambrosiana, 1989]; trans. H. de Romestin,NPNF 10) 1.2.5: "uirtus supranaturam." 88. Hieron. Epist. 107.7,22.38, Ambrose De officiis ministrorum 1.18.69, Peter Chrysologus Sermo 80. 89. Vita sanctae Eugeniae (ed. PL 73) 15. The PL has infrunitam where 1 read infirmiter. See Anson ("Female Transvestite;' 12) on Rufinus's authorship. 90. On Castissima, see Salisbury, Church Fathers) 104-10. 91. Hieron. Epist. 22.27 (trans. Wright; 1 have changed the translator's "blush" for erubescent to "are ashamed"). C£ Hieron. Epist. 1.14. 92. Ambrose De officiis ministrorum 1.46.223. 93. Cod. Theod. 16.2.27. 94. See Elizabeth A. Clark, ''New Perspectives on the Origenist Controversy:

376

NOTES TO PAGES 233-36

Human Embodiment and Ascetic Strategies:' Church History 59 (1990): 145-62; idem, Origenist Controversyy esp. chap. 3. For more details on the specific debate over sexual difference, see the discussion of this question in Clark, Women in Late Antiquityy 120-26; Brown, Body and Societyy 379-84; and Hunter, "Paradise of Patriarchy." 95. Hieron.Adv.Jov. 1.36, idemy Comm. in Epist. ad Ephesios 3.5. 96. Hieron.Apologia contra Rufinum (ed. CCSL 79; trans. J. Hritzu, FC 53) 1.29. His comments were a response to RufinusApologia contra Hieronymum 2.5. 97. Hieron. Epist. 108.23 (my trans.). He continued by saying that Jesus' words about the angelic life in Heaven will not mean that human beings will have the substan~e (substantia) of angels, being neither male nor female, but that they will associate with them and share their blessedness (conversatio et beatitudo). 98. Hieron. Epist. 84.6 (my trans.). 99. August. De continentia (ed. CSEL 41; trans. M. McDonald, FC 16) 10.24. On Augustine and women as the image of God, see Kim Power, "Women, Man and the Imago Dei/' part 4 of Veiled Desire: Augustine on Women (New York: Continuum, 1995); T. J. van Bavel, ''Augustine's View on Women:' Augustiniana 39 (1989): 5-53; Kari B0rresen, "In Defense of Augustine: How Femina Is Homo/'Augustiniana40 (1990): 411-28; andAllen, ConceptofWomany 218-36. 100. August.Deciv.D. 22.17. 101. August. De trinitate (ed. CCSL 50) 12.7.10. 102. August. De trinitate 12.7.12, cf. idemy De opere monachorum 32.40. 103. August.Deciv.D. 22.17. 104. August. De civ. D. 14.11: "feminae, a parte scilicet inferiore illius humanae copulae incipiens." C£ 20.21, idem, Diuersae quaestiones (ed. CCSL 44A) 11. 105. August. Devera religione (ed. CCSL 32; trans. J. Burleigh [South Bend, Ind.: Gateway, 1953]) 41. 78. 106. On female asceticism in the West, see Anne Ewing Hickey, Women ofthe Roman Aristocracy as Christian Monasticsy Studies in Religion, 1 (Ann Arbor: DMI Research Press, 1987); on female asceticism in the East, see Elm, Vi1lJins of God. 107. AmbroseDevi1lJinibus 1.12.65. McNamara (ANew Songy 121) lists Tertullian as the first Christian writer to connect the veiling of virgins and the bride of Christ imagery (De oratione 22.9, misidentified as 25, where he used the expression nupsisti enim Christo); Cyprian alluded to the same image (De habitu virginum 20); but it does not seem to have been much used before Ambrose and Jerome (see Hieron. Epist. 22.17: "esse cum Christo ... sponsum tuum"; 22.25: "sponsa intrante cum sponso"; and 22.26: "tu intrinsecus esto cum sponso.)" See also Clark, "Dses of the Song of Songs:' who notes the later Latin fathers' use of the image for promoting sexual renunciation; and David Hunter, "Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late Fourth-Century Rome:' Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993): 47-71, who notes Jovinian's objection to the use of the "bride of Christ" image for virginal women alone (part onovinian's larger defense of the spiritual equality of all Christians, married or virginal). 108. Hieron. Epist. 22.25.

NOTES TO PAGES 236-40

377

109. Ambrose De vi1lfinibus 2.7,9. I have replaced the translator's "for divine service" for ad ecclesiam with "to church." 110. Ambrose De vi1lfinibus 2.11. Ill. Hieron. Epist. 22.25 (trans. Wright), c£ 22.17,24. 112. See Clark, Origenist Controversy) 20-25; see also Francis Murphy, "Melania the Elder: A Biographical Note;' Traditio 5 (1947): 59-77; Hickey, Women of the RiJman Aristocracy) 43-48. 113. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 29.6: "si feminam dici licet, tam uiriliter Christianam",,' C£ 45.2. 114. Gerontius Vita Melaniae Iunioris (ed. D. Gorce, SC 90; trans. E. Clark [New York: E. Mellen, 1984]) 39: "<j>poVTU.la aVOpEtOV I-HlAAOV OE oupavtov:' For biographical details, see Elizabeth A. Clark, "Piety, Propaganda, and Politics in the Life of Melania the Younger;' inAscetic Piety and Women)s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen, 1985); or Salisbury, Church Fathers) 89-96; or Gillian Cloke, This Female Man: Women and Spiritual Power in the PatristicAge) A.D. 350-450, 167-85; and esp. Coon, Sacred Fictions) 109-19 (who notes [119] how Melania the Younger "underscores the danger of female usurpation of male power"). 115. Gerontius Vita Melaniae Iunioris 11. 116. Gerontius Vita Melaniae Iunioris 50, 54. 117. On Eudocia's role in the N estorian dispute, see Holum, Theodosian Empresses) 118-228 (on Eudocia's association with Melania the Younger, see 183-86); on the concern for presenting Melania as "orthodox;' see Clark, "Piety, Propaganda:' 118. Auson. Parentalia (ed. as Epigr.) 611. 7-10 (my trans.): "feminei sexus odium tibi semper?' 119. Prudent. Perist. 3 11. 31-5. 120. Paulinus of Nola Epist. 23.24-5. Cloke (This Female Man) 220) writes: ''Anyone holy enough to be an exemplar of the faith could not be a woman: every one of the many who achieved fame through piety was held to 'surpass her sex' never, be it noted, to elevate the expectations that might be held of her sex. The argument is self-fulfilling: however many ofthis kind ofwomen there were, in being superior they were always excepted from their sex, never taken as representative; always regarded as a superior anomaly from their sex and in spite of it, and never as an example of their sex's capacity." 121. Pavlovskis ("Life of St. Pelagia") compares the Christian legends of transvestite females and pagan legends of cross-dressing; the connection between pagan and Christian legends of transvestite males has not yet been studied, but the dozens ofpagan stories of transvestism and androgyny have been collected by Marie Delcourt, Hermaphrodite. Mythes etrites de la bisexualite dans PAntiquite classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958). 122. I am grateful to Professor John Boswell for calling this legend to myattention and for having provided me with a translation of the biography from the manuscript of his book, Same-Sex Unions) before its publication. He obviously thought it to be a legend of Eastern origin, using the Greek text for his translation. Maximian, however, was only one of several competing claimants to the im-

378

NOTES TO PAGES 24I-46

perial throne in 309, and his area of jurisdiction at that time was in Gaul. Furthermore, as Boswell points out (147 n. 172), one of the earliest references to the cult of Sergius is by Gregory of Tours in sL"'Cth-centllry Gaul~ who believ~d th~ .' relics of the saint to have been in Bordeau."'C (HistoriaFranwrum 7.31). The ..text •.. of their martyrdom itself places their execution in' Syria, and as Boswell n:cords;' :... the popularity of the men's cult in the Greek East'eventually far surpassed that' of the Latin West (155). The place of execution as recorded in the Greelc legend' or the popularity of the Greek cult may have influenced Boswell's opinion as to its ongins. He also doubted that Maximian was the emperor responsible for the martyrdom; he suggested (375 n. 2) that the emperor could have been Maximin Daia, the Eastern emperor ruling over Egypt and Syria from 305 to 313. See now also the suggestion by David Woods ("The Emperor Julian and the Passion of Sergius and Bacchus:' Journal ofEarly Chri~ian Studies 5 [1997]: 335-67) that the account is a composite of an Eastern martyr's shrine and the memory ofJulian's unique method of humiliating his soldiers. 123. Acta sanctorum Se-;;gio et Baccho martyrum (ed. AASS 7 October; trans. Boswell, Same-Sex Unions) 379): "Sicut sponsam adornasti nos muliebribus sto. lis." 124. Titus 2.12, Col. 3.9-10, Isa. 61.10. 125. The tale bears a striking resemblance to that ofDidymus and Theodora of Alexandria (AASS 28 April) and that of Alexander and Antonia of Constantinople (AASS 3 May). 126. Ambrose De vi-;;ginibus 2.4.27 and 28. 127. NnbroseDe vi-;;ginibus 2.4.29. 128. Ambrose De vi-;;ginibus 2.4.30. 129. Ambrose De vi-;;ginibus 2.4.31. I have changed the translator's ''whilst" to "while" and "surety" for vadimonium to "pledge of honor?' 130. AmbroseEpist. 78, c£ idem, De Cain etA bel 1.10.46-7 (where Ambrose has the "masculine" aspect of the soul give birth to the qualities necessary for salvation). See also Virginia Burrus ('''Equipped for Victory': Ambrose and the Gendering of Orthodoxy:' Journal ofEarly Christian Studies 4 [1996]: 461-75), who describes Ambrose's complex and conscious use of gender in his theology, including in his De vi-;;ginibus) although she does not mention the transvestite soldier episode. CHAPTER EIGHT

1. Hieron. Epist. 66.13 (my trans.). 2. Hieron. Epist. 22.32. 3. AmbroseEpist. 20.28 (my trans.). 4. Hieron. Epist. 108.7, c£ 66.13, 130.4. 5. Hieron.Epist. 108.20 (my trans.). 6. Hieron. Epist. 107.11. 7. Hieron. Epist. 130.13, c£ idem, Comm. inMatheum 3 ad 19.12: "deliciae matronales?' 8. See the excellent overview by Gabriel Sanders, "Kybele undAttis:' inDie orientalischen &ligionen im Rijmerreich) ed. Maarten Vermaseren (Leiden: E. J.

NOTES TO PAGES 247-49

379

Brill, 1981),264--,-97. See also the overviews for the Roman imperial period by Mary Beard, "The Roman and the Foreign: The Cult of the 'Great Mother' in Im.perial Rome;' in Shamanism~ History~ and the State~ ed. N. Thomas and C. . Humphrey (AnnJ\rhor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 164-90; and Tur:can, Cttltesorientaux~ chap. 1. There is a considerable amount of scholarship by ~ Maarten J. Vermaseren on the cult: see Cybele andAttis: The Myth and the Cult (London: Thaines and Hudson, 1977) and also Legend ofAttis. H~ has also collected .together many of the literary and inscriptional references to the cult in his Corpus Cultus Cybelae.Attidisque (CCCA) (Leiden: E .. J. Brill, 1977-89); see also .the collected essays by Eugene Lane, ed., Cybele~Attis and Related Cults: Essays in Memory ofM.] Vermaseren (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996). The most detailed examination of the cult, especially in the Roman Empire, still remains that by Henri Graillot, Le culte de Cybele: Mere des dieux~ aRome et dans Pempire romain (Paris: Fontemoing, 1912). I am indebted in what follows to all of these scholars. 9. For examples of this multiple identification, see Apul.Met. 11.5, Auson. Epigr. 32. 10. See J. B. Rives, Religion and Authority in R.iJman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), for the Romanization of Punic religion in the classical era. Salvian of Marseilles (De gubernatione Dei 7.18-9) made disparaging remarks about the cult of the Mother of the Gods in North Mrica, which might attest to its continued existence into the mid-fifth century, but his comments were more likely talcen from Augustine's writings, and Salvian, in any case, was writing from Gaul. 11. See HerodianBasileiaHistoria 1.11.2, Pliny.HN5.17, Ov.Fast. 4.361-4. See Eugene Lane, "The Name of Cybele's Priests the 'Galloi;" in Cybele~Attis~ and Related Cults~ ed. E. Lane, 117-33. 12. Julian Or. 5.165B-166A. See also Giulia Gasparro, Soteriology andMystic Aspects in the CultofCybele andAttis (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985); and Robert Turcan, "Attis Platonicus;' in Cybele~Attis~ and Related Cults~ ed. E. Lane, 387-403. 13. Firm. Mat. Err. prof rel. 3, c£ Amm. Marc. 22.9.15, c£ Lactant. Div. inst. 1.21, idem, Epit. div. inst. 18.5-6, August. De civ. D. 7.25. 14. Hieron. Comm. inMatheum 3 ad 19.12. See also A. D. Nock, "Eunuchs in Ancient Religion;' Archiv for Religionswissenschaft 23 (1925): 25-33; and the rebuttal by Rousselle, Porneia~ chap. 7. 15. Ps.-LucianDe Dea Syria 51. Vermaseren (Cybele andAttis~ 97) describes the clothing of the eunuch priests from several sources: a colored tunic, a head veil or turban over long and bleached hair, jewelry including necldaces, earrings, and finger rings, and facial powder. 16. See Tert.Ad nat. 1.10.45-7, idem~Apol. 15.4-5, Arn.Adv. nat. 4.35. 17. Lactant.Div. inst. 1.17 (my trans.), c£ idem,Epit. div. inst. 8.6. 18. Tert.Adnat. 2.7.16, c£ Min. FeL Oct. 22.4, Arn.Adv. nat. 1.41,5.8-17. 19. Prudent. c. Symm. 2 11. 51-2. 20. Lactant. Div. inst. 1.21: "amputato enim sexu nec uiros se nec feminas faciunt." 21. Tert.Ad nat. 1.20.4: "de tertio sexu: illud aptius de uiro et femina uiris et feminis iunctum:' I have changed the translators' "third race in sex" to "third sex:'

380

NOTES TO PAGES 249-54

22. August. De civ. D. 7.24: "nee conuertarur in feminam nee uir relinquarur." 23. Prudent. Perist. 1011.196-200. 24. Prudent. Perist 10 11. 1059-75. 25. Prudent.Perist. 1011.1091-3. 26. See the critical analysis of ancient writers on the topic by Maly Beard and, ~. John Henderson, "With This Body I Thee Worship: Sacred Prostirutlon in An-' tiquity;' in Gender and the Body in theAncientMediterranean) ed .. M. Wyke (Ox.: ford: Blackwell 1.)f"~), 56-79. 27. ApuJ.1IIJrt. 7.26. 28. PauJinus of Nola Carmen 19.169-71, c£ idem, Epist. 31.3. 29. Firm. Mat. Err. prof rel. 4.1-2. 30. Firm. Mat. Err. prof rel. 4.2: "uiros muliebria pati et hanc impuri et impudici corporis labem gloriosa ostentatio~e detegere. Publicant facinora sua et contaminati corporis uitium cum maxima delectationis macula confitenrur." C£ Min. Fel. Oct. 28.10-1, Tert. De resurrectione mortuorum 16 (where he is disgusted at the thought of kissing agallus as well as a prostirute, implying that both perform oral sex). 31. Firm. Mat. Err. prof rel. 4.2: "Negant se uiros esse, et non sunt: mulieres se uolunt credi, sed aliud qualiscumque qualitas corporis confiterur." 32. Firm. Mat. Err. prof rel. 4.3. 33. August. De civ. D. 2.5: "istos, qui flagitiosissimae consuerudinis uitiis oblectari magis quam obluctari srudent." 34. August. De civ. D. 7.26. 35. August. De civ. D. 6.8: "uiros muliebria pari non est secundum naruram, sed contra naruram." 36. August. De civ. D. 7.27: "coronatione uirilium pudendorum, mercede sruprorum, sectione membrorum, abscisione genitalium, consecratione mollium, festis inpurorum obscenorumque ludorum." 37. August. De civ. D. 6.7. I have replaced the translator's "men" with "persons." 38. August. De civ. D. 6.10. For classical references, see Lynn Roller, "The Ideology of the Eunuch Priest;' in Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean) ed. M. Wyke (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 118-35. See also Deborah Sawyer (Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries [New York: Routledge, 1996]), chap. 7, who argues that the cult of the Mother of the Gods challenged traditional Roman gender roles while the cult of the vestal virgins reinforced them. 39. See Turcan, Heliogabale; and Martin Frey, Untersuchungen zur Religion und zur Religionspolitik des Itaisers Elagabal (Sruttgart: F. Steiner, 1989), esp. chap. 2. See also the connection made by Firmicus Maternus (Err. prof rel. 8.2) between Attis and the sun. The late-third-cenrury emperor Claudius II Gothicus also supported the religion after Elagabalus (see H. A. Diuus Claudius 4.2). 40. Claud. In Eutropium 11. 326. 41. Tert. Adv. Marcionem 1.13. On the archeological evidence of shrines in the late ancient West, see Vermaseren, Cybele andAttis) chaps. 2, 6. 42. August. De civ. D. 2.26,2.4, cf. Firm. Mat. Err. prof rel. 18.

NOTES TO PAGE 255

381

43. See Mark Smith, The Early History ofGod: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990); Richard Pettey, Asherah: Goddess ofIsrael (New York: Peter Lang, 1990); and Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess., 3d ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990); se'e also the more ,:~onservative approaches of Saul. Olyan, Asherah and the C~tlt ofYahweh in Israel., , SoCiety of Biblical Literature Monograph Series, 34 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1988); and William Reed, TheAshe,rah in the Old Testament (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1949). ' 44. Beatrice Brooks ("Fertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testament;' journal ofBiblical Literature 60 [1941]: 227-53) examines the evidence for the qJdesh'tm and argues that they were sacred prostitutes; see also Greenberg (Construction of Homosexuality., 94-106, 135-41). Brooks's conclusions were questioned by Eugene Fisher ("Cultic Prostitution in the Ancient Near East? A Reassessment;' Biblical Theology Bulletin 6 [1976]: 225-36), who sees it only as a post-Biblical interpretation, and by Mayer Gruber ("The qades in the Book of Kings and in other Sources;' Tarbiz 52 [1983]: 167-76), who thinks of the qJdeshtm as "Canaanite cultic singers?' I find the basis of these rebuttals unconvincing. There is the linlc between the qJdeshah and female sacred prostitution: Joan Westenholz, "Tamar, QCdesa., QftdiStu., and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia;' Harvard Theological Review 82 (1989): 245-66; and Karel van der Toorn, "Female Prostitution in Payment of Vows in Ancient Israel;' Journal of BiblicalLiterature 108 (1989): 193-205; see also Mayer Gruber, "The Hebrew Qfdesah and Her Canaanite and Aldcadian Cognates;' in The Motherhood of God and Other Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992). It also seems clear that there were sacred male prostitutes in other areas of ancient southwest Asia: see Will Roscoe, "Priests of the Goddess: Gender Transgression in Ancient Religion;' History ofReligions 35 (1996): 195-230, who summarizes the extant evidence. There is also the derogatory use of the term kelebh., a term linked in the typical parallelisms of Biblical texts with ziinah ("secular female prostitute") and perhaps meaning a secular male prostitute: see D. Wmton Thomas, "J(clebh 'Dog': Its Origins and Some Usages ofit in the OldTestament;'VetusTestamentum 10 (1960): 41027; see also Phyllis Bird ("'To Play the Harlot': An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor;' in Gender and DiJfirence in Ancient Israel., ed. Peggy Day [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989],75-94; reprinted inMissing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997], 219-36) who argues that the Deuteronomic reformers compared qJdeshiith to ziiniith as a way of demeaning sacred sexual activity. The same might well have been true of the connection between dogs and qJdeshim., but Bird ("The End of tlle Male Cult Prostitute: A Literary-Historical and Sociological Analysis of Hebrew qades-qedes'tm/' in Supplements to Vetus Testamentum., vol. 66, ed. J. A. Emerton [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997], 37-80), does not think that they ever existed, and argues unconvincingly that they were invented only as a literary parallelism to the qadeshiith. 45. On mourning for Tammuz, see Ezek 8.14; on castration of priests, Deut. 23.1 (specifying both crushed testicles and amputated penis); on sexual penetration of males, Lev. 18.22; on transvestism, Deut. 22.5. For discussion of these

382

NOTES TO PAGES 256-57

texts see Saul Olyan, "'And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying Down of a Woman': On the Meaning and Significance' of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13;'Jour-' nal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1994): 179-206. For late ancient J ewish inter~ pretations of these prohibitions, see also Daniel Boyarin, ''Are l'here AnyJews ill 'The History of Sexu.ality'?"Journal ofthe History ofSexuality 5 (1995): 33:3...;..55;", . and Michael Satlow, "'They Abused Him like a Woman': Homoeroticism, Gen- '. der Blurring, and the Rabbis in Late Antiquity;' Journal ofthe History ofSexuality· .' 5 (1994): 1-25. 46. Both Greenberg (Construction of Homosexualityy 190-202) and Olyan ("And with a Male You Shall Not Lie") reject any connection between the Levitical prohibition and male cultic prostitution; Olyan (181-82 n. 6) also rejects altogether the existence of male cultic prostitution. Olyan suggests instead that the term tiPabhah connotes "the violation of a socially constructed boundary, the undermining or reversal of what is conventional, the order of things as the ancient might see it?' Yet all of its uses from texts of this period refer to religious violations, except one (Deut. 25.16: cheating in measurements) which might be a later interpolation; moreover, this not preclude the fact that what the q'Jdeshim were doing through their castration, transvestism, and cultic sexual activity was considered a "violation;' "undermining or reversal." See instead Calum Carmichael, "Forbidden Mixtures in Deuteronomy xxii 9-11 and Leviticus xix 19;' Vetus Testamentum 45 (1995): 433-48, who notes that the mixed cloth-oflinen and wool (sha:1atnez) condemned as tiPa bhah was of the type worn by cultic prostitutes. See also Paul Humbert, "Le substantiv toljbd et Ie verbe ~b dans EAncien Testament;:Zeitschriftfor die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 72 (1960): 217-37, who reviews all Uses of the terms. Professor Saul Olyan was kind enough to read and critique this part of the manuscript and disagreed with my conclusions, but did not provide me with any new reasons to reject them. 47. Ezek.8.14. 48. 1 Kings 14:24, 15.12,22.47,2 Kings 23.7, Job 36.14. Only once did he use a different term for qadeshj at Deut. 23.17-8 he translated it as scortatm; meaning "one who frequents prostitutes." Perhaps he had not yet understood its precise meaning, near the beginning of his translation, although it might have been his attempt to create a male equivalent and parallelism to the term sconumy meaning "harlot." He also consistently translated the term q'Jdeshah as meretrixy "female prostitute?' 49. Hieron. Comm. in Osee 1.4.14. 50. This is also the sense of the Septuagint Greek translation of the term, ~8EAuYlla, from the verb ~8EAucrcrE1.V (to malce loathsome or fearsome). 51. Rom. 1.23-9. 52. Bernadette Brooten (Love between Women: Barly Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996],363-72) discusses the passage at length and provides an annotated bibliography of modern scholars on the passage. Scholars who have linlced the passage to Greek traditions of pederasty, as is most commonly done and as Brooten herself does, are unable to explain the "reward" (Greek UV'ttlltcr9ia, Latin merces). Robin Scroggs (The New Testament and Homosexuality: Contextual Background for Contemporary De-

NOTES TO PAGE 257

383

bate [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983], 115-16), writes: "Finally, the ambiguous last phrase calls for attention .. '.. Either Paul is hinting at physical disease (perhaps venereal) ... or he counts the distortion of homosexuality itself as the punish- . .ment?'·Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspec.·tive (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998) also ignores the connection. Boswell . (Christianity)~ociflJ Tolerance) 108) noted the pos~ibility of a connection with sacred prostinition but rejected it, also mentioning the"mysteriou~ reference" at the end of the passage (113 n. 72). Curiously, Boswell attributes the connection . between this passage . and sacred prostitution to Herman van de Spijker (Diegleichgeschlechtliche Zuneigung. Homotropie: Homosexualitiit) Homoerotik) HomophilieunddieKatholischeMoraltheologie [Freiburg: Walter-Verlag Olten, 1968], 82) but this scholar rejects that interpretation. Van de Spijker, in turn, attributes the argument to Robert Wood ("Homosexual Behavior in the Bible:' One Institute Quarterly 5 [1962]: 10-19, esp. 16), but this scholar does not even discuss this interpretation in his article. The origins of this interpretation are therefore unknown. 53. Especially Wisd. 14.12-31. 54. Hieron. Comm. in Osee 1.4.14. 55. In her otherwise superlative book on sexual activity between women in antiquity, Brooten (Love between Women) 195-302), is mistaken in her assessment that Paul condemned sex between women in this passage. The link was made only through a false parallel with the "men doing shameless things with men" and "consumed with passion for each other"; of the women it is only said that they have turned "from natural intercourse" (in fact, "natural use;' Greek "n)v <\>'UO"tKTtV XPTtmv:' Latin "naturalem usum") "to unnatural practices" (Greek "EtC; n)v napa <\>umv:' Latin "in eum usum qui est contra naturam"). See Roy Bowen Ward ("Why Unnatural? The Tradition behind Romans 1 :26-27:' Harvard Theological Review 90 [1997]: 263-84), though, for contemporary definitions of"unnatural" that implied all types of non procreative sex, including sex for pleasure's salce and that would certainly have included sex as part of cultic practices, although Ward does not suggest this interpretation. Brooten misinterprets the reference to "their women" targeting a specific group of women, namely, cultic prostitutes (Love between Women) 240-41); she must also note (258) the alleged "particularly enigmatic" reference to "appropriate reward" by asking: "Did Paul envisage a venereal disease?" She does note the possibility of a relationship to cultic prostitution (253 n. 106) but says without further consideration that the "proposal has not gained acceptance," and adds incorrectly that the Roman-period sources on homoeroticism do not focus on cultic prostitution." She also admits problems with the late ancient extrapolations of Romans 1 that refer to cultic prostitution. The ancient Etlllopic version of the Apocalypse of Peter (she notes, "considered by scholars to be closer to the original than the Greek;' 306 n. 5) contains the following precise reference (quoting from her text): "These are they who cut their flesh, sodomites and the women who were with them." She is puzzled that the Apocalypse of Paul also only refers to male homoeroticism (314). Finally, she cannot successfully explain why Augustine links the passage to sex between a man and a woman (De bono conjugali 11, see Brooten,

384

NOTES TO PAGES 257-59

Love between Women. . 353), although she notes correctly tllat Ambrosiaster (Comm. in epist. ad Rnmanos 1.26 [CSEL 81.1]) understood the passage as meaning "mulier mulierem turpi desiderio ad usum adpeteret" (ec a woman seeIc,s, ' after a woman for use with shameful desire"). The only scholar to recog.oizetnat' ,,' the phrase does not refer to sex between women is James Miller, "The :rractice of,', ' Romans 1:26: Homosexual or Heterosexual?" NOPum Testamentum 37 (1995):, 1-11. ' 56. Gal. 5:12. 57. Phil. 3.2-4 ("canes;' "KUVe<;"). 58. Rev. 22.15 ("canes ... impudici ... idolis servientes;' "KUVe<; ... nOpvol ... ElOO)AOAO:'tpat"). C£ the similar list at Rev. 21.8, where all the terms are more-or-less repeated, except that "dogs" is replaced with OelAOt (translated into Latin as timides. . meaning "cowards;' ,but also meaning "the wretched" in Greek) and e/30eAUY/lEVOl (translated in Latin as execrati. . "the detestable;' but derived from the same Greek term /30EAUY/lO used to translate the Hebrew tiFa bhah. . "abomination"). 59. Matt. 19.12. 60. Dig. 50.16.128. 61. Zavinl (ed. and trans. P. Blaclcman, 7 vols., 2d ed. [New York: Judaica, 1983]) 2.1. 62. Yevamoth 8.1-6. 63. Gen. 39.1 (Potiphar, the official of the pharaoh in Egypt whose wife tried to seduce the patriarch Joseph), Jth. 12.10-5 (Bagoas, the charge d'affaires of the Assyrian c9mmander Holofernes), Jer. 38.7-13 and 39.15-8 (Ebedmelech, courtier to King Zedekiah, perhaps the same man as the nameless commander of the defenders of Jerusalem at the time of the prophet Jeremiah), Dan. 1.3-21 (Ashpenaz, who trained the prophet Daniel to serve at Nebuchadnezzar's court), and 1 Chron. 28.1 (nameless functionaries ofIGng David's court). 64. E.g., Matt. 19.29. 65. Isa. 56.3-5. The passage, found in the part of the book attributed to the anonymous writer often identified as Trito-Isaiah, may be based on the historical return of the Jews from exile in Babylon, where many of the men may well have been castrated as slaves or brought eunuch slaves with them when they returned to Israel. C£ Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 93b. This passage ofTrito-Isaiah was incorporated with earlier parts of the Biblical book of Isaiah (written by the socalled Deutero-Isaiah) that had anticipated a future restoration of the independent kingdom of Israel. 66. Acts 8.26-39. Clarice Martin ("The Function ofActs 8 :26-40 within the Narrative Structure of the Book ofActs: The Significance of the Eunuch's Provenance for Acts 1:8c" [Ph.D diss., Dulce University, 1985]) discusses the significance of the Ethiopian nationality of the eunuch for this theme of inclusiveness, especially the fact that he is the first non-Jewish convert to Christianity recorded in Acts, but not his status as a eunuch. 67. Josef Blinzler, "E'to1.v eUVOUXOl: Zur Auslegung von Mt 19.12;' ZeitschriJt for Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 48 (1957): 254-70. Jerome (Epist. 58.3) and Paulinus of Nola (Epist. 31.3) both mentioned a shrine to Tammuz at

NOTES TO PAGES 259-63

385

Bethlehem. Both probably got their information from Eusebius (De vita Constantini 3.55), but how long before the fourth century it was built is impossible . to say. There might have been itinerantgalli in the region even without an or.ganized shrine. Daniel Constantin ("Esseniens et eunuques;' RevUe de Qumran 6 .. 'I 1968]: 353-90) suggests that the third type of eunuch was a reference to the Es. sehes, who renounced sex for the salce of the coming Messianic kingdom, but such ~ interpretation already assumes a figurative understanding for the selfcastration. . 68. Matt. 6.19-21,24-34, 19.16-22. 69. Matt. 5.29-30, c£ Matt. 18.8-9, Mark 9.43-7. 70. Justin Martyr Apologia 29.2-3. 71. Traditio apostolica 16: "Meretrix vel homo luxuriosus vel qui se abscidit, et si quis alius facit rem quam non decet dicere, reiciantur; impuri enim sunt." 72. Council ofNicaea (ed. G. Alberigo et al., Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta [Bologna: Dehoniane, 1991]) canon 1. See also the discussion by H. J. Schroeder, The Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils (St. Louis: B. Herder,

1937),18-19. 73. Euseb. Hist. ecd. 6.8. 74. See John Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism in Early Christianity: Epiphanius ofSalamis and the Legacy ofOrigen (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1988), 128-35, who reviews the evidence for and against Eusebius's account. See also Brower, "Ambivalent Bodies;' who writes (209 n. 56): "Significantly, perhaps, Origen was 'conducting' his catechetical activity in the school previously led by Clement who ... attested to the presence of those who had castrated themselves out offaithfulness to Jesus' words;" and (209 n. 57): "Others have noted that in Origen's own writings he never refers to this action. They also note that in his commentary on Matthew's Gospel, he apparently disavowed any support for men who interpreted the eunuch-saying literally." See Origen Commentaria in evangeliumsecundumMatthaeum 15.1-4. 75. Hieron. Epist. 84.8 (my trans.). 76. Epiphanius of Salamis Adv. haereses 58. 77. Hieron. Epist. 22.27 (my trans.). 78. ActaJoannis 53-54. See J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 303-10, 326; Brower, "Ambivalent Bodies;' 221-22 n. 84. 79. U sener, "Legenden der Pelagia." 80. On the connection between Bacchus and Cybele, see Kirk Summers, "Lucretius' Roman Cybele;' in Cybeley Attis and Related Cultsy ed. E. Lane; Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots ofMariology (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 64-69. On the shrine to Cybele and Bacchus at Rome, see Mary Woodley, "The Sacred Precincts of Cybele" (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1989), 65. 81. Hippol. Haer. 5.1-6. 82. August. TractatusinIohannisevangelium 7.6: "Pilleatus christianus." 8 3. On these parallels, see A. T. Fear, "Cybele and Christ;' in CybeleyAttis and Related Cultsy ed. E. Lane; Arthur Evans, The God ofEcstasy: Sex Roles and theMad-

386

NOTES TO PAGES 263-64

nessofDionysos (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), chap. 7; Geoffrey Ashe, The Vit;gin: Mary's Cult and the Re-eme1lJence ofthe Goddess (London: Arleana, 1976); Benko, Vi1lJin Goddess (on Santa Maria Maggiore, 164).· ., 84. On the use of bodily mutilation in Romanjudicial proceedings, seeHarries, Law and Empire~ chaps. 6 and· 7; Laurent Angliviel de la Beaun1ell~, ~'La tor~·'. : ture dans les Res gestae d'Ammien Marcellin;' in Institutions~ societe et vie politique . dans Pempire romain au IVe siecle ap. J-c.~ ed. M. Christol et al .. (Rome·: Ecole'· Fran<;aise de Rome, 1992); Ramsay MacMullen, "Judicial Savagery in the Roman Empire;' Chiron 16 (1986): 147-66. 85. See esp. Peter Brown, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity;' Journal ofRoman Studies 61 (1971): 80-101; reprinted in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 103-52. For a comparison of the Christian holy man with the "divine man" ofpagan religion, see Gail Paterson Corrington~ The "Divine Man~~: His Origin and Function in Hellenistic Popular Religion (New York: Peter Lang, 1986). See also Brower, "Ambivalent Bodies;' on the charismatic power of the Christian eunuchs. 86. Saintly eunuchs from late antiquity include Nereus and Achilleus (AASS 12 May), Calocerus and Parthenius (AASS 19 May), Prothus and Hyacinthus (AASS 11 September), Indes (Nicephorus Callistus, Ecclesiastica Historia [PG 145] 7.6), Tigrius (AASS 12 January; Sozomen Historia ecclesiastica [PG 67] 8.24), Boethazat and Azat (Menologium Basilianum Graecorum [PG 117] 20 N 0vember and 14 April), Melito of Sardes (Eusebius Historia ecclesiastica 5.24). The limited hist9rical evidence for the subjects of these stories is discussed by Baudouin de Gaiffier, "Palatins et eunuques dans quelques documents hagiographiques;' Analecta Bollandiana 75 (1957): 17-46. See also Browe, Geschichte der Entmannun~ 20. 87. Brower ("Ambivalent Bodies;' 4), who sees the same pattern, suggests a similar explanation: that "self-made, religious eunuchs may have exercised powerful roles outside the ecclesiastical power structure; they must, therefore, be reigned [sic] in or absorbed"; adding (292) that "by employing commonly-held views about eunuchs, masculinity, and moderate asceticism, the Church's interpretation succeeded in consolidating its own nascent power or authority." He also suggests (285) that eunuchs, as liminal figures, were "a constant and uncomfortable reminder of the impermanence of social norms;' 88. For an example of the allegorical use of circumcision by a patristic writer, see Ambrose De Abraham 2.11. See also Clark, Reading Renunciation~ 225-30. Roman law specified that Jews who circumcised their sons were exempt from any charge of castration, although all others who circumcised risked the penalty (Dig. 48.8.11). In the HistoriaAugusta (Hadr. 14.2) it was claimed that Hadrian had driven the Jews to revolt by denying them the right to castrate their sons; Cassius Dio says more reliably (69.12-4) that the revolt occurred because Hadrian had dedicated a temple to Jupiter on the site of the former Temple. See also the interesting discussions on circumcision and gender difference by David Balcan, And They Took Themselves Wives: The Emet;gence of Patriarchy in Western Civilization (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 140-47; and byShaye Cohen, "Why Aren't

NOTES TO PAGES 265-70

387

Jewish Women Circumcised?" in Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean) ed. M. Wyke (Oxfo~d: Blackwell, 1998),136-54. 89. Tert. Ad uxorem 1.6. Tertullian's discussions of castration are also dis. cussed·by Georg<; Sanders, "Les galles et Ie gallat devant l'opiniori chretienne:' in _. :I:iom.mages Maarten Vermaseref/-) ed. M. de Boer (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978). . .. . 90. Tert. De cultu feminarum 2.9. 91. Tert. De cultu feminarum 82.9: "castigarido et castrando, ut ita dixerim." 92. Tert. De exhortatione castitatis 7: "castratam licentiam saepius nubendi." 93. Tert. De resurrectione mortuorum 60. 94. Tert. De m01wgamia 5. I have changed the translators' "celibate" for spado to "eunuch." 95. Tert. De monogamia 3. I have changed the translators' "virgins" for spadones to "eunuchs" and "virgin" for spada to "eunuch." 96. See Greville Freeman, "Montanism and the Pagan Cults ofPhrygia:' Dominican Studies 3 (1950): 297-316; Benko, Virgin Goddess) chap. 4; Goree, "Cultural Bases ofMontanism:' passim. Jerome referred to Montanus as "a eunuch and half-man" (Epist. 41.4: "abscisum et semiuirum"). 97. Tert. Adv. Marcionem 1.1, C£ Apul. Met. 1.9 for the same legend, which was supposed to explain the similarity between the words castrare (to castrate) and castor (beaver). 98. Tert. Adv. Marcionem 1.29, C£ idem, Adv. Valentinianos 30.3, Ps.-Tert. Carmen adv. Marcionem 511. 55-61. 99. Tert. De monogamia 7. 100. Tert.Adv.Marcionem 1.29, cf. idem,Deresurrectionemortuorum 61.6-7. 101. On virgins, see Hieron. Epist. 55.4, August. De sancta virginitate 36, Prudent.AmartWenia 1. 957; on continent persons, August. De continentia 2.5, idem, De doctrina christiana 3.17; on men in sexless marriages, Hieron. Epist. 49.2; on women in sexless marriages, Hieron. Epist. 123.10; on w:idows, Ambrose De officiis ministrorum 12.6.27, August. De adulterinis coniugiis 2.19. See Brower, ''Ambivalent Bodies:' passim) for numerous other references, including Eastern ones. 102. Hieron. Epist. 14.6 (trans. Mierow), C£ idem, Epist. 66.8,22.30. 103. Hieron.Adv. Iovinianum 1.12. 104. Ambrose De viduis 13.75-7 (I have made many changes to the translation). 105. Hieron. Comm. in evangeliumMatthaei 3 ad 19.12: "cum possint esse uiri ... sed considerandae uires sunt ... et milites suos." 106. Jolm Cassian Conlationes 12.1, c£ 1.20. 107. SalvianDegubernationeDei 3.8. 108. Valerian Homelia 17.6, cf. Hieron. Comm. inMatheum 3 ad 18.8. 109. Valerian Homelia 6.6. 110 .. Hieron. De Exodo in vigilia Paschae (ed. CCSL 78; trans. M. Ewald, FC 57): "et Helias nihil in se habens mo11e atque muliebre, sed totum uirile et rigidum (homo quippe hirsutus erat)." C£ idem, Epist. 22.11, Paulinus of Nola Epist. 24.14. The description of John the Baptist is found in Mark 1.6. I have changed the translator's "shaggy" for hirsutus to "hairy."

a

388

NOTES TO PAGES 270-75

Ill. Ambrose De fuga saeculi 6.34. The story of Elijah is related in 1 Kings 17.1-2 Kings 2.1. It specifically relates (at 1- Kings 19.3) that Elijah "was afraid and fled for his life?' " " 112. Hieron. Epist. 22.11 (my trans.): "bmnis igitur adversus viros diaboli .". virtus in lumbis ese' C£ idem, Homelia 60. 113. See William Lawrence, "The History of, the Interpretation" of Acts 8:26-40 by the Church Fathers prior to the Fall of Rome" (Ph.D~diss., Union" . Theological Seminary, 1984). 114. E.g., Hieron.Epist. 46.13. 115. Hieron.Epist. 53.5 (my trans.): "eunuchus, immouir?' 116. Hieron. Adv. Iovinianum 1.12: "spado ... qui ob robur fidei, viri nomen obtinuit." C£ also idem, Epist. 69.6, Peter Chrysologus Sermo 61. 117. August. ContraFaustumManichaeum (ed. CSEL 25.1) 16.22, C£ 14.13 for Augustine's exegesis on Isaiah's remark on eunuchs, c£ idem, De sancta virginitate 24. 118. Petrus Chrysologus Sermo 56.2. 119. John Cassian Conlationes 7.2. 120. John Cas sian Conlationes 7.2. 121. John Cas sian Conlationes 7.2. 122. Michel Foucault ("The Battle for Chastity;' in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times) ed. P. Aries and A. Bejin [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985]) argues generally for an interiorization of sexuality in Cas sian's writings. 123. August.Deciv.D. 6.7. 124. August. De haeresibus (ed. CCSL 46) 37. Augustine took most of his information from Epiphanius of Salamis (Adv. haereses 58). 125. Firm. Mat. Err. prof reI. 4.3. 126. Firm. Mat. Err. prof reI. 4.3. 127. Min. Fel. Oct. (ed. CSEL 2; trans. R. Wallis, ANF 4) 24.4-5. 128. Jerome (Epist. 22.34-6, 125.11) described the life ofmonasticism in his day for a Western audience. There is a vast secondary literature on early male monasticism, most of it on the East. On the origins of Western monasticism in particular, see Rousseau, Ascetics) Authority; Henry Chadwick, "The Ascetic Ideal in the History of the Church;' in Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Early Church (London: Variorum, 1991); Jacques Fontaine, "raristocratie occidentale devant Ie monachisme aux !Verne et Verne siecles;' Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 15 (1979): 28-53; see also the discussion by Markus, End ofAncient Christianity) chaps. 3,4, and 5. 129. Hieron. Epist. 125.17 (trans. Wright): "quasi de thalamo uirgo procedas:' 130. John Cassian Conlationes 1.8. 131. August. De opere monachorum (ed. CSEL 41; trans. M. Muldowney, FC 16) 32: "non ergo propterea se negent uiros, quia masculino sexu nihil operantur:' 132. August. De opere monachorum 31. On the Nazirites, see Num 6.5, Judg 13.5.

NOTES TO PAGES 275-80

389

133. C£ Paulinus of Nola Epist. 23.10-1 (on the theme of monks as Nazirites) and 22.1-2 (on the unkempt appearance and foul smell of monks). 134. Hieron. Epist. 14.6 (trans. Mierow). 135. Hieron ..Epist. 14~ 10 (trans. Wright) . .1$6. Hieron. Epist. 14.2 (trans. Wright): "delicate miles;' cf. 14.10: "delica. tus es." 137. Leo Epist. 167.14.. 138. John CassianConlauones 1.2. 139. John Cassian Conlationes 4.6. 140. John Cassian Conlationes 6.10, C£ 1.5 (monks are like archers, who are only successful if they are not distracted from their targets), 4.7 (their bodies and souls wage battles against each other), 5.14 (vices are their military enemies), 24.25 (their sufferings are warfare). C£ also idem, De institutis coenobiorum 7.21 (monlcs must fight against greed), 10.25 (monlcs must resist temptacion and not flee from it), 11.19 (monks must use all means at their disposal to fight). 141. See Malone, Monk and the Martyr; 70 n. 18. C£ Augustine De opere monachorum 28: "0 semi dei, milites Christi"; c£ also Hieron. Epist. 14.4. 142. Sulpicius Severus VitasanctiMartini 15 (pagans attempted to revenge themselves against him, they were unable to wound him), d: 14 (two angels dressed as soldiers appear to assist Martin), idem,Dialogi 2.3 (Martin suffered the blows of wicked mule-drivers, who found that the mules then refused to move). See Stancli:ffe, St. Martin. 143. Sulpicius Severus VitasanctiMartini 20. 144. Sulpicius SeverusDialogi (ed. PL 20; trans. G. Walsh et al., FC 7) 2.11, cf. Hieron. Epist. 22.21. 145. Hieron. Epist. 125.7 (my trans.), c£ 52.5, John Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum 6.13. Brown (Body and Societyy 243-44) suggests that misogyny was a means of creating a clear separation between all-male monastic environments and mixed secular ones. 146. Sulpicius Severus VitasanctiMartini 10. 147. Hieron. Vita sancti Pauli primi eremitae 17. 148. John Cassian Conlationes 24.26, c£ idemy De institutione coenobiorum 2.3,4.5,4.29. 149. Hieron. Epist. 125.15 (my trans.), c£ idem, De oboedientia (ed. CCSL 78). 150. John Cas sian Conlationes 16.23. 151. August. Confessiones 8.5. 152. August. Confessiones 9.4. 153. Hieron.Epist. 22.19 (my trans.): "Aliumeunuchumnecessitasfaciat,me uoluntas." 154. See Markus, End ofAncient Christianityy chaps. 12, 13, and 14. 155. Hieron. Epist. 14.2-3 (trans. Wright), c£ idem, Homilia in Matthaeum 18, c£ also the familial opposition recorded by Sulpicius Severus Vita sancti Martini 2. 156. John Cassian Conlationes 21.1 (on the first abandonment by Theonas of

390

NOTES TO PAGES 280-86

his wife), 21.8 (on his rerum home), 21.9 (on her refusal and his second abandonment of her), and 21.10 (Cassian's conclusion). 157. Hieron.Epist. 125.15 (trans. Wright). SeeMarkus,EndofAncientChris~: tianityy chap. 11, on the monastery as an ideal society in miniature.. . . . ' . .. 158. John Cas sian De institutis coenobiorum (ed. J.-G Guy [Pcu:is: :Cerf,·', '. 1965]) 4. 27-8. . 159. Hieron. Epist. 123.7 (my trans.): "euirat uirum, et aeterna debilitate fit' casrus." 160. John Cas sian Conlationes 22.3. 161. John Cas sian De institutis coenobiorum 5.6,12-9. See Rousselle, Porneiay chap. 10, on the modern studies and comparison with the diet of thegalli. 162. John Cassian Conlationes 12.7. 163. On involuntary erections, see Jo~ Cas sian Conlationes 12.9. On nocturnal emissions, see John Cassian Conlationes 22.6, idem, De institutis coenobiorum 6.10-11,19-23. 164. John Cassian De institutis coenobiorum 1.1.1: "monachum ut militem Christi in procinctu semper belli positum accinctus lumbis." C£ 1.11.1-3, 5.21.1. 165. John Cassian Conlationes 12.6. 166. John Cassian Conlationes 22.3. See also David Braldce, "The Problematization ofNocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul;'JournalofEarly Christian Studies 3 (1995): 419-60. I am grateful to him for an advance copy of his article. 167. See,SalvianDegubernationeDei 8.4. CONCLUSION

1. Hieron. Epist. 60.1 (trans. Wright; I have changed "grandeur" for magnitudo to "magnitude"). See also J. H. D. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary onJeromeyLetter 60 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), who provides detailed comments. 2. Hieron. Epist. 60.1 (trans. Wright). 3. Hieron. Epist. 60.2 (trans. Wright). 4. Hieron. Epist. 60.9 (trans. Wright). 5. Hieron. Epist. 60.10 (trans. Wright). The words are from Mt 19.21. 6. Hieron. Epist. 60.10 (trans. Wright). 7. Hieron. Epist. 60.8 (trans. Wright; I have changed "of other people's merits" for de alienis bonis to "of the merits of others"). 8. Hieron. Epist. 60.10 (trans. Wright; I have changed "him" to "you" twice). 9. Hieron. Epist. 60.10 (trans. Wright). 10. Hieron. Epist. 60.10-1 (trans. Wright). 11. Hieron.Epist. 60.19 (trans. Wright). 12. Hieron. Epist. 60.15 (trans. Wright). 13. Hieron. Epist. 60.16 (trans. Wright; I have changed the translator's "pence" to "coins"). 14. Hieron. Epist. 60.17 (trans. Wright). 15. Hieron.Epist. 60.16 (trans. Wright). The quotation is fromAeneid2.369.

NOTES TO PAGES 286-93

391

16. Hieron. Epist. 60.1 (trans. Wright). 17. Robert Markus, End ofAncient Christianity) 362, quoting in part from . Alasdair MacIntrye, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre D~e, Ind.: Uni'. versityofNotre Dame Press, 1988) . . .'. - . 18~ Hieroh: Epist. 60.4 (trans. Wright). 19. See T~rcan~ Cultesorientaux) 325-38, on. the similarities in religious impulses. behirid belief in Chris~anity and belief in other mystery religions, and his explanation for the eventual success of Christianity in the amalgamation of the . transcendent, omnipotent God with the suffering, humanlike God. 20. Hieron. Epist. 60.11 (trans. Wright). 21. Hieron.Epist. 14.

22. Hieron. Epist. 60.9 (trans. Wright). 23. Hieron. Epist. 60.10 (trans. Wright). 24. Hieron.Epist. 60.14 (trans. Wright). 25. ProbaCento (ed. and trans. E. ClarkandD. Hatch [AnnArbor: Edwards, 1981]) 11. 263-5. 26. Proba Cento 11.522-3. The incident is from Mark 10.17-22. 27. Proba Cento 11. 3-8. See also on Proba: Elizabeth A. Clark, "Faltonia Betitita Proba and her Virgilian Poem: The Christian Matron as Artist," in AsceticPiety and Women)s Faith; and ElizabethA. Clark and Diane Hatch, "Jesus as Hero in the Vergilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba;' Vet;gilius 27 (1981): 31-39; reprinted inAscetic Piety and Women)s Faith: Essays on LateAncient Christianity) Studies in Women and Religion, 1 (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1986). 28. Jo Ann McNamara, "Sexual Equality and the Cult of Virginity in Early Christian Thought;' Feminist Studies 3 (1976): 145-58; idem, "Wives and Widows in Early Christian Thought;' International Journal of Women)s Studies 2 (1979): 575-92; and Rosemary Radford Ruether, "Mothers of the Church: Ascetic Women in the Late Patristic Age;' in Women of Spirit; ed. R. Ruether and A. McLaughlin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979). See also Ross S. Kraemer, "The Conversion of Women to Ascetic Forms of Christianity;' Signs 6 (1980): 298-307 for the same approach to earlier and Eastern sources. 29. Flore Dupriez, La condition feminine et les peres de FEglise latine (Montreal: Paulines, 1982), 89: "Le christianisme mit a l'honneur des vertues dites 'feminines' de douceur, de patience, d'amour des autres, de generosite du pardon, de soumission ala volonte divine. On sait combien de femmes repondaient avec enthousiasme a cet ideal, moins nouveau pour elles que pour les hommes." 30. Anne Yarbrough, "Christianization in the Fourth Century: The Example of Roman Women;' Church History 45 (1976): 149-65. This article was a reply to Peter Brown, ''Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy;'Journal ofRoman Studies 51 (1961): 1-11. 31. Hickey, Women ofthe Roman Aristocracy. 32. Salisbury, Church Fathers) chaps. 4,5,6, and 7, respectively; see also chapter 8 for her summary and conclusion. 33. McNamara, ANew Song. 34. Averil Cameron, "VIrginity as Metaphor: Women and the Rhetoric of

392

NOTES TO PAGES 294-98

Early Christianity;' in History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History., ed. A. Cameron (London: Duckworth, 1988), i84, 191...:..92. 35. Castelli, "I Will Malee Mary Male;' 33. , 36. Kate Cooper, "Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect'.bf the, Christianization of the Roman AriStocracy;'Journal ofR1;man Studies' 82, (1992) : 150-64. . 37. Michele Salzman, "Aristocratic Women: Conductors of Christianity ill ' the Fourth Century;' Helios 16 (1989): 207-20. 38. Cooper, Vir;gin and the Bride., 84-85. 39. Castelli, "I Will Malee Mary Male;' 33. 40. On this theme, see Mark Muesse, "Religious Machismo: Masculinity and Fundamentalism;' and Evelyn Kirldey, "Is It Manly to Be Christian? The Debate in Victorian and Modern America;' in Redeeming Men: Religion andMasculinities., ed. Stephen Boyd et al. (Louisville, Ky.: WestminsterlJohn Knox Press, 1996).

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Index

abomination. See tiFiibhah Abraham, 195-96' Achilles, 218 Actium, battle of, 38 actors and actresses, 171,210-13. See also spectacles Adam and Eve, 134, 154, 173, 174, 179, 198,217,221,222,228,230,235, 263 Adonis, 94, 246, 256 adultery, 81-83, 98-99, 143, 162, 163, 164-65,190 affection, familial. See familial affection Agdistis, 24 Agnes, 214-15, 231, 242 Alypius, 176, 199 lunazons,31,66,201 lunbrose of Milan, 105, 120, 122, 126-36,138-39,141,142,147-48, 152,154,155,159-60,165,169, 170-72,173,174,177,184,192, 193,195,203,207,208,209-10, 212,216,230-31,232,236, 239,241-43,245,268-69, 270 lunbrosiaster, 165 Ammianus Marcellinus, 19-20, 27, 32, 35,42,49,56,61,62,67-68,78, 90-91,170,240 anal sex, 29,35,89

angelsandvitaangelicaJ 179, 183, 197, 229,231,233,263,264,271 anger, 27-28 Anthemius (emperor; ruled 467-472),27, 42,158 Anthusa, 262 Antichrist, 120 antimilitarism, 39, 107-9 Antioch, 47, 67 Antonines, 7 Aphrodite, 23, 246. See also Venus Apollo, 169 Apuleius, 7, 57,251 Arbitio,67-68 Arcadius (emperor; ruled 395-408), 36, 65 arenas. See spectacles Arians, 130, 135, 141, 148, 154, 171 aristocracy: definition of, 8; ranks of the, 51-52 army. See soldiers arsenokoitaiJ 166,257 asceticism, 187,222,235-37,284,288. See also monks and male monasticism Asherah,255 Ataulf,40 athletes. See charioteers; gladiators; spectacles Attis, 24, 246, 249, 250, 261, 262-63, 288

429

430

INDEX

Augustan laws on marriage. See marriage, Augustan laws on Augustine of Hippo, 7, 13,23, 106-7, 108,122-24,126,135,139-42,148, 152,153-54,155,157,159,165, 167,169,173-74,175,176-77,18182,186,187,188-89,190,194,195, 197,199,203,209,220,233-36, 249,253,254,262,265,271,272, 273-75,278,289,291 Augustus (emperor; ruled 27 B.C.E.14 C.E.), 71-72 Aurelian (emperor; ruled 270-275), 62 Aurelius Victor, 27, 28, 88, 93, 101 Ausonius,24, 35, 55,91-92,93,94,237 Avitus (emperor; ruled 455-456), 42, 48, 158 Bacchus (god), 94,169,241,246,251, 262 Bacchus (martyr). See Sergius and Bacchus (martyrs) baptism, 114, 115, 118, 120, 121, 128, 171,224,259 barbarians, 7, 37,41,43,47-49,51,59, 62,90-91, 105, 122, 124,285-86. See also ethnic minorities; Germans; Goths Barbelo and Sophia, myth of, 222 basilicas, 157,245,263 battles. See war Beatitudes, 207-8 Bellona, 31 betrothal gifts. See reverse dowry Bible and Biblical interpretation, 13, 112, 126,127,133,134,136,137,141, 146,153,154,156,161,162,165-68, 179,180-81,188,189,192,195,196, 197,207-8,211,218,221,224,231, 234,241,255-60,262,264,265, 267-68,269-71,285,291,295,297 bishops and episcopal office, 10, 125, 129, 132,137,142-60,197,276,279, 286, 289. See also clergy and clerical office; sacerdos and sacerdotium Biturigans,158-59 Boudicca, 8, 40 bride of Christ, 125, 137-42, 144, 147, 148,149,184,185,193,197,225, 236-37,239,243,274,282,295 brideprice. See reverse dowry Brown, Peter, 11

Buddha, 179 bureaucracy, imperial, 37, 54, 64 Butler, Judith, 3 Caecilian of Carthage, 123, 149, 289 Caelestis, 246, 251-52 Caelius Aurelianus, 25-26, 80 Callixtus of Rome, 155 Cameron, Averil, 13,293 Caracalla (emperor; ruled 211-217),59, 63 Carinus (emperor; ruled 283-285), 93 Carthage, 113, 115,118, 126, 142-43, 145,186,217,247,251,253,265 Cassius Dio, 8,9,27,29,32,34,40,46, 59,88-89,93,96,100-1,210 Castelli, Elizabeth, 294 Castissima,232 castration, 31-32, 33-35, 62; self-castration, 247-50, 253-73,275. Seeakoeunuchs cathedrals, 157. See also basilicas Catholic. See orthodox and orthodoxy Cato,201 Celantia, 190-91 charioteers, 175-76, 177, 178, 285 chastity. See sexual renunciation children, 34, 70-75, 100, 106,188, 19597, 198,290; spiritual, 204. See also daughters; sons Christ. See Jesus Christ Christian ideal of masculinity 6, 10,206, 239,281-82,287,296-97 Christian ideology, definition of, 10, 12-13 Chromatius of Aquileia, 208 Church fathers. See fathers, of the Church Cicero, 159, 169 cinaediJ 88, 169,251 Circumcellians, 123, 289 circumcision, 221-22, 257, 263, 264, 271 clarissimiJ 51,64,84 Clark, Elizabeth A., 11-12 classical ideals of masculinity, 6, 19-20, 77,78,287 Claudian, 36, 38,47,60,65-69,78,94, 96-100,102,254 Claudius Mamertinus, 39, 65 clergy and clerical office, 108, 129, 151, 202-3,209-10,232,243,260,284, 286, 289. See also women, exclusion of, from ecclesiastical offices

INDEX

clothing, 57-60,163,215-19,265, 277-78,285. See also transvestism Commodian, 120, 121 Commodus (emperor; ruled 177-192), 28-29,45,46,89,91 concupiscentia. See sexual desire confessors, 119, 143-46 Connell, Robert, 4 Connolly, William, 13 Constans (emperor; ruled 337-350), 101 Constantine I (emperor; ruled 306-337), 21,52,54,62,73,74,75,76,80,82, 83,85,98,107,130,131,135,156, 157,184,260 Constantinople, 62, 237, 285 Constantius II (emperor; ruled 351-361), 67-68,82-83,101 constitutiones) 53 consuls and consulship, 36, 51, 55,65,68, 97,128,160 conversion, of men, 294-96; process of, 12-13; of women, 292-96 Cooper, Kate, 294 Cornelius of Rome, 147, 153 councils, Church, 108, 156-57 cowardice, 30,44, 111, 118 cross-dressing. See transvestism curiales. See decurions cursus honorum) 50, 55, 128 Cybele, 24, 213, 246, 249, 262, 263, 266. See also Mother of the Gods Cyprian of Carthage, 109-10, 111, 11819,120,126,142-47,150-51,153, 154,162,167,173,177,189,193, 196,197,204,212,239,289 daughters: of decurions, 53-54; of designated praetors, 52. See also children David, 133-34 deaconesses, 150 decurions, 53-54, 155 demilitarization, 39,40 Democritus,287 demographic decline. See population decline depilation, 91, 218. See also hair and hairiness desertion in war, 43-44; as metaphor, 119 desire. See sexual desire

431

Deuteronomic reforms, 255 Devil, 116, 119,120-21,159,162, 166, 173-74,227,228,235,270,276 Diocletian (emperor; ruled 284-305), 8, 51,53,54,85 divorce, 71, 72, 75-76, 77 dogs, 255, 257-58 Domitian (emperor; ruled 81-96),100-1 Domna and Indes, 262 Donatists, 123, 149, 153,289 dowry, 71, 72-73, 76 Dupriez, Flore, 293 Earinus,100 Easterners, 9, 47, 62, 240; and Eastern Christian sects, 284, 187,222,226. See also ethnic minorities Ecdicia, 191 Edwards, Catharine, 14 Egeria,224 egregii) 51 Elagabalus (emperor; ruled 218-222),7, 41,57-59,63-64,86,88-89,91, 135,167,218,240,247,253-54 Elijah, 136,270 Emeterius and Chelidonius of Calahorra, 116,198 eminentissimi) 52, 65 Epicureans, 181 Epiphanius of Salamis, 261 episcopal office and authority. See bishops and episcopal office erubescere) 133, 139, 154 Esau, 196, 208 Ethiopian eunuch, 259, 270-71 ethnic minorities, 3,9,39,47-49,62, 263. See also barbarians; Greek people and culture; Jews Eudocia, 237 Eugenia, 231 Eugenius, 131, 132 Eulalia, 238 eunuchs, 14,31-36,61-69,96-102, 245-82,295 Euphrosyne, 232 Eusebius (historian), 9,114,261 Eusebius (eunuch), 36, 67-68 Eustochium, 236 Eutherius, 35, 62 Eutropius, 36, 65-67, 69, 97-100,102, 254

432

INDEX

Fabiola, 163, 164, 200, 202-3 familial affection, 71,160,195-97,27980,291 families. See children; daughters; fathers; marriage; mothers; sons fathers, 52, 70-75, 83-84, 195-97,201, 203-4,280,285; of the Church, 11, 204 Faustina, 29 Firmicus Maternus, 169-70,251-52,265, 272 flight from the world, 127-28,281 friendship, 158, 195, 197-201,232, 283-84,285 Furia, 201-2 Gabriel, 231, 236 Gainas,285 Galen, 80 Galerius (emperor; ruled 293-311), 249 Galla Placidia, 135 galli) 247-54,256,259-60,262,264, 265,266,272,275,281,297 Gallus, 68 games. See spectacles Ganymede, 94, 168, 169 Garber, Marjorie, 14 Genesius,213 Germans, 39,43,47-49,286. See also barbarians; Goths Gerontius, 237 Gervasius and Protasius, 135, 198 gladiators, 29, 45-47, 176-77, 185, 210, 214-15. See also spectacles Gleason, Maud, 13 gloriosi) 52 Gnostics, 222, 225, 226 Gospel of Matthew, 258-60, 265 Goths, 40, 49, 90, 131,286. See also barbarians; Germans governors and governorship, 51, 56,97, 126,128,129 Grand Chamberlain. See praepositus sacri cubiculi Gratian (emperor; ruled 375-383),132 Greek Christian theology and theologians, 137,139,141,162,180 Greek language, 9, 162 Greek people and culture, 47,91,221-22, 263,274

Hadrian (emperor; ruled 117-138),93, 167 hair and hairiness, 47, 216, 218, 225, 232,270,274-75,295. See also depilation Hannibal, 38 Hebrew language, 162 Helena, 131, 135 Heliodorus, 275-76, 279, 283, 289-91 Heliogabalus. See Elagabalus (emperor; ruled 218-222) Hercules, 169,213,218 heretics and heresy, 10, 145, 149, 161, 178,180,186,225,288-89. See also Arians; CirCUIDcellians; Donatists; Jovinian; Manichaeans; Marcion and Marcionists; Montanus (heresiarch) and Montanists; Naasseni; Nestorius; Priscillian of Avila; Valentinus; Valesians hermaphrodites, 22-24,31,33 Hermaphroditus, 23 Hermes, 23 Herodes,47 Herodian,59 Hickey, Anne Ewing 293 Hieronymus. See Jerome Hilarion of Gaza, 177 Hilary of ArIes, 120 Hippolytus of Rome, 107, 120, 155, 164, 226,260,262 HistoriaAugusta) 26,28,29,36,38,42, 46,48,58,60,61-62,63-65,80, 85-86,89,93,94,210,240,254 homosexuality, 14, 87-95,162,166-69, 199. See also pederasty; sexual passivity; sexual transgression honestiores) 8 Honorius (emperor; ruled 395-423),38, 41,60,65,78,94,131,135 Hopkins, Patrick, 4 household codes, 188, 224 humiliores) 151-52 humility, 121, 129, 145, 147, 150, 15153,159,277,284,289 Huns, 48, 66, 158, 163,286. See also barbarians husbands. See marriage Iamblichus, 78-79 illustres, 52,64,156

INDEX

image of God. See women, in the image of God impudicitiaJ 81, 88-92, 106,211,213, 252. See also pudicitia; sexual passivity; sexual transgression incest, 170 infamia) 30, 83, 85, 92, 210 infibulation, 177 Irenaeus of Lyons, 226-27 Irenaeus of Sirmium, 196 Isaac, 196 Isaiah, 258-59 Isis and Osiris, 246, 247 ius liberorumJ 72 Jacob, 196, 207,208 Jerome, 9, 61, 74, 96, 97,105, 121, 139, 141,142,155,156,162-64,165, 166,169,170,172,173-74,175, 177,178-82,186,195,197,198-99, 200-3,208,213,230-31,232-33, 235-36,237,245,246,256,257, 261,268,270-71,273-80,283-87, 289-91 Jesus Christ, 115, 120, 121, 131, 138-39, 141,145-46,150,153,163,164, 179,188,195,208,209,236,242, 245,258,259-60,261,262,264, 266,269,272,275-76,278,287,292 jewels, 51, 58-60,127,215-16,277 Jews, 112, 130, 137, 141, 162,221-22, 263,274 Jezebel, 127, 136,270 John (Aposde), 179 John the Baptist, 179, 270 John Cassian, 7, 35, 198,269,271-72, 273-74,276,278,279-81 Jove. See Jupiter; Zeus Jovian (emperor; ruled 363-364),76 Jovinian,178-82,204 Judith, 231 Julia Maesa, 135 Julian ofEclanum, 184, 193-94 Julian (emperor; ruled 361-363),19-20, 35,36,38,42,45,47,49,60,68,76, 78,82,96,130-31,170,177,240, 246,247,261 Julius the Veteran, 115-16 Jupiter, 42, 168-69. See also Zeus Justin Martyr, 260 Justina, 130, 132, 135, 136,148

433

kelebhtm. See dogs Lactantius, 21, 22,44,97, 131, 165, 168-69,173-74,189,211,219-20, 249 laity, 153-54 lapsed Christians, 143-45, 162 law: Christian influence on, 75; on ecclesiastical offices, 156; enforcement of, 32, 248,260,263; on marriage, 33, 18384; regulation of, 30, 32-33 Lawrence, 116, 117 Leo I (emperor; ruled 457-474), 62,101 LeoH (emperor; ruled 474), 102 Leo the Great, 108, 117, 119, 185,276 lex ScantiniaJ 88, 94 libido. See sexual desire Licinius (emperor; ruled 308-324), 44 Lucilla, 149, 155 Lucius, 115 Lupus ofTroyes, 157-58 lust. See sexual desire luxury, 56-57, 59, 60-61,113,119, 125-27,215-19. See also wealth Lyons, martyrs of, 111, 114

magister militumJ 50, 65 Magnentius, 44 Majorian (emperor; ruled 457-461), 42, 74,101,148,158 Majorinus, 149 malakoiJ 166,257 Manichaeans, 120, 184-86, 187, 188, 190,199,289 Marcellina, 235, 237 Marcellus, 122 Marcian, 32, 99 Marcion and Marcionists, 185, 222, 226, 228,266,267 Marcus Aurelius (emperor; ruled 161180),7,27-29,46,95 Marian and James, 198 Marina, 232 Markus, Robert, 286-87 marriage, 70-74, 75-76, 85, 100-2, 110, 175; ages of, 73-74; Augustan laws on, 71-72, 74,77; Christian views on, 178-94,195-97,200,222,224,268, 290,297; as slavery, 140; as theological metaphor, 137-42, 147-48. See also adultery; divorce; dowry; remarriage;

434

INDEX

marriage (continued) reverse dowry; sexual renunciation; widows and widowhood marriage payments. See dowry; reverse dowry Mars, 42, 213 Martin of Tours, 107, 111, 114, 122, 148, 155,276-77 martyrs and martyrdom, 1l0-17, 122-23, 135-37,143-44,175,182,192,198, 214-15,219,239,240-43,249-50, 263,286,288 Mary Magdalen, 139,274 Mary (mother ofJesus), 231, 236, 263 masculinity: defmition of, 5,21; hegemonic and subordinated forms of, 4, 6, II Mater Deum. See Mother of the Gods Matthew, Gospel of See Gospel of Matthew Matrona, 262 Maximian (emperor; ruled 286-305), 85, 168,240 Maximilian, 107 Maximin, 44 Maximinus (emperor; ruled 235-238), 94 Maximus, 60, 61 McNamara, JoAnn, ll, 292,293 medical notions: of castration, 33-34, 260; of sexual activity, 79-80,172, 174; of sexual difference, 20-22, 2324,32; of unmanliness, 25-26 Melania the Elder, 114, 237 Melania the Younger, 194,237 Mercury, 213 Milan, 53, 126, 128; basilica incident at, 130,132,135,246 military ideal. See soldiers, image of Minerva, 213 Minucius Felix, 192-93,272 Mishnah, 258 misogyny, 3,20-21,29,31,66,197,206, 223 Mithra and Mithraism, 45, 113-14, 115, 288 mollitia, 21, 24-25, 30, 290-91 Monica, 140, 142, 291 monks and male monasticism, 162, 245, 273-82,289-90. See also women, asceticism of Montanus and Lucius (martyrs), 115

Montanus (heresiarch) and Montanists, 183,184,192,222,227,229,239, 266,288 Mother of the Gods, 246-54, 256, 262, 263,272 mothers, 72, 75,277,279,285; Christian Church as mother, 144, 197 mulierculariusy 76, 86 mythology, 23, 246-47 N aasseni, 262 Nabor and Felix, 198 Nana,24 Narcissus, 94 Nazirites,274 Nemesianus,95 Neo-Platonism, 20, 225, 261 Nepotian, 283-87, 289-90 Neptune, 213 Nero (emperor; ruled 54-68), 40, 46, 167,201 Nestorius,237 Nicaea, 53,62,260 nobility. See aristocracy nocturnal emissions, 280-81 nonviolence. See patientia Novatian of Rome, 119, 166, 175,212 obedience, 154,278 Oceanus, 163, 202 Opellius Macrinus (emperor; ruled 217-218), 89 Optatus of Milevis, 149, 155 oral sex, 29, 35, 89,91,98, 189-90 Oribasius, 79-80, 95,177 OrigenofAlexandria, 10, 137, 139, 141, 225-26,261,269; and Origenist controversy, 232-36, 237 orthodox and orthodoxy, 10, 123, 141, 161, 187-88,289 Pacatus,38 pacifism. See antimilitarism Pagels, Elaine, 13 palatium. See bureaucracy, imperial Pammachius, 163, 164, 200 panegyrics, 41-42, 48, 60-61 Papinian,164 paradox, 1, 13, 111,140-41,208-9,239, 243,282 pateifamilias. See fathers

INDEX

patientiaJ 109-11,122 paniapourra~

70-75,82,195,203,209

patriarchs, Biblical, 181, 182. See also Abraham; Esau; Isaac; Jacob patristic. See fathers of the Church Paul of Thebes, 277-78 Paul (Apostle), 164, 166, 179, 181, 188, 208,221,223,224-25,228,231, 232,256-57,264,265,271,274-75 Paul's Letter to the Romans, 256-57, 262 Paula, 200-1, 235, 237, 246, 291 Paulinusof11ilan, 128,135, 148-49 Paulinus of Nola, 108, 114, 128, 139, 155,193-94,197,198,203,237, 238,251,291 Paulinus ofPelia, 40, 56,83,87, 166 Paulus Gurist), 23, 32, 84, 92, 93, 99 pederasty, 87, 89, 90-91, 93-95, 99-100, 168-69,176,200 Pelagia, 232, 262 Pelagius, 190-91, 193 perj'eaissimiJ 52 performativity of gender, 14 Perpetua of Carthage, 196-97,227-28, 291 persecutions. See martyrs and martyrdom Pescennius Niger (emperor; ruled 193194),38-39,80 Peter (Apostle), 146-47, 149, 181, 188 Peter Chrysologus, 120, 122, 152,271 Philaster of Brescia, 185 Phileas ofThmuis, 197 Philip, 259,270 philosophers and philosophy, 20, 78-79, 117, 168, 179, 184, 217,232, 287. Su also Neo-Platonism; Plato; Socrates; Stoicism physiognomists and physiognomy, 25, 30, 49,95 Plato, 176,219 Plautianus, 34 Plautilla, 63 politics and political authority, 39,41-42, 49-61,63-69,128-29,130-35,141, 151-60,278-79,284 Pontius, 198 popes and papal authority, 146-47 population decline, 71-72, 73, 74, 75 porneia and pornoiJ 165 Porphyria, 262 Possidius, 148

435

praepositus sam cubiculiJ 64-65. See also bureaucracy, imperial praetor, 51, 52 prefects, 51, 52, 64-65, 96,126,128,160 presbyter; 150, 156, 157,284 pride. See humility priest. See presbyter; sacerdos andsacerdotium Priscillian of Avila, 184, 185, 289 prisoners of war, 44 Proba,291-92 procreation, 79,189-90 prophetesses, 150, 229 prostitutes and prostitution, 75, 85-86, 129,149,162,163,165-66,170, 174-75,191,202,224,227,242, 243, 262. See also sacred prostitution Protasius and Gervasius, 135, 198 Prudentius, 116-17, 121, 131, 143, 175, 177,208,214-17,238,242,249-50, 263 public life: men in, 1, 37, 50-55, 78, 12829,132; women in, 50,97,150,212, 224,228,245 pudicitiaJ 81, 83, 85,92-93,95-96, 106, 174,181,185,191,193,202,293 Pulcheria, 135 purple, 51, 59,60, 157,262 Pythagoras and Pythagoreans, 79, 287 qJdeshtmJ 255-56, 257, 297 rape, 83-84, 286 Ravenna, 53 Rebecca, 196 remarriage, 71, 74, 163, 164, 191-93, 201-2,266 reverse dowry, 72-73 Roman citizenship, extension of, 72 Romanus, 117, 208, 249-50 Rome, 45, 53, 180,202,245,260,262, 263; sack of, 105, 106-7, 122, 124, 286 Ruether, Rosemary Radford, 292 Rufmus (politician), 60, 285 Rufmus (writer), 9,114,136,138,199, 201,231,232-33,237,261

sacerdos andsacerdotiumJ 150-51, 156. See also bishops and episcopal office; clergy and clerical office

436

INDEX

sacramentum, 114-15, 118,188,189, 193. See also baptism sacred prostitution, 250-54, 255-57 sailors, 29 Salisbury, Joyce, 293 Sallust,207 Salmacis, 24 Salvian of Marseilles, 106, 128, 152, 164, 165,166-67,212-13,269 Salzman, Michele, 294 Samson, 274 Sardanapalus, 59,218 Satyrus,172 seduction, 84, 163 self-castration. See castration self-control, 27, 79, 83 Semiramis, 62 semivir, 25,169,249 Senate, 9, 53, 89 Senator, 155 senatus consultaJ 53 Seneca, 253 Serenus,271-72 Sergius and Bacchus (martyrs), 198,24041,243 Severus Alexander (emperor; ruled 222-235),36,39,42,46,47,58,6364,85-86,135 sex and gender, defInitions of, 5 sexual behavior: of eunuchs, 34-35, 96-102,250-54, 256-58; of men, 79-96,162-67,171,190-91,199201; ofvvomen, 81-82,97-99, 16266, 185, 190-91, 200-1,257. Seeako anal sex; oral sex; sexual desire; sexual passivity; sexual renunciation; sexual transgression sexual desire, 34, 35, 85, 96, 110, 121, 171-75,179,183,184,190; as theological metaphor, 138-39, 190,202, 239,267,280-81 sexual immorality. See sexual transgression sexual passivity, 28-29, 41,88-92,167, 199,242. See ako sexual transgression sexual renunciation, 78, 170-78, 190-91, 224,230-31, 265-72, 279, 288. See also virgins and virginity sexual transgression, 28,87-96,161-70, 183,185-86,199-201,203,213, 219,242. See ako sexual behavior sexuality. See sexual behavior; sexual desire;

sexual passivity; sexual renunciation; sexual transgression Sidonius Apollinaris, 7,27,34,48,49,55, 106,128,155,157-59 silk, 51, 58-59, 163,216. See ako clothing Siricius of Rome, 181 slaves and slavery, 3, 8,40,46,54,56,65, 71,83,84-85,87,96-100,102,126, 140,152,155,185,188,191,195, 202,204,221,224,263,274,277, 278,279 social construction of gender, 14 Socrates, 117, 168,287 Sodom, legend of, 166 soldiers: image of, 37-39,41,45-46,57, 109,113,171,178,181,231,243, 275-77,284; realities and lives of, 41,42-44,45,48-49,67-68, 181,286. See also soldiers of Christ soldiers of Christ, 105-24,141,142,144, 158,174-75,184,198-99,219,230, 239,240,250,265,269,276,281,282 Song ofSongs, 137-38, 141, 149, 171,225 sons: of decurions, 53-54; of designated praetors, 52; spiritual, 203. See also children Sophia. See Barbelo and Sophia, myth of sophrosyne. See self-control spectabilesJ 52 spectacles, 45-47, 176-77,210-13,227, 249,285. See also actors and actresses; charioteers; gladiators sports. See spectacles Sporus,100-1 spouse of Christ. See bride of Christ Stark, Rodney, 12-13 Stilicho, 43, 49, 65, 131 Stoicism, 20, 27-28, 78, 80, 82, 109, 179, 284 stuprum. See sexual transgression subintroductiJ 200-1 submission, 125, 130, 134-35, 139-42, 145,278 Sulpicius Severus, 112, 122, 148, 155, 276-77 syneisaktoi. See subintroducti Tacitus (emperor; ruled 275-276), 59 Taifali, 90-91 Tammuz, 246, 255,256

437

INDEX

Tannit. See Caelestis taurobolium~ 45, 114 taxes, 53, 55, 86 temple prostitution. See sacred prostitution TedlUlian,7,10,35,87,97, 107, 109-15, 118,121,122,141,151,164,168, 170,173,175,177,182-83,185, 186,191-92,211,213,217-19,227, 228,230,233,235,249,254, 265-67,288,291 theater. See spectacles Thecla,188,222,228,237,242 Theodoric II, 49 Theodosian Code~ 7, 9, 101 Theodosius I (emperor; ruled 379-395), 9,43,47,60-61,130,131,133 Theodosius II (emperor; ruled 408-450), 7,76,86,135 Theonas, 279-80 Thessalonica, massacre at, 130 Thiessen, Gerd, 13 Titus (emperor; ruled 79-81),100-1 to~abhah~

255-56

Trajan (emperor; ruled 97-117), 93 transvestism, 14, 57-60,211-13,218, 222-23,227,231-32,240-43,248, 252,255,261-262,293-94.Seeauo

clothing Trier, 53,198-99 tutela perpetua mulierum~ 71; disappear-

ance of, 73 Ulpian, 23, 32, 82, 85, 92, 162, 258 univira~ 81, 192,202,293 upper classes. See aristocracy Ursicinus, 67-68 usurpers, 39, 50 Valens (emperor; ruled 364-378),52 Valentinian I (emperor; ruled 364-375),52 Valentinian II (emperor; ruled 383-392), 130,132,135,154,170-72,232,246 Valentinian III (emperor; ruled 425-455), 43,76,185 Valentinus, 226 Valerian ofCimelium, 126, 152, 199,269 Valesians, 261, 272 Vegetius, 38,41,44 veiling of women. See women, veiling of Venus, 101,213,246,251. See also Aphrodite

vestal virgins, 151,253 Victricius ofRouen, 112 Vincent ofUrins (writer), 204 Vrncent (martyr) 116, 177 virago~

30

VIrgil, 286, 291 virgins and virginity, 80, 81, 84, 106, 110, 148,179-80,182,186,214-15,224, 230-31,236-38,241-42,246,268, 274,285,293. See also sexual renunciation virtus~ 19-20,26,31,69,96,109, 113, 118,121,140,171,172,207-9,219, 230-31,243,292,296 Visigoths. See Goths vita angelica. See angels and vita angelica vita militaris. See soldiers, image of war, 38-40,43-44,46,48,66-68,131, 171,285-86; Christian views on, 1079,122, 124,281,292,297.Seeauo soldiers wealth, 38, 52, 55, 110, 126-27, 150, 156,163,237,277-78,288,289 widows and widowhood, 71, 74, 81,110, 163,164,201-2,231,237,268,285, 293 Williams, Craig, 14 Wittig, 11onique, 2 wives. See marriage women: asceticism of, 235-38, 292, 293; exclusion of, from ecclesiastical offices, 149-50,228,296; as heretics, 14849; in the image of God, 216, 225, 228,233-35,269; as imperial regents, 135,137; as martyrs, 114; social and legal status of, 30-31, 52, 71-74; veiling of, 224-25, 228, 236-38; views of nature of, 20-21, 29,30-31, 127, 134-35,174,209,215-17,220,222, 230-31; and women's history, 1,2,11, 292-94. See also conversion, of women; misogyny; public life, women in; sexual behavior, of women; virgins and virginity Yarbrough,Aulne, 293 Zenobia, 47 Zeus, 24, 240. See also Jupiter