Author Description

This accessible volume guides students of the ancient and Classical world in an exploration of the lives of ancient men and women as gendered, sexual beings. The book begins with Homer and archaic Greece, and then continues with a survey Athens in the Classical era, the Roman republic, and the early Roman empire, and concludes with discussion of the Christian fourth-century Roman empire. A continual focus is what we can know of the lives of men and women in each of the different historic periods. Also always in view is the tension between the assertion that sexuality is socially constructed and the fact that the repertoire of sexual activities in the ancient world is substantially the same as it is now. While not adopting an essentialist perspective - ancient lives were different from those of the post-modern West - the author emphasizes the commonalities between then and now. Drawing throughout on contemporary sources, the book guides students through a series of discussions to illuminate sex and gender from the time of Homer to late antiquity.