In Suetonius and in the satire of Martial and Juvenal, we find a clear contrast between Greek and Latin traditions at the beginning of the second century A.D. Nevertheless, other evidence shows that the Hellenic renaissance that marked the age of the Antonines also influenced Latin literature on love.

We have noted the poem Statius wrote to his friend to console him for the death of a loved slave boy in which the heroic Greek ideal is pervasive.

Sponsor Message.

This confluence of the two cultures is also notable in a speech of Apuleius. The author of the The Golden Ass had been arraigned on a charge of sorcery in a Roman court in North Africa about 150; his accuser made use of Apuleius' love poems to boys to argue against his claim that he was a serious philosopher.

To defend himself, Apuleius cites Greek poets like Anacreon and Alcman, and to demonstrate that serious men might also write homoerotic lyrics, quotes verse by Solon and Plato. But he adds to this tradition Latin poems by Valerius Aeditus and Quintus Catulus--though not, surprisingly, the Juventius poems of the more famous Gaius Catullus, and even poems by the emperor Hadrian, who had died a few years previously.

Since Apuleius' use of pseudonyms in his poems had been represented as a sinister detail, Apuleius is at pains to show that this was accepted as proper, and that those poets (like the early satirist Lucilius) who had used real names had been strongly criticized.

But the most striking touch in his oration is his appeal in the peroration to the Platonic ideal of love as set forth in Pausanias' speech in the Symposium. This is very far from Cicero's contemptuous ridicule of such ideas two centuries earlier.

The Second Sophistic

This confluence of the two cultures manifests itself also in the literary movement known as the Second Sophistic, which came to fruition near the end of the second century. It included rhetoricians like Maximus of Tyre, who delivered speeches on Socratic love in Rome in the reign of Commodus (ca 190), and Philostratus, another Greek rhetorician at the court of the Severan empress Julia Domna.

Philostratus' works include a collection of Love Letters by imaginary characters; almost half of his sixty letters are addressed to boys.

His Latin contemporary Aelian, writing in Greek for a Roman audience, included a significant number of anecdotes about Greek love relations from Sparta, Thebes, Athens, and Macedonia in his popular Historical Miscellanies.

Hadrian and Antinous

Nothing in the second century, however, so well symbolized the convergence of Greek and Latin traditions as the love of the emperor Hadrian for the Bithynian boy Antinous. Perhaps the most brilliant of all the emperors, Hadrian was an ardent student of Greek literature, religion, and history.

He commemorated Epaminondas and the Sacred Band by raising a monument with a laudatory poem on the battlefield of Leuctra where the Theban hero had died and been buried with his lover. Hadrian had lived in Athens as its archon under his predecessor Trajan, and added to the city a new suburb, a magnificent temple of Jupiter, a library, and a gymnasium.

At Thespiae in Boeotia, site of a famous temple of Eros, Hadrian inscribed a poem to the God of Love and the Uranian Aphrodite. Apuleius, as we have seen, claimed to have read Hadrian's own love poems to boys, which have, unfortunately, been lost.

However, fragments of a poem by the Alexandrian poet Pancrates on a dramatic episode in the life of Hadrian have survived; they tell how the emperor saved the life of Antinous in a lion hunt in Libya. When Antinous, still in his early youth, drowned in the Nile, Hadrian mourned his death extravagantly, built a majestic new city on the site in his honor, had him deified as the founder of a new mystery religion, and filled the empire with statues of the beautiful youth, some of which rank among the greatest masterpieces of the Hellenistic period.

In modern literature, the love affair of the emperor and his favorite is acutely and sympathetically analyzed in Marguerite Yourcenar's historical novel, Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), which purports to reconstruct Hadrian's lost autobiography. It was this work, equally impressive for its literary quality and for its historical erudition, that led to Yourcenar's election to the French Academy as its first woman member.

The Greco-Roman myths concerning same-sex love have been of crucial importance to the Western gay and lesbian literary heritage, both as texts and as icons.

In ancient Rome, the galli were castrated priests of Cybele, the Asian Mother Goddess, and of the Syrian goddess Atagartis; they were widely riducled for their effeminacy, cross-dressing, and sexual passivity.

Ancient Greece holds a unique place in the heritage of homosexual literature as it was a society that openly celebrated same-sex love in its poetry and prose.

Pederasty is the erotic relationship between an adult male and a boy, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection.

Ancient Rome's attitude toward same-sex sexual activity was remarkably various, with role, age, and status as important as gender in the regulation of sexual relations.

Since antiquity Ganymede, the beautiful Phrygian youth abducted by Jupiter, has served as an artistic expression for homosexuality.

Although the myth of Narcissus was originally intended as a moral fable against excessive pride, Narcissus has functioned in the arts as a symbol of same-sex passion, as well as of masturbation and effeminacy.

Although most artists since the Hellenistic age ignore the homosexual aspect of Orpheus, depicting him instead as the classical pattern of the poet-musician, notable exceptions are Colard Mansion and Albrecht Dürer.

The bisexual Lord Byron treated many of his homosexual love affairs in his poetry, encoding them by the use of classical references or by purporting that they were affairs with women.

The Roman poet Catullus incorporated homoerotic themes in his verse, both reflecting the passionate character of same-sex friendships and describing several of his own homosexual adventures.

One of the greatest graphic artists in history, Dürer elevated printmaking to the level of painting through his unprecedented use of line and value; his works frequently express sexual themes and homoeroticism.

The love of the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian for the beautiful youth Antinous was exceptional not because the lovers were male, but because of its intensity.

In his highly accomplished and influential poetry, Horace reflects the easy bisexuality of the Roman upper class in the first century B. C.

The works of satirist Juvenal are crucial for exploring attitudes toward (homo)sexuality in ancient Rome.

Among Greek writers on homosexual themes, Plato is preeminent not only as a major philosopher but also as the greatest master of Greek prose.

No ancient is more instructive about pederasty than the Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch.

The fifteenth-century Italian scholar and poet Poliziano wrote many homoerotic Greek and Latin epigrams, published when he was seventeen.

The ancient Greek poet Theocritus is the first great voice in the homoerotic pastoral tradition in Western literature.

Virgil wrote approvingly of male love in many works, and his second eclogue became the most famous poem on that subject in Latin literature.

The prize-winning novelist Marguerite Yourcenar reflected her own homosexuality in her works almost exclusively through male characters, most notably in Memoirs of Hadrian.