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Classical Literature
Lucian
In Lucian's satiric works, homosexuality is treated as one of a related series of personal traits that characterize villainy, pretension, and ignorance, while the Erôtes of pseudo-Lucian advocates male-male love as honorable and as a sign of social progress.
Pastoral
Both the elegiac and the romantic pastoral have been associated with homoerotic desire from their beginnings in classical literature to their echoes in contemporary literatures.
Petronius
Petronius' Satyricon is both the best evidence for homosexual behavior at the height of the Roman Empire and one of the most bumptious homoerotic picaresque narratives ever written.
Plato
Among Greek writers on homosexual themes, Plato is preeminent not only as a major philosopher but also as the greatest master of Greek prose.
Plutarch
No ancient is more instructive about pederasty than the Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch.
Poetry: Gay Male
The gay tradition in literature from ancient times to the present is primarily a tradition not of prose but of verse.
Poetry: Lesbian
Since the 1960s, the general trend in lesbian poetry has been collective and political rather than purely aesthetic.
Romantic Friendship: Male
Critics use the term male romantic friendship to describe strong attachments between men in works ranging from ancient epics and medieval romances to Renaissance plays, Gothic novels, westerns, and war movies.
Roman Literature
Roman writers on homosexual or bisexual themes generally followed Greek models; but unlike the Greeks, Romans condoned sex with slaves.
Sappho
Admired through the ages as one of the greatest lyric poets, the ancient Greek writer Sappho is today esteemed by lesbians around the world as the archetypal lesbian and their symbolic mother.
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