#it's complicated to call it 'homophobia' because of the ancient roman ideas about sexuality???

[amorremanet]

[A] scratchy voice cut in with an accent that wanted to badly to be Australian, but mostly sounded like a pirate from an animated kids’ movie:

“Ooooh, crikey. Here we find a specimen of the mighty Sebastianus flagrándus, an’ he looks like a biggun, too. Now, this breed is known for both their mutually beneficial relationships with lesser beasts, like that little Canis familiaris right there and for their ability to fall asleep in strange places. Oy, he may not look like much righ’ now, kids—”

“But he’s six-foot-three, can floor a Hell’s Angel one-on-one, and might not be asleep?”

Seb rolled his eyes before lifting his head and arching an eyebrow across the table at Todd Burroughs. Or, more accurately, at Todd and the video camera he’d mounted on a small tripod in front of him. About halfway between them sat a black plastic box that Seb recognized as the portable digital audio recorder he’d gotten Todd for his birthday, back in January. Fussing with something or other on the camera, Todd said nothing and didn’t look up from the flip-out screen.…

Under most circumstances, Todd would’ve distracted Seb from how heavy his shoulders felt and the dry, sticky feeling on the roof of his mouth. Tonight, however, he slouched over, propped himself up on his elbows, and couldn’t find the wherewithal to smile… Not if Todd was going to play around with his camera instead of talking. Wrinkling his nose, Seb waited in vain for Todd to acknowledge him.

“You should’ve said, ‘flagrāns,’ by the way. If you were trying to call me, ‘flaming’?” Seb gave Todd a moment of silence, then added, “You used the gerundive of flagrō, flagrā́re. Your scientific name for me means, like, ‘Sebastian, who must be incinerated.’ You want the present active participle.”

Todd nodded, but said nothing. Pressing button after button, he frowned, but still said nothing. At the very least, he could’ve told Seb not to correct his grammar in Latin, and yet? He said nothing.

Seb sighed. “Strictly speaking, though, flagrā́re is for when something is literally on fire,” he said, dropping his cheek into his hand. “But there’s no good Latin for what you’re saying, because of the Romans’ cultural ideas about sex and gender? Cinaedus is usually read, ‘he who bottoms,’ but for every time Ganymede gets called, ‘Jupiter’s cinaedus,’ you’ve got five references to womanizing cinaedi. Pathicus always refers to guys who bottom, but can be complicated? Morbōsus technically means, ‘diseased,’ or, ‘pathological,’ but also referred to cinaedi who wanted to get fucked. Because you could be a cinaedus and want to top some other pretty boy into the klínen. You’d still be effeminate, but you wouldn’t get called, ‘sick.’ Galbinatus works for flamboyant effeminacy, but doesn’t have any sexuality-related connotations. Ēnervā́tum is good? It’s a perfect passive participle, so—”

“Hey, Pretty Boy?” Todd kept his eyes on the camera. “Can you sit up straight for me? Without any, ‘How dare you, I can’t do anything straight.’ I just need to get this shot right.”

in which my losers are bad at communicating, and i am bad at keeping my own pet interests out of things

[classicslesbianopinions]

My other issue with TSOA: it 100% projects modern gay experiences/homophobia into a context where those things didn’t exist at all. Why is Thetis homophobic? Why does Patroclus spend zero time examining the fact that he’s apparently what we would call gay in a society where he’d be expected to be something closer to what we’d call bi? Like it’s super possible to do interesting explorations of sexuality in Ancient Greece and Miller just doesn’t.

yeah that’s a fair point. i would say that like... m/m relationships in ancient greece are a whole can of worms and the relationship between achilles and patroclus actually wouldn’t have been accepted in greek society as far as i’m aware, m/m relationships were usually between a man and a teenage-ish boy and a relationship between two grown men meant that one of them had “submitted” to the other or whatever. like they were so misogynist it turned back into homophobia and also gross age gaps. don’t quote me on any of this though because i’m kind of shaky on it. and it’s also totally possible that thetis just didn’t think patroclus was a worthy match for achilles regardless. and i have theories about how homeric culture was different from like... athenian culture, for example, and how ancient greece evolved a lot between homer’s time and the time that we know more about and can actually study. i’ve been writing about that in context of womanhood and mourning and how those standards changed but i think it could apply here. tl;dr gender was different in ancient greece but it was still complicated and the source of a lot of discrimination. and of course it planted the seeds for roman and then colonial ideas of gender that have pervaded most of the world by now

so that was a whole ramble but at the end of the day miller is a straight woman so she’s not about to come up with anything good or revolutionary in her book about gay people...