Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada

74 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS ings. usually reflecting the interests of the elite class. centred on Rome. whereas the much longer tenth chapter casts its net much wider. taking in not only literature-both Latin and Greek such as (once more) the Satyricon. Apuleius' Metamorphoses, Plutarch's Amatorius, and the Greek romances-but also epigraphic texts and iconic representations that reflect the mentalities of a broader cross-section of the Empire. Male same-sex desire and love receive ample and excellent discussion. Skinner argues that Plutarch and the Greek romances can be viewed as moving towards "some radical rethinking of established gender roles" (273)-surely, once more, a most suitable topic for classroom discussion. At the conclusion of chapter 10. she does well to impress upon her readers that inclusion of the "culture-specific concerns" (282) of the Jewish and other ethnic groups would have made this chapter too unwieldy : in any case, "an enormous Kinsey II project" (282), so to speak, in an ancient context. on sexual attitudes across the Roman Empire would be simply impossible methodologically. In her appropriately titled" Afterword: The Use of Antiquity." concluding what I judge to be a masterly synthesis of existing scholarship and of her own insights into an immensely complex subject, Skinner returns to the present-day concerns she raised in her "Introduction" and in many of the following chapters. The Christian church left its mark on Western civilization with a perhaps unique erotophobic obsession . the powerful remnants of which continue to motivate today's sexual conservatives in the pursuit of their social agenda. This legacy cannot help but lend a contemporary urgency also to our study of sexuality in ancient Greek and Roman culture. BEERT VERSTRAETE DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS ACADIA UNIVERSITY WOLFVILLE, NS BoP rXo THOMAS K. HUBBARD. Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents. Berkeley/Los Angeles /London: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 558. Among gay, lesbian. bosexuaL and transgendered tLGBT] professional classicists who have followed the uninspiring record of the American Philological Association [APA] in the realm of lesbian. gay, bisexuaL and transgendered rights. Thomas Hubbard. the author of this book, is well known. In the mid 1990S. when LGBT activists within the APA sug- BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 75 gested that it not hold its meetings in states where sodomy laws effectively criminalized gays, lesbians, and other sexually inventive sorts. Hubbard wrote a letter to the APA Newsletter denouncing the suggestion . Several years later, while I was serving on the APA's Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups, I proposed that the APA, like the American Anthropological Association, require or at least encourage hiring institutions that use its Placement Service to indicate whether they offer domestic partner benefits to partners of their gay and lesbian employees. This was an effort to put pressure on colleges and universities to grant such benefits. Hubbard. in his capacity as Chair of the Placement committee, immediately began to fire off e-mails to APA officials in opposition to the move. This conservative approach to queer issues is reflected in Hubbard's presentation of the evidence on ancient Greek and Roman homosexuality. In the 19805 and 1990S, the budding discipline of queer studies questioned the universality of many categories that had been used in the modern world to analyze erotic behavior. Many scholars proclaimed the historical contingency of concepts like homosexuality and heterosexuality and argued that they were inapplicable to Classical Mediterranean cultures. By entitling his book Homosexuality in Greece and Rome. Hubbard has once again, as he long has, declared himself to be among the conservatives who reject this (once) new wave of scholarship . Hubbard briefly deals with the theories he rejects in his introduction, in which he appears to miss the point. The issue is not as much, as he seems to think, whether people are born with proclivities to certain sexual activities as it is whether ancient categories of thought match our own. They don't. Ancient languages have no word that corresponds with our "homosexuality." They couldn't. The whole concept is a product of certain technologies. disciplines, and socio-economic structures that did not exist in antiquity. It is telling...