SAUL M. OLYAN: Good afternoon.
On behalf of the Program
in Judaic Studies
and with thanks to the Elga
Stulman Fund in Judaic Studies,
it's my very great
pleasure to introduce
Bernadette J Brooten, the Robert
and Myra Kraft and Jacob Hiatt
professor of Christian studies,
professor of women's studies,
professor of classics
emerita, and the director
of the Feminist Sexual Ethics
Project at Brandeis University.
Professor Brooten is the author
of a number of important books
and many articles and essays
in English and German.
Among her most celebrated
and influential works
are her monographs--
Women Leaders in the Ancient
Synagogue Inscriptional
Evidence and Background Issues,
published by Brown Judaic
Studies in 1982, and
Love Between Women Early
Christian Responses to
Female Homoeroticism,
published by the University
of Chicago Press in 1996.
The former work has
had a momentous impact
on how we scholars think
about gender and leadership
in ancient Judaism and is
still widely cited, even
after almost 40 years in print.
The latter work won
a number of awards
and quickly
established Bernadette
as the world's leading authority
on female homoeroticism
in the ancient world.
Bernadette is the
recipient of a number
of prestigious fellowships,
including a MacArthur, an NEH,
and a Fulbright, as well as
several Ford Foundation grants.
She has also received
an honorary doctorate
from the University of
Bern in Switzerland.
The title of her lecture
today is Did Women
Marry Other Women
in the Roman World
Jewish and Christian Sources.
Please join me in welcoming
Bernadette Brooten to Brown.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Has
the mic been turned on?
Yes.
OK.
So I am very happy to be here.
Thank you for the invitation.
And I thank the foundation
that provided the funding
for this and for-- to you, Saul,
for your lovely introduction.
And I am happy to announce
that the book Women
Leaders in the Ancient
Synagogue has been selected
as one of the Brown
Judaic Studies volumes
that will be digitized
and open to everybody.
And I've written a new
introduction to it,
bringing it up to date.
So I'm-- so it's all at Brown.
It's all Brown.
I'm always corresponding
with Brown.
Either it's about
the book or it's
about the lecture in
one way or another.
So I'm eager to speak with
you today about this topic.
Let's see here.
Where is the clicker?
Were there women who
married other women
in the Roman Empire?
Could such marriages have
been in Egyptian practice
around the second to
the fourth centuries?
Doesn't that seem
highly unlikely?
Didn't everyone from
the Roman government
to the ancient rabbis place
such a strong emphasis
on procreation that they
could never have recognized
such marriages under law?
For myself, I believed
marriage between women
to be impossible when years
ago I first encountered
ancient texts in Greek and
Hebrew that spoke of it.
I thought these texts were
polemical with no basis
in reality.
I thought they were
meant to ridicule
other people for
behaving outrageously
and in a depraved fashion.
Today I ask, do the ancient
texts on marriage between women
fall into the category of
historical evidence for women's
lives or instead of men's
thinking and fantasizing
about women?
I will lay out for you four
plausible interpretive options.
First, they provide evidence
for informal long term
relationships--
that is marriages--
albeit not legally recognized,
or they point to marriages
in which one of the partners
has ambiguous genitalia,
or they provide a very early
precedent for the Sudanese,
Kenyan, Cameroonian,
and Nigerian--
and Tanzanian, actually, also--
economic social institution
of woman woman
marriage, which does not
imply a sexual
relationship, or these texts
could envision an alternative
dystopian universe,
or be pure polemics.
Those of us who work to paint
a historical picture of life
in the ancient world are
by necessity detectives.
This applies even more
to those of us working
in women's history, which
for the ancient Mediterranean
I call prehistory, owing to
the dearth of the sources.
I have to live with the
uncertainty of my hypotheses,
for I can hardly prove anything.
But the joy of detective work on
very ancient and obscure lives
outweighs my desire
to prove something.
Before proceeding
to the sources,
let me describe marriage
in the early Roman
Empire, which was in short a
complete hodgepodge of customs
and laws.
Matrimony-- Latin matrimonium--
was reserved for
Roman citizens, which
the Roman state regulated.
Enslaved persons were
not allowed to marry,
but could enter into an
informal union called,
in Latin, contubernium.
People conquered by the Romans
had many forms of marriage,
including within each culture,
which they did not necessarily
register with any official.
You didn't have to go to a
notary public or anything
to register a marriage,
but you could.
Marriage between women and men
was not a uniform institution
regulated by or even required
to be registered with the state.
So let us look now
at the sources.
Luxury confounds nature.
Men passively play the
role of women and women
behave like men in that
women, contrary to nature,
are given in marriage
and marry other women--
in Greek, gamomenai te
kai gamousai gynaikes.
Thus writes Christian
theologian Clement
of Alexandria in
the second century.
Clement focuses here on the
proper gender roles of men
and of women.
In the context-- men are
supposed to behave differently
from each other.
Men and women are supposed
to behave differently
from each other.
Men becoming passive
during sex and women
imitating men by playing
the role of a groom
or of a wife in a woman woman
marriage is, in his view,
unnatural.
Unnatural is the
single most common word
used to qualify sexual love
between women in the Roman
world, including by the
apostle Paul in his letter
to the Romans 124 to 27.
Notice that the verb to marry--
so this is the verb
to marry, and it
occurs in two different forms.
So this is the passive form,
and this is the active form.
gamomenai is the passive,
gamousai is the active.
So we don't-- when
we think of marriage,
we don't think of one being
active and the other being
passive.
They both marry each other.
But they thought that
a man married a woman,
and a woman was married--
passively married.
So here, he is saying the
women play both roles--
that is, in the sense
the role of the groom
and the role of the wife.
So the natural state
of things is for men--
a man to marry and for the
woman to be given in marriage,
or to be passively married.
Inclement for a woman to marry
in the active is natural,
and for a woman passively
married to a woman
is equally unnatural.
In both cases, a woman would
unnaturally assume agency.
So now to the four options.
I'll speak first about
that first option
of informal relationships
that they called marriage.
In my book Love Between Women
Early Christian Responses
to Female Homoeroticism,
I suggested
on the basis of Clement
and several other sources
from the early Roman Empire
and of one contemporaneous
rabbinic source that
some women conceptualize
their relationship with
another woman as a marriage.
As expected, this has
drawn some positive
and some critical responses.
That would be what
you would expect
if you say something like that.
Classicist Alan Cameron
and Roger Bagnall
each wrote an article
disputing my conclusions.
As I go through these
ancient sources with you,
I will respond to
their criticisms
and review new
ancient evidence that
has come to light since
the publication of Love
Between Women.
Classicist Alan Cameron
questioned my interpretation
of Clement--
this passage in front of you--
arguing that the
gam-- the G-A-M root--
in the Greek text that I
cite can mean something other
than marriage,
namely to have sex,
especially of the licentious
or shameful variety.
In response, while Cameron
plausibly showed that
[NON-ENGLISH] et cetera can mean
simply sex and not marriage,
he did not prove that it cannot
mean marriage in the texts that
I discussed.
He concedes that [NON-ENGLISH]
in Clement can mean to marry,
but he cites other examples
in which it can simply means
to have sex.
His argument for it meaning
something other than sex
here is, and I quote
him, "why repeat the verb
in both passive and active?
His point must be that
some women play the husband
and some the wife
in these unions."
close quote.
I agree with Cameron that
the active and passive forms
of the verb refer
to different roles,
but active and passive are
the foundational categories
for both sex and marriage in
the ancient Mediterranean.
Clement surely knew that
emperor Nero, 37 to 68,
had publicly celebrated
marriages to other males.
In one, Nero was the groom,
yet while in at least
one other ceremony, he was
the bride, complete with veil.
And Clement may well have heard
of other aristocratic men who
celebrated marriages
to other males.
In ancient astrology-- you
didn't think I was going
to talk about astrology right
after that, but here it is--
many aspects of one's
life are determined
by the configuration of
the planets under which one
is conceived or born.
Erotic inclination
is one such aspect.
Ancient astrology
does not represent
an arcane field, but rather
broader cultural views--
views that Christians and
Jews may well have shared.
In the same city as Clement,
Alexandria in Egypt,
and during the same century--
the second century CE--
astronomer and astrologer,
Ptolemy of Alexandria,
discusses women who by virtue of
the constellations under which
they are conceived or born are
oriented toward other women.
I quote now--
"The women lust for
unnatural sexual relations,
cast inviting glances of the
eye, and are called tribades--"
now, I have not
translated that word.
The singular would be tribas--
T-R-I-B-A-S, as you
see on the screen--
"for they play the
active role with women
and perform male functions.
If the planet Venus enters a
masculine sign of the zodiac,
they do this in secret.
But if Mars does as
well, they live openly."
And I quote again--
"Sometimes they
refer to the women
with whom they are on such terms
as though they were actually
their legal wives--" as
though they were actually
their legal wives.
It doesn't say they
are their legal wives--
as though they were
actually their legal wives.
Nomimai hosper gynaikes.
Tribades here play
the active role.
Cameron's critique is
"If these marriages could
be compared to marriages, they
were obviously not marriages."
Close quote.
But as Cameron is not
claiming that legal wives does
mean legal wives, but rather
that they were not actually
legal wives.
I am not arguing that they
were legal wives, either,
but rather that some women
may have conceptualized
their relationships that way.
An early fifth century
astrological work
by Hephaestion of Thebes
replicates the reference
to lawful wives, which
shows that it continued
to be known and circulated.
Clement of Alexandria
knew, or likely knew,
of Ptolemy, because they were
both leading intellectuals
in Alexandria in
the second century.
And Clement went to the
library a great deal
and cites numerous books
in his own writings.
He actually cites
1,000 different works,
so he really was
at that library.
We do not know if the
early rabbis knew Ptolemy
of Alexandria or
Hephaestion of Thebes,
but we do know that
they knew astrology,
and they may have known
of these traditions.
Let me now explain what
the Greek tribas can mean.
Number one, a woman who
has sex with a woman,
or number two, a woman who
penetrates women, boys,
and girls, perhaps with the
physical means to do so--
for example, with
ambiguous genitalia--
or number three, a woman
who prefers female partners
to male ones.
I will come back
to these meanings.
My proposal that
some women may have
been in long term relationships
with other women--
relationships that they
viewed as marriages--
elicited, as I mentioned, both
agreement and disagreement.
So classicist Alan Cameron,
who I have just mentioned,
questions my
interpretation and writes,
"though my case for
marriage between women--"
and I quote him--
"rests essentially
on four Greek texts."
close quote.
That is Clement of Alexandria,
Ptolemy of Alexandria,
and two that I will
discuss shortly.
Cameron, however, simply
ignores my discussion
of an ancient rabbinic
text known as the Sifra.
And that is significant,
because the Hebrew verb
nasa unambiguously means to
marry and not to have sex.
The Sifra is commenting
on Leviticus 18:3,
the same chapter that prohibits
anal intercourse between males.
So what does Leviticus
18:3 mean, asks the Sifra.
Which laws shouldn't one
follow, the Sifra comments,
or "you shall not do as they
do in the land of Egypt."
So that's Leviticus 18:3.
"You shall not do as they
do in the land of Egypt,
where you lived, or of the
land of Canaan to which I'm
taking you.
You shall not walk
in their statutes."
So what does this mean?
So the Sifra says--
the Sifra on this path
to the ancient rabbinic
commentary on this passage
says, "or you shall not do as
they do in the land of Egypt
and you shall not do as they
do in the land of Canaan."
Quotation of Leviticus 18:3.
One could interpret
it as meaning
that they may not build
buildings or plant
plants like them.
So what shall not do--
like you shall not do what?
Not build Egyptian style
buildings or Egyptian style
farms.
"Therefore scripture
teaches, 'You shall not walk
in their statutes,'
Leviticus 18:3.
"And what did they do?
A man married a man, and a
woman, a woman, and a woman
married a woman
and her daughter,
and a woman was
married to two men."
End quote.
In rabbinic law, the verb nasa--
which I've given you
here, a man married--
signifies change
in legal status.
This does not mean that the
rabbis recognize the marriages
that they list here.
In fact, the point
is that they do not.
Rather, they present
persons in such marriages
as brazen in their
flouting of the law.
Angela J Ricchetti, in the
most detailed and astute study
to date of this passage
and its afterlife,
argues that the
Sifra, and I quote,
"describes not a sexual
violation, but a subversion
of the ideal social order--
not a matter of
private identity, but
of public identity
and communal status.
Marriage is a legal and hence
at least semi public status."
Close quote.
Similarly, Michael Satlow, of
course of Brown University,
writes "one can
only--" and I quote,
"one can only
guess at the reason
for this inclusion
of a prohibition
of female homoerotic marriage.
It is possible--" Yeah.
So I filled in a prohibition
of female homoerotic marriage.
"It is possible
that the invocation
of the marital relationship
indicates a strong disapproval
or even fear of the rejection
of men and of the family ideal.
Alternatively, perhaps,
this is a response
to an actual social phenomenon.
In either case,
it should be noted
that this is a condemnation
not of homoerotic sex acts,
but of marriage,"
which he emphasizes.
"This passage does
not explicitly
comment upon female
homoerotic sex acts."
End quote.
Ricchetti, Satlow, [INAUDIBLE]
whom I will discuss shortly,
and I agree that
the Sifra prohibits
marriages between women
in an important text
that Cameron did not examine.
Now of course, like
other highly legal--
highly developed legal
systems, rabbinic law utilizes
hypotheticals.
And the forms of
marriage mentioned here
may be purely hypothetical.
Eusebios of Caesarea-- if--
circa 265 to 340--
echoes the rabbinic construe in
his interpretation of Leviticus
18:3, and thereby
makes it more likely
that the earlier authors
who used the G-A-M root
were also writing
about marriage.
Eusebios apparently
spoke with a rabbi.
Caesarea in Roman Palestine was
a rabbinic center at the time,
so rabbis and early church
writers lived in the same town.
And they probably both--
I mean, the church fathers
certainly spoke Greek,
and the rabbis also spoke
Greek who lived there.
Eusebios discusses
the depths of evil
to which humanity had fallen
under the sway of evil spirits,
including cannibalism
and incest.
For this reason, God the
word, that is Christ,
beamed forth rays
of divine light.
And I now begin quoting.
"For God, that is
the logos himself--
Eusebios sees Christ, the
logos, as the god legislating
in Leviticus--
says outright in legislating
for the Hebrew people
through Moses, you
shall not follow
the customs of the land
of Egypt where you lived,
and you shall not follow the
customs of the land of Canaan
where I am bringing you.
And you shall not
follow their laws.
My judgments you shall
observe, and my ordinances you
shall keep.
I am the Lord, your God."
So he's quoting
Leviticus 18:3 and 4.
Then he goes on, "having
prohibited every unlawful
marriage-- athemitios gamos--"
There's the G-A-M root again--
"and every shameful
practice-- aschemon praxis--
that is unions-- mixeis, in
the sense of sexual relations--
of women with women and
of males with males."
Like the Sifra, Eusebios
takes the customs
of the land of Egypt, the
customs of the land of Canaan,
and their laws to refer
to unlawful marriage.
Eusebios's phrase
unions-- that is,
sexual relations of women with
women and of males with males--
directly parallels the
Sifra's a man married
a man and a woman a woman.
Eusebios's unlawful--
Eusebios's, and I
quote, "unlawful marriage
and every shameful practice
and unions of women with
women and of males with males"
end quote, overlap
with one another.
That is, unlawful marriage is a
shameful practice that includes
same gender sexual relations.
Because the Sifra
was very likely
composed before Eusebios
lived in the fourth century,
I have to assume that he
or a Christian before him
adopted this interpretation from
the rabbis and not vice versa.
Now Iamblichos-- Iamblichos,
a second century Syrian
or possibly Babylonian
novelist, wrote
about the quotes "wild
and lawless amours,"
end quote, of Berenike,
daughter of the King of Egypt,
and Mesopotamia, with whom
she had a sexual affair.
Mesopotamia synegineto--
so that is to be together
in a sexual sense.
Cameron and I agree
up to this point.
We also agree that the phrase
for the marriage of Mesopotamia
is ambiguous-- gamous
Mesopotamias he Berenike
poieitai, which could
either mean Berenike married
Mesopotamia, or Berenike
held the wedding feast
for Mesopotamia.
So we don't know.
Second century satirist
Lucian of Samosata,
in his Dialogues of
the Courtesans Five,
describes how two wealthy
women, Megilla and Demonassa
hire a courtesan
named Liaena and try
to persuade her to participate
in a threesome, which prospect
Liaena does not even
understand and about which
she is then horribly ashamed.
Both of the women kissed
Liaena quotes, "like men."
Megilla, who defines
herself as Megillos,
loss underscores that he was
born just like any other--
just like other women, but that
he has the mind and desires
and everything else as a man--
of a man.
He says that he married--
gegameka, the same
gam root, G-A-M--
Demonassa a long time ago and
that Demonassa is my wife--
[NON-ENGLISH].
Cameron argues that
[NON-ENGLISH] here does not
mean to marry, but rather to
play the male sexual role.
And that Liaena can hardly
grasp how they have sex together
and would, and I quote,
"only be further confused
by talk of marriage
between women."
That is possible.
And we are certainly not
talking about legally recognized
marriage.
Cameron stresses that Megilla,
Megillos, and Demonassa in
quotes, "are," in
quotes, "evidently
not in an exclusive
monogamous relationship,"
close quotes, because they are
trying to get Liaena to party
with them.
Obviously, but perhaps Cameron's
understanding of marriage
is too limited for
this satirical work.
The dialogue is about male
voyeurism and features
anxiety about wealthy women
not under male control.
The question is which specter
did the verb [NON-ENGLISH]
and the term my wife
[NON-ENGLISH] raise--
that of women assuming
a male sexual role
or of women who tried to
make their relationship
ape that of respectable society.
Both seem possible.
Ultimately, however,
Cameron agrees with me
that some female couples
lived openly, with reference
to Ptolemy's statement that
some refer to their partners
as if they're lawful wives,
and that was a quote.
He writes, and I quote,
"There can be little doubt
that female couples who
openly lived together
were a not uncommon feature
of the observant Ptolemy's
everyday world." close quote.
Notice that Ptolemy,
and Clement,
and Hephaestion of
Thebes were from Egypt.
And it's the character
Berenike, who passionately loved
Mesopotamia in the
novel, was the daughter
of the King of Egypt.
Thus when the Sifra and Eusebios
define marriage between women
as epitomizing the
depravities of the Canaanites
and the Egyptians,
this charge may well
have had special resonance
and could indicate
that Jewish and Christian
leaders were responding
to a phenomenon that had
gained sufficient visibility
to trouble them-- that
is, there may have been
a geographical connection,
such as if one were to say,
you shall not do as they do
in the land of San Francisco,
you shall not do as they
do in the land of Berkeley.
We would get a connection.
An additional relevant texts
from Egypt has emerged.
In a private letter
dated around 250 to 275--
so the third century--
concerning business matters
common in Egyptian papyrus
letters, a woman named Thaesis
writes to her daughter Didime.
Thaesis states-- so the
mother, Thaesis, states,
and I quote here,
"You wrote to me--
your wife in your name--
and I sold the wine at
twice what I bought it for."
Close quote.
The editors right,
"He gyne and I quote--
"He gyne sou--
that is your wife--
seems an unavoidable reading.
Though the letter is
to a woman, the writer
must be thinking
of her husband."
Close quotes.
Papyrologist Roger
Bagnall argues
that your wife in
your name is an error.
Thaesis's letter to Didyme
is one of two letters to her
on the same sheet of papyrus.
A man named Petosirus
wrote the other letter.
He argues-- so Bagnall
argues that taking the word
gyne as designating a
woman who Didyme called
wife is unlikely
because number one,
in Roman Egypt private letters
are restrained with respect
to sex and affection, in part
because others might well
read the letter.
And two, this is
a business letter
with only a few
personal greetings.
Referring to behavior
widely considered
outside of respectability
is unlikely.
He poses-- that is, Bagnall
poses the question whether gyne
could mean something other
than wife, but rejects that.
Bagnall settles on the
following solution--
Thaesis or Petosirus,
whoever was actually
writing these two letters--
they were written by one person.
The handwriting is
the same person--
received a letter that Didyme
had written in her husband's
name, perhaps
paired with a letter
by herself, similar
to the two letters
addressed here to Didyme.
So hard to follow here.
And I quote from Bagnall,
"Responding, the writer
addresses the letter
to Didyme but drifts
into actually thinking
of her husband,
in whose name the previous
letter was written.
He was, after all,
the supposed author.
And probably the business
being discussed here
was in the letter
written in his name.
He can then refer to
Didyme as your wife,
because he is thinking of her
husband as the addressee."
End of the Bagnall quotation.
In whichever way one
assesses the original editors
and Bagnall solution,
elegant it is not.
Bagnall makes a number
of assumptions here.
One, the person doing
the writing is a man.
Two, that Didyme has a husband.
Three, that the
hypothetical husband
wrote the previous letter.
And four, that the writer of
this letter is quite absent
minded and only a few lines
into a letter to Didyme
confuses her with a man.
In response to Bagnall's
plausible argument,
the papyrus letters avoid
references to affection
and would be very
unlikely to mention
something so unrespectable
in a business letter.
Perhaps this letter points
to pockets of tolerance.
We know, for example,
of Greek love spells
they found in Egypt during
the time of the Roman Empire,
in which women seek to
attract a woman to themselves
and men try to obtain
the love of a man.
In sum, in this first
interpretive option,
adult women found a way to
live together in a long term
relationship that they
privately call a marriage
and a few people around them
accepted the arrangement--
maybe just three.
I'm not arguing for
widespread toleration.
The sources that I have shown
new cluster around Egypt
in the second to the
third or fourth centuries.
Perhaps Egypt was a place in
those few centuries of time
in which rare cases of such
an arrangement were known.
I'm not sick.
It's a different kind of thing.
So you don't have to worry.
The limits of this
interpretation
are that I posit here
a social practice that
seems to run counter to
all else that we know
about marriage in this period.
Let's look at a
different matter.
What might Thaesis, Didyme,
and the other Egyptian women
written about in these
sources have looked like?
Could they have resembled
these portraits?
So these are mummy portraits.
First, a word of caution--
these are paintings
and not photographs.
They are representations
that surely
contain some idealization.
Nevertheless, they
are Egyptian and do
represent some aspects
of what was likely
Egyptian women's appearance.
Unlike classical Greek statues
which are highly idealized,
comparable--
these Roman period
mummy portraits
show individualized features.
You can see that
the two women don't
look the same, and other mummy
portraits that we have also
show individualized
features, which
is comparable to
Roman busts that
show the particularities
of each person's face.
The painters represent
these deceased women
as prosperous and attractive
with beautiful cosmetics
and jewelry.
Notice the extremely
expensive pearls.
There are multiple pearls there.
Pearls were extremely expensive.
I think we've got--
yeah, there are
pearls over here.
Then you've got the
gold necklace here.
That's a very expensive
gold necklace.
I'm trying to decide-- do you
think it's Tiffany's or what
jewelry store would
that come from?
It's a very expensive necklace.
And then the ivory hairpin.
We've got an ivory
hairpin up here.
So that's also a sign of wealth.
And she has a beautiful
necklace, as well.
And the dress, also--
these dark colored dresses.
These purple-- the
purple color here,
it could be have been dyed
with a luxurious purple
from the murex
snail in Tyre, which
is in what is today Lebanon.
The ancient viewer would
understand these women
to be slave holders, for slavery
was the main means of acquiring
wealth in the Roman
world, including
this expensive jewelry.
Further, prosperous women might
have enslaved hairdressers
to style their hair in
this elaborate fashion.
They're braided and beautiful.
Now to be sure,
these painters may
have represented them as
wealthier than they actually
were so that their
relatives would
be able to give particular
honor to the deceased.
Maybe they never
had this jewelry.
Maybe they just put it
on the mummy portrait.
All of this put
together, however,
makes it highly
unlikely that women
such as those memorialized here
would have married other women.
Heirs were needed for the
orderly transition of wealth,
and unless they
already had offspring,
they and their
relatives would have
been very unlikely to
support alternative marriage
arrangements.
I wondered about the ethics of
presenting the mummy portraits
of these women in this lecture,
because these particular women
and their relatives
would likely have
been shocked and
dismayed to be included
in a discussion of
woman woman marriage.
Let me be clear, I am not
presenting these women
as having potentially been
in same sex marriages,
but I'm rather showing
you their portraits
so that you can imagine
the physical appearance
of the Egyptian women
spoken of by Ptolemy
of Alexandria,
Clement of Alexandria,
the Sifra, and Thaesis.
So now, interpretive
possibility number two--
I would now like to interpret
several of the texts
very differently.
Perhaps the so-called
active partner
had ambiguous genitalia.
That is, a means to
penetrate his, her,
or their passive female partner,
or perhaps these male authors
fantasized that she,
he, they was physically
able to penetrate a vagina.
Ancient evidence to
support this interpretation
can be found first in
the term tribas, which
we looked at before--
namely, the second
interpretive option here,
a woman who penetrates
another person.
Now, Seneca the Elder
from the first century
BCE to the first century CE
gives us the earliest known use
of the term tribades, which
is the plural of tribas
in Latin, with which he
refers to both female partners
with the assumption that
one, but not both of them,
has some means of
penetrating the other.
This means that
both the penetrator
and the penetrated
woman are tribades.
So in other words,
both are not just
the so-called masculine woman,
which you will sometimes
read in the literature today.
Somewhat differently-- so that
was interpretive possibility
there one.
Somewhat differently in
[INAUDIBLE],, first century CE,
a tribas named Philaenis
is hyper-masculine
and plays the active sexual
role with both boys and girls
in addition to performing
cunnilingus on girls.
In the fifth century, medical
writer Caelius Aurelianus
describes tribades as women
quote "who pursue love
with both genders, but pushed
to be with women more than
with men and chase
after women with almost
masculine jealousy," end quote.
Thus, the term tribas has
different meanings, which
is why I leave it untranslated.
And Ptolemy of
Alexandria couldn't
refer to a person with
ambiguous genitalia.
Let us look again as the texts
that we've already seen once.
"The women--" I quote--
"The women lust for
unnatural sexual relations,
cast inviting
glances of the eye,
and are called
tribades, for they
play the active role with women
and perform male functions."
And then, "Under
one constellation,
they do these things in secret.
But in another
constellation, they sometimes
refer to the woman with
whom they are on such terms
as though they were
actually their legal wives."
That's what I read before.
Nomimai hosper gynaikes.
In Ptolemy's astrology--
I should go back to that.
Excuse me.
In Ptolemy's astrology,
castrated men, sterile women,
and persons with no aperture
are conceived or born
under the same configuration.
If Mars signifies
masculinity is present,
men who have lost their
genitals, [INAUDIBLE]
and tribades are born.
In the fourth century Latin
astrological work of Firmicus
Maternus, the term virago, which
comes from the Latin masculine
woman here-- comes from the
Latin word vir, meaning man--
appears to replace
tribades and viragines,
plural, quote "who will never
couple sexually with men,
or if they do, do not
conceive or give birth"
are placed parallel
with eunuchs,
with a slight change
in the configuration
of the planets under which
one is conceived or born.
Hermaphrodites--
apparently persons
with both a fully formed vagina
and penis-- will be born.
I now see the configuration
of tribades or viragines--
eunuchs and hermaphrodites--
in a new light.
So this is something
that I hadn't
thought of at all at the
time that I was writing Love
Between Women.
And the rise of transgender
research and research
on intersex has
made-- has opened me
to new ways of looking
at these ancient texts.
So could any of the texts
on tribades or viragines
be read as referring to persons
with ambiguous genitalia
designated as female at birth?
These texts are deeply
ideological in the language
used to represent gender,
but their authors also
lived in a world in which
ambiguous genitalia were
more common than today,
because surgery at birth
would have been rare,
unlike in many countries
in the 21st century.
The representation of
tribades and viragines
could have evoked
images of beings
who not only aggressively
engage in relations
with the quotes "wrong
persons," but who
also possessed a physical
means of penetration.
Ambiguous genitalia or
the presumption thereof--
perception thereof-- could help
to explain the clitoridectomies
performed on adult women who
display quotes "turpitude"
or quotes "masculine desires"
that I discussed in Love
Between Women.
And yet, Mustio's
translation and adaptation
of a midwives'
handbook circulated
under the name of Soranos,
first second century CE,
gives a reason for a
clitoridectomy performed
on an adult woman.
And I quote, "A large clitoris
is a symptom of turpitude--"
that is, immorality.
"In fact, they strive to have
their own flesh stimulated just
like men and to obtain sexual
intercourse, as it were."
End quote.
A clitoridectomy could
have been a means
of making the unintelligible
able to be read as female--
of creating an ambiguous or
less ambiguous femaleness.
Some reviewers of my
book, Love Between Women,
ignored my discussion
of the clitoridectomy
performed on adult women
or simply stated that it
was irrelevant to the topic.
Whereas in the book I argued
that the clitoridectomy was
relevant because some candidates
for the clitoridectomy
were represented as having
masculine desires and the like,
I now realize that
ambiguous genitalia
could have played a role.
In the book, I sometimes
spoke of the image
of the penetrative
tribas as a male fantasy,
but perhaps physical
genitalia were
at play, which of course
still leaves room for fantasy.
Visualizing tribades as persons
with ambiguous genitalia
could have relieved
some of having
to face up to female
homoerotic desire
in the absence of penetration.
The case of the
historical person
named Pantous or Paitous
raises similar questions.
In an ancient Egyptian
love spell, probably
of the second century CE, a
scribe uses a female pronoun
twice for Pantous or Paitous--
the lead tablets spell the
name in two different ways.
So in one tablet, it's Pantous,
in one tablet, it's Paitous--
whom Nike is trying
to attract to herself.
Am I in your way here?
OK.
I'll move back a little bit.
That'll be better.
So this is the spell.
Horion, son of Sarapous,
make and force--
and then you have a
drawing of a mummy,
because they tried to get a
dead person to force the love
to be brought about--
make and force Nike, daughter
of Apollonous-- so these,
they always say the name of
the mother, not the father--
to fall in love with
Paitous, whom Tmesios bore.
Make Nike, daughter
of Apollonous,
fall in love with Pantous, whom
Tmesisos bore for five months.
Why the five months?
You think they went
longer than that,
but they're maybe just
doing what they can.
The Egyptian prefix pa
is, however, masculine,
which could make
the name masculine.
Perhaps Pantous/Paitous
assumed a male name
and viewed himself as a man.
Could Pantous/Paitous's
use through their scribe
of feminine pronouns
for themself
mean that the
person had a vagina,
but viewed themself as a man?
Or perhaps the person
had ambiguous genitalia
and their parents had named
them Pantous or Paitous,
but they went by
female pronouns.
Ancient rabbis of the first
centuries of the Roman Empire
in the eastern Mediterranean
discussed how to deal with
a person with both female and
male genitals-- an androgynos,
a lone word in Hebrew
from Greek androgynos--
[NON-ENGLISH].
In a legal system that
distinguish sharply--
that is, the rabbinic legal
system that distinguish sharply
between female and male
duties and privileges,
these rabbis had to
decide which commandments
were incumbent on an
androginos who had
both male and female genitalia.
Among other things,
these rabbis stated
that an androginos was
in some ways like men,
in some ways like women,
and in some ways like both,
and in some ways like neither.
And they elucidate those.
So like men, the
androginos took a wife,
but was not taken as a wife.
So here again we have that
active and passive form.
As in Greek, the Hebrew
uses a verb [NON-ENGLISH]
for the active--
for in the active for
the male role of marrying
and the passive for the
female role of being married.
If the rabbis who
were responding
to a phenomenon of
ambiguous genitalia,
and if some persons considered
a specific androginos
to be more female but with an
ability to penetrate, that is,
someone like a tribas,
then some persons
may have viewed such a marriage
as a woman woman marriage.
Do people follow
that last argument?
Mostly.
Yeah.
Mostly.
We can ask questions afterwards.
The Roman law-- but the point
here is that the rabbis present
the androginos as clear--
totally male, totally female.
But in nature, it's not clear.
It's not always clear.
And so what would the--
my question is, what
would the rabbis
have done with somebody who
seemed to be more feminine
but also had male genitalia
and could penetrate?
Where would they fit them in?
And maybe they fit them into
the androginos, who then
was supposed to marry a woman.
The Roman law contemporaneous
with the early rabbis discusses
persons with ambiguous
genitalia under
the hermaphrodite category--
[NON-ENGLISH] Jurist Ulpian,
second third century CE writes,
and I quote, "Question--
with whom is a
hermaphrodite comparable?
I think each one
should be ascribed
to that sex which is prevalent
in his or her makeup."
So in other words,
they've got a gray area.
Close quote.
So when the androginos is
fully female and fully male--
so whereas the androginos,
according to the rabbis,
is fully female and
fully male, but we
know that the biology would
have been more complicated
than that, the
hermaphrodite in Roman law
may be more female or more male.
So in this Roman
legal categorization,
a tribas with a physical
means to penetrate
might have been a
subcategory of hermaphrodite.
Although ancient
Roman law does not
address whom a
hermaphrodite may marry,
if we follow Ulpian's logic,
if the male sex is prevalent,
then he may only marry a
woman, and if the female sex
is more prevalent, she
may marry only a man.
Now, I'm speculating
here, but I'm
drawing it from the legal
description of Ulpian.
So to summarize my
second interpretive
option, ambiguous genitalia--
in astrology, a
tribas appears to be
a woman with the physical
means of penetrating a vagina.
And she might designate
her female partner
as though she were
her legal wife.
Maybe Pantous/Paitous
was such a person.
And we can read the discussions
of marriages between women
as referring to persons
with ambiguous genitalia.
There are limitations
to this interpretation.
Ptolemy and Lucian of
Samosata lend themselves
well to the ambiguous
genitalia interpretation,
and Thaesis could be
writing to a daughter
with ambiguous genitalia
who is married a wife.
Clement, the Sifra,
and Eusebios, however,
speak of women marrying
women without any indication
of ambiguous genitalia.
So now, the third possibility.
Yes.
OK.
That was before.
Sorry.
Oh, yeah.
I'm just going to go
back and leave that up.
So rabbinic scholar [INAUDIBLE]
persuasively reads the early
rabbinic Sifra text--
oh, sorry.
There.
Persuasively reads the
early rabbinic Sifra text
as representing the
kind of dystopian
science fiction, a
view of the other--
here, the Canaanites
and the Egyptians--
as not following the
binary legal system
of the ancient rabbis.
She argues that the
rabbis of this passage
create a parallel universe.
This projected universe is
partly like the rabbi's own--
marriage exists as a
legal institution and sex
is regulated and orderly.
And yet, it is
simultaneously wholly other--
a universe in which
women are legal agents
and able to marry in
a way that renders men
subservient or irrelevant,
such as by marrying two men
or marrying another woman.
In imagining marriages
between women, Clement notes,
these rabbis are
acknowledging the substance
and the seriousness of sexual
contact and relationships
between women, which contrasts
with two brief descriptions
in the Babylonian Talmud
in which the majority
of the rabbis decide that
sexual contact between women
is not real sex, but
rather only immodesty.
The rabbis are not,
she argues, interested
in marriage between
women per se,
but are instead
working to expand
the list of prohibited
sexual relations--
[NON-ENGLISH]---- found in
Leviticus 18 and 20 to include
explicitly marriage
between women,
which implies sexual relations
between women and marriage
between a woman and two men.
No longer non-existence
or un-contemplated,
a marriage between
women is thereby
brought into the familiar realm
of the Levitical prohibition,
says Clement.
Several aspects of the text in
the early rabbinic practices
support Clement's position.
The Canaanites and
Egyptians who ostensibly
practiced marriage
between women are
the near other for the rabbis.
Marriage between women undercuts
such major rabbinic principles
as the asymmetrical
nature of marriage,
women's highly prescribed
capacity for legal action,
and the centrality of
men to marriage and life.
And the rabbis engage
in hypotheticals.
Clement, however,
so focuses solely
on the text of the Sifra.
Had she considered
the other sources,
she might have considered other
interpretive possibilities.
Just as one woman--
one can plausibly argue
that for the Sifra,
marriage between
women represents
a dystopian
alternative universe,
so also can one view Clement
of Alexandria in this way.
In this way, the context of the
Clement passage on woman woman
marriage is a vociferous
attack on males
who dress like women,
and pluck out their hair,
and shave their beards.
He speaks of males who
wear cosmetics, jewelry,
and delicate clothing,
and he reviles prostitutes
both male and female.
Contrary to nature,
the women become
masculine by either taking
the active or the passive role
in a marriage to a woman, and
the men become effeminate.
And I quote, "He who denies his
masculinity in broad daylight
will certainly prove himself
to be a woman at night."
Close quote.
Such ancient-- such
other ancient writers
as Jewish philosopher
Philo of Alexandria
or Christian
Tertullian of Carthage
similarly conjure up
horrifying images of males
depilating their hair and
wearing makeup, jewelry,
and soft clothing.
So perhaps Clement's
charge that women
played the role of the husband
or the wife in marriages
to other women is simply
part of a broader dystopian
view of the debauched other.
This interpretation would also
work with Cameron's construal
of [NON-ENGLISH] and
[NON-ENGLISH] as simply meaning
to have sex with, rather than
to marry and to be married.
Because for Clement, both
marriage between women and sex
between women would epitomize
the urban world about which
he is warning his readers.
Whether the dystopian
interpretation
would work for any of the
other ancient sources,
however, is less clear.
Perhaps Demonassa and Megilla--
Megillos and Lucian
of Samosata could
be seen in this way, as could
Eusebios's interpretation
of Leviticus, which
I had on the screen.
In contrast, Ptolemy of
Alexander's astrology
is about the world as
his readers know it,
and not about a world that
is profoundly disordered.
The papyrus letter from
the mother to her daughter
is far too mundane to
be part of a dystopia.
This third interpretation
has at least two advantages.
It takes full account of the
shocking force of marriages
between women, and it leaves
the social picture as it is.
Men married women, and women
were given in marriage to men,
and persons with
ambiguous genitalia
were rare in
discussions of marriage.
The limitations are that it
may foreclose the possibility
of a more heterogeneous Roman--
Egypt-- Roman period Egypt than
we have imagined previously,
and that the polemical
representations of urban life
may be based on
social practices.
For example, the image of
males plucking out their hair
and wearing delicate clothing
is quite plausible historically.
Marriage between women
or between a person
with ambiguous
genitalia and a woman
with unambiguous
genitalia may vigorously--
while vigorously opposed, may
have been social practices.
So now to the fourth
interpretive possibility--
might we read any of the
ancient Egyptian sources
as the earliest evidence
for woman woman marriage
as it is currently practiced
among the Kikuyu, the Nandi,
the Kalenjin, the Gusii,
the Kamba of Kenya,
the Kuria of Kenya and
Tanzania, the Dinka and the Nuer
of South Sudan,
and the Ebo, Fon,
and [INAUDIBLE] of Nigeria.
Scholars have generally viewed
these forms of woman woman
marriage as so-called social
and economic arrangements
that did not imply sexual
contact between the women
or definitely excluded it.
In woman woman marriage,
one of the women
plays a dowry for the purpose
of marrying the other woman,
and one or both may derive
economic and social benefits
from the marriage.
For example, the woman for
whom the dowry was paid
may bear a child for the
other woman as a surrogate,
as it were, thereby enabling
the passing on of property.
In multiple legal
cases the Kenyan courts
have recognized
woman woman marriage
as a social and
economic institution.
Judges have enumerated
features of such a marriage.
According to one
judge, and I quote,
"It has an inherently
social functionality,
and it entails no connotation
of sexual partnership."
Close quote.
Whether or not any women in such
marriages ever engage in sexual
contact with their partners,
we simply cannot know.
But this judge and the
others in this culture
certainly claim that
sex is not involved.
Affection and sometimes sharing
a bed, however, are reported.
For example, in a 2011 legal
case concerning the Nandi
ethnicity, the brother of
the father of the new wife
reported on the 2006
wedding ceremony
over which he presided.
Each of the two women
affirmed that she
loved the other and the
older woman paid a dowry
and stated that the younger
woman would inherit from her.
A judge recognized the woman
woman marriage and the younger
woman's right to inherit,
referring to the 2010
Kenyan Constitution's
article 11 1, which states,
and I quote "The Constitution
recognizes culture
as the foundation
of the nation."
Close quote.
In short, this cultural
practice is well
established within
Kenyan society.
According to the view
of most researchers,
and it seems of some
courts, woman woman marriage
is mainly functional, bringing
socioeconomic benefits
to both women.
In interviews with
Kenyan Kikuyu women,
however, [INAUDIBLE]
and William E O'Brien
observed complex reasons for
entering into such marriages.
They may have done so for
social and economic reasons,
but also for political
or personal ones.
Some women described strong
emotional bonds to each other,
and more than one
expressed appreciation
for not being dominated by
a man in their marriage.
If we read any of
this ancient sources
as involving something like
contemporary woman woman
marriage, the women
in such marriages
could fit seamlessly
into their culture.
So thinking back now to
Thaesis's daughter's wife
in the papyrus letter, if
that were to be a woman woman
marriage in any way resembling
the contemporary ones, the wife
and the daughter
could be benefiting
from a socioeconomic arrangement
that was simultaneously
affectionate.
This solution would address
Roger Bagnall's point--
the papyrus letters, which
could be intercepted and read
by others while en route--
do not address personal,
intimate relationships.
Even if Thaesis's letter
to her daughter Didyme
were referring to a type of
woman woman marriage quite
different from contemporary
Sudanese, Kenyan, Cameroonian,
Tanzanian, and
Nigerian ones, it may
refer to some type of culturally
acceptable alternative marriage
arrangement otherwise
unknown to us.
So it opens up an
interpretive possibility.
This fourth interpretation
avoids the shock
of positing a sexual marriage
without the procreation
generally seen as essential to
marriages in the Mediterranean
world in the Roman period.
The limitations are
that most of the sources
imply a sexual
marriage between women,
and that Clement of Alexandria,
the Sifra, and Eusebios
themselves expressed
strong disapproval--
one might say shock--
at the possibility of
marriages between women.
Furthermore, contemporary
woman woman marriages
exist in regions other
than Egypt, but not
to my knowledge in Egypt itself.
And we do not have evidence
for their extreme antiquity.
Nevertheless, the
contemporary phenomenon
helps to sensitize
the interpreter
to potentially new meanings
to the ancient sources.
I hope to see continuing
research on this
and also I on woman woman
marriage in centuries
and locations not
discussed here.
Such research might give
rise to new questions
to pose of the ancient
texts, taking full account
of historical differences.
For example, Sharon Marcus
documents and discusses
contractual marriage
between English women
in the 19th century.
So now to my conclusion.
So in closing, I will summarize
each of these interpretations
and leave it to you to decide.
First, these texts
could concern long term
extra legal relationships
called marriage by the women.
The strength of
this interpretation
is that it is the most
straightforward interpretation
of the verb to marry
and the noun wife.
Further, the existence of
long term relationships
is plausible in the
cultures under question.
The limitation is that
no known extant writer
presents this as a normal
understanding of marriage.
Secondly, these
texts can be read
as discussing marriages
in which one partner has
ambiguous genitalia.
This construal lends itself
well to Marshall's depiction
of the tribas, Philaenis,
Ptolemy's depiction
of tribades, [INAUDIBLE]
discussion of the virago,
and the medical texts on
selective clitoridectomy
performed on adult women.
These texts, however,
on women marrying women
do not ever make the question
of ambiguous genitalia explicit,
although Ptolemy's tribas
may have ambiguous genitalia.
And thirdly, these texts
could be the earliest evidence
for the contemporary economic
social custom of woman woman
marriage in Africa.
We do not know the precise age
of contemporary woman woman
marriage, but it
may be very old.
Thaesis's letter to
Didyme could refer
to this or a comparable custom.
The limitation of
this interpretation
is that Clement, Lucian,
Iamblichos, and Eusebios all
speak of sex.
And finally, they
could be pure polemics.
So they could be representing an
alternative dystopian universe
or simply be pure polemics.
This interpretation is
plausible for both the Sifra
and for Clement.
Thaesis's letter and
astrologer Ptolemy
are, however, very concrete
and close to social practice.
While the alternative
dystopian universe explanation
does provide a reason for why
these authors write of woman
woman marriage, dismissing
the texts as polemical
closes off that question.
So in sum, each of these four
interpretations is plausible
and each is limited.
As I have shown, one or the
other of these interpretations
is more suited to a
specific text or texts
within the set of passages
on marriage between women.
I hope that the
four interpretations
that I have delineated
will encourage others--
perhaps persons in this room--
to explore each of
these or to develop
additional ways of viewing
one or more of these texts.
Thank you for your attention.
SAUL M. OLYAN: We have time for
questions, comments, reactions.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Larry?
AUDIENCE: Going back
to the Sifra position,
I can imagine that that
could be a dystopian view,
but it also looks absolutely
like rabbinic case
law, where you have case
one, two, three, four.
I just recently somewhere
saw a very similar ones.
If a man divorces a woman
and then remarries her,
that's a forbidden-
marriage category.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
That's right.
That's right.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
AUDIENCE: That's right.
If that were sneaked in
there, you would hardly
notice the difference.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
AUDIENCE: It looks
like typical list
of examples, where you have a
number of different categories.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Right.
AUDIENCE: All of which
are equally forbidden.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Right.
Right.
Right.
AUDIENCE: So I can
imagine that it
could be imaginatively
creating the other,
but it just looks so typical.
Looks so un-rhetorical.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Looks
so un-rhetorical to you.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What do other people think?
What do you think?
Why call on people?
It's awful.
Which one did you
find most persuasive,
or did you find more
than one persuasive?
AUDIENCE: I actually found
more than one persuasive.
It felt to me that a
lot of these authors
have different answers to
your questions in mind.
And it felt as you
went through that--
especially because the
pros and cons were so
convincing that some
authors, [INAUDIBLE]
certain categories and
others into the others.
It felt that each of them were
answering a different question
rather than answering
the same possibility.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
Yes.
We'll use this.
[INAUDIBLE] Sure.
Yes.
Thank you, thank you.
You listened very carefully.
I'm grateful for that.
There's no such thing as a
stupid question, you know.
Does everybody know that here?
Please.
Yeah.
Let's get the
microphone for you.
AUDIENCE: I know
when you were talking
about the possibility
of this relating
to ambiguous genitalia,
I was also thinking about
like I've heard some
stuff about other genders
beyond male, female,
androgynous in Jewish texts.
And I was wondering if you
skipped those for time,
or if there's anything
[INAUDIBLE] interesting
[INAUDIBLE].
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Oh,
it's very interesting.
Yes.
So rabbinic sources
essentially have six genders.
They have male and female.
They have saris-- a saris,
who is apparently a eunuch.
And an ailonit, who is a
woman who has something
different about her
body and is sterile.
And you have the tumtum,
who has no aperture.
So you can't see the
genitalia at all.
And the adroginos, who has
both female and male fully.
So they're aware of
a spectrum, and they
write about each of those.
Yeah.
So I do think they're relevant.
Now the rabbinic categories--
there's also-- I should say,
in the Hippocratic Corpus,
there is also a
set of six genders,
and the androginos
is one of them.
But they are different.
They are based on behavior,
like the mannish woman
and the effeminate man,
whereas the rabbinic genders
are based on genitalia and
physical-- the physicality.
Like the saris doesn't
develop two pubic hairs,
which is the rabbinic definition
of a girl becoming a woman.
And so this spectrum
of gender is certainly
something that's known
in the ancient world.
And I wonder where
the rabbi's looking
at these say
astrological texts--
and I'm assuming that the
astrological texts are not just
that the astrologers made up
these things, because they
go around and observe, and
they have to speak to people.
And so I'm thinking
more that they
are reflecting some aspects
of the societal discourse
about gender.
And so they have the--
as I mentioned-- the
hermaphrodite, and the eunuch,
and the tribas,
and then they have
a kind of sterile woman
in one of the texts.
And so that could be like
the I ailonit of the rabbis.
So I'm wondering, when
they got together--
the rabbis were not
following astrology,
but they did-- they
were aware of it,
and there is a text
called [INAUDIBLE]
that is about astrology.
And there are
synagogues in Israel
that have the signs of the
zodiac right in the middle
of the synagogue floor, OK?
So they're close to it.
And what would-- in other words,
what would a Jewish rabbi do
with a Jewish tribas?
How would they fit?
In other words, if they take
a conceptualization that's
not precisely their
conceptualization
but another one, where would
they fit the tribas in?
So I think your
question's right on.
Yeah.
It's another area
that I'm working on,
is bringing the rabbinic
sources into discussion
with these other sources from
the Roman period that discuss
a range of genders.
Yes.
Please, [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: First, thank you
so much for this very rich
lecture.
I would like to ask
you to bridge over
into the kind of gender
fluid rhetoric we
see in literary texts
of the same time.
So as you-- you've just
cited the medical texts
on a mannish woman
or an effeminate man.
But as you well
know, for example,
in our martyr texts
like Thecla or Perpetua,
here to be the manly woman or
the female man of god in early
monastic texts is
a praise-worthy--
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN:
Positive thing.
Yes
AUDIENCE: --rhetoric.
Yes.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: In contrast
to these medical texts
or your more dystopian
reading, which
I think you're
right-- and certainly
in the satirical text.
But how are we going to bridge
in to the more positive use
of that kind of gendered
imagery in the literary texts?
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: That's
really a fascinating question.
Yes.
So you have-- what Professor
Harvey is referring to is--
so for example, in the martyrdom
of Perpetua and Felicitas,
Perpetua dreams of
herself as being a man.
And so it's a
powerful image of her
being courageous
and able to face
the arena and the
things that are going
to happen to her in the arena.
And Thecla, another
early Christian
figure in the acts of Paul
and Thecla, which are--
there are acts of the
Apostles in the New Testament,
then there individual
acts of apostles--
The Acts of Paul, The Acts of
Thomas, The Acts of Andrew,
and so forth.
And so in the acts of Paul,
there's a figure called Thecla.
And she becomes transfixed
by Paul, which has
a kind of erotic tone to it.
The word used for
transfixed-- she's
sitting at her window
of her house, which
is a very wealthy home, and
she hears Paul speaking.
And she becomes transfixed.
And the Greek term for
that relates to Greek terms
for being under a spell--
a magical thing.
So she becomes transfixed.
Anyway, she wants
to follow Paul.
She leaves Paul.
She has many adventures
along the way.
And finally, she dresses
like a man, which
means she pulls up her cloak.
She wants to cut her hair
short, but her hair's
too pretty, really.
But she really wants
to cut her hair short.
So she wants to behave and look
like a man, which would also
be good for her safety
traveling around,
although what is
often overlooked
is she brings an enslaved
retinue with her.
She's not alone.
She has enslaved men and
women coming with her.
She's an upper class woman.
Somebody has to
carry the baggage.
But she does hitch
up her garment
to be like a male garment.
And there it seems
very positive.
And it ends with
having enlightened many
with the word of God,
she slept a noble sleep.
So it's a very
positive image of her.
And then there are other things.
Of course, the
cross dressing that
occurs in monastic communities.
So sometimes a woman
might dress like the man
in a monastic community, and
her fellow male monastics
didn't know it until she died.
So it's kind of hard
for us to imagine that,
but that is the way it's
represented in the literature.
Are those the kinds of things
you're thinking of, Susan?
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Also, as
praiseworthy rhetoric.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN:
As praiseworthy, rather.
Exactly.
As praiseworthy.
Yeah.
So there is ambiguity there.
AUDIENCE: Do you think that
reflects on the more literal--
you're trying to come up
with concrete evidence here.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: I see.
So you're saying that--
because otherwise in
early Christianity,
there are important
places where a woman is
seen as masculine in some way,
and that's very praiseworthy.
It signifies courage,
and endurance,
and athletic prowess,
and so forth.
And so maybe that would
support the social practice
interpretation of these texts.
It's a very
interesting question.
That's a very interesting take
on it that I hadn't thought of.
I'm going to look around
until I see a raised eyebrow
or somebody thinking something.
Oh everybody will now
go placid on their faces
so they [INAUDIBLE] call on.
Now this gentleman
in the back, you
look like you have
something to say.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I'm just-- I'm interested
in how certain people have
ambiguous genders at that
time would identify themselves
under those certain
terms or if society
would have placed those.
Like would someone go around
and say, oh, I'm androginos.
You know, like that's
what I identify as,
and then society
would be like, OK.
That is you.
Or would society
place those labels
on that person first
for that to go on?
BERNADETTE J
BROOTEN: You know we
don't have-- at least
to my knowledge,
we do not have evidence
of persons doing that.
There may be, because
we keep discovering.
And maybe if I look through more
literature, I would find some.
But I haven't found--
I certainly haven't found any
of a tribas saying that she--
that she or they was a tribas.
It's a negative slur used
against certain persons.
Yeah.
And so I don't know
about the androginos
and the rabbinic adroginos.
Maybe in the rabbinic
androginos [INAUDIBLE],,
because for one thing, the
rabbinic androginos is--
I mean, the rabbis are--
there are lots of very
interesting literature
on this subjects right
now on the androginos.
[INAUDIBLE] Stanford [INAUDIBLE]
have written on these subjects.
And they argue differently
about the meanings,
but one interpretation is that
when the rabbis are talking
about the androginos,
what they're trying to do
is they're trying to make
their legal system fit.
They don't want to have a
legal system where nobody fit--
where somebody doesn't fit.
It has to be a universal
legal system that
can accommodate everyone.
And so they fit the adroginos
in by saying, OK, in these ways
you're like a woman and you
follow these commandments.
In these ways, you're
like a man and you
follow these commandments,
and so forth.
And there is one
thing that's very
sad about their interpretation.
Well, on the one hand I
should say the androginos
and the tumtum are
accepted as beings.
They're accepted
as-- they're not--
they're not driven
out of the community.
They're not reviled.
They're supposed to be fit in.
But there's a very
sad aspect, which
is the androginos is like a
male in that he may not be alone
with women, and
the androginos is
like a female in that she
may not be alone with men.
So it prescribes a
solitary existence,
because either one could
be physically attracted
and so forth.
And so there could be problems.
But they do try to fit--
they try to fit
the adroginos in.
Whereas the Hippocratic Corpus
about behavior is more--
it's more directly judgemental,
like the mannish woman
and the effeminate man.
Like this is something you're
definitely not supposed to be,
but there are such
persons out there.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Great.
Got a question over here.
AUDIENCE: So you interwove
into your discussion questions
of slaves and [INAUDIBLE]
sex individuals.
And so I was wondering
what the picture
looks like with kind of--
sorry-- with same
sex contubernium.
Because Roman's are quite
happy to talk about slaves
as being married and
talk about slave's
wives and that sort of thing.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: And Romans are also at
the same time aware or-- yeah.
They think of
themselves as being
susceptible to being enslaved.
And they think of slaves as
being susceptible to maybe
being freed.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
AUDIENCE: So the
evidence is likely to be
pretty sparse on this.
But is there any
sense in which Romans
project citizen values
of marriage onto slaves,
or do they other
them and make them
like the Sifra makes
the Egyptians as having
these kind of weird
marriage customs
that need to be avoided?
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
This is an excellent question.
The Roman jurists who
write about contubernium,
sometimes slip in
the saying spouse.
So in other words, even though
it's not husband or wife,
they sometimes do that, so that
at one level they recognize
the marriages, and at
another level they don't.
Because they don't have--
you don't have
inheritance, you don't
have any rights over your
children, you can't pass--
you don't have inheritance,
you can't pass on property.
Your own property actually
still is under the control
of the patron.
So there-- you have
duties to the patron,
who is your former slave
mistress or slave master.
So in some ways it's like
an emotional attachment,
but doesn't have any
legal consequences.
The question of same
sex contubernium, that's
a very interesting question.
There may well have been.
The one thing-- there are two
hesitations that I have about
positing it is very wide--
I mean, none of
this is widespread.
We're talking about tiny
numbers of people, anyway.
But a woman was
supposed to give birth,
and a slave woman was
supposed to give birth.
And the point at which
an enslaved females
had the highest price
in relation to males
was during her
childbearing years.
So she was valuable as a
piece of property to be sold
and to bear children.
So I think that the owners would
have only tolerated anything
that they saw between
women if the woman was also
having sex with a man.
That's my suspicion, because
it was very important to them
to gain property in that way.
There's a dispute about
whether the Romans engaged
in slave breeding or
whether they simply
encouraged enslaved
persons to have children.
And one can argue
that either way.
It wasn't like-- we don't
find anything exactly
like what you have
in US slavery.
For example, in--
I want to say Virginia--
there were plantations for
the crop of the plantation
was babies to be
sold down river--
to be sold to the south.
So they focused on
that as the product.
And I don't find that
in Roman society.
I don't find that level
of conscious breeding.
Let's see.
I had another question.
Oh, also with respect to the
partners choosing their own--
if we're talking about
a woman and a man
now that were enslaved, a person
choosing their own partner
could be seen as very
problematic for the owner.
So for example, a Christian
writer of the fourth century,
Basil of Caesarea,
writes that there
are enslaved women who bring
outrage upon the household
through their secret marriages.
Well, what does that mean?
I mean, apparently they
chose their own partner.
And that's the infraction--
they chose their own partner.
You're not supposed to be
able to choose your partner.
The master's supposed to approve
of everything that goes on.
So those are some of the
pieces I put into the pot
for that discussion.
But maybe somebody finds
something, and you write me,
and I will quote
you in the footnote,
or I will encourage you
to write your own article,
and I will cite your article.
Maybe you'll write a term paper.
Maybe you'll do something else.
You look like you
might have a question.
Oh, no.
You'll remember this
as the horrid day
when the speaker
called on people.
AUDIENCE: No I--
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN:
But look at--
you've got questions.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I don't
have a question.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: You
don't have a question.
OK.
Do you have a comment?
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: OK.
OK.
Thank you.
That's fine, too.
That's fine.
Yeah.
Yes, Saul.
SAUL M. OLYAN: I very
much enjoyed the--
as Susan referred to
it-- rich presentation.
My comment is about
what we fear--
our nightmares.
In other words, what makes
up a dystopian vision.
And it's interesting
that the ones
that I'm most familiar
with from Mesopotamia
or from the Hebrew Bible don't
include the kind of thing
you see in Romans 1
or the kind of thing
you see in some of the things
that you were presenting.
They talk about son raises
his hand against his father,
daughter disrespects her mother,
corpses pile up in the street.
So the dystopian
vision is typically
a reversal of all norms.
But there's nothing that I
can think of-- there's no--
there's nothing like a man
goes off with another man,
or a woman with another woman
like in Rome [INAUDIBLE]..
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
SAUL M. OLYAN: It's
more of a comment
and a comparison
than a question.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yeah.
SAUL M. OLYAN: And it
raises for me-- just
thinking about their nightmares
versus this other group's
nightmares.
And why are same sex couplings
in some people's nightmares
but not in other
people's nightmares.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN:
That's right.
That's right.
SAUL M. OLYAN: And
that's fascinating to me.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN:
It is fascinating.
And in some people's
nightmares today, they're
very prominent in the
country as a whole.
It's a very prominent
nightmare today.
Yeah.
SAUL M. OLYAN: Whereas
for other people,
it's not a nightmare at all.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN:
That's right.
That's right.
SAUL M. OLYAN: In
fact, the people
for whom it is a nightmare
are the nightmare for others,
to be quite blunt about
it, and vice versa.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
That's right.
SAUL M. OLYAN: Yeah.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN:
That's right.
SAUL M. OLYAN:
That's fascinating.
It points to the relativity
of the things we fear.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Some of this nightmarish
quality comes out
in early Christian apocalypses
in which the women are--
women who marry women
writhing in a river of fire.
So some of the women
who coupled with women,
or hurling herself
off of the cliff.
And then having to go up again
and hurl herself off again.
So that's--
SAUL M. OLYAN: Is that
an afterlife punishment?
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yeah.
And afterlife
punishment [INAUDIBLE]..
SAUL M. OLYAN: You often
see that in these visions
of afterlife punishment.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
That's very interesting.
Yeah.
Why it is.
Is it that it was unheard of?
Is it that it was accepted
and just not even seen
as that big of a thing.
SAUL M. OLYAN: Yeah,
these are the questions
it reasons by its absence.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Yeah.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
SAUL M. OLYAN: Well, I would
like to take this opportunity
to thank you very much.
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: Thank you.
SAUL M. OLYAN: [INAUDIBLE]
BERNADETTE J BROOTEN: You are a
wonderful audience, including--
tell the people who had
to leave early, also, you
were wonderful audience.
You were so attentive.
It's a lot to--
