Abstract:
Scholarly accounts of sexuality in the ancient world have placed much emphasis
on the normative dichotomy of activity and passivity. In the case of female
homoeroticism, scholars have focussed largely on the figure of the so-called
tribas, a masculinised, aggressively penetrative female who takes the active role
in sexual relations with women. My thesis seeks to set out a wider
conceptualisation of female homoeroticism that encompasses erotic sensuality
between conventionally feminine women.
The first chapter surveys previous scholarship on ancient sexuality and gender
and on female homoeroticism in particular, examining the difficulties in
terminology and methodology inherent in such a project. The second chapter
turns to the Callisto episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, beginning with the kiss
between the huntress Callisto and Jupiter, who is disguised as Callisto’s patron
goddess Diana. The Callisto episode contains hints of previous intimacy
between Callisto and Diana, and the kiss scene can be read as an erotic
interaction between the two, both of whom are portrayed as conventionally
feminine rather than tribadic. The third chapter examines several Greek
intertexts for the Callisto episode: Callimachus’ hymns to Athena and Artemis,
and the story of Leucippus as narrated by Parthenius and Pausanias. These
narratives exhibit a similar dynamic to the Callisto episode, in that they eroticise
the relationships both between Diana and her companions and amongst those
companions. An educated reader of Ovid’s Metamorphoses would plausibly
have had these Greek texts in mind, and would thus have been more likely to
read the relationship between Diana and Callisto as homoerotic. Finally, the
fourth chapter approaches Statius’ Achilleid from the perspective of female
homoeroticism, a move without precedent in past scholarship. The relationship
between Deidameia and the cross-dressed Achilles engages intertextually with
the Callisto episode, presenting another exclusively female-homosocial
environment in which homoerotic desires can flourish.
