#ancient homosexuality

One of Asklepiades’ defining features as a love epigrammist is the variety he depicts. He’s not alwayspositiveabout it, as in the first case - and in fact he often writes miserably or about misery - but he surveys the breadth of romance and sexuality as he thought of it. Here, therefore, we learn of two lesbian Samians, an exotic (probably Nubian, but she was in any case noted for being both coal-black and ‘native’ instead of Greek) royal mistress to Asklepiades’ ruler Ptolemy Philadelphos, and a woman who likes adolescent youths and, seducing them, dresses in the petasosandkhlamys.

Two women from Samos, Bitto and Nannion, don’t want to
come to Aphrodite on the goddess’ terms.
They’re abandoning her for something else, something wrong. Lady Kypris,
curse their bed, these women who turn their backs on you.

Didyme’s bloom has enchanted me, oh god! I’m
melting, like wax by a fire, in the light of her beauty.
If she’s black, so what? Coals are too; but when
we tend them, they still glow, like a rose’s unfurled petals.

Dorkion, that lover of youths, just like a boy, knows
how to loose the swift arrow of Common Love,
striking them with desire from her eyes like a lightning bolt, and from her shoulders
[…]
with her boy’s hat, her boy’s cloak shows her naked thigh.

(Asklepiades in the Greek Anthology (5.207, 5.210, 12.161); my translation)

αἱ Σάμιαι Βιττὼ καὶ Νάννιον εἰς Ἀφροδίτης
φοιτᾶν τοῖς αὐτῆς οὐκ ἐθέλουσι νόμοις,
εἰς δ᾽ ἕτερ᾽ αὐτομολοῦσιν, ἃ μὴ καλά. δεσπότι Κύπρι,
μίσει τὰς κοίτης τῆς παρὰ σοὶ φυγάδας

τῷ θαλλῷ Διδύμη με συνήρπασεν ὤ μοι. ἐγὼ δὲ
τήκομαι, ὡς κηρὸς πὰρ πυρί, κάλλος ὁρῶν.
εἰ δὲ μέλαινα, τί τοῦτο ; καὶ ἄνθρακες: ἀλλ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἐκείνους
θάλψωμεν, λάμπους᾽ ὡς ῥόδεαι κάλυκες.

Δόρκιον ἡ φιλέφηβος ἐπίσταται, ὡς ἁπαλὸς παῖς,
ἕσθαι πανδήμου Κύπριδος ὠκὺ βέλος,
ἵμερον ἀστράπτουσα κατ᾽ ὄμματος, ἠδ᾽ ὑπὲρ ὤμων
[…]
σὺν πετάσῳ γυμνὸν μηρὸν ἔφαινε χλαμύς.