Sex and desire between men in Byzantium: civil law, dissidence, and (the lack of) enforcement.

Date: 21 May 2020 Time: 3.10 pm

CANCELLED The School of Languages and Cultures invites you to a seminar from the Classics Research Seminar Series presented by Dr Mark Masterson, Programme Director of Classics, Senior Lecturer of Classics.

Venue: OK526 (Classics Museum)

In the mid-eighth century in the Ekloge, the Isaurian law code, we read a law against sex between males: "The aselgeis, both the one doing it and the one receiving it, let them pay the penalty by the sword. But if the one receiving is discovered to be less than twelve years old, he should be excused,as his age shows that he did not understand this thing he had undergone"(17.38). Understood here is that the aselgeis are males who have sex with one another. While there is some consideration given to the very young, and while it is not as severe in its rhetoric as enactments in the earlier Justinianic and Theodosian codifications, it is all the same a cruel law that mandates execution (in addition, of course, to promising persecution and the crushing of dissidence). It is therefore interesting that we have no record of this law ever being used. In this papers, I discuss what we may wish to make of this situation.

ALL WELCOME