[LCC] Mitsis on Bowersock on Davidson, and Lear and Cantarella

[Terrence Lockyer]

I thought this response to a review, forwarded to Classics-L by 
John Lauritsen, might be of interest here:

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[I was asked to post this comment on CLASSICS-L. It does not 
necessarily reflect my own opinions. -- JL]

In response to Glen Bowersock's review (called "Men and Boys") in 
the NYRB of 9/24/09:

Readers of Professor Bowersock's review can be grateful for his 
learned tour of older, esp. 19th century German, scholarship on 
Greek pederasty, but it was unclear to me that he lavished the 
same kind of attention on the two books actually under review, 
_The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient 
World_ by James Davidson and _Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: 
Boys Were Their Gods_ by Andrew Lear and Eva Cantarella. For 
instance, he highlights the fact that we modern Westerners would 
class Greek pederasty as child abuse (with the now inevitable 
digs at Catholic priests). That is undoubtedly true, but one of 
Davidson's principal arguments is that the eromenos in Greek 
pederastic relations was supposed to be at least 18. I have 
doubts about this claim, but it seems to me misleading in a 
review of Davidson's book to fail to mention this fact, since it 
leaves the impression that Davidson's argument against viewing 
Greek pederasty as child abuse is unseemly in a way clearly not 
intended by the author. By the same token, Bowersock makes the 
dismissive claim that Lear's and Cantarella's principal 
contribution is merely to publish what they found in Keith 
DeVries' list and he then chides them for limiting their 
discussion to Archaic and Classical vase-painting. But, of 
course, not all of his readers will be in a position to know that 
De Vries' list concerns only Archaic and Classical; and this 
complaint also squares rather poorly with his praise, earlier in 
the review, of Sir Kenneth Dover's _Greek Homosexuality_ which 
also only considers Archaic and Classical material. Bowersock 
then makes rather heavy weather of his complaint against Lear and 
Cantarella that they fail to consider a large amount of later 
material. It is true, of course, that there is much later textual 
material, but it is simply untrue that there is a large quantity 
of later Greek visual evidence. John Clarke in _Looking at 
Lovemaking_ lists THREE Hellenistic works, one of which he argues 
may have been made at Rome for a Roman patron by a Greek artist. 
The material Bowersock refers to later in his review also derives 
from Roman contexts (although again probably made by Greek 
artists). In his penultimate paragraph, he mentions the fact that 
Greek and Roman attitudes toward pederasty (or practices of 
man-boy relations) were different, but he oddly considers it a 
great flaw in a book about Greek pederasty that Cantarella and 
Lear do not include Roman material. So, for example, on the 
Warren cup, a slave is watching one of the sex scenes. The 
presence of slaves was typical of Roman lovemaking, but as far as 
we know, not of Greek. Finally, in a review that concentrates so 
heavily on the Warren cup, it would seem appropriate to mention 
the fact that many scholars (such as Caroline Vout, in _Power and 
Eroticism in Imperial Rome_) consider it a fake. I don't happen 
to agree, but why should Cantarella and Lear muddy the waters in 
a book about Greek pederasty by discussing a possibly fake 
Atticizing work from Augustan Rome? Moreover, Bowersock spends 
most of his time complaining about the fact that they focus 
exclusively on Archaic/Classical Athenian vase-painting. One 
might think they did so for good reason, however, as there are 
over 1000 vases from this time and place to consider and very 
little material from elsewhere. Of course, it is perhaps a 
plausible criticism that their title implies that they will 
examine evidence beyond this. To spend the bulk of his actual 
discussion of their book on this secondary point, however, while 
making absolutely no effort to judge whether they competently 
choose, describe, explain etc. the 113 vase-paintings they 
actually do discuss suggests to me that Professor Bowersock's 
attention must somehow have been distracted from the actual job 
at hand, reviewing the books.

Phillip Mitsis
A.S. Onassis Professor of
Hellenic Culture and Civilization
New York University

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The text above the line was cross-posted by
Terrence Lockyer
Johannesburg, South Africa
e-mail:  lockyert [at] mweb.co.za

Please note that I am simply fowarding this message for 
information, and have no personal connection with any 
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