Sarah Nooter’s How to Be Queer: An Ancient Guide to Sexuality is an entry in Princeton University Press’ Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series. Each volume presents translations of various passages of ancient Greek and Roman literature that offer some self-help-esque guidance in specific topics.[1]
Nooter’s title is delightfully provocative, with the implication that queerness defines ancient sexuality. The deliberate anachronism of the term “queer” (x) meets the average reader where they are in terms of contemporary beliefs about sexuality and its predication upon attraction to gender, as the passages contained in the volume comprise “a plurality of the instances of non-heteronormativity that exist in the archaic and classical Greek texts that we still possess” (viii). “Queer” activates two sets of “normative” ideas for Nooter’s passages to upend, both modern constructions of sexual identity based on the gender of one’s desired object and ancient ideals of proper sexual expression circumscribed by one’s gender and class. However, as Nooter suggests in her introduction, the “queer” and the “straight” need not be mutually exclusive: “One purpose of this volume is to invite readers to loosen their ideas of what is “queer” and what is “straight.” The boundary between them is not so stable; nor should it be” (x).
The nature of this volume as a sourcebook and collection of passages (in the original Greek and in translation) obviates the need to evaluate any driving central argument, beyond an ontological one (i.e., that such a volume needs to exist, on which see below), but with that in mind, my evaluation centers on which passages and topics Nooter has chosen to include and how she has organized her evidence, arguments in and of themselves for a literary “canon” of ancient Greek queerness, as it were.
There are 12 chapters organized each in the same fashion: a brief paragraph-long introduction to the text(s) and author(s) in the chapter followed by the Greek of the source material on the left-hand page and a corresponding English translation on the right, à la the Loeb Classical Library. Nooter will occasionally, though inconsistently, provide further introductions within a chapter if a new author or work is introduced. For example, chapter 6, “Boy’s Gone Crazy: The Depths of Desire”, comprises passages that focus on male same-gender desire from Anacreon, Theocritus, Pindar, and Xenophon. The passages from all four authors are briefly contextualized in one chapter introduction (77), but the last author, Xenophon, receives his own introductory paragraph when passages from his Symposium begin (83), ostensibly to differentiate his Symposium from Plato’s Symposium, which was introduced earlier in chapter 1 (37). Within each chapter, the transitions between passages, including those between different authors, can be confusingly marked. The author’s name and the work’s title (without a passage or line citation) will mark the change in the English translation, while a passage or line citation (without author or work information) will mark the change in the Greek text. In cases where the author remains the same but a new passage from that author begins, the Greek text is divided by the new passage or line citation, but the English translation is divided only by a horizontal rule of five dots; if you were not keeping track of which author you were reading, you would need to flip back to check, since the header of any given page contains only the volume’s title and the chapter title.
Such confusing signposting, however, does not detract at all from Nooter’s smartly-chosen and cleverly-organized selections, comprehensively spread temporally from the Archaic period into the Hellenistic and Imperial. They comprise both bread-and-butter passages in ancient sexuality studies, from the fragments of Sappho (chapters 4, “Just Like a Woman: The Female Gaze”, and 5, “Crash into Me: The Scorch of Lust”) to Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium (chapter 9, “The Origin of Love: Halves and Holes”), and lesser-studied yet equally important passages. In particular, the space given to the female same-gender desires expressed in choral lyric in Alcman 1 and 3 (chapter 3, “I’m Coming Out: Girl/Friends”) complements the individual perspectives in Sappho’s monodic fragments (chapters 4 and 5) and fosters new appreciation for women’s erotic subjectivity in these ancient works. The chapter divisions and titles advertise topics that range from meta-erotic masculine bonds (like that between Achilles and Patroclus in chapter 1, “Two of Us: Beyond Eros”) to feminine appreciation of feminine beauty (e.g., the Alcman and Sappho fragments mentioned above); from gender-normative practices like masculine dominance, activity, and the gaze (as in Zeus and Poseidon in chapter 2, “Come and Get Your Love: Snatching Boys”; Anacreon in chapter 6, “Boy’s Gone Crazy: The Depths of Desire”; and Theognis in chapter 7, “Don’t Do Me Like That: Getting Played”) to gender-disruptive practices like men dressing in feminine clothing (like Agathon in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae and Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae in chapter 8, “The Wild Side: Gender Bending”); from philosophical definitions of eros (like that of Plato’s Aristophanes in the Symposium mentioned above and Plato’s Socrates in the Phaedrus in chapter 11, “The Wings of Love: Adoring Boys”) to the practical experience of eros (like Hippothales of Plato’s Lysis and Theocritus’ lover characters in the Idylls in chapter 10, “Lust for Life: Wooing Boys”, and Alcibiades as dramatized in Plato’s Symposium and dramatically chronicled by Plutarch in chapter 12, “Who Wants to Live Forever: Killer Queen”). Nooter has impressively and laudably collated a vast variety of sources that contains something for anyone interested in any aspect of non-normative Greek sexuality.
The series claims that these sourcebooks “make the practical wisdom of antiquity accessible for modern life”, but for the average reader, this particular volume will likely require supplemental resources, whether in the form of secondary readings or knowledgeable teachers, to contextualize the stories and narratives that it contains. Potential readers who lack pre-existing knowledge about ancient Greece may be confused by the variety of genres, narratives, terms, and ideas in the volume; Nooter can give only so much context in the space of an introductory paragraph, and her endnotes, while helpful, are self-professedly exiguous in number and size. For example, with regard to the many names in the sources that can be confusing for the non-specialist, Nooter states, “I identify only those in the notes that seem critical to understanding the sense of the passages” (xi). There is no glossary or index either for rapid look-ups or quick references. As another example, when explaining Plato’s application of the term “lover” to Achilles (“Aeschylus wrote nonsense when he said that Achilles was in fact the lover of Patroclus,” Αἰσχύλος δὲ φλυαρεῖ φάσκων Ἀχιλλέα Πατρόκλου ἐρᾶν [Plato Symposium 180a]), Nooter describes the institution of pederasty concisely, as follows: “As can be seen throughout this volume, a common trope of erotic relationships in ancient Greece was that the older party to an affair was the active agent of love or desire, while the younger party was its passive recipient” (240). The physical and indeed metaphysical implications of the terms “active” or “passive” may produce more questions in the average reader’s mind than space would permit answers for; indeed, Nooter nods at one implication of the active-passive dichotomy in the introduction to the very next chapter, in which she claims that “the attraction of men to other men was recognized in early literature as a basis for erotic and reciprocal (if uneven) relationships” (41, emphasis mine), but again, only so much explication, set-up, and analysis can be provided in chapter introductions or endnotes for a sourcebook like this.
For this reason, the volume serves best not as a comprehensive resource but as a starting point or a reference work, either for the average reader to get a basic sense of the texts, authors, and concepts contained herein before digging into further reading, or for a student to peruse as a sourcebook with the help and guidance of a teacher who can give deeper context for and foster meaningful engagements with the texts. Teachers and scholars also serve to benefit from the breadth of Nooter’s sources, both in terms of source collation for research or pedagogical material for the classroom; I embarrassedly admit to learning about Alcman’s female same-gender desire poems for the first time from this volume, despite my teaching courses on Greco-Roman gender and sexuality. I anticipate adopting this volume as a required textbook in future versions of my courses.
The book is free from typographical errors. Both the Latin and the Greek fonts are easy to read, with the latter faithfully reproducing any appropriate lacunae or conjectures with customary brackets, spaces, cruces, and dots. Nooter’s translations from the Greek are impressively both faithful to the original and comprehensible and pleasant to read for the language-less. One illustrative example is Kinsman’s crude suggestion to Agathon at Thesmophoriazusae 153 (οὐκοῦν κελητίζεις, ὅταν Φαίδραν ποιῇς;) that Agathon “leaps from horse to horse” (LSJ s.v. κελητίζω), which Nooter renders, “Then do you ride cow-girl style when you’re staging Phaedra?” (123).
The hopeful note sounded by Nooter at the end of the introduction frames for this queer reviewer the stakes of a volume like this: “Reader, whatever your own sense of your own identity, sexuality, or place in the world, I hope that you will find this volume by turns buoyant, playful, and passionate. If there is one thing the Greeks can teach us, it is that the erotic and the queer are a source of life and a cause for celebration” (xi). In an era where queer identities are increasingly under threat, including but not limited to legislation aimed at disenfranchisement of trans people and court cases aimed at curtailing LGBTQIA+ rights more generally, the celebration of “non-normative” identities and practices works towards demystifying the other, bridging the gap to make those who identify as “normative” realize that the distance between “us” and “them” is perhaps not quite so large.
Table of Contents (and Passages Contained)
Introduction (vii-xi)
- Two of Us: Beyond Eros (Homer Iliad 16.1-100, 18.78-116, 19.303-27, 22.385-90, 23.35-107, 23.138-53, 23.217-25, 24.1-12; Aeschylus Myrmidons fr. 228a, 229a, 231a; Plato Symposium 179b-180a) (2-39)
- Come and Get Your Love: Snatching Boys (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 202-17; Pindar Olympian 1.36-87) (40-49)
- I’m Coming Out: Girl/Friends (Alcman 1.39-101, 3) (50-59)
- Just Like a Woman: The Female Gaze (Sappho fr. 1, 16; Anacreon 358) (60-67)
- Crash Into Me: The Scorch of Lust (Sappho 31, 94, 96, 130, 131) (68-75)
- Boy’s Gone Crazy: The Depths of Desire (Anacreon 357, 359, 360, 378, 398, 407, 413; Theocritus Epigram 17; Pindar “For Theoxenus of Tenedos” fr. 108; Xenophon Symposium 1.1-10, 4.10-29) (76-95)
- Don’t Do Me Like That: Getting Played (Theognis 237-54, 1235-38, 1249-52, 1259-62, 1263-66, 1267-70, 1271-74, 1283-1394, 1295-98, 1299-1304, 1305-10, 1311-18, 1318a-b, 1319-22, 1323-26, 1327-34, 1335-36, 1337-40, 1341-50, 1351-52, 1353-56, 1357-60, 1361-62, 1363-64, 1365-66, 1367-68, 1369-72, 1373-74, 1375-76, 1377-80, 1381-85, 1386-89) (96-117)
- The Wild Side: Gender Bending (Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 130-67; Euripides Bacchae 451-59, 912-44) (118-29)
- The Origin of Love: Halves and Holes (Plato Symposium 189c-193d) (130-45)
- Lust for Love: Wooing Boys (Plato Lysis 203a-207b; Theocritus Idylls 12, 13, 29, 30) (146-79)
- The Wings of Love: Adoring Boys (Plato Phaedrus 237a-241d, 244a-b, 245b-c, 251a-252c, 255a-e) (180-211)
- Who Wants to Live Forever: Killer Queen (Plato Symposium 216d-219e; Plutarch Alcibiades 1.3-2.2, 3.1-6.2, 16.1-3) (212-37)
Notes (239-45)
Notes
[1] One miniscule quibble with the title of the volume under consideration, however, is that the “ancient” in the subtitle more properly indicates “ancient Greek” – the volume contains no sources beyond Greek ones.