Acca soror: Queer kinship, female homosociality, and the Amazon-huntress band in Latin literature

Abstract

Despite the modern association of ancient Amazons and Diana’s huntresses with lesbianism, scholarly accounts of these groups as they appear in ancient Greek and Roman literature have rarely adverted to any hints of homoeroticism. This article re-examines several narratives concerning Amazons and huntresses in Latin literature (including Camilla in Vergil’s Aeneid and Phaedra in Seneca’s eponymous tragedy) from the perspective of queer kinship and female homosociality, demonstrating the ways in which these characters subvert traditional norms of kinship and femininity, replacing patriarchal control with female sodality, often imaged as a “sister” relationship. It suggests that, even if we do not interpret these intense homosocial bonds as erotic, we can nonetheless perceive a more radical rejection of social norms that transcends genital sexuality and merits the label of “queerness”, insofar as queerness can be defined as a resistance to normativity.

Keywords:

• Amazons
• homoeroticism
• lesbianism
• Vergil’s Aeneid
• Seneca’s Phaedra

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 The list of 70s publications is taken from Schwarz (2000), 176.

2 For a more detailed examination of Amazon myth, see especially Blok (1995), and Penrose (2016), for an approach informed by postcolonial theory.

3 On women and war in antiquity generally, see the collection of essays edited by Fabre-Serris and Keith (2015).

4 Diodorus 2.44-46.

5 Some ancient sources for the three strands of the tradition: men as sex slaves: Diod. 2.45; annual procreation, Strabo 11.5.1; killing male offspring, Hellanicus (FGrHist 4 F 167).

6 See especially duBois (1982).

7 Blok (1995) offers a detailed appraisal of the role of Amazons in the myths of Achilles, Hercules, and Bellerophon.

8 Aeneid 11.659-62; 11.648. Sharrock (2015) offers a nuanced reading of the way in which comparisons of female soldiers to Amazons can act as a reductive stereotype for both ancient authors and modern critics, marking them as Others and denying them heroism. Sharrock essentially reads the Amazon as a deviant figure; I, however, seek to recuperate the ancient Amazon and reframe her “deviance”, regardless of the often scathing approach of ancient authors.

9 On female homoeroticism in antiquity, see the comprehensive treatment of Boehringer (2021).

10 The vase had previously been discussed by Mayor (2014), 135–6, who, however, asserts that “[s]ame- sex desire among Amazons is not in evidence in ancient Greco- Roman art or literature” (2014, 135), without any indication that the vase is just such a piece of evidence.

11 On the “traffic in women”, see Rubin (1975). The original essay still retains its stark analytical power.

12 I put chastity in quotes here to emphasize the difference between ancient and modern notions: in antiquity, “virginity” primarily means that someone is not married, while in modern culture, the primary signification is that someone has not had sex (on which see Sissa 1990). Further, the relationship of ancient “chastity” to female homoeroticism is unclear; it seems that a woman might still remain a “virgin” if she has sex with another woman, but no ancient author tells us explicitly.

13 For “huntresses who don’t care about weaving”, see Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.411-12 (Callisto), Vergil, Aeneid 7.805-6 (Camilla), Silius, Punica 2.68-84 (Asbyte).

14 Compare Monique Wittig’s description of lesbians (1992, 32): “‘woman’ has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual economic systems. Lesbians are not women.” If it is participation in patriarchal exchange that engenders women as such, Amazon-huntresses are not quite women either.

15 For discussion of Camilla’s relationship to the heroic character of the “future” Roman people, see Viparelli (2008), 21-3.

16 It is worth noting that, although the representation of Camilla shares elements in common with virgin huntresses found in texts like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, these young virgin huntresses, predominantly prey for male rapists, tend to be represented in a much more eroticized way than Camilla. She is conceptualized as more of a professional soldier (see Sharrock 2015) than a liminal adolescent, her liminal adolescence now in the narrative past for Vergil. Although Camilla is eroticized to an extent, especially in the symbolic penetration of death, she is rather more multi-faceted than many of the virgin huntresses. Here, we encounter the issue of “male fantasy”: are these characters represented for the sake of male titillation more than the questioning of gender norms? Certainly, any sympathy on the authors’ part towards these characters is frequently combined with the sexualization and aestheticization of their fear and vulnerability, as the classic treatment of Richlin (1992) provocatively argues in regard to Ovid. However, readers’ responses are not limited to authors’ intentions. While some readers would surely have been titillated, others (including perhaps female readers) may have responded differently.

17 11.507, 508, 565, 604, 664, 676, 718, 762, 778, 791, 808.

18 See Oliver (2015); Boehringer (2021), 62–74 and 203–212. It is worth noting that Callisto’s father is Lycaon, a bloodthirsty tyrant who is turned into a wolf, so that his savage outside matches his inside.

19 According to Elina Pyy, “Camilla’s death deprives the community of her potential offspring” (Pyy 2019, 164). This is a strong potential motivation.

20 Sharrock (2015, 162) offers a possible explanation: “Metabus dies of old age, thus allowing Camilla to grow up and seek reconciliation with her people.”

21 Another (intratextual) Amazon connection is the similarity between Camilla and Vergil’s description of Penthesilea in book 1 (1.490-3). For discussion of the relationship between Camilla and Greek sources on Amazons, see Boyd (1992), 216–18.

22 The slippage in Camilla’s biography elides her reintegration; what is foremost for the reader is the imagery of Diana’s speech. Although it may be that Camilla lived once again among the Volscians (including the men), the huntress and Amazon imagery evokes all-female community. What is lacking is the institutionalized Amazonian aggression toward men, but the refusal of men as spouses remains.

23 Camilla dies because she drops her guard in her “feminine” desire for the spoils of Chloreus, a priest of Cybele (another gender-deviant archetype; devotees of Cybele were notorious for castrating themselves). Regrettably, I do not have space to elaborate on the rich gender dynamics of Camilla’s final moments, including the desire of her killer Arruns to erase the “disgrace” she represents, the significance of her “feminine love of booty and spoils”, the arguably eroticized description of her lethal wound, and the relationship between her masculinity and Chloreus’ effeminacy. See further Fowler 1987 (Camilla’s death as defloration), West 1985 (Chloreus’ effeminacy; West seems to reproduce rather than critique the representation of easterners as weak and effeminate), De Boer 2019 (Camilla’s “deviant” lifestyle is “corrected” by her sexualized death).

24 Oxford Latin Dictionary, sv aequalis.

25 Williams (2012), 159. Williams also discusses some contexts in which frater (brother) and soror can have an erotic charge.

26 For more connections between Camilla and Dido, see Ramsby (2010).

27 For further discussion of Asbyte focused on gender dynamics, see Keith (2010).

28 In a discussion of queer kinship, Elizabeth Freeman states (2007, 298): “kinship can also be viewed as the process by which bodies and the potential for physical and emotional attachment are created, transformed, and sustained over time.”

29 Extended quotations from Phaedra are taken from the translation of Wilson (2010).

30 On Phaedra’s unhappy marriage and Theseus’ violent temperament, see Armstrong (2006), 279–86.

31 For huntresses with loosely-bound or free-flowing hair, see Ovid Metamorphoses 1.497-8 (Daphne); 2.412-13 (Callisto); 9.90 (one of Diana’s attendants); 10.592 (Atalanta); Vergil Aeneid 1.319 (Venus disguised as a Dianic huntress).

32 On the incestuous nature of stepmother-stepson relationships in Roman cultural discourse (and the Roman obsession with such relationships, regardless of their actual prevalence), see McAuley (2016), 230.

33 As Fitch and McElduff put it (2008, 33), “Hippolytus’ energy is allied to a male freedom of movement, which she envies because of her sense of entrapment in the palace and in the heavy clothes of a noblewoman.”

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Notes on contributors

Jay Oliver

Jay Oliver is assistant professor of Classics and Sexuality and Gender Studies at the University of Guelph. Their main interests revolve around gender and sexuality in antiquity, especially in Latin literature. They have published on Ovid and Petronius.