ABSTRACT

Un-Roman Sex explores how gender and sex were perceived and represented outside the Mediterranean core of the Roman Empire.

The volume critically explores the gender constructs and sexual behaviours in the provinces and frontiers in light of recent studies of Roman erotic experience and flux gender identities. At its core, it challenges the unproblematised extension of the traditional Romano-Hellenistic model to the provinces and frontiers. Did sexual relations and gender identities undergo processes of "provincialisation" or "barbarisation" similar to other well-known aspects of cultural negotiation and syncretism in provincial and border regions, for example in art and religion? The 11 chapters that make up the volume explore these issues from a variety of angles, providing a balanced and rounded view through use of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence. Accordingly, the contributions represent new and emerging ideas on the subject of sex, gender, and sexuality in the Roman provinces.

As such, Un-Roman Sex will be of interest to higher-level undergraduates and graduates/academics studying the Roman empire, gender, and sexuality in the ancient world and at the Roman frontiers.

chapter 1|21 pages

Venus’ mirror

Reflections of gender and sexuality in the Roman Empire

part I|91 pages

Seeing (beyond) sex

chapter 2|29 pages

On a knife-edge

An image of sex and spectacle from Roman north-west Europe

chapter 3|36 pages

More than just love and sex

Venus figurines in Roman Britain

chapter 4|24 pages

His and hers

Magic, materiality, and sexual imagery

part II|123 pages

Representations and performance of the feminine (or is it?)

chapter 5|66 pages

Barbie-bodies and coffee beans

Female genital imagery in the Mediterranean and the north-west provinces of the Roman Empire

chapter 6|27 pages

Female status and gender on the Roman frontier in Britain

Between representation and reality

chapter 7|28 pages

Dressed for death?

A study of female-associated burials from Roman-period Slovenia

part III|121 pages

The stuff of “man”

chapter 8|33 pages

Coming out of the provincial closet

Masculinity, sexuality, and same-sex sexual relations amongst Roman soldiers in the European north-west, first–third centuries A.D.

chapter 9|36 pages

The phallus and the frontier

The form and function of phallic imagery along Hadrian’s Wall

chapter 11|14 pages

Roman and un-Roman sex