Introduction 28 March 2005

1. Sex and Money: Social and Economic Ethics in the Classical and Medieval Mediterranean WorldsEdward D. Englishhttp://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/english/classes/hist197ee • Introduction • 28 March 2005

2. In this course we are concerned with the ethical and philosophical meanings that are applied to human sexual physiology, sexual sensations, and sexual behavior within particular historical communities and how these ideas relate to meanings applied to certain economic activities.

3. We are interested in erotic experience as expressed in texts and images. This abound with systems that regulate (moral/ethical) intercourse, procreation and all erotic experience. These can be negative or positive.

4. Terminology and Concepts Sexuality =lovemaking, sexual activity Heterosexuality=Male-Female Homosexuality = Male-male Female-Female Male-Boy Gender = Learned or Natural

5. Questions on Cultural Constructions of Sexuality = our own or those of the past =universal and given social attitudes = vary in communities or cultures over time = or were people then like us - essentially

6. Images or Cultural Artifacts of Everyday Life – Indicative of Different Attitudes To Interpret Consider the Circumstances of: Artists Patrons Audience Locations/Uses

7. Ask Who made it? When was it made? Who paid for it? Who looked at it? Where did people look at it? Under what circumstances did they look at it? What else does it look like? These help with its interpretive possibilities.

8. Symposium with Companions – at the Bottom of a Drinking Cup

9. Alcibiades – A participant and Famous Athenian Soldier and Politician -- and perhaps once a Lover of Socrates.

10. Sexual Images all over not just indicating Brothels

11. Apotropaic To Ward off bad Luck or the Evil Eye -- here a Phallus to Make the Bread Rise in a Bakery in Pompeii

12. Priapus and a Scale – the Guardian of Gardens and Fertility

13. The god Mercury or Hermes also Fertility and Business

14. Garden Decorations -- A Herm with a Woman

15. Utensils and Plates--Decorative Items: Here a Drinking Cup -- An Inopportune Satyr and a Maenad

16. Another Drinking Cup for a Different Taste with a Man and a Boy – Athenian and Greek Pederasty – What was Its Function?

17. Silver Drinking Cup – More Graphic (The Warren Cup)

18. Woman’s Bronze Mirror – A Human Lover being Crowned by Eros/Cupid for His Prowess – Passionate Sex as a Divine Gift (Corinth, about 325 BCE)

19. Drinking Vessel with Another Intimate Scene

20. Amusements – Gladiators – the sex stars of their days

21. Woman in a Bikini-- Mosaic in a Bath in a Villa in Sicily

22. Workout – in a Bath in Sicily

23. Funeral Stele: More Solemn Affection between a Couple

24. Real Romans in Egypt – Mummy Paintings

25. Is all this ultimately about first, and foundationally, governing oneself, then managing one’s estate, and then participating in the right administration of the city or community? Rather than the later concept of Sin?

26. So one might say that we are investigating the social management strategies of these past cultures and how they shaped behavior. In other words how did they judge and classify this sexual and economic behavior? http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/english/classes/hist197ee