The Warren cup

 The Warren Cup is an ancient Greco-Roman silver drinking cup decorated in relief with two images of male same-sex acts. It was purchased by the British Museum, London. 5-15 A D.

I loves ya

I don't know who the artist is. If you know, let me know in the comments, so I can give credit where it's due.

Head of an Athlete (Apoxyomenos)

Stunningly beautiful.

You can buy it here!

Gay Influence

While looking for pics for the previous post, I discovered this fascinating blog:

Gay Influence

It's subtitled "gay and bisexual men of importance", and it's a compendium of gay-shaded men since Alexander the Great.  Great resource.  I'm putting a link in the blogs list in the sidebar.

Bust of Alexander the Great

Santorini

It's winter here.  Yesterday morning at dawn it was -1C on the verandah, today it was +1C.  And out house heating is STILL broken.

I am dreaming of somewhere warm, with blue skies and whitewashed walls.  Santorini would do very nicely.  Now all I have to do is find the money!

He is beautiful

Καλὸς ἐστίν.

Achilles weeps for Patroclus

So the fighting raged, while swift-footed Antilochus brought the news to Achilles. He found him in front of the high-sterned ships, agonising over the war, communing anxiously with his proud heart: ‘What woe is this? Why are the long-haired Greeks in flight? Why are they being driven back once more from the plain to the ships? Is this another sorrow sent by the gods, one that my mother prophesied? Did she not say that while I still lived the best of the Myrmidons would forgo the light of day at Trojan hands? Is Patroclus dead, in his rashness: despite my warning, to return to the ships once the fire was out, and not to battle Hector?’

He was lost like this in reflection, when Antilochus, bathed in scalding tears, brought the bitter news: ‘Alas, warlike son of Peleus, sad are the tidings you must hear. Would it were not so, but Patroclus has fallen, and they fight over his corpse, his naked corpse, for Hector of the gleaming helm has your armour.’

At these words, a black cloud of grief shrouded Achilles. Grasping handfuls of dark sand and ash, he poured them over his head and handsome face, soiling his scented tunic. Then he flung himself in the dust, and lying there outstretched, a fallen giant, tore and fouled his hair. The slave girls he and Patroclus had seized as prizes, shrieked with alarm, and ran to warlike Achilles, beating their breasts and sinking to the ground beside him. Antilochus, weeping and groaning, grasped Achilles’ hand, fearing he might take his knife and cut his own throat, so heart-felt was his noble grief.

[Translation from A S Kline's Poetry in Translation]

Greek god

It was the curly hair which made me think of it.

Majorca Flats -- 255

A familiar grey-haired old lady appeared through the sliding doors.

“Gran! Over here!” Jason moved as fast as he could through the crowds towards his grandmother and when he reached her threw his arms around her.

“Oh, gran!” he said, quite overcome with love and affection.

“Jason, darling, so lovely to see you!” His grandmother was as emotional as he.

“Gran, this is my friend Keith. Keith, this is my gran ...” and then he stopped because he wasn't quite sure what to call her.

“Lucasta Wellbury, my dear,” she said casting a quick sharp glance at Jason. “Such a pleasure. Meeting you I mean. One of dear Jason's friends. Such a bore the customs wallahs! Wanting to know whether I was an immigrant. As if I would leave Parker and Mr Minim like that. Miles and miles of desert my dear, wrinkled brown holes everywhere.” Keith's eyes sparkled with amusement. “So big. All those sheep stations and red dust. Quite wearing. Not as young as I was, you know,” she said casting a roguish grin at Keith.

Keith was delighted with her. He bowed. “Welcome to Oz, Mrs Wellbury!”

“Oz. So yellow brick road. Or was that another film? With Judy Gladiolus. Some flower name. Used to be all the rage when I was a gal. Flowers and gems. I could have been Ruby. Or Violet really to do that to your child but my father was a classics buff. Ancient Greeks. So much we learnt from them I mean our civilisation except of course the gay thing I had a discussion with Canon Green about it not quite an argument.”

“Wouldn't have thought that timid old stick would argue with formidob you, gran!”

“Not timid. Reserved, perhaps. The best kind of Christian, Jason. Don't judge him as anything like those vulgar American fundamentalists. Anyway he said in the end that whatever the Bible said about homosexuality we were given brains by God to think and too many people didn't think and we were given hearts by Him to love and too many people didn't love and then he started making copious notes for a sermon and got quite distracted so I knew he'd forgotten the Sunday lunch invitation I'd made him so I got Parker to phone such a dear man.”

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Episodes 1 to 220 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)

Dark Haired Babe

This guy is so gorgeous.  And to add to his attraction, he's wearing a thong underneath his jeans.  They always showcase a man's (or a woman's) bum better than any other kind of underwear, provided there's something to show off about.

I love it that he's not too muscly; that his body hair is thick enough to brush with your hands, but not too thick; I love the curve of his eyebrows and their thickness; the faint flush to his face; his perfect neck column; the full sweet curve of his lips.

Sometimes there are some people, male or female, so beautiful that one is in awe.  I have no thought of knowing them or having sex with them.  Just an occasional glance will do me.  I know physical beauty is transitory, but then everything passes, not so?  Panta rhei, said the Greeks.  But they said it to remind us, because we keep on forgetting.

The Two Marys

I tend to read books and watch films which make me feel that there is stuff, that there are places in the world, which are good. Yup, I know. We have pollies and captains of industry and born-again self-righteous pricks. And the Taliban (recently in the news for hanging an eight year old). Charming. And prissy bureaucrats who say 'them's the rules, fucker.' Selfishness and cruelty and ignorance and greed.

So as an antidote I read and watch escapist entertainment. Real enough to allow me to suspend disbelief but unreal enough to involve 'happy endings'.

Mary Renault and Mary Stewart are two authors who thrill me as well as make me feel some things might be all right with the world. No gay man of my generation won't know about Mary Renault. The Charioteer was one of the first mainstream novels to treat gays sympathetically. In fact, together with Victim it is credited with helping bring about the repeal of the anti-gay laws in Britain. I didn't know any other gay blokes. I had no idea how to be a gay. There were no gay bookshops where I lived. All I knew was that I was deeply in love with a man. The Charioteer helped me survive, helped me chart a course through the wild country of gay, helped me set up the guidelines and parameters which still direct me today: that gay is not immoral, that bi is 'gay plus, not minus', that the sex isn't all, that there can be a kind of 'exalted paganism' which is an alternative to the narrow, vicious and hurtful dictates of Christian fundamentalism.

The Last of the Wine, her next book, was the first set in ancient Greece, and again, it showed a world where same-sex love was ordinary, not a repulsive sin and a 'crime against nature' (which on the other hand of course much of modern industry and life is, though the aforesaid captains of industry wouldn't agree with you.) Her stories celebrate us. And are also enthralling, magical, convincing.

The other Mary, Mary Stewart, wrote romantic thrillers as well as a series about Merlin and Arthurian Britain. Her romantic novels are het, and I'm never quite sure whether to identify with her heroines or heroes. Her heroines are spunky, courageous, and altogether attractive, unlike so many heroines from this kind of novel. The villains are always blonds with blue eyes (how we laughed) and the heroes always dark-haired and dark-eyed. But the romance is special, and, even on the tenth rereading, the stories still gripping.

Both Marys are old-fashioned now. They wrote for the educated middle classes, people who could speak some French, who knew at least some Greek and Latin, people who didn't have to struggle against penury. The inimitable Jane says, apropos of poverty,

I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else. And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and common sense of the world as appears at first; for a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross.

That's from Emma, and that minx is talking to Harriet whom she hopes to raise up in the world.

The middle classes the two Marys wrote for could afford holidays on the Continent, at a time when working class families were lucky to have two weeks at Eastbourne. Both Marys loved Greece, and obviously visited often, setting many novels there and in the Levant generally. Greece after all, when it was pagan and also under the Christian Byzantine Empire, covered the whole of the eastern end of the Mediterranean. (Maybe next post, I'll talk about Cavafy, a modern Greek poet from Alexandria who managed to fill his poetry with the losses of the glories of Ancient Greece and combine it with his own melancholy attempt to find love as a gay man)

I grew up poor. That kind of middle class expansiveness was unknown to me. So these stories were also escapist in another way. I could pretend I was a well-off, confident member of the middle class, that I knew what was what, that I belonged on the broad airy uplands of prosperity, that I too had visited Vienna or Thebes or pre-civil-war Beirut.

Even though both authors have dated, they're still very good at their craft. And both of them celebrate love: Mary Renault gay and Mary Stewart het, but honestly, there's not that much difference. We all need love. And escapist romance never hurt anybody.