GANYMEDE IN THE ART OF ROMAN CAMPANIA ANCIENT ROMAN VIEWERS’ EXPERIENCE OF EROTIC MYTHOLOGICAL ART

GANYMEDE IN THE ART OF ROMAN CAMPANIA - ANCIENT ROMAN VIEWERS’ EXPERIENCE OF EROTIC MYTHOLOGICAL ARTGANYMEDE IN THE ART OF ROMAN CAMPANIA
ANCIENT ROMAN VIEWERS’ EXPERIENCE OF EROTIC
MYTHOLOGICAL ART
Ville Hakanen
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION
To be presented for public discussion with the permission of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Helsinki, in Porthania, Auditorium PIII, on the 23rd of February, 2022 at 17 o’clock.
Helsinki 2022
Layout: Unigrafia
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ABSTRACT
Ancient Roman wall painting and stucco decorations often contain images of erotic desire and images of people marked as erotically desirable. Images of the myth of Ganymede are a case in point. They concentrate on the naked body of a youth whose pose and physique make clear that he is supposed to arouse desire. The youth is accompanied by Jupiter’s eagle, often suggestively holding him from behind. In ancient literature the myth of Jupiter’s abduction of Ganymede symbolized normative sexual desire felt by adult men for younger men of lesser social standing. Taken together, this evidence seems to suggest that artistic representations of Ganymede were primarily a food for the erotic fantasies of adult men – a common view regarding much of ancient erotic imagery.
This hypothesis, however, is full of uncertainties. What guarantees that adult men found the images erotic in the manner suggested by literary sources? Could it happen, that a man desired to take the role of the desired Ganymede instead of the desiring Jupiter? The images were also viewed by younger men and women, slaves as well as free. What can we say about their engagement with the images: did women’s desire follow the familiar path of men or would they rather identify with the feminized role of Ganymede? What about men whose subordinate social status relegated them to a sexual position parallel to Ganymede’s? Should we make assumptions about people’s desires and erotic identifications based on their gender and social status in the first place? Indeed, how did the ancient framework conceptualize sexual desire and its relationship to personal identity? And finally, did it make a difference whether desire was aroused by a real person or an artistic representation?
These questions are fundamental if we want to understand the way ancient viewers experienced the erotic images that surrounded them, to understand the dynamics of ancient viewer’s identification with ancient erotic art. To answer these questions, we need to go further than iconography and the literary and archaeological context of the images. In this work I approach ancient viewers’ experience of erotic images, particularly those representing Ganymede, by taking into account ancient norms of sexual desire and behavior, ancient norms of sex and gender, and discussing them in relation to the modern conceptual framework of Judith Butler’s theory of sex and gender. The discursive character of the ancient conception of sex/gender emerging from this discussion is compatible with the conception of self distinguished in Greco-Roman philosophy and poetry by Christopher Gill. By combining these theoretical frameworks, I am able to propose relatively strict discursive limits for the sexual desire and gendered identification Roman viewers would have experienced as possible. A survey of ancient discussion
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regarding the visual incentive of emotions and the way art engages its audience leads me to suggest that identification with art followed the same dynamic as identification in real life.
Consequently, I argue that ancient viewing of erotic art should be understood as participation in a discourse about the correct way of being a desiring person. This discourse would have been part of the performative production of the norms of sex/gender and the self. These norms enabled ancient people to understand themselves as persons, as proper, “livable” human beings. The existential gravity of the discourse would have rendered it compelling for its participants.
Equipped with this theoretical perspective, I analyze four Campanian wall painting and stucco decorations from the first century CE involving an image of Ganymede. I consider the images as part of an iconographic continuum which refers to the literary tradition of the myth, and look at the images in relation to their archaeological and decorative contexts. My theoretical approach enables me to propose how ancient viewers of Greco-Roman cultural background would have identified with the images. Viewers able to build their selfhood according to the normatively ideal masculine model would have identified with the discursive position represented by the phallic, penetrative desirer – Jupiter in images of Ganymede. As the universal framework of correct personhood, normative masculinity would have guided every viewer’s understanding of themselves. I propose that persons whose bodies and social roles were used as the negative opposite of the masculine ideal – primarily women and slaves – could have experienced the images in a hybrid manner translating the normative model of desiring to conform to feminized sexual roles allotted to them in practice. In images of Ganymede, this means a contemporary identification with Jupiter’s desire and Ganymede’s sexual role. Roman art’s tendency to create potentially contradictory combinations of images would have challenged viewers to find the correct way of desiring. Together with other incoherence in the normative framework, it shows the fundamentally unstable, discursive character of abiding norms of sex and gender in antiquity as well.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work would not have been possible without the help and support of many people and institutions.
I want to thank Professor Kirsi Saarikangas, my principal supervisor, whose calming presence and unwavering confidence in my work have carried me through the long and sometimes arduous process. My other supervisor, Director of the Finnish Institute in Rome, Docent Ria Berg, has provided me not only with perceptive comments but also with a scholarly example of conceptual comprehension combined with a meticulous attention to material detail and warm humor. I thank her also for inviting me to participate, in May 2014, in the Symposium on the Roman courtesan at Villa Lante and in the resulting publication, the outcome of which is the first article of this work (article A).
I am deeply grateful to Associate Professor Jennifer Trimble and Professor Verity Platt, the pre-examiners of this thesis. Their insightful remarks have brought this work to a higher level and their encouragement has helped me through the final stages of the process. I also owe sincere thanks to Professor Caroline Vout for her invaluable critique which sparked me to explain myself better. Obviously, I am fully responsible for any errors or negligence remaining.
I thank the Vice Director of the Finnish Institute in Rome, Dr Elina Pyy, and Dr Samuli Simelius for their support and assistance, their academic example and their inspiring friendship.
I thank the anonymous reviewers of the American Journal of Archaeology, whose remarks on the first unsuccessful version of the second article of this work (article B) pushed me to develop my theoretical thinking and whose remarks on the accepted second version of the article assured me that I had found the right path. I am grateful to Editor-in-Chief Jane B. Carter of the AJA for accepting the article and for her help in tightening my arguments. I would also like to thank Professor John R. Clarke, Professor Ja Elsner, and Dr Eeva-Maria Viitanen for their insightful comments on various versions of article B, and Professor Clarke for hosting me as a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin during the spring semester of 2016. I owe warm thanks to Dr. Rudolf Känel for his generous assistance regarding the telamones and Jaakko Kalsi for his help with the figures of article B.
My institutional networks have provided me with invaluable support. I want to thank the Doctoral Program in History and Cultural Heritage of the University of Helsinki for granting me a funded doctoral candidate position for three and a half years. In the discipline of Art History, I owe particular thanks to Docent Leena- Maija Rossi (now Professor in the University of Lapland) for her valuable comments
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on the third article of this work (article C) and her inspiring example as an art historian and scholar of gender. I have always warmly felt Docent Elina Räsänen’s encouragement and support. The doctoral seminar of Professor Saarikangas has been a safe environment to explore ideas. Among the participants I would like to thank in particular Dr Oscar A. Ortiz and my dear friend Veera Moll for much- needed peer support along the way.
I am grateful to the Finnish Institute in Rome for offering an incomparable framework for scholarship, ideas and friendships ever since my participation, in 2011, in the introductory course to antiquity at Villa Lante under the caring guidance of the then director of the institute, Docent Katariina Mustakallio. I want to thank the Foundation Institutum Romanum Finlandiae and the staff of the Institute, first of all Intendent Simo Örmä. Among the many people whose acquaintance I can trace back to Villa Lante, directly or indirectly, I thank Dr Tuomo Nuorluoto and Urpo Kantola for their assistance with certain linguistic uncertainties. I thank Roosa Kallunki, Anna-Maria Wilskman, and Anna Vuolanto for the shared moments of enthusiasm and frustration. Along with the Finnish Institute, the library of the American Academy in Rome was an important place for this work.
The occasion that initiated me into the hands-on study of antiquity was the Pompeii Project of the University of Helsinki (Expeditio Pompeiana Universitatis Helsingiensis). During the field seasons of 2010-2012, under the tutelage of the director of the project, Docent Antero Tammisto, with the heartfelt support of the whole team, I was encouraged to construct my identity as a student and scholar of Pompeian wall-painting, for which I am forever grateful.
I owe warm thanks to the Parco archeologico di Pompei (formerly Soprintendenza Pompei) for allowing me to study the decorations in Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae discussed in this work in situ, and for granting me authorization to use photos taken at the sites. I also thank the Parco archeologico di Ostia Antica for allowing me to examine the decoration of the House of Jupiter and Ganymede in situ.
Besides the funding of the University of Helsinki, this work has been funded by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation and the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation. I am deeply grateful to these organizations for enabling me to focus full-time on my research.
Robert Whiting has been wonderfully reliable and patient in checking my English from the second article on.
Finally, I want to express my warmest gratitude to my family and friends. I can sincerely and proudly claim (along the lines of my argument in this work) that I am who I am because of the people with whom I have habituated myself with behavior, attitudes and beliefs and with whom I can engage in reflective discourse. The past couple of years of pandemic-affected life have achingly demonstrated how
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important even just the idea of my friends being there for me is, not to mention the importance of the time spent together, hopefully increasing exponentially after the worst is over – both pandemic- and dissertation-wise.
My grandparents Sirkka and Arne Pacius and Anja and Aarno Hakanen have provided me with the kindest possible example of virtue and humanity and sparked my curiosity of the study of antiquity, both by their appreciation of learning and by lending me a collection of Asterix comics when I was a kid. My parents Olli Hakanen and Anneli Pacius, my brother Jussi Hakanen and his spouse Sanni Koskela, I cannot thank you enough for your love and support, for your endless interest in my work and for an internalized model of rational argumentation. My partner Antti Saastamoinen, I love you and thank you for our life together – the most significant frames of this work.
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CONTENTS
2.2.1 Material limitations ........................................................................... 28 2.2.2 Iconography ........................................................................................32
3 Methodology of the Study of Roman Decorations ...........................................45
4 Summary and Archaeological Contexts of Articles A-C ..................................53 4.1 Casa di Ganimede and House IX 5, 11.13 in Pompeii (Article A) ..................54 4.2 Forum Baths in Pompeii (Article B) .............................................................56 4.3 Villa Arianna at Stabiae (Article C) ...............................................................57
5 Sexual Desire and Ancient Conceptions of “Gender” and “Sex”................... 60 5.1 The Penetration Model .................................................................................. 61 5.2 Masculine Gender Status and Sexual Desire ................................................66 5.3 Discursive Construction of “Sex” and “Gender” ............................................ 71 5.4 Femininity and Womanhood ........................................................................76
5.4.1 Virtue and Womanhood .....................................................................79 5.4.2 Erotic Experience of Female-Identifying Persons ............................ 84
6 The Roman Self and Erotic Experience .............................................................. 91 6.1 Foucault, Gill, and Butler: Erotic Experience, Selfhood,
and Performativity ........................................................................................93 6.2 Objective-Participant Conception of Selfhood ............................................. 98 6.3 Identification, Virtue, Shame ......................................................................106
8 Conclusions - Roman Viewers’ Identification with Images of Ganymede ...146 8.1 Casa di Ganimede and House IX 5, 11.13 in Pompeii (Article A) ................150 8.2 Forum Baths in Pompeii (Article B) ............................................................153 8.3 Villa Arianna at Stabiae (Article C) ............................................................. 155 8.4 Coda: Roman Sarcophagus Reliefs and Normative Identification ............. 157
Bibliography .............................................................................................................161
LIST OF ORIGINAL ARTICLES
This thesis is based on two previously published peer-reviewed research articles and one article manuscript. Each article is referred to in the text by its letter.
Article A
Hakanen, Ville. 2018. “A perfect scenery for male courtesans? Ganymede in two Pompeian wall paintings.” In The roman courtesan : archaeological reflections of a literary topos, edited by R. Berg and R. Neudecker, in the series Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae vol. 46. Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 167-181.
Article B
Hakanen, Ville. 2020. “Normative Masculinity and the Decoration of the Forum Baths in Pompeii.” American Journal of Archaeology 124(1): 37-71.
Article C
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1 INTRODUCTION
The naked male figure has the slender body of an athletic adolescent with fleshy musculature but no pubic hair. He wears a cape, chlamys, that merely frames his nudity, a pointed Phrygian cap and a pair of intricate Phrygian boots, if he is not barefoot. His hair is curly and longer in the back. His poses vary between a languid repose and a ballet dancer’s dive, but they all share an air of ease and composure – despite the fact that the youth is in the presence of a large eagle, which either observes him from a tree, carries him in the air or is served by him on the ground. The shepherd’s stick, pedum, or hunting spears that the youth often carries with him lie unused by his side. The eagle is usually proud-looking: puffy-chested, forceful, sometimes outright fierce. There is a tension between the bird’s dynamism and the gentle staticity of the youth.
This description applies to a number of representations of the myth of Ganymede from the first century CE Italian peninsula. According to ancient sources, Ganymede was a beautiful Trojan prince, whom Jupiter, in the shape of an eagle, abducted and made his cup-bearer and lover. Jupiter and Ganymede became a symbol of adult men’s sexual desire for younger men and boys. Images of the myth emphasize this association through the normatively desirable body of Ganymede and his generous nudity, through the sexually suggestive poses of the couple, and sometimes by placing a baby Eros between the two. These images seem to represent a homoerotic fantasy, where one partner is the plain embodiment of an animal desire aroused by the other partner who is passive and overtly eroticized.
However, as soon as the scene is labeled “homoerotic” it becomes loaded with an entire sphere of associations most of which have little to do with antiquity. By singling out representations of the myth of Ganymede from representations of other eroticized figures, strikingly similar in shape but desired by female deities (for instance, Endymion and Adonis) or themselves female (like Europa, Leda, and Ariadne), I assume that Ganymede was special for the fact that he was a man desired by a male god. My reason for this assumption might be that I have grown into thinking that people have subjective, personal sexual identities, some of which conform to the norms of their society more than others, and that same-sex desire often forms the basis for identities that differ from the mainstream. Consequently, I might suggest that a significant reason for the production of images of the myth of Ganymede and, at least, a significant reason for enjoying them as viewers, would have been the nourishment of a desire the recognition of which could have functioned as an incentive to construct a corresponding identity. This identity, in turn, would have needed external assertion in the form of representations. All of a sudden, we would have a perspective on images of Ganymede that is male
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and distinctively modern in the sense that it focuses on same-sex desire but does not, as such, make a distinction between the status of the parties of the desire, its subject and object, Jupiter and Ganymede.
If we want to consider the difference between Jupiter and Ganymede – an active, dominating, perhaps symbolically phallic, but otherwise non-eroticized subject of desire and a passive/subservient, overtly eroticized object of desire – we should shift our focus from homoeroticism to social status and gender. Such a perspective would align Ganymede with parallel figures, both male and female, who are young, sexy, and passive – feminized – displayed for the gaze of their desirers. The motivation behind the creation and enjoyment of images of Ganymede would still be desire, but desire that is not different by default from desire aroused by similar female figures or similar male figures beloved by goddesses. This would seem to conform with ancient thinking that was mostly concerned with the way sexual behavior reflected people’s social and gender status. But where does this perspective leave the desire of viewers whose sexual and social status was parallel to Ganymede? Should we think of female viewers automatically identifying with the position of feminized figures like Ganymede, Narcissus or Ariadne? Or is their identification based on the apparent sex of the figure? In fact, how does people’s identification with sex and gender function in the first place and can we understand the way it functioned in antiquity?
As we see, an image of a relatively simple-looking erotic scenario soon leads to highly complex, abstract questions if we seek to understand the way it was experienced in antiquity. Similar questions would arise regarding viewers’ response to an erotic image today, but in the case of antiquity we must try to bridge the gap between conceptual frameworks of selfhood, sex/gender, and art separated by almost two millennia. This might sound like a project doomed to fail, but I argue that it is not. On the contrary, it provides us with a theoretical understanding which is not limited to an individual ancient work of art or an individual decoration, to an individual ancient viewer on a particular occasion of viewing, or to the viewers whose perspective is represented in the preserved literary sources. By understanding the dynamics of ancient selfhood and its connection to the norms and ideals of sex/gender, by understanding the way artworks were thought to function in regard to the audience’s feelings and desires, we gain a perspective which enables us to hypothesize on a firm basis with the experience of all the viewers who were part of the Greco-Roman culture. This is what I venture to do in this study.
Articles A-C
But this is not where my work began. This investigation started as the study of the “homoerotic” subject of Ganymede in Roman wall paintings and stucco decorations. Because Roman images of Ganymede are always part of decorations
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which include other mythological images, it was clear from the beginning that the scope of the study would be somewhat wider, but it was still motivated by my interest in examining if and how the viewing of images of Ganymede could…