Tag: Greek Anthology

Ancient Greek and Latin Insult Poetry

The ancient Greeks and Romans are known for their many revered works of literature, art, and philosophy. One thing they are not known for (but perhaps should be!) is their insult poetry. In this post, I have collected some insulting ancient Greek and Roman poetic passages from a wide variety of sources, including the Homeric epics, Sappho, Hipponax, Catullus, and Martial, that I find especially amusing or revealing about ancient Greek and/or Roman society.

Readers should be aware that many of the passages I am about to discuss are extremely misogynistic, classist, racist, and/or shockingly sexually obscene. Some passages contain references to sexual violence. Some readers may find some of these poems disturbing.

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The Ancient Greek Woman Who Dressed as a Man to Seduce Men

Earlier this week, I came across an absolutely fascinating epigram in the Greek Anthology by Asklepiades of Samos (lived c. 320 – after c. 263 BCE), an early Hellenistic Greek poet, whose epigrams are among the oldest that are included in the anthology. In the poem, he describes a beautiful young person named Dorkion (which is the diminutive form of the name Dorkas, which means “gazelle”) who was apparently assigned female at birth, whom he describes using feminine grammatical forms, and whom modern scholars have universally interpreted as woman, who dresses and behaves like a young man while trying to seduce young men.

I was intrigued by this poem, in part because of what it may reveal about ancient Greek attitudes toward gender, sex, and gender-nonconforming behavior. I thought that my readers might find it interesting as well, so I’ve decided to share it here, along with some information about its background and scholarly interpretations of it.

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