The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 25. John Boswell "Review of the novel Ephesiaca"

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Review of the novel Ephesiaca

(The plot of this Greek-language novel from the 100s AD is whirlwind, to say the least. Cecil B. DeMille would have nightmares on how to bring it all to the big screen. So, reading the detailed Wiki synopsis for the book first may help you understand the comments below. Boswell’s main objective is to illustrate the ancients’ effortless acceptance of Gay couples forming marriages equitable with opposite-sex unions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephesian_Tale)

And while the hero [Habrocomes] and heroine [Anthia] of Xenophon of Ephesus’ romance novel [the “Ephesiaca”] are deeply in love with each other, and drawn together by mutual attraction, their parents arranged for the marriage for reasons completely unrelated to their feelings, and without consulting them. […]

Although writers sometimes infer from the literary stereotypes of fourth-century Athens that all ancient [same-sex] relationships were temporary and age-related, the evidence suggests, as noted above, that this picture is exaggerated even for Athens, and [same-sex love] relationships in the rest of ancient Europe were certainly far more varied and flexible than this, probably not very – as they were in Greece – different from their heterosexual counterparts. Plutarch makes this point explicitly: “ . . . the lover of beauty will be fairly and equably disposed toward both sexes, instead of supposing that males and females are as different in the matter of love as they are in their clothes.” He suggests, further, that the upper age limit for “lovers” and lower limit for “beloveds” would be precisely the same regardless of genders.

In antique romances, Gay lovers have permanent, exclusive relationships precluding similar relations with other men, [and] they appear as unions characterized by general equality, although there is sometimes an age differential, and the idea that one party will be the “lover” and one the “beloved” persists even in the face of social realities militating against it. […] In Xenophon of Ephesus’ romance novel, the “Ephesiaca,” [the backstory includes the tale of how] two boys about the same age fall in love, but one [Hippothoos] takes on the role of “lover” and must undertake to rescue the other [Hyperanthes] from the clutches of an older man by abducting [his partner] at swordpoint from the latter’s home, having had to sell all his belongings and take[n] sail to get there. [Tragically, Hyperanthes dies in the escape.][i]

There are, in fact, three prominent couples in this novel: [First,] Habrocomes and Anthia are (respectively) the hero and heroine, whose marriage of love (though arranged) and subsequent misadventures constitute the major plot of the novel. Though they are separated through most of it and constantly tempted or threatened to marry or sleep with other partners, […] they remain absolutely faithful to each other and are ecstatically reunited at the end of the novel. [Second,] their faithful servants Leucon and Rhode, who have suffered through misadventures and separation from their beloved master and mistress, are reunited with them at the end, now prosperous and free, and the two couples remain friends. A third couple consists of two males, Hippothoos and Cleisthenes. The former, an ex-pirate, is a devoted friend of the hero; the great love of his life was a young man named Hyperanthes, who died tragically. Hippothoos settles down at the end of the novel in a permanent romantic relationship with […] Cleisthenes,[ii] who is both beautiful and of good family. […] They live as a permanent couple on terms of equality and friendship with Habrocomes and Anthia and Leucon and Rhode.

Habrocomes and Anthia are legally married in a [religious] ceremony described in the novel; Leucon and Rhode, being servile, probably are not legally married, but their relationship is treated as comparable to that of their masters, permanent and based on love. The author establishes many parallels between Hippothoos’ two [same-sex] loves and the heterosexual relationships in the novel: his first partner’s name [Hyperanthes] is a play on Anthia’s name (hers means “beautiful”; his “more than beautiful” or “extremely beautiful”); he and Hippothoos meet at a festival like Habrocomes and Anthia; the young man’s parents arrange a relationship with another man based on economic advantage (like most heterosexual marriages), and [Hyperanthes] and Hippothoos must escape (one might say “elope”) to live happily together.

When all the principals in the novel are finally reunited, the author has each couple go to bed together “as they are,” Habrocomes with Anthia, Leucon with Rhode, Hippothoos with Cleisthenes. Hippothoos raises a great tomb to his first partner, Hyperanthes, and lives with Cleisthenes in a lasting union of apparent equality, “sharing his goods” (5.9.2, 5.15.4). Although the text has been [defaced], it seems to indicate that the legal aspect of this relationship took the form of adoption. Roman law viewed with utter horror the prospect of a male’s marrying an adopted child of the opposite gender, but was much more indulgent when the genders were the same, or the adoption was actually undertaken as a form of […] matrimony.

Most ancient writers – in striking opposition to their modern counterparts – generally entertained higher expectations of the fidelity and permanence of [Gay] passions than of heterosexual feelings. Plutarch adduces with evident disapproval cases of husbands who allowed their wives to be unfaithful to gain some advantage, and then notes, “By contrast, of all the many Gay lovers there were and have been, do you know of a single one who surrendered his beloved, even to gain honor from Zeus? I do not” (Erotikos 760B). The proponent of [same-sex] passion in the Hellenistic debate Affairs of the Heart says that wisdom and experience teach that love between males is the “most stable” of loves. This prejudice was doubtless influenced by the Symposium of Plato, in which heterosexual relationships and feelings are characterized as pedestrian, while their same-sex equivalents are “heavenly.” The contrast exercised wide influence on all subsequent discussions of love.

—John Boswell,[iii]

1994