Sex: Antiquity and Its Legacy

Review: It may seem that physical sex has no history. (The human race does it, and needs to do it, and has always done it.) But actually there is a real need to consider how the very conceptualization of sex itself has changed, with its different boundaries, constructions and anxieties. Daniel Orrells' intelligent, coherent and intellectually exciting book offers just such a consideration. He takes the somewhat stagnant debate about ancient sexuality in a wholly new and profitable direction, and in so doing gives the field a real shake-up. Orrells is an excellent scholar and writes with wit and verve. In placing the history of the sexual act alongside the ideology of the body, of the person and of agency, his important - but never self-important - book has the potential to break out to a very wide readership.' - Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek Literature and Culture, University of Cambridge 'This is a spectacular book - learned, provocative, witty, highly readable and tightly argued. Daniel Orrells complicates and complements the arguments of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality, showing that the sexual lives of the Greeks and Romans, however different from our own, are nonetheless central to modern notions of sexuality, sexual identity, and gender expression. Starting in the Renaissance, Orrells demonstrates that the reception of ancient Greek and Roman literature played a key role in the development of the psychoanalytic understanding of sexuality; that classical scholars, poets, and eventually nineteenth-century sexologists turned to "the classics" for vocabularies and methods of knowing about sex, and of thinking about sex as a form of knowing. This book is immensely informative and delightful to read, presenting complex debates in lucid, playful prose.' - Kirk Ormand, Professor of Classics, Oberlin College, author of Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome