COMPARISON BETWEEN LATIN POETRY AND PROSE

Comparison Between Latin Poetry and Prose

Comparison between Latin Poetry and Prose

The academic tradition of pederastic verse may not ever have completely died out despiteChristian homophobia, though no demonstrations in Latin survive from the fifth through the eighth century. But then little was in writing in the so-called Dark Ages (476-1000), and less survives. If the last survivingpagan homoerotic poems in Latin by Nemesianus in his fourth Bucolic were made in the reign of Numerian (283-284), Christian Latin pederastic verses emerged some two centuries later, best exemplified by Ausonius (d. ca. 395). Ausonius' library contained homosexual literature that scandalized Romans and he translated from GreekintoLatin Strato'sriddleabout three men simultaneously enjoying four sexual postures.

Elements of Continuity

A tradition of tolerance for sodomy can be traced from Ausonius through Sidonius Apollinarius to the monks of the central middle Ages with their taste for "particularfriendships." A North Italian among poets of the ninth century who rescued classical traditions wrote: "Hard marrow from mother's bones/Created men from thrown stones;/ Of which one is this young boy,/Who can ignore tearful sobs./When I am heartbroken, my mind will rej0ice.P shall weep as the doe whose fawn has fled." ("0 admirabile Veneris ydolum.") So much of the classical tradition had survived that poems of love or intimate friendship for other men could be written by bishops and men of learning without incurring scorn or censure as would have happened in nineteenth- century Europe. The experts of Latin publications, having in writing in their own spoken tongue, were revered as forms by authors composing in a learned, artificial talk, not their own vernacular, and celebrated in their composing their fondness for other men, and especially the passion which as adult males they felt for boys. The entire homoerotic custom of Mediterranean heritage, made this inevitable. And the compares and antagonisms-the young man who scorns his lovers, the loverwho is interested only in a boy's examines and not his brain and character-are commonplaces in the Latin literature of pederasty.

From the Carolingians to the subsequent Middle Ages

In the renewal of discovering throughout the Carolingian era (late eighth and ninth centuries), a distinctly erotic component can be seen in the around of clerics over which Alcuin, the "friend of Charlemagne," presided. The main heading of the passion, although, was mostly from Alcuin to his students; he went so far as to bestow upon a favorite scholar a "pet ...