Acca soror: Queer kinship, female homosociality, and the Amazon-huntress band in Latin literature

Abstract

Despite the modern association of ancient Amazons and Diana’s huntresses with lesbianism, scholarly accounts of these groups as they appear in ancient Greek and Roman literature have rarely adverted to any hints of homoeroticism. This article re-examines several narratives concerning Amazons and huntresses in Latin literature (including Camilla in Vergil’s Aeneid and Phaedra in Seneca’s eponymous tragedy) from the perspective of queer kinship and female homosociality, demonstrating the ways in which these characters subvert traditional norms of kinship and femininity, replacing patriarchal control with female sodality, often imaged as a “sister” relationship. It suggests that, even if we do not interpret these intense homosocial bonds as erotic, we can nonetheless perceive a more radical rejection of social norms that transcends genital sexuality and merits the label of “queerness”, insofar as queerness can be defined as a resistance to normativity.