From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. By Kyle Harper. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. iv + 304 pp. $39.95 hardcover.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity . By Kyle Harper . Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 2013. iv + 304 pp. $39.95 hardcover.Book Reviews and NotesFrom the sex trade as an essential element of the Roman economy in the second century to the tale of the penitent who takes up desert asceticism in the fifth, this work traces the transformation of Roman society into Christian by paying particular attention to sexual morality. As indicated by the title, the thesis is that sin, a theological concept, replaces shame, a social one, as the driving force of sexual ethics and legislation in the Christian period. Harper argues that the Greco-Roman of the imperial period embedded eros within the social structures of honor and shame. While sexual behavior was driven by both individual desire and social expectation, the logic of its inhered in the social order, with moral categories associated with social status. An aristocratic male, a female slave, and a prostitute each had different social expectations regarding both sexual behavior and its morality. However, following the transformation occasioned by the rise and success of Christianity, which Harper dates to Justinian, the moral logic became different--it was severed from social status and tied to the theological concept of sin, in which, he says, the cosmos replaced the city as the framework of morality (8). Harper also aims to pay special attention to the relatively unexplored categories of same-sex behavior and prostitution in this period. While this characterization of the shift between Roman and Christian sexual might not surprise historians of this period, Harper's assembling and placing in conversation a wide and deep range of ancient sources provides a significant contribution.For his assessment of Greco-Roman sexual morality, Harper argues that the Greek novels provide a window into the relationship between erotic ideologies and social structure. Focusing on Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon , Harper argues that it both celebrates the eros of the free and noble lovers, and instantiates the social values of its age. The adventures required by the genre threaten, but never violate, the honor of the maiden Leucippe, whose destiny, the novel makes clear, is to be chastely married to Clitophon. Represented here is the honor of the book's title--for the Romans, sexual immorality consisted of sexual violation of socially inappropriate persons, such as the wives of peers or same-sex partners of the same age and social status. For aristocratic men, sexual excess with slaves or prostitutes was unwise, but not immoral. Harper takes the novels to be accepting and even celebrating sexual desire, but this desire is only respectably resolved in honorable marriage. While the gloomy Stoics (11) might argue otherwise, sexual desire was embraced by Roman culture, as long as it was appropriately embedded in the social structure.Harper sees the seeds of change in two significant elements of the rising Christian ideology. Focusing primarily on Clement of Alexandria, he identifies the first as the rejection of desire. The purpose of sexuality, Harper argues, comes to be procreation, and, for Clement, desire needs to be moderated, and ultimately conquered by the intellect. …