Performing the Kinaidos

Abstract

Performing the “Kinaidos” is the first book-length study to explore the figure of the kinaidos (Latin, cinaedus), a type of person noted in ancient literature for his effeminacy and untoward sexual behavior. By exploring the presence of this unmanly man in a wide range of textual sources (Plato, Aeschines, Plautus, Catullus, Martial, Juvenal, documentary papyri, and dedicatory inscriptions) and across numerous locations (classical Greece, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Roman world), Performing the “Kinaidos” demonstrates how this figure haunted, in different ways, the binary oppositions structuring ancient societies located around the Mediterranean from the 6th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. Moving beyond previous debates over whether the kinaidos was an ancient “homosexual” or not, the book re-evaluates this figure by analyzing the multiple axes of difference such as sex, status, ethnicity, and occupation through which this type of person gained legibility in antiquity. It also emphasizes the kinaidos’ role in the development of the category of the professional performer. The book centers the numerous descriptions of the specific poetic and dance styles associated with the kinaidos in ancient sources—a racy verse meter called the Sotadean and a rapid shimmying of the buttocks—and integrates them with the closely related issue of acceptable forms of male social performance in classical cultures.