Posted on 02/11/2004 11:08:25 AM PST by Pyro7480
(Reprinted with permission from NEW OXFORD REVIEW, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706, U.S.A.)
True to its Jewish heritage, Christianity from the beginning has treated homosexual acts as an abomination. Christianity's judgement of homosexuality has been consistent. It remains to be seen if the Episcopal Church will be able to retain its title as a Christian denomination.
But there is a non-Christian witness from the first century A.D., that of the satirist Juvenal, whose judgements of homosexuality are consistently ignored today. A pagan's denunciations would considerably strengthen the arguments of today's Christians if they could show that non-Christians could be as strongly disgusted by homosexual acts as any Christian.
The intellectual climate of the first-century A.D. Rome had much in common with the intellectual climate of Western Civilization today, and the common link is the ancient Greek philosopher of hedonism, Epicurus. Benjamin Wiker, in a cutting-edge essay on the Epicurean-Christian conflict that appeared in this journal over four years ago ("The Christian & the Epicurean," Jul-Aug. 1999), laid the foundations for the link between Darwin and Epicurus that he elaborated on in a book three years late, Moral Darwinism (InterVarsity Press, 2002). "Epicureanism is the root of Darwinism," he argued in the book, "...which entangles nearly every aspect of our contemporary culture" by excluding the evidence of divinity in the creation, and design in Nature. Darwinian materialism has been the agent of materialism in 21st-century America that ives us a "completely Godless, soulless universe," entirely in accord with the aims of Epicurusm who believed that the good life was a liberation from any belief in gods concerned with mankind, the immortal soul, and any kind of an after-life. With the triumph of secularism has come a moral revolution bringing to the fore arguments favoring abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality.
Aware that popularization of Epicurus in the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius in first-century A.D. Rome had been highly influential, Wiker credits a traditional Roman Stoicism and a nascent Christianity as the intellectual forces that eventually discredited Epicureanism until its revival centuries later in Renaissance Europe. But there was a pagan man of letters of uncommon eloquence in first-century Rome, Juvenal, whose writings were widely read by early Christians and non-Christians alike. He was keenly aware of a disastrous moral decline that he documented with an abundance of detail. His chronicle is unique in its sweep and exposure of a decadence he clearly saw as not merely scandalous, but as the onset of a moral anarchy that could lead to the downfall of civilized society. Comparing the Rome of his day with the ancient, primitive (pre-Lucretian) Republican Rome, he denounces attitudes and practices that are seen as evidence of a new moral sensitivity unique to today's secular America. Though he has as much to say about political, social, and moral corruption in general, we shall limit our observation in this essay to homosexuality and same-sex "marriage."
Juvenal's second satire, ommitted from school texts of Juvenal and translated with omission even in the Loeb edition of Juvenal, begins as a discourse on the homosexuality of those who seem to be masculine heterosexuals. (Warning: Graphic language ahead)
Appearances are deceptive:
Every back street swarms with solemn-faced humbuggers.
You there - have you the nerve to thunder at vice, who are
The most notorious dyke among all our Socratic fairies?
Your shaggy limbs and the bristling hair on your forearms
Suggest a fierce male virtue; but the surgeon called in
To lance your swollen piles dissolves in laughter
At the sight of the well-smoothed passage.
We will not find in the popular press what we find in Juvenal. He alone presents us with a graphic, incriminating anal imagery to expose the practicing homosexual. Juvenal refers to morbus (disease), and observes symptoms of anemia among the homosexuals, as in the harlot denouncing the "detestable peversions" of men who are "giving tongue to each other's parts.... Your lawyer-philosopher obliges young men both ways, his versatile efforts/Turning him doubly anemic."
Same-sex "marriage" is seen as the ultimate, even blasphemous, perversion
And what about
That noble sprig who went through a "marriage" with some common
Horn-player or trumpeter - and brought him a cool half million
As a bridal dowry? The contract was signed, the blessing
Pronounced, and the blushing bride hung round "her" husband's neck
At a lavish wedding breakfast. Shades of our ancestors!
Is it a moral reformer we need, or an augur
Of evil omens?
That a former priest of Mars now "decks himself out in bridal frills, assumes/The train and veil!" deeply repulses the satirist, who in turn, can only wonder "whence came/This prurient itch upon them? A wealthy, well-born/Man is betrothed in marriage to another man/And you [O Father of our City] do nothing." Clearly the speaker is "homophobic" if by that we mean condemnatory of anal intercourse. The more he knows, the more he condemns it.
Juvenal envisions same-sex "marriages" becoming commonplace, as a friend confides:
"I must go down-town tomorrow
First thing: a special engagement." "What's happening?" "Need you ask?"
I'm going to a wedding. Old So-and-so's got his boyfriend
To the altar at last...."
He foresees the time when male brides "will yearn for a mention/In the daily gazette," just like the major U.S. dailies are now formally announcing same-sex engagements and "marriages."
Same-sex "marriages" then as now had the problem of sterile intercourse, which our scientists are trying to remedy. That "gay unions" are sterile is seen by Juvenal as Nature's wisdom, though male brides "sample foreign nostrums/Guaranteed to induce conception" or else try magical fertility rites. Long before the invention of the microscope and precise knowledge of feminine ovaries, it is possible that male brides in Juvenal's time could have believed that the colon used as a vagina might have feminine properties.
The second satire concludes by asking the reader to imagine the next-life underworld (banished by Epicurus and Lucretius) actually exists. The reception of modern homosexuals by virtuous Romans of old would require purification rites for the new arrivals "even among the dead/Rome stands dishonored." Primitive tribes in northern Europe conquered and captured by the Roman legions find abhorrent the sexual vices practiced in Rome, proof that homosexuality florishes only in morally anarchic luxury. Foreigners who stay long enough in Rome will eventually "catch her deadly sickness," which Peter Green, our translator, makes explicit from the earlier morbus, which is obviously a venereal disease.
As Juvenal recognized in the secularized, godless Rome of his day, same-sex "marriage" is not merely a crime against Nature and a corruption of marriage and family, not merely a symptom of moral decline, but a function of a morally sick society that includes a disease primarily transmitted by anal intercourse. At the center of the second satire, he writes that
Infection spread this plague
And will spread it further still, just as a single
Scabby sheep in the field brings death to the whole flock
Or the touch of one blighted grape will blight the bunch.
A learned commentary on these lines by Susanna Braund in her Cambridge University Press edition (1996) of Juvenal tells us that "the centre of the poem presents an image of disease and rot spreading uncontrollably from the centre outwards in images drawn from farming... and viticulture. The 'disease' here mentioned is homosexuality, not hypocrisy; contagio recalls morbum, from a context describing overt homosexuals." Nowhere does Braund identify the disease as HIV and AIDS, but I do, though I admit the evidence is not scientific and can likely never be proved at this late date.
Since 1981 we have recognized AIDS as a lethal epidemic now annually claiming the lives of some 16,000 young men in their prime years in the U.S. alone, and millions throughout the world. Never in all of the arguments currently offered as an affirmation of equal rights for homosexuals do we find a linkage with a lethal venereal disease transmitted primarily through anal intercourse. That the spread of AIDS was rapid and lethal throughout the Roman Empire we may assume from its prevalence in the undeveloped nations of our day. Were Gibbon to chronicle the decline and fall of the Roman Empire today, he could not deny the possiblity of a rapid and near fatal population decline caused by venereal disease.
The context for sexual corruption in our time, and Juvenal's Rome, is godless Epicurean hedonism. Like causes will have like effects. The further study of Juvenal's satires with an eye to Western civilization in our time will bring to light many more interesting correspondences. I have not even touched upon adultery, muggings, or female wrestlers and gladiators. When will a contemporary Juvenal arise to present us with the graphic and incontrovertible evidence of social, moral, and political decline
The translation I have used is not always literal, but always bold, idiomatic, and lively: Peter Green, Juvenal: The Sixteen Satires, Penguin Books, 1967. A more literal but also bowdlerized translation is the Loeb Classical Library edition by G.G. Ramsay, Juvenal and Persius, Harvard University Press, rev. ed. 1969. The scholarly edition with the Latin text and commentary is by Susanna M. Braund, Juvenal Satires, Book I, Cambridge University Press, 1996. My source for sex in ancient Rome is Craig A William's Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity, Oxford University Press, 199, whose factual evidence I do not dispute, but whose interpretation of those facts is frequently at variance with mine because he has a very trendy view of homosexuality.
Leland Peterson is Emeritus Professor of English and Latin at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. His scholarly articles have appeared in such periodicals as Modern Philology, PMLA, and Harvard Library Bulletin.
Juvenal always bears rereading, but Professor Peterson should stick to Philology and leave epidemiology to the pros.
The rate of genetic change in any disease organism and the amount of variability of it's genetic material give a very accurate date for the breakout of the disease among humanity.
HIV is considerably less than a century old in humans.
The disease is much more likely Gonorrhea since Syphilis did not appear until the 15th Century
As someone else suggested on FR, Civil Unions for gays could be initiated through "Gayrriage Ceremonies."
To be consistent, the Massachusetts Court should decide a man can call himself a "woman" or "female" on his driver's license.
I heard somewhere that it came back with explorers from the New World. Does that have any validity?
Also, even today hepatitis is more common among homosexual men than among heterosexual men, due mainly to anal intercourse and swallowing of semen. Might that have been the disease Juvenal may have symbolically paralleled with the metaphorical malaise of homosexuality?
Regards.
Is this a crveo thread?
Everyone knows that today's moral decay is the result of Episcopalians. ;)
Here's another one!
Aside from the books in the New Testament, the Didache (Greek for "teaching") is the earliest known Christian writing. It is believed to have been written and compiled during the years AD 50-110.
The Didache
Part 1: The Two Ways
The Way of Life
1. There are two Ways: a Way of Life and a Way of Death, and the difference between these two Ways is great.
The Way of Life is this: "Thou shalt love first the Lord thy Creator, and secondly thy neighbour as thyself; and thou shalt do nothing to any man that thou wouldst not wish to be done to thyself."
What you may learn from these words is to bless them that curse you, to pray for your enemies, and to fast for your persecutors. For where is the merit in loving only those who return your love? Even the heathens do as much as that. But if you love those who hate you, you will have nobody to be your enemy.
Beware of the carnal appetites of the body. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one to him as well, and perfection will be yours. Should anyone compel you to go a mile, go another one with him. If someone takes away your coat, let him have your shirt too. If someone seizes anything belonging to you, do not ask for it back again (you could not get it, anyway). Give to everyone that asks, without looking for any repayment, for it is the Father's pleasure that we should share His gracious bounty with all men. A giver who gives freely, as the commandment directs, is blessed; no fault can be found with him. But woe to the taker; for though he cannot be blamed for taking if he was in need, yet if he was not, an account will be required of him as to why he took it, and for what purpose, and he will be taken into custody and examined about this action, and he will not get out until he has paid the last penny. The old saying is in point here: "Let your alms grow damp with sweat in your hand, until you know who it is you are giving them to.
2. The second commandment in the Teaching means: Commit no murder, adultery, sodomy, fornication, or theft. Practise no magic, sorcery, abortion, or infanticide. See that you do not covet anything your neighbour possesses, and never be guilty of perjury, false witness, slander, or malice. Do not equivocate in thought or speech, for a double tongue is a deadly snare; the words you speak should not be false or empty phrases, but fraught with purposeful action. You are not to be avaricious or extortionate, and you must resist any temptation to hypocrisy, spitefulness, or superiority. You are to have no malicious designs on a neighbour. You are to cherish no feelings of hatred for anybody; some you are to reprove, some to pray for, and some again to love more than your own life.
3. Keep away from every bad man, my son, and from all his kind. Never give way to anger, for anger leads to homicide. Likewise refrain from fanaticism, quarrelling, and hot-temperedness, for these too can breed homicide.
Beware of lust, my son, for lust leads to fornication. Likewise refrain from unclean talk and the roving eye, for these too can breed adultery.
Do not be always looking for omens, my son, for this leads to idolatry. Likewise have nothing to do with witchcraft, astrology, or magic; do not even consent to be a witness of such practices, for they too can all breed idolatry.
Tell no lies, my son, for lying leads to theft. Likewise do not be over-anxious to be rich or to be admired, for these too can breed thievishness.
Do not be a grumbler, my son, for this leads to blasphemy. Likewise do not be too opinionated, and do not harbour thoughts of wickedness, for these too can breed blasphemy.
Learn to be meek, for the meek are to inherit the earth. School yourself to forbearance, compassion, guilelessness, calmness, and goodness; and never forget to respect the teaching you have had.
Do not parade your own merits, or allow yourself to behave presumptuously, and do not make a point of associating with persons of eminence, but choose the companionship of honest and humble folk.
Accept as good whatever experience comes your way, in the knowledge that nothing can happen without God.
4. By day and by night, my son, remember him who speaks the word of God to you. Give him the honour you would give the Lord; for wherever the Lord's attributes are the subject of discourse, there the Lord is present. Frequent the company of the saints daily, so as to be edified by their conversation. Never encourage dissensions, but try to make peace between those who are at variance. Judge with justice, reprove without fear or favour, and never be in two minds about your decisions.
Do not be like those who reach out to take, but draw back when the time comes for giving. If the labour of your hands has been productive, your giving will be a ransom for sins. Give without hesitating and without grumbling, and you will see Whose generosity will requite you. Never turn away the needy; share all your possessions with your brother, and do not claim that anything is your own. If you and he are joint participators in things immortal, how much more so in things that are mortal?
You are not to withhold your hand from your son or daughter, but to bring them up in the fear of God from their childhood.
Never speak sharply when giving orders to male or female domestics whose trust is in the same God as yours; otherwise they may cease to fear Him who is over you both. He has not come to call men according to their rank, but those for whom He has prepared the Spirit. And you, servants, obey your masters with respectfulness and fear, as the representatives of God. Hate all impiety and everything that does not please the Lord. See that you do not neglect the commandments of the Lord, but keep them just as you received them, without any additions or subtractions of your own.
In church, make confession of your faults, and do not come to your prayers with a bad conscience.
That is the Way of Life.
The Way of Death
5. The Way of Death is this. To begin with, it is evil, and in every way fraught with damnation. In it are murders, adulteries, lusts, fornications, thefts, idolatries, witchcraft, sorceries, robberies, perjuries, hypocrisies, duplicities, deceit, pride, malice, self-will, avarice, foul language, jealousy, insolence, arrogance, and boastfulness. Here are those who persecute good men, hold truth in abhorrence, and love falsehood; who do not know of the rewards of righteousness, nor adhere to what is good, nor to just judgement; who lie awake planning wickedness rather than well-doing. Gentleness and patience are beyond their conception; they care for nothing good or useful, and are bent only on their own advantage, without pity for the poor or feeling for the distressed. Knowledge of their Creator is not in them; they make away with their infants and deface God's image; they turn away the needy and oppress the afflicted; they aid and abet the rich but arbitrarily condemn the poor; they are utterly and altogether sunk in iniquity. Flee, my children, from all this!Conclusion
6. Take care that nobody tempts you away from the path of this Teaching, for such a man's tuition can have nothing to do with God. If you can shoulder the Lord's yoke in its entirety, then you will be perfect; but if that is too much for you, do as much as you can.As regards diet, keep the rules so far as you are able; only be careful to refuse anything that has been offered to an idol, for that is the worship of dead gods.
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