With the help of several online friends (yay twitter!) I tracked down various versions of this text in time to discuss in in my podcast on women loving women in classical Rome, so it only made sense to add it to my occasional series of LHMP entries with primary sources. I can't say that I was happy to find that the evidence in the story for women's same-sex marriage in ancient Egypt was not quite as solid as some authors (like Brooten) imply. But it's still a clear presentation of a romantic and erotic (and possibly matrimonial) relationship depicted in a fictional context by an author within the cultural scope of the Roman empire and presented using language identical to that used for heterosexual relationshps.
I'm amused to find that over-the-top ancient Greek adventure-romances were evidently A Thing. Next week's entry will look at parallels between the plot stucture of Greek romances and an early Christian text "The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena" which involves a similar string of separations, abductions, rescues, devoted pining, and dramatic reunion.
Unlike Ovid, Iamblichos doesn't seem to have had any doubts that women could not only feel desire for each other but had clear ideas about how to act on it. But this text also points out how easy it is for evidence of women's homoeroticism to be erased across the ages. Photius wrote his summary of the Babyloniaka and skipped over much of the side-story of Berenike with the bare outline: The story of Berenice, daughter of the king of Egypt, of her disgraceful amours, of her intimacy with Mesopotamia. If the character of Mesopotamia hadn't been so essential to the central story of Rhodanes and Sinonis, one imagines that Photius might have eliminated it altogether as part of the unfortunately "immoral" portions of Iamblichos' work.
Wikipedia says that the last known copy of the original text by Iamblichos was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1671...but that the fate of the work hinged on a single copy speaks of a history of neglect and indifference. Mind you, based on the summary that we have, the Babyloniaka may not have been exactly a shining lamp of literature. Perhaps the characterization by Photius that it was a "puerile fiction" has merit. But there's a long history of female erasure based on which texts are considered to have merit. Perhaps we need our "puerile fictions" if that's the only place we can find ourselves reflected.
Comments