‘Ancient Sexuality Revisited’
King’s College London
June 26-28th 2025
Organised by Jean-Christophe Courtil (Toulouse/Institut Universitaire de France) and Martin Dinter (KCL)
Schedule and abstracts for the event above can now be found on the conference website.
Those wishing to attend should please register with martin.dinter@kcl.ac.uk.
The event will be co-hosted by KCL’s Classics Department, Centre of Medical Humanities, Centre of Late Antique Studies and Queer at King’s and is generously supported by the Institut Universitaire de France, the University of Toulouse and King’s College London.
Thursday 26th June 2023
9.00-9.15: Opening by the conference organisers
9.15-10.00: key note I:
Sandra Boehringer (Strasbourg), Sex, Pleasure, and Theory: What Do Aphrodisia Really Stand For?
10.00-10.15: Response by Niall Slater (Emory)
10.15-10.30: Discussion
10.30-11.00: Coffee Break
Session 1a: Practicing Sex (chair Susan Deacy, Bristol)
11.00-11.30: Nikos Manousakis (Athens), Who’s Afraid of the Eunuch?: Dionysus’ Sexual Anatomy in Aeschylus’ Edonians
11.30-12.00: Cătălin Enache (Vienna), Incestuous Desire in Platon
12.00-12.15 Discussion
12.15-13.00: Lunch Break
13.30-14.15: key note II:
Gabriel Alexandre Fernandes Da Silva (Lisbon), Animals and Sexuality in Pliny and the Plinian Tradition
14.15-14.30: Response by Anthony Corbeill (Virginia)
14.30-14.45: Discussion
14.45-15.15: Coffee Break
Session 1b: Practicing Sex (chair Pavlos Avlamis, KCL)
15.15-15.45: Effrosyni Tsakou (Lille), The Body as Canvas: Paraphilias in Ancient Greek Love Letters
15.45-16.15: Oroel Marcuello Gil (Zaragoza), Games of Shepherds. Interpreting Incestuous Homosexual Rape in Daphnis and Chloe 3.9: Harpagmós, Rite of Passage or Intertextual Play?
16.15-16.30: Discussion
Session 2: Invective and Shaming (chair: Daniel Orrells, KCL)
16.30-17.00: Margot Neger (Cyprus), Versus Intemperantissimi: Erotic Poetry and Sexual Morality in Ancient Lawsuits
17.00-17.30: Jean Coert (Dresden), Shaming Sexual Deviance with Attic Eloquence
17.30-17.45 Discussion
Friday 27th June 2023
9.00-9.45: key note III:
Antoine Pietrobelli (Besançon), Galen and Aphrodisia
9.45-10.00: Response by Rebecca Langlands (Exeter)
10.00-10.15: Discussion
10.15-10.45: Coffee Break
Session 3a: Sex and Medicine (chair: Antoine Pietrobelli, Besançon)
10.45-11.15: Lorenzo Ronchini (Padova), Οἰκειότης and Ἔθος as Coordinates of Sexuality in Galen
11.15-11.45: Justo Hernández (La Laguna), The Sexual Hygiene within Galenism: Tractado Del Uso de las Mugeres (1572) by Francisco Núñez De Coria
11.45-12.00: Discussion
12.00-12.45: Lunch Break
Session 3b: Sex and Medicine (chair: Jean-Christophe Courtil, Toulouse/ Institut Universitaire de France)
12.45-13.15: Victoria Recio Muñoz, Ana Isabel Martín Ferreira (Valladolid): Hymen: From Literature to Medicine (Lexical and Literary Aspects)
13.15-13.45: Bénédicte Delignon (Paris-Nanterre), Semen and Sexuality: The Lucretian Rereading of Hippocrates and its Influence on some Latin Poets
13.45-14.00 Discussion
14.00-14.45: key note IV:
Jean-Christophe Courtil (Toulouse), Venereal Diseases in Antiquity? New Perspectives
14.45-15.00: Response by Katharina Lorenz (Giessen)
15.00 -15.15: Discussion
15.15-15.45: Coffee break
Session 4: Historiography and Sexuality (chair: Martin Dinter, KCL)
15.45-16.15: Gilson Charles dos Santos (Universidade de Brasília, Brazil), A Reflection on Male Homosexual Relationships in Latin Historiography and Rhetoric: The Cases of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony and Seianus
16.15-16.45: Darja Šterbenc Erker (HU-Berlin), Suetonius on Augustus’ Harnessing of the Sexual Lives of the Roman Elite
16.45-17.00: Discussion
Saturday 28th June
Session 5: Poetry, Sex, and Eroticism (chair: Anthony Corbeill, Virginia)
9.00-9.30: Flavia Vasconcellos Amaral (Winnipeg), Meleager’s Erotica and his Poetic Composition
9.30-10.00: Adrien Bresson (Saint-Étienne), Delineating Masculine Sexuality in the Fourth Century: Ausonius and Claudian
10.00-10.30: Benjamin Demassieux (Lille), Divine Abduction and Mortal Justice: Negotiating Consent, Power, and Legal Frameworks in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae and Dracontius’ De Raptu Helenae
10.30-11.00: Discussion
11.00-11.30: Coffee Break
Session 6: Ethnography, Anthropology, Society (chair Niall Slater, Emory)
11.30-12.00: Ralph Moore (Dublin), Like Beasts in the Field?: Theories of Nature vs Nurture in Greek and Latin Ethnographies of Sexuality in the Barbarian North
12.00-12.30: Huiling Zhang (Oxford), Brothers in Love and Crime: The Address Frater and a Legal Reading of the Male Love Triangle in the Satyricon
12.30-13.00: Lothar Willms (Berlin), All Greek to us? A Structuralist Rereading of Sexuality in Antiquity
13.00-13.30: Discussion
Farewell