Games of Venus: An Anthology of Greek and Roman Erotic Verse from Sappho to Ovid

by Peter Bing

This section is much indebted to the pioneering work of many fine scholars, and does not pretend to originality. Among the many works that have appeared on the topic of ancient Greek sexual mores, we single out K.J. Dover, “Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behaviour,” Arethusa 6 (1973) 59–73; idem, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Berkeley 1974) esp. 205–216; idem, Greek Homosexuality (New York 1978); M. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality vol.2 (New York 1985); J. Henderson, “Greek Attitudes toward Sex,” in Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean, eds. M. Grant and R. Kitzinger (New York 1988) vol.2 pp. 1249–1263; D. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York 1989); J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire (New York 1989); for the latter two cf. J. Griffin's sceptical review in The New York Review of Books 37.5 (1990) 6–12; D. Halperin, J. Winkler, F. Zeitlin, eds., Before Sexuality (Princeton 1990). For the erotic tradition in the visual arts, see J. Boardman and E. La Rocca, Eros in Greece (London 1978); D. Mountfield, Greek and Roman Erotica (New York 1982); C. Johns, Sex or Symbol: Erotic Images of Greece and Rome (Austin 1982); A. Dierichs, “Erotik in der Kunst Griechenlands,” Antike Welt 19 (Sondernummer 1988).