Intimacy in roman times (1st-4th centuries B.C.E.)
Visual culture around sexuality, the body and gender (an approach to the peninsular west)
- 24 FEB 2024 5PM
24 Feb 202417h – 18h15
By Ricardo Pinto e Chaves (University of Évora, CHAIA)
Free admission, subject to capacity
+ 10 years old | 75 minutes
This activity is conducted in Portuguese.
Sexuality, the body and gender are the focus of much cultural and social debate, as well as playing a role in the spheres of politics and economics. The dialectic that currently exists around these issues can be contemporised by an examination of classical society, assuming the necessary conceptual and mental distancing and avoiding possible errors of anachronism that these subjects have recently been subjected to.
The aim of this brief presentation is to explore how erotic/sexual iconography allows us to understand sexuality in Roman times as one of the many instruments of the process of domination and acculturation undertaken by Rome in the subjugation of other peoples.
The visual culture associated with sexual relations may have contributed, in the westernmost part of the empire, to the creation of a specific discourse relating to a provincial and plural sexuality, as can be seen in other provinces of the Roman Empire.
Given the lack of studies of this nature relating to Portuguese territory, this debate is crucial to obtaining useful information for the study of regional Roman sexual identities.
José Avelar © Museum of Lisbon