Ancient Sexuality

From emperors to empresses, poets to prostitutes, slaves to plebs, ancient Rome was a wealth of different experiences and expectations-nowhere more so than around the subject of sex and sexuality. The image of ancient Rome that has come down to us is one of sexual excess: emperors gripped by perversion partaking in pleasure with whomever and whatever they fancied during weeklong orgies.

In her previous books, Vicki Len put listeners in the sandals of now obsolete laborers, ranging from funeral clowns to armpit pluckers, and untangled the twisted threads of superstition and science in antiquity. Now, in this book of astonishing true tales of love and sex in long-ago Greece, Rome, and other cultures around the Mediterranean, she opens the doors to shadowy rooms and parts the curtains of decorum.

The idea of sexual fluidity may seem new, but it is at least as old as the ancient Greeks, who wrote about queer experiences with remarkable frankness, wit, and insight. How to Be Queer is an infatuating collection of these writings about desire, love, and lust between men, between women, and between humans and gods, in lucid and lively new translations.

In western post-Christian society, humans are thought of less like precious image bearers and more like commodities. The canary in the coal mine of this ideological shift is often women and children, which manifests itself in the seemingly built-in disdain towards motherhood and children for their lack of production of economically valuable goods. However, the risk of this utilitarian approach to human life is not just outside the church, but within those spaces as well.

Zábavnou formou sledujeme proměnu společenského chování v ohledu na intimní činnosti (např. antikoncepce či spodní prádlo) od starověku až po novověk. V učebnicích historie i vědeckých dílech najdeme především údaje o panovnících, slavných bitvách, hospodářství i umění, ale o základních lidských potřebách se toho dozvíme málo či vůbec nic. Vlastimil Vondruška to napravuje a lehce stravitelným stylem přináší informace o různých pojetích péče o lidské tělo a o proměně společenského chování v ohledu na intimní činnosti od starověku až po baroko.