The life of the kinaidoi

This dissertation explores the kinaidos/cinaedus, a type of person often noted in Greek and Latin literature both for his effeminacy and for untoward sexual behavior. In the 1990s this figure became the prime site of contestation between various classical scholars as to the existence, or not, of ancient conceptions of sexual identity; yet in our ancient sources too, the kinaidos maintained an exemplary status as the antitype of normative classical masculinity, and historical figures such as Demosthenes, Julius Caesar, and the emperor Augustus were called out as this type of unmanly male. Alongside this ontological significance, the kinaidos is also mentioned in literary and documentary sources as a type of professional performer known for his lubricious dancing and lewd songs, which were performed to a distinctive verse meter the Sotadean. This project explores how the kinaidos is represented and understood across the Greek, Ptolemaic and Roman Egyptian, and Roman worlds and argues that the identity categories of the professional (as entertainer) and social performer (as pervert) were more enmeshed than has previously been acknowledged.