Catamite

References in literature and popular culture

• In Plato's dialogue Gorgias (at 494e), Socrates uses the phrase κιναίδων βίος ('catamite life'), in a conversation with Callicles contrasting appetites and contentment.
• The word appears widely but not necessarily frequently in the Latin literature of antiquity, from Plautus to Ausonius. It is sometimes a synonym for puer delicatus, 'delicate boy'. Cicero uses the term as an insult. The word became a general term for a boy groomed for sexual purposes. It also appears in Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Books 3.16, 5.10 and 6.34).
• Stephen Dedalus ponders the word in Ulysses when discussing accusations that William Shakespeare might have been a pederast.
• C. S. Lewis in his partial autobiography Surprised by Joy described the social roles during his time at Wyvern College (by which he meant Malvern College) as including the role of "Tart": "a pretty and effeminate-looking small boy who acts as a catamite to one or more of his seniors ..." and noted that "pederasty ... was not [frowned upon as seriously as] wearing one's coat unbuttoned."
• Anthony Burgess's 1980 novel Earthly Powers uses the word in its opening sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."
• In HBO's TV series Rome, following the battle of Pharsalus, Julius Caesar admonishes Lucius Vorenus for letting Pompey Magnus escape, saying that Pompey might be "broken like a Dacian catamite" and yet still be dangerous.
• In the post-apocalyptic landscape of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, the narrator describes an army on the move on foot with "women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites".
• In South Park season 7 episode 8, "South Park Is Gay!", Craig Tucker identifies himself as a catamite.

References

References

1. Craig Williams, ''Roman Homosexuality'' (Oxford University Press, 1999, 2010), pp. 52–55, 75.
2. Cicero, frg. B29 of his orations and ''[[Philippicae. Philippics]]'' 2.77; Bertocchi and Maraldi, "''Menaechmus quidam''," p. 95.
3. Alastair J. L. Blanshard, "Greek Love," in ''Sex: Vice and Love from Antiquity to Modernity'' (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 131. Both [[Maurus Servius Honoratus. Servius]], note to ''[[Aeneid]]'' 1.128, and [[Sextus Pompeius Festus. Festus]] state clearly that ''Catamitus'' was the Latin equivalent of ''Ganymedes''; Festus says he was the ''concubinus'' of Jove. Alessandra Bertocchi and Mirka Maraldi, "''Menaechmus quidam'': Indefinites and Proper Nouns in Classical and Late Latin," in ''Latin vulgaire–Latin tardif. Actes du VII^ème Colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif. Séville, 2–6 septembre 2003'' (University of Seville, 2006), p. 95, note 16.
4. [[Larissa Bonfante]] and [[Judith Swaddling]], ''Etruscan Myths'' (University of Texas Press, 2006), p. 73.
5. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' 3rd Ed. (2003)
6. ''Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life'', Chapter VI ''Bloodery'', pp. 83–84, C. S. Lewis
7. "An arresting opening". [[The Daily Telegraph]].
8. McCarthy, Cormac. (2006). "The Road". Vintage International.