Homosexuality In Ovid's Metamorphoses

Homosexuality was a term that was created by German psychologist, Karl-Maria Benkert in the late 19th century (Pickett, 2015). Ovid was a Roman poet that focused on various Greek myths for a Roman audience, which included homosexuality, as a part of his major work, Metamorphoses. The idea of same-sex attraction and other types of sexuality were seen in many ancient civilizations, but with no concrete term to describe the relationships. Homosexuality was seen more, and more widely excepted, in the male population compared to the female population, in which there were not many records of this occurring. Ovid portrayed homosexual relationships, for both men and women, in his versions of various myths in his works, in which power dynamics and societal …show more content…
He sang about two important homosexual relationships, Jupiter and Ganymede as well as Apollo and Hyacinthus. In the story about Jupiter and Ganymede, Jupiter fell in love with Ganymede who was tending to some sheep when he was kidnapped by an eagle. Jupiter either sent the eagle that took Ganymede or was Jupiter disguised as an eagle. Jupiter eventually made Ganymede immortal and his personal cupbearer, but after witnessing Hera’s jealousy of Ganymede, he was turned into the constellation Aquarius. In Apollo and Hyacinthus’ story, Apollo fell in love with Hyacinthus and while they were competing in throwing the discus, Apollo accidentally struck Hyacinthus and killed him. In these ancient civilizations, the male homosexual relationships consisted of an older man and a younger man that has not yet reached adulthood. These relationships would last until the younger man would reach the age of adulthood. In both of these relationships the gods were the older men and the heroes were the younger men, of lower status than the older man, which reflected how male homosexual relationships worked in ancient civilizations. However, as mentioned before, Ovid favored the love between two women more than the love between two men, which was probably why there was no happy ending for the two male couples. Even though male homosexuality was widely accepted in Roman and Greek cultures, Ovid didn’t really care much about a man’s need for pleasure through sex. He came from a time period that believed that men could have sex with whoever they wanted, whether it was another man or woman, since they were “legitimate objects of sexual pleasure,” which was also why there were many depictions of rape in mythology (Hallet, 1997). Jupiter was a very