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I read this book in the midst of the public debate over the presence of homosexuals in the military and found that it enriched my thinking on this issue. The author, a professor in the Institute of Roman Law at the University of Milan, writes from a historical and decidedly nonpsychological perspective. But the value of this work for a psychoanalytically oriented reader is that it demonstrates yet again the remarkable plasticity of human sexual behavior and the complex interaction between psychosexual factors and cultural trends.
Bisexuality in the Ancient World, despite its catchy title and apparent marketing to a psychological readership, is essentially a work of classical scholarship. The words “homosexuality” and “bisexuality” have no particular psychological meaning here but are purely descriptive. Drawing on primary sources that include philosophical and literary works as well as legal documents, Cantarella carefully investigates the sexual norms and practices of ancient Greece and Rome. Her study focuses mainly on men, primarily because the available documentation regarding female sexuality in antiquity is negligible. The level of scholarship in this work appears high, although my ability to judge the quality of classical research is rather limited.
The strength of this work lies in its clear and compelling descriptions of how people's ideas about love, gender, and sexuality