Abstract
These papers examine ways in which humor can, in different cultural contexts, be bound up with with gender and eroticism, and thus reveal norms and values specific to the Greek and Roman worlds. By historicizing both "laughter" and "sexuality", and being particularly sensitive to the physical performance contexts of various cultural practices, the authors develop new interpretations of a variety of sources (images on symposium pottery, Athenian comedy, courtroom oratory, Socratic dialogue, Latin epigram, prose fiction). The neologism humoerotica, which plays on the often anachronistic association of homoeroticism with antiquity, exemplifies our commitment to the use of fluid heuristic categories for exploring cultures “before sexuality”--a territory less familiar than is often supposed.
Keywords: Humor, laughter, sexuality, gender, eroticism, Attic pottery, Aristophanes, Aeschines, Xenophon, Socrates, Martial, Lucian.