Libertine leading the people

Tucked away in the medieval manuscripts of the works of Lucian, the scintillating Greco-Syrian satirist of the second century AD, is a dialogue entitled Loves. Two friends with different sexual preferences visit the city of Knidos to see the famous statue of Aphrodite. One pronounces himself awestruck when confronted by the statue, while the other prefers to view her from the back. Their responses prompt a debate: is it better for a man to love women or boys? Vigorous discussion ensues, veering between the high-minded and the bawdily suggestive. The advocate for boys is pronounced the winner – by a third friend (who is for his part avowedly asexual). Since the nineteenth centuryLoves has split scholars: some have seen it as a genuine work of Lucian, others as a late-antique forgery. That debate is in itself politicized: a pro-gay manifesto is more easily ignored once banished from the oeuvre of one of the literary greats.

As Andrea Capra and Barbara Graziosi reveal, Loves had at least one enthusiastic reader in the nineteenth century: the Italian revolutionary hero and sometime classics professor Luigi Settembrini. It inspired him to compose a spoof translation of a spoof ancient Greek text called The Neoplatonists, which he claimed was the work of the otherwise unknown Aristaeus of Megara. His manuscript lay hidden until 1937, when the classicist Raffaele Cantarella discovered it in the National Library in Naples. Thereafter it was suppressed for many years, for fear that its joyously unabashed (if often euphemistic) celebrations of sex in all its permutations should taint the name of a founding father of the new Italy. It was finally published in the 1970s, to great public prurience. Once the hero of the nation, Settembrini was now increasingly seen as a libertine. Just as with Lucian, the attribution of The Neoplatonists to an illustrious author threatened scandal.

In this captivating book Capra and Graziosi set out to reunite the two facets of Settembrini’s self, the revolutionary and the classically infused lover. They read The Neoplatonists – an English translation of which appears at the end of the book – as playfully semi-autobiographical, recalling passages in its author’s unfinished memoir that speak more guardedly of intense male friendships. But Settembrini, they emphasize, was a man of many parts who was also deeply in love with his wife, Gigia Faucitano, his intellectual companion, confidante and constant support through his brutal imprisonment between 1839 and 1842. This was when he began to immerse himself in the works of Lucian, and miraculously managed to translate them from his confinement. (Just as miraculously, she managed to smuggle his efforts out.) The complexity of his erotic attachments is reflected in The Neoplatonists: the two young men on whom it focuses seek pleasure in each other, but also (sometimes individually, sometimes à trois) in an older man, and in women. What is striking about the narrative is the absence of jealous possessiveness: the youths love passionately, but without conflict.

Classical reception studies in the twenty-first century have found themselves enmeshed in culture wars. The history of nineteenth-century classics has been a particular conflict zone between (to caricature) those who see it as an age of philological heroes and those who decry the roots of the modern subject in the imperialism, colonialism, sexism and “classism” of those formative times. For Capra and Graziosi, Settembrini offers an inspiringly different narrative of classical reception. For one thing, culture warriors tend to focus on Anglo-German narratives, while classics in southern Europe has a very different backstory. Also important here, as the authors emphasize, is the turn to post-classical literature as a source of inspiration: Settembrini looked not to the canonically classical, fourth-century BC figure of Plato, but to a post-classical Syrian writing in Greek centuries later, under the Roman Empire. Lucian is a “Neoplatonist” not in the philosophical sense, but in the sense that he embraced love between males, as Plato did. Settembrini, like C. P. Cavafy, found a refuge in this post-canonical material, in which he was clearly saturated. (Indeed, I think I spy even more allusions to late Greek erotica than Capra and Graziosi do.) Finally, they laud the spirit of joy and positivity that animates Settembrini’s eroticism. This humane spirit, they argue, was the wellspring of his revolutionary politics, which were remarkably liberal for the time: he supported a form of equality of the sexes, and a multi-ethnic Italy. They also suggest that this could be a model for the embattled modern academy.

Their book is provocative, exploratory and open-ended, as were Settembrini’s writings. No one, inevitably, will be convinced by every word. But it is riveting from start to end. Settembrini was an extraordinary figure who lived a colourful life against the backdrop of a transformative era. Andrea Capra and Barbara Graziosi tell the story superbly. More than that, they reflect richly and profoundly on what that tale means for us today – whether as classicists, lovers, revolutionaries or human beings.

Tim Whitmarsh is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge

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