The ancient Greeks and Romans were not shy about sex. Phallic imagery, sex scenes, and the lively activities of their promiscuous gods adorned many objects, buildings, and sculptures. Drinking cups, oil-lamps, and walls were decorated with scenes of seduction; statues of erect penises served as boundary-stones and signposts; and marble satyrs and nymphs grappled in gardens. Caroline Vout examines the abundance of sexual imagery in Greek and Roman culture. Were these images intended to be shocking, humorous, or exciting? Are they about sex or love? How are we to know whether our responses to them are akin to those of the ancients? The answers to these questions provide fascinating insights into ancient attitudes toward religion, politics, sex, gender, and the body. They also reveal how the ancients saw themselves and their world, and how subsequent centuries have seen them. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this lively and thought-provoking book not only addresses theories of sexual practice and social history, it is also a visual history of what it meant and still means to stare sex in the face.

Sex on Show: Seeing the Erotic in Greece and Rome

Arts & Photography

Vout, Caroline

History & Criticism

University of California Press

The relationships between Roman emperors and their objects of desire, male and female, are well attested. The salacious nature of this evidence means that it is often omitted from mainstream historical inquiry. Yet that is to underestimate the importance of 'gossip' and the act of thinking about an emperor's private life. In this book Dr Vout takes the reader from Rome, and Martial's and Statius' poems about Domitian's favourite eunuch, to Antioch and dialogues in praise of Lucius Verus' mistress, to the widespread visual commemoration and cult of Hadrian's young male lover, Antinous. She explores not the relationships themselves but rather the implications of their description. Such description provides a template with which to examine the relationship between emperor and subject, gods and mortals, East and West, centre and periphery. It thus contributes to the fields of imperial representation, court society and the imperial cult.

Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome

Cambridge University Press

How did the statues of ancient Greece wind up dictating art history in the West? How did the material culture of the Greeks and Romans come to be seen as "classical" and as "art"? What does "classical art" mean across time and place? In this ambitious, richly illustrated book, art historian and classicist Caroline Vout provides an original history of how classical art has been continuously redefined over the millennia as it has found itself in new contexts and cultures. All of this raises the question of classical art's future.
What we call classical art did not simply appear in ancient Rome, or in the Renaissance, or in the eighteenth-century Academy. Endlessly repackaged and revered or rebuked, Greek and Roman artifacts have gathered an amazing array of values, both positive and negative, in each new historical period, even as these objects themselves have reshaped their surroundings. Vout shows how this process began in antiquity, as Greeks of the Hellenistic period transformed the art of fifth-century Greece, and continued through the Roman empire, Constantinople, European court societies, the neoclassical English country house, and the nineteenth century, up to the modern museum.
A unique exploration of how each period of Western culture has transformed Greek and Roman antiquities and in turn been transformed by them, this book revolutionizes our understanding of what classical art has meant and continues to mean.

Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

Princeton University Press

VOUT, C.: SEX ON SHOW. SEEING THE EROTIC IN GREECE AND ROME. LONDON, 2013, 256 p. color laminas.Encuadernacion original. Nuevo.

Sex on Show

BRITISH MUSEUM

Rome is 'the city of seven hills'. This book examines the need for the 'seven hills' cliché, its origins, development, impact and borrowing. It explores how the cliché relates to Rome's real volcanic terrain and how it is fundamental to how we define this. Its chronological remit is capacious: Varro, Virgil and Claudian at one end, on, through the work of Renaissance antiquarians, to embrace frescoes and nineteenth-century engravings. These artists and authors celebrated the hills and the views from these hills, in an attempt to capture Rome holistically. By studying their efforts, this book confronts the problems of encapsulating Rome and 'cityness' more broadly and indeed the artificiality of any representation, whether a painting, poem or map. In this sense, it is not a history of the city at any one moment in time, but a history of how the city has been, and has to be, perceived.

The Hills of Rome: Signature of an Eternal City

History

Ancient Civilizations

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022\nA SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022\n'A gloriously intimate tour of the body in antiquity' Gavin Francis\n'Vout tackles a huge range of ideas and subjects with irrepressible energy ... full of arresting, sometimes startling ideas and facts that topple the Greeks and Romans from their lofty, pristine, snow-white pedestals' Guardian\n'A triumph ... an extraordinary book that stopped me in my tracks' Peter Frankopan\nThe Greek and Roman body is often seen as flawless - cast from life in buff bronze and white marble, to sit upon a pedestal. But this, of course, is a lie.\nHere, classicist Caroline Vout reaches beyond texts and galleries to expose Greek and Roman bodies for what they truly were: anxious, ailing, imperfect, diverse, and responsible for a legacy as lasting as their statues. Taking us on a gruesome, thrilling journey, she taps into the questions that those in the Greek and Roman worlds asked about their bodies - where do we come from? What makes us different from gods and animals? What happens to our bodies, and the forces that govern them, when we die? Vout also reveals the surprising actions people often took to transform their bodies - from sophisticated surgery and contraception to body oils, cosmetics and early gym memberships.\nYou've seen the paintings, read the philosophers and heard the myths - now here's the classical body in all its flesh and blood glory.

Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body - Shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic Runciman Award

Wellcome Collection

WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE ANGLO-HELLENIC RUNICMAN AWARD A SUNDAY TIMES AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR'A gloriously intimate tour of the body in antiquity' Gavin Francis'A triumph ... an extraordinary book that stopped me in my tracks' Peter FrankopanThe Greek and Roman body is often seen as flawless - cast from life in buff bronze and white marble, to sit upon a pedestal. But this, of course, is a lie.Here, classicist Caroline Vout reaches beyond texts and galleries to expose Greek and Roman bodies for what they truly were: anxious, ailing, imperfect, diverse, and responsible for a legacy as lasting as their statues. Taking us on a gruesome, thrilling journey, she taps into the questions that those in the Greek and Roman worlds asked about their bodies - where do we come from? What makes us different from gods and animals? What happens to our bodies, and the forces that govern them, when we die?You've seen the paintings, read the philosophers and heard the myths - now here's the classical body in all its flesh and blood glory.

Exposed

IPS - Profile Books

Al desnudo: El cuerpo griego y romano

Punto de Vista Editores

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vout, Caroline. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Vout, Caroline

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vout, Caroline. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Sex on Show: Seeing the Erotic in Greece and Rome

Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome

Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome

Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

Sex on Show

The Hills of Rome: Signature of an Eternal City

The Hills of Rome: Signature of an Eternal City

Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body - Shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic Runciman Award

Exposed

Al desnudo: El cuerpo griego y romano