Platonic and Roman Influence on Stoic and Epicurean Sexual Ethics

Abstract

This chapter examines recent scholarship and ancient evidence on Stoicism, Epicureanism, and the social and economic environment in which they operated and explores the possibility that the brief flowering of radical thought regarding sex and gender in Plato and Zeno was eclipsed by the pursuit of patronage, especially Roman patronage, which favored both the denial of same-sex relations and the rejection of feminist social views. However much the Stoics encouraged their Roman patrons to foster mild social reforms, they ultimately provided leadership in sexual ethics only for the repressive obsession of the Christians, who redoubled the meddlesome influence of patronage through the more formal and rigid constraints of religious dogma.

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