orichalcum

So, for the article I'm working on, I wound up researching all menage a trois (ou quatre) relationships attested in the Roman world.

What I found surprising was the breakdown.

According to at least the evidence of inscriptions, we have 7 instances of two men and one woman, 1 instance of two women and one man, and 1 instance of 3 men and one woman. Now, it's impossible to confirm that all these relationships were sexual; two definitely were, but it's barely possible that the others were nonsexual associations of people (perhaps former co-slaves?) who referred to each other on tombstones as "companions." Still, it's more likely than not.

I know nothing about the statistics of modern poly relationships, I should say. Still, I found this pattern surprising given that anthropologically, polygyny is much more common as a social structure than polyandry. My working hypothesis is that these were expensive concubines and it was cheaper to have two friends "share" her than for one to pay for her upkeep alone; we have an example of that attested from ancient Greece.

Still, I would have expected to see more of the "harem" model pursued by very wealthy men. The other possibility is that it's simply a question of the nature of the evidence; men are much more frequently named in inscriptions, and perhaps men in polygynous relationships felt less need to commemorate "Slave Girl #2."

Any thoughts or ideas?

Have I mentioned how wonderful it's been the past two weeks to fall back in love with my book? I had grown tired and afraid of the dissertation, but now it's not a dissertation, it's a Whole New Book, and that's exciting and cool.