catamite

Roman Ganymede as a puer delicatus, with the eagle of Jove

A catamite (Latin catamitus) was a handsome youth kept as a sexual companion in ancient Rome, usually in a pederastic relationship.^[1] The word derives from the proper noun Catamitus, the Latinized form of Ganymede, the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer.^[2] The Etruscan form of the name was Catmite, from an alternate Greek form of the name, Gadymedes.^[3]

References in literature

• The word appears widely but not necessarily frequently in the Latin literature of antiquity, from Plautus to Ausonius. It is sometimes a synonym for puer delicatus, "delicate boy". Cicero uses the term as an insult.^[4] The word became a general term for a boy groomed for sexual purposes.
• Anthony Burgess opens his novel Earthly Powers with the memorable sentence. "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." ^[5]
• In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy there is a description of a column of post apocalyptic warriors marching down the road, with captive females and "catamites" trailing behind.
• Catamites were used extensively in the L. Ron Hubbard science fiction dekology Mission Earth. It was described in the novels as a 'cure' used in the procedures of psychology for the 'mental illness' of heterosexual behaviour.

See also

Look up catamite in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Homosexuality in ancient Rome

References

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