Among the objects that today fascinate the thousands of tourists who visit the British Museum in London, one stands out that, despite its discreet dimensions, is one of its most celebrated jewels. It is a richly decorated piece with an exquisite technique, a unique example of silver jewelry from the ancient world. It is currently known as the Warren Cup, a name that refers to Edward Perry Warren, an eccentric American art collector and former owner of this object.
His explicit homoerotic scenes, snapshots immortalized two thousand years ago, show the social reality of an ancient culture that collided with the morality of the last century. Today, this object is a unique example that illustrates the diverse conception that Greco-Roman culture had of sexuality.
Edward Warren – also known as Ned – purchased the cup in Rome in 1911 for £2,000, and it immediately became one of his most prized possessions. On his return to England, he placed the object in safekeeping in his personal office at his mansion in Lewes, East Sussex, known as Lewes House.
Ned's fascination with the piece, in which he perhaps saw his homosexuality identified, led him to proudly display it at parties to family and friends, who soon came to know the object as "the Holy Grail." However, the social norms of the moment were not as permissive as her inner circles.
After Ned's death in 1928, no one dared to buy the cup at the various auctions that were organized because of its explicit imagery. Thus, it remained forgotten in the attic of the property until the middle of the century. In 1953, Harry W. Parsons, a friend of Ned's, arranged for his secretary and heir, Harry Thomas, to send it to the New York collector Walter Baker.
In American territory, the object was reviewed by a customs inspector of Italian origin and Catholic faith, who did not hesitate to stop the entry of the package, alleging that it was a pornographic import. Returned to England, the cup began a twelve-year journey in which institutions such as the British Museum or the Fitzwilliam, in Cambridge, did not dare to acquire it. The reason was still the type of scenes it contained.
In the mid-1980s, the social position regarding other sexual tendencies, not considered normative, began to change, and the cup was shown to the public at the Antikenmuseum in Basel. In 1992 it was also exhibited by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and six years later, the British Museum had a second chance to acquire it.
In 1999, all the media covered the news: the British Museum had just bought a glass with homoerotic scenes for 1,800,000 pounds, the highest price ever paid by the institution up to then.
Although there were numerous attempts to identify the cup as a modern creation, the stylistic and quality analyzes of the silver found parallels with other objects from the Vesuvian area. Thus, they fixed their chronology at the end of the empire of Augustus or the beginning of that of Tiberius, that is, between the years 5 and 15 of our era.
Several notes recovered from Ned Warren's environment revealed that the cup was probably found along with some coins dating from the Claudian Empire (41-54), in the town of Battir, a city a few kilometers from Jerusalem (Israel). .
Despite being a Roman province since AD 6, the Judean region was characterized by its tumultuous economic and religious landscape. Hence, it is thought that the finding could be a small treasure hidden in the typical cavities around Battir. But how and why did it end up there? Identified with ancient Bethther, the Jewish population of Battir assisted in the gestation of the subsequent Bar Kochba revolt against the Roman legions, in 132-135.
The most accepted theory is that the objects were hidden – perhaps with the intention of recovering them later – by some Roman or Greek from Jerusalem, who was able to flee the city during the ravages caused by the Jewish attack in August 66. Or, simply , some thief stole the belongings of someone who was traveling on the road.
With certainty, the cup belonged to a figure from the Roman elite around Jerusalem, and perhaps the object was already in the city when Pontius Pilate was governor of the province between 26 and 37, decisive years for the history of Christianity.
Approaching the reality of sexuality in Antiquity entails accepting a vision that is conditioned and limited by our current perspective. In ancient Rome, this reality was more related to the individual's gender identity than to her sexual orientation. Everything revolved around free adult men and lower sectors: women, children and slaves. Regarding inter-masculine relations, a series of norms perpetuated the domination of the active man over the passive, the free man over the slave, or the adult over the young.
In his work Curculio, the Latin playwright Plautus (c. 254-184 BC) indicated: "Love what you want, as long as you keep away from married women, widows, virgins, young men and free children." Failure to comply with the rules implied subverting the established order. Those who acquired a passive role in the sexual act, for example, saw their masculine identity damaged – these were known as cinaedi. Similarly, there were a number of laws surrounding violations against Roman citizens.
Some of the prevailing principles in Rome came from ancient Greece. There, the most notable thing was the existence of a well-organized pedophilia system, which recognized the relationships between a male adult citizen –erastes– and a free adolescent who would become a citizen –eromenos–.
Some city-states like Sparta accepted this order, while others forbade it. From Athens we know the legitimization of relationships of adult citizens with inferiors in status (women, children, foreigners and slaves), who did not enjoy their same legal and political rights. The iconographic evidence of this city has shown an evolution in the representation of this type of sexual acts, linked to social changes with the establishment of democracy.
Precisely, the two scenes represented in the Warren cup reflect two types of Greek inter-masculine sexual acts: on the one hand, a bearded Greek adult penetrating a beardless Greek youth; on the other, a beardless young character penetrating a boy who is entering puberty. His hairstyle indicates that they were Greek citizens. We find ourselves, then, before a deliberate representation of the types of Greek pederastic relationships before the eyes of a Roman, for whom the piece would be made.
The official recognition that pedophilia enjoyed in ancient Greece did not exist, on the contrary, in Rome, although its citizens would be aware of the characteristic order of some Greek city-states, a topic that they would discuss at banquets and meetings, in which, without doubt, the cup was used.
Some of the figures on the cup are minors, so their actions, in the eyes of today's observer, are intolerable and immoral. However, it is not difficult to imagine that, for the ancient observer, the scene represented was a close reality, a reason that explains the creation of an object that reminds us that sexuality and its social conception are not fixed and invariable, but fluid and changing. along the history.
This text is part of an article published in number 639 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
