‘A hard-on more raging than a man’s’: what the tribas figure reveals about lesbians in ancient Rome

Wikimedia Learning about lesbians from ancient Roman texts is hard. For one thing, most sources we have were written by men, and were largely about men (and how they perceived women). But Roman lesbians did exist. So uncovering what they were like – and what place they may have held in society – becomes a matter of reading between the lines. Ancient terminology The term “lesbian” had a different meaning in ancient Rome. It referred to people who lived on the Greek island of Lesbos. One famous…