Queer Icons of Classical Antiquity You Didn’t Learn About in School
When an illustrator and a poet went searching for queer stories in the history and mythology of Greco-Roman antiquity, they found nothing less than an army of boyfriends.
Specifically, in the fourth century B.C., an elite troop composed only of pairs of gay lovers battled its way across ancient Greece.
This battalion of boyfriends is just one set in the romantic cast of queer characters in “300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love From the Ancient World,” an illustrated compendium, released this week, by the Irish poet Sean Hewitt and the English artist and designer Luke Edward Hall.
Mr. Hall illustrated the stories in portraits with yearning gazes, strong jaws and androgynous poses, while Mr. Hewitt composed effervescent, often moving poems from older translations (many of which had skirted the homoerotic elements), with occasional winks and gestures to contemporary gay sensibilities.
