Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome

Caroline Vout is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ's College, having previously taught at the University of Nottingham. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and has been a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome. She has published widely on aspects of Roman imperial culture and curated the exhibition Antinous: the Face of the Antique at the Henry Moore Institute in summer 2006.

• 1. The erotics of imperium; 2. Romancing the stone: the story of Hadrian and Antinous; 3. Compromising traditions: the case of Nero and Sporus; 4. A match made in heaven: Earinus and the emperor; 5. Mistress as metaphor: a dialogue with Panthea; 6. And so to bed...

Review of the hardback: '… her lively account shows how residents of the empire gained a sense of collective identity … by sharing jokes, gossip and fantasy about the emperor's sex life.' The Times Literary Supplement