Conquered Bodies in the Roman Bedroom
This chapter examines tales of beautiful Jewish men and women taken captive by Rome. In these stories, beauty performs potent cultural work. Through sexualized narratives that portray the captive Jew as victim of Roman greed, Bavli Gittin makes use of a common Roman moral trope—concern for luxuria, an insatiable desire for luxury that is also expressed in lust and licentiousness—to critique elite Roman decadence and moral degradation. These stories also reveal a striking departure from the conventional beauty politics of rabbinic culture. Elsewhere, the Babylonian Talmud frequently portrays women’s beauty as a source of spiritual danger to rabbinic men. By contrast, Bavli Gittin portrays the beautiful woman as a victim, not a threat. Amidst situations of overt Roman violence, Bavli Gittin affirms the moral innocence of violated men and women who are subjected to the conqueror’s lust.