300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World by Seán Hewitt and Luke Edward Hall (Illustrator)
If you love Greek/Roman mythology retellings, this book is for you.
I would have saved so many annotation tabs if I just marked the pages that didn't stand out. Seriously, every page in this book was incredible. I should probably tell you a little about what the book is about now, eh?
This book is a collection of translated ancient Greek and Roman stories about queer love and desire from some of the most famous storytellers of antiquity including Pluto, Martial, Plutarch Ovid and many more. I fell in love with Greek mythology retellings through The Song of Achilles, but knew little more about queer love in ancient times. This collection references myth as well as daily life of loving and desiring beyond the traditional hertosexual marriage we see in pop culture retellings.
Here are a few of my favourite quotes:
"You only want me for my body, but I am Socrates - I have a beautiful mind too!" Xenophon, The Symposium
"So what if I throw in some heat, some sweat and spice to get some hairy old men hard? Do 'a thousand kisses' and 'sweet lips' make me less of a man? Come here. Say it again. I'll show you what a man is when I plough your holes and fuck your faces up."Catullus, 16
"She wont suck cock - thats for sissies. No - she plunges her tongue into the cracks of women." Martial, Epigrams
Seán Hewitt sets up each of the fragments of translated text for us but putting it in context of the rest of the document, if there is one or the time/place in which this writing takes place and compares it to how a modern reader may feel about it. Especially as it pertains to issues of consent and misogyny.
The illustrations by Luke Edward Hall are 10/10 and add a special sort of magic to the story. Bringing these text forward 2,000+ years making it feel current. Like we could go for a pint with these writers or their subjects (not that we'd always want to).
This book is best read beside your best friend, so you can stop every other page to read outloud your favourite quotes, because there will be a lot of them you'll want to share.
