纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 036耶路撒冷沃伦杯(4)（在线收听）

Looking at the scenes on the cup more closely, there's no doubt where these encounters are taking place. The musical instruments, the furniture, the clothes and the hairstyles of the lovers, all point to the past-and indeed to the Classical Greece of several centuries earlier. Interestingly, we can tell that the two adolescents shown here were not slaves. The style of their hair-cut, with a long lock of hair trailing down the neck, is typical of free-born Greek boys. Between 16 and 18, their hair would be cut and dedicated to the gods as part of their passage into manhood. So both the boys that we see here are free, and from good families. But we can also see another figure, who might have been part of the Roman banquet at which the cup was used. He stands in the background, peeping at one of the scenes of love-making from behind a door-we only see half his face. He is clearly a slave, although it is impossible to know whether he is simply indulging in a bit of voyeurism, or apprehensively responding to a call for "room service". Either way he's a reminder that what he and we are witnessing are acts to be conducted only in private behind closed doors. Here's Bettany Hughes again:

两个场景发生的时代显而易见：乐器、家具、恋人的服装与头饰都是几世纪前希腊式的。有趣的是，我们能看出酒杯上两个较年轻的少年并非奴隶。他们的头发中有一长缕垂到了背部，这是典型的希腊自由民男孩的发型。在16至18岁之间，作为成年礼的一部分，这缕头发会被剪下来献给神。因此他们应该都是自由民，而且家境富裕。我们在画面上能看到的另一个角色也出现在我们之前所假想的罗马宴会上。他正躲在门后窥探不堪入目的场面，只露出半张脸。他很明显是个奴隶，但我们不知道他是在享受偷窥的乐趣还是应少年的召唤来为他们服务。无论如何，他的出现提醒我们，我们眼前的场景只会发生在紧闭的房门之内。 贝塔尼休斯评论道：

"In Rome there's a kind of notion that you have good wives, and that you should somehow manage without resorting to male sex, but we know, we know from the poetry, we know from the laws, we know from the kind of back references to homosexual relations, that actually this was something that did happen throughout the Roman world.

罗马人认为，如果你有个好妻子，就不该再与同性恋爱，但我们从诗歌、法律，以及对同性恋关系的反向引用上，都能看出同性恋是当时社会的常见情形。