Narrativizing Desire on the Frontier

In this presentation, I consider a passage from the tenth-century historiography, Theophanes Continuatus, that puts questions to standard interpretations of military masculinity and its relation to same-sex desire. In book 4 at section 23, the historiographer who wrote Theophanes Continuatus depicts Karbeas (the leader of the break-away Paulician state based in Tephrike) as curiously interested in the sexual desires of two of his high-status military men captives. Karbeas also tips his hand as to his own sexual interests. I focus on how we should regard this remarkable passage from “a history for the palace” (Featherstone 2012) and what it says about what is thinkable in the capital and on the frontier about masculine gender and desire. All in all, consideration of this passage brings up interesting questions about historical method and the nature of investigations into desire and gender in history.