Homo Urbanus or Urban Homos?

Abstract This article analyzes how space and place affect the constructions of sexuality, gender, and urbanity in Philo’s Vita Contemplativa and the histories of rural queer Jewish wo/men. Extending the work of David Runia, who calls Philo an “ambivalent homo urbanus ,” I show how Philo’s ambivalence stems from discomfort with the “urban homos” who perpetuate a city’s vice. Philo emphasizes a form of metronormativity in his portrayal of an urban sexual immoderation that is rooted in racialized, Roman depictions of cities and their sexuality. Philo’s cure is embodied in the Therapeutic rejection of the city and all sexual praxis. Despite Philo’s intentions, urban queerness cannot infect the Therapeuts because they may already have been embodying queerness in the wild. By placing the Therapeuts alongside evidence of other subcultures of queerness and gender egalitarianism in Roman Egypt, the article concludes by re-centering the rural, queer Jewish wo/men found in the Vita Contemplativa .