Tug your toga to these 12 homoerotic ancient epics

Scream and Booksmart heartthrob Mason Gooding recently proclaimed his love for The Song of Achilles, and now we can’t help but dream cast Gooding in the gay Greek epic.

For those of you unfamiliar, The Song of Achilles is a retelling of Homer’s The Iliad, focusing on the romance between warriors Patroculs and Achilles, set against the backdrop of the Trojan War.

The book, originally released in 2011, has been a word of mouth hit, and fans have been patiently waiting for a film adaptation — could Gooding follow in Brad Pitt’s footsteps and play (a gayer) version of Achilles?

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Not just Troy, but sword and sandal Hollywood epics have been popular with gay men since the dawn of cinema — and it’s not hard to see why. The stories of barely clad men oiled up, ready for battle have always had homoeroticism baked into it.

As we wait for The Song of Achilles movie to become a reality, here are some homoerotic ancient epics that have already been adapted for the small and big screen…

The Eagle 

The 2011 film has been called “the most homoerotic Roman movie ever,” with Magic Mike star Channing Tatum trading his dancing shoes for battle armor as he plays Marcus Flavius Aquila, a Roman soldier who sets out in search of a bronze eagle that once belonged to his father’s army. But Marcus doesn’t go on the search alone, he enlists his “body slave,” Esca (Jamie Bell) to help. The two men set out on their quest, and an epic love story — or um, bromance — is born. 

In an interview with Vulture, Tatum said he didn’t think the film was homoerotic, but when ranking Tatum’s gayest roles, HuffPost contributor Derek Hartley proclaimed: “If you are an old-school gay who loves a coded Celluloid Closet classic, The Eagle is for you.”

300

With its sea of muscles and nearly naked men, 300 has amassed a large gay fan base since its release in 2006. The film, directed by Zack Snyder, tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans faced off against a Persian army of 300,000 soldiers. 300 was a hit, and made a star out of Gerard Butler. A second movie, 300: Rise of an Empire, was released in 2014, but it was the proposed third movie in the series where things got even gayer.

During a 2021 interview on The Playlist’s The Fourth Wall podcast, Snyder revealed that during the pandemic, he started writing a third 300 movie focusing on Alexander the Great:

“I was writing this thing about Alexander the Great, and it turned into a movie about the relationship between Hephaestion and Alexander. It turned out to be a love story. So it really didn’t fit in as the third movie,” he said. “But there was that concept, and it came out really great. It’s called ‘Blood and Ashes,’ and it’s a beautiful love story, really, with warfare.”

The Making of Centurians of Rome

The most expensive gay adult film at its time of production, Centurians of Rome, cost almost $100,000 and is now more infamous for the behind-the-scenes drama and debauchery, including how it was funded by George Basque, a bank robber turned movie producer. The movie, set during Caligula’s reign as emperor, tells the story of two Roman countrymen who are sold into slavery for not paying taxes. Upon its release, Centurians of Rome was called an “artistic failure” and “the strangest gay adult film ever made.” While the movie might be a failure, the troubled production is still fascinating more than 40 years later.

Troy

Even though he doesn’t play Achilles as gay, as many scholars have speculated, Brad Pitt is at peak golden god, as the Greek warrior in the 2004 film. And the eye candy doesn’t stop there, with Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom rounding out the main cast. While the movie, written by David Benioff (co-creator of HBO’s Game of Thrones and Netflix’s upcoming 3 Body Problem), and based on Homer’s The Iliad, wasn’t critically acclaimed, it did influence an entire generation of gay men. Fire Island’s James Scully, who upon seeing Pitt in Troy recalled thinking: “Yep, I am attracted to beautiful men, for sure.” Iliad? More like IliYAAAS!

Ancient Workouts With Omar

Leading up to the premiere of the 2022 docuseries, Colosseum, the History Channel devoted an episode of their YouTube series, Ancient Workouts With Omar, to how to train like a Roman Gladiator. Ancient Workouts provided us with some shirtless eye candy, preparing us for Colosseum, which was not explicitly gay but included enough sweaty buff barbarian beefcakes to have it be called “an unintentionally gay, Gladiator-themed circuit party.” 

If Roman Gladiators weren’t enough, in another Ancient Workouts episode, Omar also taught us how Spartans got their sculpted physiques.

Before Homosexuals

In between barbarian beefcakes battling it out, it’s good to remember that these stories of Roman and Greecian same-sex attraction are based in historical fact, as director John Scagliotti reminds us.

In the first part of his trilogy featuring Before Stonewall and After Stonewall, Scagliotti uses art, poetry, and interviews with historians to take viewers “on a wondrous tour of same-sex desire from ancient times to Victorian crimes.” 

Sebastiane

Even if you are unfamiliar with Saint Sebastian, you probably recognize how he has been depicted in art throughout history, with this shirtless torso impaled with arrows. 

In 1976, directors Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress brought Sebastian’s story to life in a Latin language film, starring Leonardo Treviglio as the titular martyr, who is banished “to a remote coastal outpost where his fellow soldiers, weakened by their desires, turn to homosexual activities to satisfy their needs. Sebastian becomes the target of lust for the officer Severus, but repeatedly rejects the man’s advances.”

Ancient epics might be known for their swords and sandals, but the cast of Sebastiane spends the majority of the movie naked. With plenty of beautiful tan bodies and man-on-man action, it was a pioneering work of queer cinema. If you needed another reason to check it out, the movie also features three Rocky Horror Picture Show cast members: Nell Campbell, Peter Hinwood, and Patricia Quinn.

Barbarians

No, not the horror movie about a monster living under a Detroit AirBNB, this German series ran for two seasons on Netflix, and tells a fictionalized version of the Roman Empire’s occupation of Germania. In the second season, Flavus, the brother of Germanic leader, Arminius, arrived, and it was revealed that he was lovers with Marbod, a ruthless Germanic tribal leader, years before when they were both in Rome. While the series might not be the most historically accurate, it treated viewers to some hot tension-filled scenes with Marbod and Flavus in between the brutal battle scenes.

Spartacus

The 1960 film directed by Stanley Kubrick has been a favorite of gay men for years, just ask Christian from Clueless. The infamous “oysters or snails” scene between Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis was cut from the original release, but finally restored to the epic back in the ‘90s. 

In 2010, Starz introduced the story of Spartacus to a whole new generation with its original series that lasted four seasons. The epic retelling featured multiple same-sex relationships, and even had a gay warrior, Agron (Dan Feuerriegel).

Now that a Spartacus revival is in development at Starz, it might be the perfect time to oil up and slip your sandals back on.

Ben-Hur

The movie that ushered in a whole new era of sword-and-sandal epics, 1959’s Ben-Hur was a colossal box office hit, and made Oscars history when it won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. A biblical story starring Charleston Heston might not scream gay, but Gore Vidal disagrees. The sardonic writer was brought on to punch up the script by the film’s screenwriter, Karl Tunberg, and he rewrote several scenes to “hint heavily at a prior sexual relationship between Charlton Heston’s title character and his childhood friend (and later betrayer) Messala (Stephen Boyd),” as Vidal revealed in the 1995 documentary, The Celluloid Closet.

Sadly, the 2016 Ben-Hur remake removed any gay subtext, but at least we’ll always have the homoerotic 1959 classic.

Sacred Band of Thebes

In a recent GQ interview, Fellow Travelers and Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey pitched a passion project based on the true story of the Sacred Band of Thebes: “I’m obsessed with the Sacred Band of Thebes, an army of 300 gay lovers in [ancient] Greece. They partnered in pairs, this gay army, and they overthrew a Spartan army… I want to do that as a comedy,” revealed the out actor.

While Bailey’s movie isn’t a reality yet, consider our Fandango ticket alert already on. Until then, check out a segment from Discovery+’s The Book of Queer, which tells the story of the Sacred Band of Thebes, with TikTok icons Rob Anderson and Chris Olsen playing the shirtless warriors.

Alexander: The Making of a God

The epic life of Alexander the Great has been told repeatedly on film, to varying degrees of success. What is usually glossed over in these blockbuster biopics of the warrior prince, is his sexuality — and how historians believe he had relationships with both men and women. 

The upcoming Netflix docuseries, out January 31, Alexander: The Making of a God, “reenacts dramatic details of Alexander’s mythic life during his rise.” According to Tudum, the series “speculates on intimate details of Alexander’s private life, including his time with childhood friend and purported lover Hephaestion.”