A lot of scholars point out that homosexuality wasn't really a concept in the ancient world. Neither was marriage for love or anything other than a means to perpetuate genes and familial property. But what was very much a concept was machismo. Being a "bottom" (in different terms back then) was considered degrading and "womanly," and that was typically the issue at hand, according to many scholars, such as DanMcClellan, Robert Alter, and Jerome Walsh.