Sexuality in Ancient Rome
Encyclopedia
Sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome
are indicated by Roman art
, literature
and inscriptions
, and to a lesser extent by archaeological remains
such as erotic artifacts and architecture
. It has sometimes been assumed that "unlimited sexual license" was characteristic of ancient Rome:
But sexuality was not excluded as a concern of the mos maiorum
, the traditional social norms that affected public, private, and military life. Pudor, "shame, modesty," was a regulating factor in behavior, as were legal strictures on certain sexual transgressions in both the Republican
and Imperial
periods. The censors were public officials who determined the social rank
of individuals and who could and did on occasion remove citizens
from the senatorial
or equestrian order for sexual misconduct. The mid-20th-century sexuality theorist Michel Foucault
regarded sex throughout the Greco-Roman world
as governed by restraint and the art of managing sexual pleasure.
Roman society was patriarchal
(see paterfamilias), and masculinity
was premised on a capacity for governing oneself and others of lower status, not only in war and politics, but in bed. "Virtue" (virtus
), related by etymology
to the Latin
word for "man," vir, was an active masculine ideal of self-discipline. The corresponding ideal for a woman was pudicitia
, often translated as chastity or modesty, but a more positive and even competitive personal quality that displayed both her attractiveness and self-control. Roman women of the upper classes were expected to be well-educated, strong of character, and active in maintaining their family's standing in society. But with extremely few exceptions, surviving Latin literature preserves the voices only of educated male Romans on the subject of sexuality. While visual art was created by those of lower social status and of a greater range of ethnicity, it was commissioned by people wealthy enough to afford it, including in the Imperial era
former slaves, and was tailored to their taste and inclinations.
Some sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Roman culture
differ markedly from those in later Western societies
. Roman religion
supported sexuality as an aspect of prosperity for the state, and individuals might turn to private religious practice or "magic
" for improving their erotic lives or reproductive health. Prostitution
was legal, public, and widespread. Pornographic paintings were featured among the art collections in respectable upperclass households. It was considered natural and unremarkable for adult males to be sexually attracted to teen-aged youths of both sexes, and pederasty was condoned as long as the younger partner was not a freeborn Roman. "Homosexual" and "heterosexual" did not form the primary dichotomy of Roman thinking about sexuality, and no Latin
words for these concepts exist. No moral censure was directed at the adult male who enjoyed sex acts with either women or males of inferior status, as long as his behaviors revealed no weaknesses or excesses, nor infringed on the rights and prerogatives of his male peers. While perceived effeminacy was denounced, especially in political rhetoric, sex in moderation with male prostitutes or slaves was not regarded as improper or vitiating to masculinity, if the male citizen took the active and not the receiving role. Hypersexuality
, however, was condemned morally and medically in both men and women. Women were held to a stricter moral code
, and same-sex relations between women are poorly documented, but the sexuality of women is variously celebrated or reviled throughout Latin literature. In general the Romans had more flexible gender categories than the ancient Greeks.
A late 20th-century paradigm analyzed Roman sexuality in terms of a "penetrator-penetrated" binary model
, a misleadingly rigid analysis that may obscure expressions of sexuality among individual Romans. Even the relevance of the word "sexuality
" to ancient Roman culture has been disputed, but in the absence of any other label for "the cultural interpretation of erotic experience," the term continues to be used.
, love poetry, graffiti, magic spells
, inscriptions
, and interior decoration—have more to say about sex than those which were elevated
, such as epic
and tragedy
. Information about the sex lives of the Romans is scattered in historiography
, oratory, philosophy, and writings on medicine, agriculture
, and other technical topics. Legal texts
point to behaviors Romans wanted to regulate or prohibit, without necessarily reflecting what people actually did or refrained from doing.
Major Latin authors whose works contribute significantly to an understanding of Roman sexuality include:
Ovid lists a number of writers known for salacious material whose works are now lost. Greek sex manuals and "straightforward pornography" were published under the name of famous heterai
(courtesans), and circulated in Rome. The robustly sexual Milesiaca of Aristides
was translated by Sisenna
, one of the praetor
s of 78 BC. Ovid calls the book a collection of misdeeds (crimina), and says the narrative was laced with dirty jokes. After the Battle of Carrhae
, the Parthians
were reportedly shocked to find the Milesiaca in the baggage of Marcus Crassus's officers.
Erotic art, especially as preserved in Pompeii and Herculaneum
, is a rich if not unambiguous source; some images contradict sexual preferences stressed in literary sources and may be intended to provoke laughter or challenge conventional attitudes. Everyday objects such as mirrors and serving vessels might be decorated with erotic scenes; on Arretine ware, these range from "elegant amorous dalliance" to explicit views of the penis entering the vagina. Erotic paintings were found in the most respectable houses of the Roman nobility
, as Ovid notes:
The pornographic tabella and the erotically charged Venus appear among various images that a connoisseur of art might enjoy. A series of paintings from the Suburban Baths at Pompeii
, discovered in 1986 and published in 1995, presents erotic scenarios that seem intended "to amuse the viewer with outrageous sexual spectacle," including a variety of positions, oral sex, and group sex featuring male-female, male-male, and female-female relations.
The décor of a Roman bedroom could reflect quite literally its sexual use: the Augustan poet Horace
supposedly had a mirrored room for sex, so that when he hired a prostitute he could watch from all angles. The emperor Tiberius
had his bedrooms decorated with "the most lascivious" paintings and sculptures, and stocked with Greek sex manuals by Elephantis
in case those employed in sex needed direction.
In the 2nd century AD, "there is a boom in texts about sex in Greek and Latin," along with romance novels
. But frank sexuality all but disappears from literature thereafter, and sexual topics are reserved for medical writing or Christian theology. In the 3rd century, as Christianity became institutionalized, Church Fathers
such as Tertullian
and Clement of Alexandria
debated the permissibility of marital sex for procreation in relation to an ideal of celibacy
. The sexuality of martyrology
focuses on tests against the Christian's chastity and sexual torture; Christian women are more often than men subjected to sexual mutilation, in particular of the breasts. The obscene humor of Martial was briefly revived in 4th-century Bordeaux
by the Gallo-Roman
scholar-poet Ausonius
, who shunned pederasty and was at least nominally a Christian.
, both the public cult of the state and private religious practices and magic. Sexuality was an important category of Roman religious thought. The complement of male and female was vital to the Roman concept of deity. The Dii Consentes
were a council of deities in male-female pairs, to some extent Rome's equivalent to the Twelve Olympians
of the Greeks. At least two state priesthoods were held jointly by a married couple. The Vestal Virgins, the one state priesthood reserved for women, took a vow of chastity that granted them relative independence from male control; among the religious objects in their keeping was a sacred phallus
: "Vesta
's fire … evoked the idea of sexual purity in the female" and "represented the procreative power of the male." The men who served in the various colleges
of priests
were expected to marry and have families. Cicero
held that the desire (libido
) to procreate was "the seedbed of the republic," as it was the cause for the first form of social institution, marriage. Marriage produced children and in turn a "house" (domus
) for family unity that was the building block of urban life.
Many Roman religious festivals had an element of sexuality. The February Lupercalia
, celebrated as late as the 5th century of the Christian era, included an archaic fertility rite. The Floralia
featured nude dancing. At certain religious festivals throughout April, prostitutes participated or were officially recognized.
The connections among human reproduction, general prosperity, and the wellbeing of the state is embodied by the Roman cult
of Venus
, who differs from her Greek counterpart Aphrodite
in her role as a mother of the Roman people through her half-mortal son Aeneas
. During the civil wars of the 80s BC
, Sulla, about to invade his own country with the legions
under his command, issued a coin depicting a crowned Venus as his personal patron deity, with Cupid
holding a palm branch
of victory; on the reverse military trophies
flank symbols of the augur
s, the state priests who read the will of the gods. The iconography links deities of love and desire with military success and religious authority; Sulla adopted the title Epaphroditus, "Aphrodite's own," before he became a dictator
. The fascinum, a phallic charm, was ubiquitous in Roman culture, appearing on everything from jewelry to bells and wind chime
s to lamps, including as an amulet
to protect children and triumphing generals
.
Cupid inspired desire; the imported god Priapus
represented gross or humorous lust; Mutunus Tutunus
promoted marital sex. The god Liber
(understood as the "Free One") oversaw physiological responses during sexual intercourse. When a male assumed the toga virilis, "toga of manhood," Liber became his patron
; according to the love poets, he left behind the innocent modesty (pudor) of childhood and acquired the sexual freedom (libertas) to begin his course of love.
Classical myths
often deal with sexual themes such as gender identity
, adultery
, incest
, and rape
. Roman art and literature continued the Hellenistic
treatment of mythological figures having sex as humanly erotic and at times humorous, often removed from the religious dimension.
" derives, is an abstract noun denoting "a moral and physical purity usually in a specifically religious context," sometimes but not always referring to sexual chastity. The related adjective castus (feminine
casta, neuter castum), "pure," can be used of places and objects as well as people; the adjective pudicus ("chaste, modest") describes more specifically a person who is sexually moral. The goddess Ceres was concerned with both ritual and sexual castitas, and the torch carried in her honor as part of the Roman wedding procession was associated with the bride's purity; Ceres also embodied motherhood. The goddess Vesta was the primary deity of the Roman pantheon associated with castitas; a virgin goddess herself, her priestesses the Vestals were virgins who took a vow to remain celibate.
Incestum (that which is "not castum") is an act that violates religious purity, perhaps synonymous with that which is nefas, religiously impermissible. The violation of a Vestal's vow of chastity was incestum, a legal charge brought against her and the man who rendered her impure through sexual relations, whether consensually or by force. A Vestal's loss of castitas ruptured Rome's treaty with the gods (pax deorum
), and was typically accompanied by the observation of bad omens (prodigia). Prosecutions for incestum involving a Vestal often coincide with political unrest, and some charges of incestum seem politically motivated: Marcus Crassus was acquitted of incestum with a Vestal who shared his family name. Although the English word "incest
" derives from the Latin, incestuous relations are only one form of Roman incestum, which can sometimes be translated as "sacrilege
." When Clodius Pulcher dressed as a woman and intruded on the all-female rites of the Bona Dea
, he was charged with incestum.
and moral discourse, stuprum is illicit sexual intercourse, translatable as "criminal debauchery" or "sex crime." Stuprum encompasses diverse sexual offenses including incestum, rape ("unlawful sex by force"), and adultery. In early Rome, stuprum was a disgraceful act in general, or any public disgrace, including but not limited to illicit sex. By the time of the comic playwright Plautus
(ca. 254–184 BC) it had acquired its more restricted sexual meaning. Stuprum can occur only among citizens; protection from sexual misconduct was among the legal rights that distinguished the citizen from the non-citizen. Although the noun stuprum may be translated into English as fornication
, the intransitive verb
"to fornicate" is an inadequate translation of the Latin stuprare, which is a transitive verb
requiring a direct object (the person who is the target of the misconduct) and a male agent (the stuprator).
; compare ex-voto
) in the form of breasts and penises have been found at healing sanctuaries.
A private ritual under some circumstances might be considered "magic," an indistinct category in antiquity. An amatorium (Greek philtron) was a love charm or potion; binding spells (defixiones) were supposed to "fix" a person's sexual affection. The Greek Magical Papyri
, a collection of syncretic magic
texts, contain many love spells that indicate "there was a very lively market in erotic magic in the Roman period," catered by freelance priests who at times claimed to derive their authority from the Egyptian religious tradition. Canidia, a witch described by Horace, performs a spell using a female effigy to dominate a smaller male doll.
Aphrodisiac
s, anaphrodisiac
s, contraceptives, and abortifacient
s are preserved by both medical handbooks and magic texts; potions can be difficult to distinguish from pharmacology. In his Book 33 De medicamentis, Marcellus of Bordeaux, a contemporary of Ausonius, collected more than 70 sexually-related treatments—for growths and lesions on the testicles and penis, undescended testicles, erectile dysfunction
, hydrocele
, "creating a eunuch
without surgery," ensuring a woman's fidelity, and compelling or diminishing a man's desire—some of which involve ritual procedures:
Marcellus also records which herbs could be used to induce menstruation
, or to purge the womb after childbirth or abortion; these herbs include potential abortifacients and may have been used as such. Other sources advise remedies such as coating the penis with a mixture of honey and pepper to get an erection, or boiling an ass's genitals in oil as an ointment.
' De rerum natura provides one of the most extended passages on human sexuality in Latin literature. Yeats
, describing the translation by Dryden
, called it "the finest description of sexual intercourse ever written." Lucretius was the contemporary of Catullus
and Cicero
in the mid-1st century BC. His didactic poem De rerum natura is a presentation of Epicurean philosophy
within the Ennian
tradition of Latin poetry. Epicureanism is both materialist
and hedonic. The highest good
is pleasure, defined as the absence of physical pain and emotional distress. The Epicurean seeks to gratify his desires with the least expenditure of passion and effort. Desires are ranked as those that are both natural and necessary, such as hunger and thirst; those that are natural but unnecessary, such as sex; and those that are neither natural nor necessary, including the desire to rule over others and glorify oneself. It is within this context that Lucretius presents his analysis of love and sexual desire, which counters the erotic ethos of Catullus and influenced the love poets of the Augustan period
.
Lucretius treats male desire, female sexual pleasure, heredity, and infertility as aspects of sexual physiology. In the Epicurean view, sexuality arises from impersonal physical causes without divine or supernatural influence. The onset of physical maturity generates semen, and wet dreams
occur as the sexual instinct develops. Sense perception, specifically the sight of a beautiful body, provokes the movement of semen into the genitals and toward the object of desire. The engorgement of the genitals creates an urge to ejaculate, coupled with the anticipation of pleasure. The body's response to physical attractiveness is automatic, and neither the character of the person desired nor one's own choice is a factor. With a combination of scientific detachment and ironic humor, Lucretius treats the human sex drive as muta cupido, "dumb desire", comparing the physiological response of ejaculation to the blood spurting from a wound. Love (amor) is merely an elaborate cultural posturing that obscures a glandular condition; love taints sexual pleasure just as life is tainted by the fear of death. Lucretius is writing primarily for a male audience, and assumes that love is a male passion, directed at either boys or women. Male desire is viewed as pathological, frustrating, and violent.
Lucretius thus expresses an Epicurean ambivalence toward sexuality, which threatens one's peace of mind with agitation if desire becomes a form of bondage and torment, but his view of female sexuality is less negative. While men are driven by unnatural expectations to engage in onesided and desperate sex, women act on a purely animal instinct toward affection which leads to mutual satisfaction. The comparison with female animals in heat is meant not as an insult, though there are a few traces of conventional misogyny in the work, but to indicate that desire is natural and should not be experienced as torture.
Having analyzed the sex act, Lucretius then considers conception and what in modern terms would be called genetics. Both the man and the woman, he says, produce genital fluids which in a successful procreative act mingle. The characteristics of the child are formed by the relative proportions of the mother's "seed" to the father's. A child who most resembles its mother is born when the female seed dominates the male's, and vice versa; when neither the male nor female seed dominates, the child will have traits of both mother and father evenly. Infertility occurs when the two partners fail to make a satisfactory match of their seed after several attempts; the explanation for infertility is physiological and rational, and has nothing to do with the gods. The transfer of genital "seed" (semina) is consonant with Epicurean physics and the theme of the work as a whole: the invisible semina rerum, "seeds of things," continually dissolve and recombine in universal flux. The vocabulary of biological procreation underlies Lucretius's presentation of how matter is formed from atoms.
Lucretius' purpose is to correct ignorance and to give the knowledge necessary for managing one's sex life rationally. He distinguishes between pleasure and conception as goals of copulation; both are legitimate, but require different approaches. He recommends casual sex as a way of releasing sexual tension without becoming obsessed with a single object of desire; a "streetwalking Venus"—a common prostitute—should be used as a surrogate. Sex without passionate attachment produces a superior form of pleasure free of uncertainty, frenzy, and mental disturbance. Lucretius calls this form of sexual pleasure venus, in contrast to amor, passionate love. The best sex is that of happy animals, or of gods. Lucretius combines an Epicurean wariness of sex as a threat to peace of mind with the Roman cultural value placed on sexuality as an aspect of marriage and family life, pictured as an Epicurean man in a tranquil and friendly marriage with a good but homely woman, beauty being a disquieting prompt to excessive desire. Lucretius reacts against the Roman tendency to display sex ostentatiously, as in erotic art, and rejects the aggressive, "Priapic" model of sexuality spurred by visual stimulus.
among the Greeks, sex was regarded as a good
, if enjoyed between people who maintained the principles of respect and friendship; in the ideal society, sex should be enjoyed freely, without bonds of marriage that treated the partner as property. Some Greek Stoics privileged same-sex relations between a man and a younger male partner (see "Pederasty in ancient Greece
"). Stoics in the Roman Imperial era
, however, departed from the view of human beings as "communally sexual animals" and emphasized sex within marriage, which as an institution helped sustain social order. Although they distrusted strong passions, including sexual desire, sexual vitality was necessary for procreation.
Roman-era Stoics such as Seneca
and Musonius Rufus
, both active about a hundred years after Lucretius, emphasized "sex unity" over the polarity of the sexes. Although Musonius is predominately a Stoic, his philosophy also partakes of Platonism
and Pythagoreanism
. He rejected the Aristotelian tradition
which portrayed sexual dimorphism
as expressing a proper relation of those ruling (male) and those being ruled (female), and which distinguished men from women as biologically lacking
. Dimorphism exists, according to Musonius, simply to create difference, and difference in turn creates the desire for a complementary relationship, that is, a couple who will bond for life for the sake of each other and for their children. The Roman ideal of marriage was a partnership of companions who work together to produce and rear children, manage everyday affairs, lead exemplary lives, and enjoy affection; Musonius drew on this ideal to promote the Stoic view that the capacity for virtue and self-mastery was not gender-specific.
Both Musonius and Seneca criticized the double standard
, cultural and legal, that granted Roman men greater sexual freedom than women. Men, Musonius argues, are excused by society for resorting to prostitutes and slaves to satisfy their sexual appetites, while such behavior from a woman would not be tolerated; therefore, if men presume to exercise authority over women because they believe themselves to have greater self-control, they ought to be able to manage their sex drive. The argument, then, is not that sexual freedom is a human good, but that men as well as women should exercise sexual restraint. A man visiting a prostitute does harm to himself by lacking self-discipline; disrespect for his wife and her expectations of fidelity would not be at issue. Similarly, a man should not be so self-indulgent as to exploit a female slave sexually; her right not to be used, however, is not a motive for his restraint. Musonius maintained that even within marriage, sex should be undertaken as an expression of affection and for procreation, and not for "bare pleasure".
Musonius did not approve of same-sex relations in general, because they lacked a procreative purpose. Seneca and Epictetus
also thought that procreation privileged male-female sexual pairing within marriage, and Seneca strongly opposed adultery, finding it particularly offensive by women.
Seneca is known primarily as a Stoic philosopher, but he draws on Neopythagoreanism
for his views on sexual austerity. Neopythagoreans characterized sexuality outside marriage as disordered and undesirable; celibacy was not an ideal, but chastity within marriage was. To Seneca, sexual desire for pleasure (libido) is a "destructive force (exitium) insidiously fixed in the innards"; unregulated, it becomes cupiditas, lust. The only justification for sex is reproduction within marriage. Although other Stoics see potential in beauty to be an ethical stimulus, a way to attract and develop affection and friendship within sexual relations, Seneca distrusts the love of physical beauty as destroying reason to the point of insanity. A man should have no sexual partner other than his wife, and the wise man (sapiens, Greek sophos) will make love to his wife by exercising good judgment (iudicium), not emotion (affectus). This is a far stricter view than that of other Stoics who advocate sex as a means of promoting mutual affection within marriage.
The philosophical view of the body as a corpse that carries around the soul could result in outright contempt for sexuality: "as for sexual intercourse," the emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius writes, "it is the friction of a piece of gut and, following a sort of convulsion, the expulsion of some mucus." Seneca rails "at great length" against the perversity of one Hostius Quadra, who surrounded himself with the equivalent of funhouse mirrors
so he could view sex parties
from distorted angles and penises would look bigger.
Sexual severity opened the Roman Stoics to charges of hypocrisy: Juvenal
satirizes those who affect a rough and manly Stoic façade but privately indulge. It was routinely joked that not only were Stoics inclined toward pederasty, they liked young men who were acquiring beards, contrary to Roman sexual custom. Martial
repeatedly makes insinuations about those who were outwardly Stoic but privately enjoyed the passive homosexual role.
Stoic sexual ethics are grounded in their physics
and cosmology
. The 5th-century writer Macrobius preserves a Stoic interpretation of the myth of the birth of Venus
as a result of the primal castration of the deity Heaven (Latin Caelus
). The myth, Macrobius indicates, could be understood as an allegory
of the doctrine of seminal reason
. The elements derive from the semina, "seeds," that are generated by heaven; "love" brings together the elements in the act of creation, like the sexual union of male and female. Cicero suggests that in Stoic allegory the severing of reproductive organs signifies "that the highest heavenly aether, that seed-fire which generates all things, did not require the equivalent of human genitals to proceed in its generative work."
, "valor" as that which made a man most fully a man, was among the active virtues. Roman ideals of masculinity were thus premised on taking an active role that was also, as Craig A. Williams has noted, "the prime directive of masculine sexual behavior for Romans." The impetus toward action might express itself most intensely in an ideal of dominance that reflects the hierarchy of Roman patriarchal society. The "conquest mentality" was part of a "cult of virility" that particularly shaped Roman homosexual practices. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, an emphasis on domination has led scholars to view expressions of Roman male sexuality in terms of a "penetrator-penetrated" binary model
; that is, the proper way for a Roman male to seek sexual gratification was to insert his penis in his partner. Allowing himself to be penetrated threatened his liberty as a free citizen as well as his sexual integrity.
It was expected and socially acceptable for a freeborn Roman man to want sex with both female and male partners, as long as he took the dominating role. Acceptable objects of desire were women of any social or legal status, male prostitutes, or male slaves, but sexual behaviors outside marriage were to be confined to slaves and prostitutes, or less often a concubine or "kept woman." Lack of self-control, including in managing one's sex life, indicated that a man was incapable of governing others; the enjoyment of "low sensual pleasure" threatened to erode the elite male's identity as a cultured person. It was a point of pride for Gaius Gracchus
to claim that during his term as a provincial governor
he kept no slave-boys chosen for their good looks, no female prostitutes visited his house, and he never accosted other men's slave-boys.
In the Imperial era, anxieties about the loss of political liberty and the subordination of the citizen to the emperor were expressed by a perceived increase in passive homosexual behavior among free men, accompanied by a documentable increase in the execution and corporal punishment of citizens. The dissolution of Republican ideals of physical integrity in relation to libertas contributes to and is reflected by the sexual license and decadence associated with the Empire.
(ca. 239–169 BC) declared that "exposing naked bodies among citizens is the beginning of public disgrace (flagitium)," a sentiment echoed by Cicero that again links the self-containment of the body with citizenship. Roman attitudes toward nudity differed from those of the Greeks, whose ideal of masculine excellence was expressed by the nude male body in art and in such real-life venues as athletic contests. The toga
, by contrast, distinguished the body of the sexually privileged adult Roman male. Even when stripping down for exercises, Roman men kept their genitals and buttocks covered, an Italic custom shared also with the Etruscans, whose art mostly shows them wearing a loincloth
, a skirt-like garment, or the earliest form of "shorts" for athletics. Romans who competed in the Olympic Games presumably followed the Greek custom of nudity, but athletic nudity at Rome has been dated variously, possibly as early as the introduction of Greek-style games in the 2nd century BC but perhaps not regularly till the time of Nero
around 60 AD.
Public nudity might be offensive or distasteful even in traditional settings; Cicero derides Mark Antony
as undignified for appearing near-naked as a participant in the Lupercalia
, even though it was ritually required. Nudity is one of the themes of this religious festival that most consumes Ovid's attention in the Fasti, his long-form poem on the Roman calendar
. Augustus
, during his program of religious revivalism, attempted to reform the Lupercalia, in part by suppressing the use of nudity despite its fertility aspect.
Negative connotations of nudity include defeat in war, since captives were stripped, and slavery, since slaves for sale were often displayed naked. The disapproval of nudity was thus less a matter of trying to suppress inappropriate sexual desire than of dignifying and marking the citizen's body.
The influence of Greek art, however, led to "heroic" nude portrayals
of Roman men and gods, a practice that began in the 2nd century BC. When statues of Roman generals nude in the manner of Hellenistic kings first began to be displayed, they were shocking not simply because they exposed the male figure, but because they evoked concepts of royalty and divinity that were contrary to Republican ideals of citizenship as embodied by the toga. The god Mars is presented as a mature, bearded man in the attire of a Roman general when he is conceived of as the dignified father of the Roman people, while depictions of Mars as youthful, beardless, and nude show the influence of the Greek Ares
. In art produced under Augustus, the programmatic adoption of Hellenistic and Neo-Attic style
led to more complex signification of the male body shown nude, partially nude, or costumed in a muscle cuirass
.
One exception to public nudity was the baths
, though attitudes toward nude bathing also changed over time. In the 2nd century BC, Cato
preferred not to bathe in the presence of his son, and Plutarch
implies that for Romans of these earlier times it was considered shameful for mature men to expose their bodies to younger males. Later, however, men and women might even bathe together.
and other malevolent supernatural forces. It was used as an amulet
(fascinum), many examples of which have survived, particularly in the form of wind chime
s (tintinnabula
). Some scholars have even interpreted the plan of the Forum Augustum as phallic, "with its two semi-circular galleries or exedra
e as the testicles and its long projecting forecourt as the shaft."
The outsized phallus
of Roman art
was associated with the god Priapus
, among others. It was laughter-provoking, grotesque, or used for magical purposes. Originating in the Greek town of Lampsacus
, Priapus was a fertility deity whose statue was placed in gardens to ward off thieves. The poetry collection called the Priapea deals with phallic sexuality, including poems spoken in the person of Priapus. In one, for instance, Priapus threatens anal rape against any potential thief. The wrath of Priapus might cause impotence, or a state of perpetual arousal with no means of release: one curse of Priapus upon a thief was that he might lack women or boys to relieve him of his erection, and burst.
There are approximately 120 recorded Latin terms and metaphors for the penis, with the largest category treating the male member as an instrument of aggression, a weapon. This metaphorical tendency is exemplified by actual lead sling-bullets which are sometimes found inscribed with the image of a phallus, or messages that liken the target to a sexual conquest, for instance "I seek Octavian's asshole." The most common obscenity for the penis is mentula, which Martial argues for in place of polite terms: his privileging of the word as time-honored Latin from the era of Numa
may be compared to the unvarnished integrity of "four letter Anglo-Saxon words
." Cicero does not use the word even when discussing the nature of obscene language in a letter to his friend Atticus
; Catullus famously uses it as a pseudonym for the disreputable Mamurra
, Julius Caesar's friend ("Dick" or "Peter" might be English equivalents). Mentula appears frequently in graffiti and the Priapea, but while obscene the word was not inherently abusive or vituperative. Verpa, by contrast, was "an emotive and highly offensive word" for the penis with its foreskin drawn back, as the result of an erection, excessive sexual activity, or circumcision. Virga, as well as other words for "branch, rod, stake, beam," is a common metaphor, as is vomer, "plough."
The penis might also be referred to as the "vein" (vena), "tail" (penis or cauda), or "tendon" (nervus). The English word "penis" derives from penis, which originally meant "tail" but in Classical Latin
was used regularly as a "risqué colloquialism" for the male organ. Later, penis becomes the standard word in polite Latin, as used for example by the scholiast to Juvenal and by Arnobius
, but did not pass into usage among the Romance languages
. It was not a term used by medical writers, except for Marcellus of Bordeaux. In medieval Latin
, a vogue for scholarly obscenity led to a perception of the dactyl
, a metrical unit of verse represented as an image of the penis, with the long syllable (longum) the shaft and the two short syllables (breves) the testicles.
The apparent connection between Latin testes, "testicles," and testis, plural testes, "witness" (the origin of English "testify" and "testimony") may lie in archaic ritual. Some ancient Mediterranean cultures swore binding oaths upon the male genitalia, symbolizing that "the bearing of false witness brings a curse upon not only oneself, but one's house and future line." Latin writers make frequent puns and jokes based on the two meanings of testis: it took balls to become a legally functioning male citizen. The English word "testicle" derives from the diminutive
testiculum. The obscene word for "testicle" was coleus.
and circumcision
were linked as barbaric mutilations of the male genitalia. When the cult of Cybele
was imported to Rome at the end of the 3rd century BC, its traditional eunuch
ism was confined to foreign priests (the Galli
), while Roman citizens formed sodalities to perform honors in keeping with their own customs. It has been argued that the Apostle Paul's exhortation of the Galatians
not to undergo circumcision
should be understood not only in the context of Jewish circumcision
, but also of the ritual castration associated with Cybele, whose cult was centered in Galatia
. Among Jews, circumcision was a marker of the Covenant
; diaspora Jews
circumcised their male slaves and adult male converts
, in addition to Jewish male infants. Although Greco-Roman writers view circumcision as an identifying characteristic of Jews, they believed the practice to have originated in Egypt, and recorded it among peoples they identified as Arab
, Syrian
, Phoenician, Colchian
, and Ethiopian. The Neoplatonic philosopher Sallustius
associates circumcision with the strange familial–sexual customs of the Massagetae
who "eat their fathers" and of the Persians who "preserve their nobility by begetting children on their mothers."
Some Romans kept beautiful male slaves as deliciae or delicati ("toys, delights") who were sometimes castrated in an effort to preserve the androgynous looks of their youth. The emperor Nero
had his favorite Sporus castrated, and married him in a public ceremony.
By the end of the 1st century AD, bans against castration had been enacted by the emperors Domitian
and Nerva
in the face of a burgeoning trade in eunuch slaves. Sometime between 128 and 132 AD, Hadrian
seems to have temporarily banned circumcision, on pain of death. Antoninus Pius
exempted Jews from the ban,, as well as Egyptian priests, and Origen
says that in his time only Jews were permitted to practice circumcision. Legislation under Constantine
, the first Christian emperor, freed any slave who was subjected to circumcision; in 339 AD, circumcising a slave became punishable by death.
A surgical procedure (epispasm) existed to restore the foreskin
and cover the glans
"for the sake of decorum." Some Hellenized or Romanized Jews resorted to epispasm in order to make themselves less conspicuous at the baths or during athletics. Of these, some had themselves circumcised again later.
was thought to weaken men. Greek medical theories based on the classical elements and humors
recommended limiting the production of semen by means of cooling, drying, and astringent therapies, including cold baths and the avoidance of flatulence-causing foods. In the 2nd century AD, the medical writer Galen
explains semen
as a concoction of blood (conceived of as a humor) and pneuma
(the "vital air
" required by organs to function) formed within the man's coiled spermatic vessels, with the humor turning white through heat as it enters into the testicles. In his treatise On Semen, Galen warns that immoderate sexual activity results in a loss of pneuma and hence vitality:
The uncontrolled dispersing of pneuma in semen could lead to loss of physical vigor, mental acuity, masculinity, and a strong manly voice, a complaint registered also in the Priapea. Sexual activity was thought particularly to affect the voice: singers and actors might be infibulated to preserve their voices. Quintilian
advises that the orator who wished to cultivate a deep masculine voice for court should abstain from sexual relations. This concern was felt intensely by Catullus
's friend Calvus
, the 1st-century BC avant-garde poet
and orator, who slept with lead plates over his kidneys to control wet dreams. Pliny
reports that:
Lead plates, cupping therapy, and depilatories
were prescribed for three sexual disorders thought to be related to nocturnal emissions: satyriasis, or hypersexuality
; priapism
, a chronic erection without an accompanying desire for sex; and the involuntary discharge of semen (seminis lapsus or seminis effusio).
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Effeminacy
was a favorite accusation in Roman political invective, and was aimed particularly at populares
, the politicians of the faction who represented themselves as champions of the people, sometimes called Rome's "democratic" party in contrast to the optimates
, a conservative elite of nobles
. In the last years of the Republic, the popularists Julius Caesar
, Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony
), and Clodius Pulcher, as well as the Catilinarian conspirators, were all derided as effeminate, overly-groomed, too-good-looking men who might be on the receiving end of sex from other males; at the same time, they were supposed to be womanizers or possessed of devastating sex appeal.
Perhaps the most notorious incident of cross-dressing
in ancient Rome occurred in 62 BC, when Clodius Pulcher intruded on annual rites of the Bona Dea
that were restricted to women only. The rites were held at a senior magistrate
's home, in this year that of Julius Caesar, nearing the end of his term as praetor
and only recently invested as Pontifex Maximus
. Clodius disguised himself as a female musician to gain entrance, as described in a "verbal striptease" by Cicero, who prosecuted him for sacrilege (incestum):
The actions of Clodius, who had just been elected quaestor
and was probably about to turn thirty, are often regarded as a last juvenile prank. The all-female nature of these nocturnal rites attracted much prurient speculation from men; they were fantasized as drunken lesbian orgies that might be fun to watch. Clodius is supposed to have intended to seduce Caesar's wife, but his masculine voice gave him away before he got a chance. The scandal prompted Caesar to seek an immediate divorce to control the damage to his own reputation, giving rise to the famous line "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." The incident "summed up the disorder of the final years of the republic."
In addition to political invective, cross-dressing appears in Roman literature and art as a mythological trope (as in the story of Hercules
and Omphale
exchanging roles and attire), religious investiture
, and rarely or ambiguously as transvestic fetishism
. A section of the Digest by Ulpian
categorizes Roman clothing
on the basis of who may appropriately wear it; a man who wore women's clothes, Ulpian notes, would risk making himself the object of scorn. A fragment from the playwright Accius
(170–86 BC) seems to refer to a father who secretly wore "virgin's finery." An instance of transvestism
is noted in a legal case, in which "a certain senator accustomed to wear women's evening clothes" was disposing of the garments in his will. In a "mock trial
" exercise presented by the elder Seneca
, a young man (adulescens) is gang-raped while wearing women's clothes in public, but his attire is explained as his acting on a dare by his friends, not as a choice based on gender identity or the pursuit of erotic pleasure.
Gender ambiguity was a characteristic of the priests of the goddess Cybele
known as Galli
, whose ritual attire included items of women’s clothing. They are sometimes considered a transgendered priesthood, since they were required to be castrated in imitation of Attis
. The complexities of gender identity in the religion of Cybele and the Attis myth are explored by Catullus in one of his longest poems, Carmen 63.
and various pieces of Augustan moral legislation were meant to restrict same-sex activity among freeborn males, viewed as threatening a man's status and independence as a citizen.
Latin had such a wealth of words for men outside the masculine norm that some scholars argue for the existence of a homosexual subculture
at Rome; that is, although the noun "homosexual" has no straightforward equivalent in Latin, literary sources reveal a pattern of behaviors among a minority of free men that indicate same-sex preference or orientation. Some terms, such as exoletus
, specifically refer to an adult; Romans who were socially marked as "masculine" did not confine their same-sex penetration of male prostitutes or slaves to those who were "boys" under the age of 20.
Homoerotic Latin literature includes the "Juventius" poems of Catullus
, elegies by Tibullus
and Propertius, the second Eclogue of Vergil, and several poems by Horace
. Lucretius addresses the love of boys in De rerum natura (4.1052–1056). Although Ovid
includes mythological treatments of homoeroticism in the Metamorphoses, he is unusual among Latin love poets, and indeed among Romans in general, for his aggressively heterosexual stance. The Satyricon
of Petronius
is so permeated with the culture of male-male sexuality that in 18th-century European literary circles, his name became "a byword for homosexuality."
Although Roman law did not recognize marriage between men, in the early Imperial period some male couples were celebrating traditional marriage rites. Same-sex weddings are reported by sources that mock them; the feelings of the participants are not recorded.
Apart from measures to protect the liberty of citizens, the prosecution of homosexuality as a general crime began in the 3rd century of the Christian era when male prostitution was banned by Philip the Arab
. By the end of the 4th century, passive homosexuality under the Christian Empire
was punishable by burning. "Death by sword" was the punishment for a "man coupling like a woman" under the Theodosian Code. Under Justinian, all same-sex acts, passive or active, no matter who the partners, were declared contrary to nature and punishable by death. Homosexual behaviors were pointed to as causes for God's wrath
following a series of disasters around 542 and 559.
) suffered by males who prostituted themselves or willingly took the receiving role in sex. According to the jurist Pomponius
, "whatever man has been raped by the force of robbers or the enemy in wartime (vi praedonum vel hostium)" ought to bear no stigma. Fears of mass rape following a military defeat extended equally to male and female potential victims.
Roman law addressed the rape of a male citizen as early as the 2nd century BC, when a ruling was issued in a case that may have involved a male of same-sex orientation. Although a man who had worked as a prostitute could not be raped as a matter of law, it was ruled that even a man who was "disreputable (famosus) and questionable (suspiciosus)" had the same right as other free men not to have his body subjected to forced sex. In a book on rhetoric from the early 1st century BC, the rape of a freeborn male (ingenuus
) is equated with that of a materfamilias as a capital crime. The Lex Julia de vi publica, recorded in the early 3rd century AD but "probably dating from the dictatorship
of Julius Caesar," defined rape as forced sex against "boy, woman, or anyone"; the rapist was subject to execution, a rare penalty in Roman law. It was a capital crime for a man to abduct a free-born boy for sexual purposes, or to bribe the boy's chaperon (comes) for the opportunity. Negligent chaperones could be prosecuted under various laws, placing the blame on those who failed in their responsibilities as guardians rather than on the victim. Although the law recognized the victim's blamelessness, rhetoric used by the defense indicates that attitudes of blame among jurors could be exploited.
In his collection of twelve anecdotes dealing with assaults on chastity, the historian Valerius Maximus
features male victims in equal number to female. In the "mock trial
" case described by the elder Seneca
, an adulescens (a man young enough not to have begun his formal career) was gang-raped by ten of his peers; although the case is imaginary, Seneca assumes that the law permitted the successful prosecution of the rapists. Another hypothetical case imagines the extremity to which a rape victim could be driven: the free-born male who was raped commits suicide. The rape of an ingenuus is among the worst crimes that could be committed in Rome, along with parricide
, the rape of a female virgin, and robbing a temple. Rape was nevertheless one of the traditional punishments inflicted on a male adulterer by the wronged husband, though perhaps more in revenge fantasy than in practice. The threat of one man to subject another to anal or oral rape (irrumatio
) is a theme of invective poetry, most notably in Catullus's notorious Carmen 16
, and was a form of masculine braggadocio.
, whether on the march or at a permanent fort (castra
), was attended by a number of camp followers who might include prostitutes. Their presence seems to have been taken for granted, and mentioned mainly when it became problematic; for instance, when Scipio Aemilianus was setting out for Numantia
in 133 BC, he dismissed the camp followers as one of his measures for restoring discipline.
Perhaps most peculiar is the prohibition against marriage in the Imperial army. In the early period, Rome had an army of citizens who left their families and took up arms as the need arose. During the expansionism of the Middle Republic, Rome began acquiring vast territories to be defended as provinces, and during the time of Gaius Marius
(d. 86 BC), the army had been professionalized. The ban on marriage began under Augustus
(ruled 27 BC–14 AD), perhaps to discourage families from following the army and impairing its mobility. The marriage ban applied to all ranks up to the centurion
ate; men of the governing classes were exempt. By the 2nd century AD, the stability of the Empire
kept most units in permanent forts, where attachments with local women often developed. Although legally these unions could not be formalized as marriages, their value in providing emotional support for the soldiers was recognized. After a soldier was discharged, the couple were granted the right of legal marriage as citizens (conubium), and any children they already had were considered to have been born to citizens. Septimius Severus
rescinded the ban in 197 AD.
Other forms of sexual gratification available to soldiers were the use of male slaves, war rape
, and same-sex relations. Homosexual behavior among soldiers was subject to harsh penalties, including death, as a violation of military discipline. Polybius
(2nd century BC) reports that same-sex activity in the military was punishable by the fustuarium
, clubbing to death. Sex among fellow soldiers violated the Roman decorum against intercourse with another free-born male. A soldier maintained his masculinity by not allowing his body to be used for sexual purposes. This physical integrity stood in contrast to the limits placed on his actions as a free man within the military hierarchy; most strikingly, Roman soldiers were the only citizens regularly subjected to corporal punishment, reserved in the civilian world mainly for slaves. Sexual integrity helped distinguish the status of the soldier, who otherwise sacrificed a great deal of his civilian autonomy, from that of the slave. In warfare, rape signified defeat, another motive for the soldier not to compromise his body sexually.
An incident related by Plutarch
in his biography of Marius illustrates the soldier's right to maintain his sexual integrity. A good-looking young recruit named Trebonius had been sexually harassed
over a period of time by his superior officer, who happened to be Marius's nephew, Gaius Luscius. One night, having fended off unwanted advances on numerous occasions, Trebonius was summoned to Luscius's tent. Unable to disobey the command of his superior, he found himself the object of a sexual assault and drew his sword, killing Luscius. A conviction for killing an officer typically resulted in execution. When brought to trial, he was able to produce witnesses to show that he had repeatedly had to fend off Luscius, and "had never prostituted his body to anyone, despite offers of expensive gifts." Marius not only acquitted Trebonius in the killing of his kinsman, but gave him a crown for bravery. Roman historians record other cautionary tales of officers who abuse their authority to coerce sex from their soldiers, and then suffer dire consequences. The youngest officers, who still might retain some of the adolescent attraction that Romans favored in male-male relations, were advised to beef up their masculine qualities, such as not wearing perfume, nor trimming nostril and underarm hair.
During wartime, the violent use of war captives for sex was not considered criminal rape. Mass rape
was one of the acts of punitive violence during the sack of a city, but if the siege had ended through diplomatic negotiations rather than storming the walls, by custom the inhabitants were neither enslaved nor subjected to personal violence. Mass rape as a form of warfare was thus permissible only when part of an overall strategy for gaining control of a population. An ethical ideal of sexual self-control among enlisted men was vital to preserving peace once hostilities ceased. In territories and provinces
brought under treaty with Rome, soldiers who committed rape against the local people might be subjected to harsher punishments than civilians. Sertorius, the long-time governor
of Roman Spain whose policies emphasized respect and cooperation with provincials, executed an entire cohort
when a single soldier had attempted to rape a local woman.
) and fecundity: Augustus
granted special honors and privileges to women who had given birth to three children (see "Ius trium liberorum
"). Control of female sexuality was regarded as necessary for the stability of the state, as embodied most conspicuously in the absolute virginity of the Vestals. A Vestal who violated her vow was entombed alive in a ritual that mimicked some aspects of a Roman funeral
; her lover was executed. Female sexuality, either disorderly or exemplary, often impacts state religion in times of crisis for the Republic. The moral legislation of Augustus focused on harnessing the sexuality of women.
As was the case for men, free women who displayed themselves sexually, such as prostitutes and performers, or who made themselves available indiscriminately were excluded from legal protections and social respectability.
Many Roman literary sources approve of respectable women exercising sexual passion within marriage. While ancient literature overwhelmingly takes a male-centered view of sexuality, the Augustan poet Ovid
expresses an explicit and virtually unique interest in how women experience intercourse.
In the real world as described in literature, prostitutes sometimes displayed themselves naked at the entrance to their brothel cubicles, or wore see-through silk garments; slaves for sale were often displayed naked to allow buyers to inspect them for defects, and to symbolize that they lacked the right to control their own body. As Seneca the Elder
described a woman for sale:
The display of the female body made it vulnerable. Varro
said sight was the greatest of the senses, because while the others were limited by proximity, sight could penetrate even to the stars; he thought the Latin word for "sight, gaze
", visus, was etymologically related to vis, "force, power". But the connection between visus and vis, he said, also implied the potential for violation, just as Actaeon
gazing on the naked Diana
violated the goddess. The completely nude female body as portrayed in sculpture was thought to embody a universal concept of Venus, whose counterpart Aphrodite is the goddess most often depicted as a nude in Greek art.
One of the slang words women used for their genitals was porcus, "pig," particularly when mature women spoke of girls. Varro connects this usage of the word to the sacrifice of a pig to the goddess Ceres in preliminary wedding rites. The "basic obscenity" for the female genitalia is cunnus, "cunt
," though perhaps not as strongly offensive as the English. Martial uses the word more than thirty times, Catullus once, and Horace
thrice only in his early work; it also appears in the Priapea and graffiti. Metaphors of fields, gardens, and meadows are common, as is the image of the masculine "plough" in the feminine "furrow." Other metaphors include cave, ditch, pit, bag, vessel, door, hearth, oven, and altar.
The function of the clitoris
(landica) was "well understood." In classical Latin
, landica was a highly indecorous obscenity found in graffiti and the Priapea; the clitoris was usually referred to with a metaphor, such as Juvenal's crista ("crest"). Cicero records that a hapless speaker of consular rank
broke up the senate
just by saying something that sounded like landica: hanc culpam maiorem an il-lam dicam? ("Shall I call this fault greater or that one?" heard as "this greater fault or a clitoris?"). "Could he have been more obscene?" Cicero exclaims, observing at the same time that cum nos, "when we," sounds like cunnus. A lead sling-bullet uncovered through archaeology was inscribed "I aim for Fulvia's clit" (Fulviae landicam peto), Fulvia
being the wife of Mark Antony who commanded troops during the civil wars of the 40s and 30s.
Latin lacked a standard word for labia; two terms found in medical writers are orae, "edges" or "shores," and pinnacula, "little wings." The first recorded instance of the word vulva occurs in Varro's work on agriculture (1st century BC), where it refers to the membrane that surrounds a fetus. In the early Empire, vulva came into usage for "womb," the usual word for which had been uterus in the Republic, or sometimes more vaguely venter or alvus, both words for "belly." Vulva seems originally to have referred to the womb of animals, but is "extremely common" in Pliny's Natural History for a human uterus. In the Imperial era, vulva can mean "female reproductive organs" collectively or vaguely, or sometimes refers to the vagina alone. Early Latin Bible translators
used vulva as the correct and proper word for the womb. At some point during the Imperial era, matrix became the common word for "uterus," particularly in the gynecological writers of late antiquity
, who also employ a specialized vocabulary for parts of the reproductive organs.
Both women and men often removed their pubic hair, but grooming may have varied over time and by individual preference. A fragment from the early satirist Lucilius
refers to penetrating a "hairy bag," and a graffito from Pompeii declares that "a hairy cunt is fucked much better than one which is smooth; it's steamy and wants cock."
At the entrance to a caldarium
in the bath complex
of the House of Menander
at Pompeii, an unusual graphic device appears on a mosaic: a phallic oil can is surrounded by strigil
s in the shape of female genitalia, juxtaposed with an "Ethiopian" water-bearer who has an "unusually large and comically detailed" penis.
take note of breasts in an erotic context.
The breasts of a beautiful woman were supposed to be "unobtrusive." Idealized breasts in the tradition of Hellenistic poetry were compared to apples; Martial makes fun of large breasts. Old women who were stereotypically ugly and undesirable in every way had "pendulous" breasts. On the Roman stage
, exaggerated breasts were part of the costuming for comically unattractive female characters, since in classic Roman comedy women's roles were played by male actors in drag
.
While Greek epigrams describe ideal breasts, Latin poets take limited interest in them, at least as compared to the modern focus on admiring and fondling a woman's breasts. They are observed mainly as aspects of a woman's beauty or perfection of form, though Ovid finds them inviting to touch. In one poem celebrating a wedding, Catullus remarks on the bride's "tender nipples" (teneris … papillis) which would keep a good husband sleeping with her; erotic appeal supports fidelity within marriage and leads to children and a long life together.
Because all infants were breastfed in antiquity, the breast was viewed primarily as an emblem of nurturing and of motherhood. Mastoi, breast-shaped drinking cups, and representations of breasts are among the votive offerings (vota
) found at sanctuaries of deities such as Diana
and Hercules
, sometimes having been dedicated by wet nurse
s. The breast-shaped cup may have a religious significance; the drinking of breast milk by an adult who is elderly or about to die symbolized potential rebirth in the afterlife. In the Etruscan tradition
, the goddess Juno
(Uni
) offers her breast to Hercules as a sign that he may enter the ranks of the immortals. The religious meaning may underlie the story of how Pero offered breast milk to her elderly father when he was imprisoned and sentenced to death by starvation (see Roman Charity
). The scene is among the moral paintings in a Pompeiian bedroom that belonged to a child, along with the legend "in sadness is the meeting of modesty and piety." Pliny
records medicinal uses of breast milk, and ranks it as one of the most useful remedies, especially for ailments of the eyes and ears. Wrapping one's head in a bra was said to cure a headache.
Baring the breasts is one of the gestures made by women, particularly mothers or nurses, to express mourning or as an appeal for mercy. The baring and beating of breasts ritually in grief was interpreted by Servius as producing milk to feed the dead. In Greek and Latin literature, mythological mothers sometimes expose their breasts in moments of extreme emotional duress to demand that their nurturing role be respected. Breasts exposed with such intensity held apotropaic power. Julius Caesar
indicates that the gesture had a similar significance in Celtic culture: during the siege of Avaricum, the female heads of household (matres familiae) expose their breasts and extend their hands to ask that the women and children be spared. Tacitus
notes Germanic
women who exhorted their reluctant men to valorous battle by aggressively baring their breasts. Although in general "the gesture is meant to arouse pity rather than sexual desire," the beauty of the breasts so exposed is sometimes in evidence and remarked upon.
Because women were normally portrayed clothed in art, bared breasts can signify vulnerability or erotic availability by choice, accident, or force. Baring a single breast was a visual motif of Classical Greek sculpture, where among other situations, including seductions, it often represented impending physical violence or rape. Some scholars have attempted to find a "code" in which exposing the right breast had an erotic significance, while the left breast signified nurturing. Although art produced by the Romans may imitate or directly draw on Greek conventions, during the Classical period
of Greek art images of women nursing were treated as animalistic or barbaric; by contrast, the coexisting Italic tradition emphasized the breast as a focus of the mother-child relationship and as a source of female power.
The erogenous power of the breast was not utterly neglected: in comparing sex with a woman to sex with a boy, a Greek novel
of the Roman Imperial era notes that "her breast when it is caressed provides its own particular pleasure." Propertius connects breast development with girls reaching an age to "play". Tibullus
observes that a woman just might wear loose clothing so that her breasts "flash
" when she reclines at dinner. An astrological tradition
held that mammary intercourse
was enjoyed by men born under the conjunction of Venus, Mercury, and Saturn. Even in the most sexually explicit Roman paintings, however, the breasts are sometimes kept covered by the strophium (breast band). The women so depicted may be prostitutes, but it can be difficult to discern why an artist decides in a given scenario to portray the breasts covered or exposed.
, "courtesan" or "companion"), tribas (plural tribades), and Lesbia; Latin words include the loanword
tribas, fricatrix ("she who rubs"), and virago
. References to sex between women are infrequent in the Roman literature of the Republic and early Principate
. Ovid, who advocates generally for a heterosexual lifestyle, finds it "a desire known to no one, freakish, novel … among all animals no female is seized by desire for female."
During the Roman Imperial era, sources for same-sex relations among women are more abundant, in the form of love spells, medical writing, texts on astrology and the interpretation of dreams, and other sources. A graffito from Pompeii expresses the desire of one woman for another:
An early reference to same-sex relations among women as "lesbianism" is found in Lucian
(2nd century AD): "They say there are women like that in Lesbos, masculine-looking, but they don't want to give it up for men. Instead, they consort with women, just like men."
Since Romans thought a sex act required an active or dominant partner who was "phallic" (see "Phallic sexuality" above), male writers imagined that in lesbian sex one of the women would use a dildo
or have an exceptionally large clitoris for penetration, and that she would be the one experiencing pleasure. Martial describes lesbians as having outsized sexual appetites and performing penetrative sex on both women and boys. Imperial portrayals of women who sodomize boys, drink and eat like men, and engage in vigorous physical regimens, may reflect cultural anxieties about the growing independence of Roman women.
. The legendary founders Romulus and Remus
were born from the rape of the Vestal Rhea Silvia
by the god Mars
. Romulus and his "band of freebooters" can transform their all-male settlement into a city only by the "rape" of the Sabine women
, that is, by forcibly abducting the daughters of their Sabine neighbors to take as wives. The overthrow of the Roman monarchy and the establishment of the Republic was precipitated by the rape of the much-admired Lucretia
by Sextus Tarquinius
, the king's son. The legend crystallizes the Roman view of unchecked libido as a form of tyranny.
The Augustan
historian
Livy
seems "embarrassed" by the rape motif of early Roman history, and emphasizes the redeeming political dimension of these events. Lucretius condemns rape as a primitive behavior outside the bounds of an advanced civilization, describing it as "a man's use of violent force and imposition of sexual impulse."
recognized rape as a crime: the rape victim was not guilty of anything. Intercourse by force or compulsion (vis), even if it took place under circumstances that were otherwise unlawful for a woman (see "Moral and legal concepts" above), left the woman legally without blame. The official position under Diocletian
(reigned 284–305 AD) held that:
Although literary sources from the Republican era make it clear that rape was wrong and severely penalized, the statute
s under which it might be charged as a crime are unknown until passage of the Lex Iulia de vi publica
, dating probably to the dictatorship of Juius Caesar in the 40s BC. Rome had no state prosecutors; cases could be prosecuted by any citizen with the legal expertise and speaking ability to do so. Since emancipated women were allowed to bring criminal prosecutions in the Republic, it is conceivable that a rape victim could have brought charges against her rapist herself. Otherwise, the case could be prosecuted by her father or husband, or by anyone who saw fit to do so. There was no statute of limitations
for rape; by contrast adultery, which was criminalized under Augustus
, had to be prosecuted within five years. Rape was a capital crime.
As a matter of law, rape could be committed only against a citizen in good standing. A woman who worked as a prostitute or entertainer lost her social standing and became infamis; by making her body publicly available, she had in effect surrendered her right to be protected from sexual abuse or physical violence. Cicero defended a client whose misdeeds included the gang rape of an actress on the grounds that young men took customary license with entertainers. The rape of a slave could be prosecuted only as damage to her owner's property, under the Lex Aquilia
. Consent would have been an issue in rape cases only rarely; if the accused argued that the woman had consented, he could still be charged with committing the more general sex crime of stuprum against a citizen, since male sexual freedom was limited to prostitutes or slaves. If rape against a married woman could not be proven, the Augustan legislation criminalizing adultery would make the man liable to a charge of adulterium, criminal adultery, though a charge of either adultery or stuprum without force would implicate the woman as well. An acquittal for rape, as with any other crime, would open the prosecutor to a retaliatory charge of calumnia
, malicious prosecution. The prosecution of rape might also be hindered by psychological and social pressures, such as embarrassment or a reluctance to expose one's private life.
Attitudes toward rape changed when the Empire became Christianized. St. Augustine
interpreted Lucretia's suicide as a possible admission that she had secretly encouraged the rapist, and Christian apologists regarded her as having committed the sin of involuntary sexual pleasure. The first Christian emperor Constantine redefined rape as a public offense rather than as a private wrong. Earlier Roman law had blurred the line between abduction and elopement, since in either case it was the right of the paterfamilias to give or withhold his consent to his daughter's marriage that had been violated. The word raptus thus could refer to a successful seduction as well as abduction or rape. If the girl consented, Constantine ordered that she be punished along with the male "abductor" by being burnt alive. If she had not consented, she was still considered an accomplice, "on the grounds that she could have saved herself by screaming for help." As a participant to the rape, she was punished under law by being disinherited, regardless of the wishes of her family. Even if she and her family consented to a marriage as the result of an elopement, the marriage was legally void. In the Republic and the pre-Christian Empire, the consequences of an abduction or an elopement had been up to the couple and their families.
claimed that in front of his son he tried to speak as though Vestal Virgins were present.
Freeborn Roman boys also wore an apotropaic amulet called the bulla
which incorporated a phallic talisman
(fascinum) inside a locket of gold, silver, or bronze, or in a leather pouch. In addition to its magical function, the bulla would have been a visible warning that the boy was sexually off-limits. The equivalent for the girl was the lunula, a crescent moon amulet.
There were laws protecting freeborn children from sexual predator
s, and the rape of a freeborn boy was a capital crime; this severity was directed at protecting the integrity of the young citizen. Fictional license was not a defense; Valerius Maximus
reports that a poetic boast of seducing a puer praetextatus ("praetextate boy") and a freeborn virgin (ingenua virgo) was used in court to impugn a prosecutor's moral authority. In denouncing the debaucheries of Quintus Apronius, Cicero builds to the worst offence: Apronius danced naked at a banquet in front of a boy still of an age to wear the praetexta. Although children were taken to dinner parties (convivia) to accustom them to proper adult social behavior, Quintilian
scolds parents of his day for being poor role models: they parade their mistresses and male concubines and behave indiscreetly even when their children are present, and think it's cute when their children say things that are age-inappropriate. Quintilian regards this misbehavior as a sign of general moral decline. At weddings, however, boys were by ancient custom given license to speak obscenely, peppering the new couple with dirty jokes, as humor and laughter were thought to promote fecundity.
Protections applied only to freeborn children, not those born to slaves, sold into slavery, or taken captive in war. The social acceptance of pederasty among the Romans was focused on the exploitation of young male slaves or prostitutes by men of the upper classes.
The puberty ritual for the young male involved shaving his first beard and taking off his bulla
, which he dedicated to the household gods, the Lares
. He assumed the toga virilis ("toga of manhood"), was enrolled as a citizen on the census, and soon began his military service. Traditionally, the ceremony was held on the Liberalia
, the festival in honor of the god Liber
, who embodied both political and sexual liberty. Following his rite of passage
, the young male citizen was permitted the avenues of sexual activity that were generally acceptable for Roman men of his social rank. Often a young man would be introduced to heterosexual intercourse by an experienced female prostitute.
Roman women were expected to remain virgins until marriage; the higher the social rank of a girl, the sooner she was likely to become betrothed and married. The general age of betrothal for women of the upper classes was fourteen, but for patricians as early as twelve. Weddings, however, were often postponed until the girl was considered mature enough. The wedding ceremony was in part a rite of passage for the bride, as Rome lacked the elaborate female puberty rituals of ancient Greece. On the night before the wedding, the bride bound up her hair with a yellow hairnet she had woven. The confining of her hair signifies the harnessing of her sexuality within marriage. Her weaving of the tunica recta and the hairnet demonstrated her skill and her capacity for acting in the traditional matron's role as custos domi, "guardian of the house." On her wedding day, she belted her tunic with the cingulum, made from the wool of a ewe to symbolize fertility and tied with the "knot of Hercules", which was supposed to be hard to untie. The knot symbolized wifely chastity, in that it was to be untied only by her husband, but the cingulum also symbolized that the bridegroom "was belted and bound" to his wife. The bride's hair was ritually styled in "six tresses" (seni crines), and she was veiled until uncovered by her husband at the end of the ceremony, a ritual of surrendering her virginity to him.
noted that "it is not sexual intercourse that makes a marriage but rather marital affection," but the warnings by moralists and philosophers against a preoccupation with sex within marriage recognize the potential for marital passion.
Sexual intimacy between a married couple was a private matter, and not usually the subject of literature. An exception was the epithalamium
, a genre of poetry that celebrated a wedding. A wedding hymn by Catullus, for instance, praises the love goddess Venus because "nothing is possible without you." Ovid, whose love poetry early in his career was directed at fictional mistresses, wrote elegies during his exile in which he longed for his wife. Among the collected letters
of Pliny Minor
is one he writes about his feelings for his wife:
Pliny adopts the rhetoric of love poetry, conventionally directed at an illicit or hard-to-attain lover, as appropriate for expressing his wedded desire.
Although it was a point of pride for a woman to be univira, married only once, there was no stigma attached to divorce. Speedy remarriage after divorce or the death of a spouse was common and even expected among the Roman elite, since marriage was considered right and natural for adults. Although widows were usually expected to wait ten months before remarrying, even a pregnant woman was not barred from taking a new husband, as long as the paternity of her child was not in doubt for legal purposes. If a first marriage ended, women seem to have had more say in arranging subsequent marriages. While having children was a primary goal of marriage, other social and familial bonds were enhanced, not excluding personal companionship and sexual pleasure between husband and wife, as indicated by marriages involving women past their childbearing years.
The Trojan
royal couple Hector
and Andromache
became a mythological trope
of wedded sex. Latin love elegy focuses on their sex life rather than the tragic end of their marriage with Hector's death at the hands of Achilles
. They were known for the "woman on top" position, with a verb suggesting that the woman "rides" the man like a horse. In general, Hector was portrayed as markedly heterosexual and an exemplary husband.
from the guests. "Look inside," the poet advises the bride, who burns with an "intimate flame," "where your man lies on the richly arrayed bed, completely available to you." The husband is reminded that "good Venus" has blessed him, since he can now desire openly what he desires, and need not conceal a "good love." The couple is encouraged to enjoy themselves as they please (ludite ut lubet); the goal is to produce children soon.
A pair of paintings in a bedroom of the Casa della Farnesina has been interpreted as "a narrative of the modest bride becoming the immodest lover — perhaps fulfilling a ribald male fantasy."
Some literary passages suggest that a newlywed might break off his outside sexual relations for a time and focus on bonding with his wife in the hope of starting a family. Some Stoics maintained that marital fidelity was as much a virtue for men as for women (see "Stoic sexual morality" above). Legally, however, a Roman husband did not commit adultery when he had sex outside marriage as long as his partner was considered sexually available; sexual misconduct (stuprum) was adultery depending on the status of a female partner. A character in a play by Plautus
expresses a man's sexual freedom in comic terms:
A married or marriageable woman and young male citizens are off-limits, just as if they were the property of someone else, and in fact adultery as a crime was committed contrary to the rights of the paterfamilias to control his household. For a man, adultery was a sexual offense committed with a woman who was neither his wife nor a permissible partner such as a prostitute
or slave
, in effect when his female partner was another man's wife or his unmarried daughter. The later jurists emphasize that adulterium in the strict sense was committed with a married woman.
For a married woman, no infidelity was acceptable, and first-time brides were expected to be virgins. According to Cato
(2nd century BC), a husband had an ancient right (ius
) to kill his wife if he caught her in the act of adultery, but if this "right" existed, it was a matter of custom and not statute law. In the Republic, adultery was normally considered a private matter for families to deal with, not a serious criminal offense requiring the attention of the courts. No source records the justified killing of a woman for adultery by either a father or husband during the Republican era, though adultery was grounds for divorce.
Following the collapse of the Republic
, moral legislation became part of the new political order under Rome's first emperor, Augustus
. Laws pertaining to adultery passed in 18 BC were part of his program to restore the mos maiorum
, traditional social norms, while consolidating his political authority and codifying a more rigid social hierarchy
in the wake of the recent civil wars
. The appeal to old-fashioned values cloaked the radical overthrow of the Republic's participatory political institutions by top-down, one-man rule. The Lex Iulia de adulteriis ("Julian Law concerning acts of adultery") was directed at punishing married women who engaged in extra-marital affairs. Scholars have often assumed that the Lex Iulia was meant to address a virulent outbreak of adultery in the Late Republic. An androcentric perspective in the early 20th century held that the Lex Iulia had been "a very necessary check upon the growing independence and recklessness of women." A more sympathetic view in the late 20th to early 21st century saw love affairs as a way for the intelligent, independent women of the elite to form emotionally meaningful relationships outside marriages arranged for political purposes. It is possible, however, that no such epidemic of adultery even existed; the law should perhaps be understood not as addressing a real problem that threatened society, but as one of the instruments of social control exercised by Augustus that cast the state, and by extension himself, in the role of paterfamilias to all Rome.
Personal anxieties about infidelity, within marriage or not, are reflected in magic spells intended to "fix" (defixiones) or bind the other person's erotic attachment. Spells were also available for interrogating the beloved about any fidelity. One magical papyrus
from Roman Egypt recommends placing the heart of a hoopoe on a sleeping woman's genitals to induce truthful answers; another says that the tongue of a hen placed on her lips or breast will cause her to reveal the name of the man she loves.
Literature of the Late Republic and Principate
, particularly the satires of Horace
and Juvenal
, offer various depictions, or perhaps fantasies, of how a wronged husband might subject his wife's lover to humiliation and punishment. In these literary treatments, the adulterer is castrated, beaten, raped by the husband himself or his slaves, or penetrated anally with a mullet
, a type of prized fish cultivated by elite Romans as a leisure activity (otium). References to such acts do not appear in the letters of Cicero
nor the histories of Tacitus
, and may be fictional exaggerations. Ovid
makes fun of the jealous husband as lacking in sophistication: "The man who's excessively wounded by his wife's adulterous affairs is a hick." Ovid's predecessor Catullus
wrote poetry celebrating his adulterous affair with "Lesbia," his social superior
, traditionally identified as Clodia Metelli. The cultivation of a laissez-faire attitude as a sign of urbanity may have prompted the provision of Augustus's adultery law that required a husband to divorce his wife and bring formal legal charges against her, or face charges himself for pimping
(lenocinium).
, an owner could use them for sex or hire them out to service other people. The letters of Cicero have suggested to some scholars that he had a long-term homosexual relationship with his slave Tiro. As Eva Cantarella
stated bluntly, "the Roman paterfamilias was an absolute master, … he exercised a power outside any control of society and the state. In this situation why on earth should he refrain from sodomising
his houseboys?" But this form of sexual release thus held little erotic cachet: to use one's own slaves was "one step up from masturbation." In describing the ideal partner in pederasty, Martial prefers a slave boy who "acts more like a free man than his master," that is, one who can frame the affair as a stimulating game of courtship. When figures identifiable as slaves appear in erotic art, they are performing routine tasks in the background, not taking part in sex acts. In his work on the interpretation of dreams
(ca. 170 AD), Artemidorus
takes a symbolic view of the sexual value of slaves: to dream of having sex with one's own female slave was a good thing, "for slaves are the dreamer's possession; therefore taking pleasure in them signifies the dreamer's being pleased with his own possessions."
A Roman could exploit his own slaves for sex, but was not entitled to compel any enslaved person he chose to have sex, since the owner had the right to control his own property. In the pursuit of sex with a slave who belonged to someone else, persuasion or threats might be employed. A charge of rape could not be brought against a free man who forced a slave to have sex, since a slave lacked the legal standing that protected a citizen's body, but the owner could prosecute the rapist under the Lex Aquilia
, a law pertaining to property damage.
A slave's sexuality was closely controlled. Slaves had no right to legal marriage (conubium), though they could live together as husband and wife (contubernales). An owner usually restricted the heterosexual activities of his male slaves to females he also owned; any children born from these unions added to his wealth. Cato
, at a time when Rome's large-scale slave economy was still in early development, thought it good practice to monitor his slaves' sex lives, and required male slaves to pay a fee for access to their fellow female slaves.
If an owner found that his male slave was having a sexual relationship with a free woman, by law he had to warn the couple three times to break it off; if the affair continued, he had the right to take ownership of the woman. References to women from respectable families having sex with a male slave are infrequent, indicating that male writers were not preoccupied with the risk of it. Cicero offers no examples in either the gossipy parts of his letters or in court cases where he attacks the reputation of a woman: he accuses Clodia of incest and of running her house like a brothel, but not of sleeping with slaves. Not even Messalina
or Sallust
's Sempronia is accused in the hostile sources of having sex with a slave.
Despite the external controls and restrictions placed on a slave's sexuality, Roman art and literature perversely often portray slaves as lascivious, voyeuristic, and even sexually knowing. One of the themes of Roman comedy that distinguishes it from its Greek models is the depiction of master-slave relations.
Freeborn Romans who fell into slavery were supposed to be protected from sexual exploitation, as indicated by two different stories recorded by ancient historians. Before the abolition of debt bondage
in the 4th century BC, free Romans were sometimes driven to sell themselves or their children into slavery when they were overwhelmed by debt. According to Livy
, debt slavery (nexum
) was abolished as a direct result of the attempted sexual abuse of a freeborn youth who served as surety for his father's debt with the usurer Lucius Papirius. The boy, Gaius Publilius, was notably beautiful, and Papirius insisted that as a bond slave he was required to provide sexual services. When Publilius refused, Papirius had him stripped and whipped. The youth then took to the streets to display his injuries, and an outcry among the people led the consuls
to convene the senate
. The political process eventually led to the Lex Poetelia Papiria
, which prohibited holding debtors in bondage for their debt and required instead that the debtor’s property be used as collateral. The law thus established that the integrity of a Roman citizen's body was fundamental to the concept of libertas, political liberty, in contrast to the uses to which a slave's body was subject. In this and a similar incident reported by Valerius Maximus
, corporal punishment and sexual abuse are seen as similar violations of the citizen's freedom from physical compulsion, in contrast to the slave's physical vulnerability.
Some sexual protections could be extended to slaves. The conduct of slaves reflected generally on the respectability of the household, and the materfamilias in particular was judged by her female slaves' sexual behavior, which was expected to be moral or at least discreet. This decorum may have limited the exploitation of female slaves that were part of the familia. Seneca
expressed Stoic indignation that a male slave should be groomed effeminately and used sexually, because a slave's human dignity should not be debased. The burgeoning trade in eunuch slaves during the early Empire prompted legislation under the emperor Hadrian
that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will "for lust or gain." Legal agreements on the sale of a slave might include a ne serva prostituatur covenant that prohibited the employment of the slave as a prostitute. Although concern for the slave's welfare may have been a factor in individual cases, this legal restriction seems also to have been intended to shield the male citizen owner from the shame or infamia associated with pimping and prostitution. The ne serva covenant remained in force for subsequent sales, even if the buyer was initially unaware of it, and if it was violated, the illegally prostituted slave was granted freedom.
. Prostitutes in Rome had to register with the aedile
s. Despite what might seem to be a clear distinction as a matter of law, the jurist Ulpian
opined that an openly promiscuous woman brought the status of prostitute upon herself, even if she accepted no money. The Augustan moral legislation that criminalized adultery exempted prostitutes, who could legally have sex with a married man. Encouraged to think of adultery as a matter of law rather than morality, a few socially prominent women even chose to avoid prosecution for adultery by registering themselves as prostitutes.
Confused status frequently results in plot complications in the comedies of Plautus
and Terence
. Obstacles to love arise when a young man falls in love with, and wishes to marry, a non-citizen prostitute, and are overcome when the young woman's true status as a freeborn virgin is revealed. The well-brought-up freeborn virgin is marriageable, and the non-citizen prostitute is not. The relation of these comic situations to real life is problematic: Plautus and Terence drew on Greek models which are often little known, and so the extent to which they incorporated Roman social behaviors and attitudes is hard to determine. Elaine Fantham
has observed that prolonged military campaigning in Greece and Asia Minor had introduced Roman men to a more sophisticated standard of luxury and pleasure, perhaps reflected by comedy: the young man acts out his infatuation with an expensive courtesan instead of a family slave or common prostitute.
Prostitutes appear in erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum
, including wall paintings from buildings identified as brothels, in which they are often nude except for a strapless bra (strophium). The paintings illustrate various sexual positions that contradict some scholarly claims about the preferences of Roman men in heterosexual acts. Literary sources record that prostitutes wore distinctive clothing, often gaudy dresses of see-through silk. They were the only Roman women who wore the toga
, the distinctive dress of a free Roman male. This crossing of gender boundaries has been interpreted variously.
as a legal status once entered into could not be escaped: a prostitute was "not only a woman who practices prostitution, but also one who has formerly done so, even though she has ceased to act in this manner; for the disgrace is not removed even if the practice is subsequently discontinued."
In the Roman moral tradition, pleasure (voluptas) was a dubious pursuit. The Stoic moralist Seneca contrasts pleasure with virtue (virtus):
Roman ambivalence toward physical pleasure is expressed by the infamia of those whose bodies provided it publicly. In a technical sense, infamia was an official loss of legal standing for a freeborn person as a result of misconduct, including sexual misconduct, but the word could be used for ill repute in general. Infamia was an "inescapable consequence" of certain professions, including not only prostitutes and pimps but performers such as actors
, dancers, and gladiator
s: "These figures were the objects of other people's desires. They served the pleasure of others. They were tarnished by exposure to the public gaze
."
Those labeled infames (singular infamis) were liable to corporal punishment, usually reserved for slaves. Under the Republic and early Empire, one of the ways in which the citizen's liberty was defined was through the freedom of his body from physical coercion or punishment such as flogging by authorities. Citizens who chose to become public performers, however, and to use their bodies to offer public pleasure, were excluded from these physical protections, and could be beaten or otherwise subjected to violence. Any free man who became a gladiator took an oath to suffer branding, bondage, and beating, as well as potential death by the sword. Both glamorized and despised, the gladiator was supposed to exert a compelling sexual allure over women.
Actors were sexually ambiguous, in part because they could imitate women, and were attractive to both men and women. The dictator
Sulla had a long-term affair with an actor; Maecenas, the arts patron and advisor to Augustus
, was in love with an actor named Bathyllus
; and women of the Imperial family are alleged to have had affairs with actors. Actresses were assumed to be prostitutes.
A man who enjoyed receiving anal sex or providing oral sex, often characterized as a cinaedus, might also be stigmatized as infamis, though if he was a citizen he could retain his legal standing.
). Most Romans lived in apartments (insulae
); the domus was a large, independent dwelling owned by a family of considerable means, and in Rome was central to the family's social identity. A few of these residences have rooms decorated with pornographic art not differing from that found in identified brothels; in some cases, an erotically decorated room has its own exterior door to admit visitors who would normally enter the home through the main doors leading to the atrium, where the family displayed ancestral images and other trophies of respectability.
It has been suggested that these rooms were meant to evoke the ambience of a brothel for the hosting of exclusive sex parties, such as the one described by the historian Valerius Maximus
as occurring in 52 BC with a consul
and the tribunes of the plebs
in attendance:
The existence of sex clubs may provide background for Late Republican political smears about public figures whose party guests included prostitutes, and for the notorious Imperial whorehouse Caligula
established on the Palatine
, where he prostituted married women and freeborn youths.
, depict various forms of copulation (concubitus varii) and sexual positions (figurae veneris). The Latin terms are Ovid's, from his description of how the most aristocratic households displayed erotic paintings among their art collections. According to Suetonius
, the emperor Tiberius
had a vast collection of sex manuals and erotic art, including a painting of the mythological huntress Atalanta
performing oral sex on Meleager
, a work that he regarded as worth more than a million sesterces. Sexual variety fascinated Romans. Astrology was thought to influence one's preferences and pursuits: people born when the sun, moon, and planets were in certain astrological sign
s were supposed to be inclined toward secret vice or "unnatural" forms of intercourse, or to becoming pathici.
Lucretius observes that prostitutes employ certain movements aimed at giving their customers pleasure and at avoiding pregnancy. His point is that sex acts may have different goals. Wives wishing to conceive are therefore advised against vigorous movement during intercourse, since such movements "knock the ploughshare from the furrow and misdirect the sowing of the seed." Lucretius recommends "doggy style
" (a tergo) for couples trying to conceive, because it mimics the natural procreative sex of animals.
." Although not found in polite literature, futuo was not necessarily insulting or aggressive; it was used transactionally for sex between a prostitute and her client, and in a passionate or loving setting may have been spoken as an arousing intimacy. A fragment from a play by Plautus suggests that acquiring an erotic vocabulary was part of a woman's introduction to sexuality within marriage: a virgin explains that she has not yet learned the words suitable for the wedding night (nupta verba). The easy use of the word by a woman in other settings indicates her independence of social norms; "either fuck me or let's fight it out," the formidable Fulvia
is quoted as challenging the future Augustus. In graffiti at Pompeii written by both men and women, forms of the word are used to announce prowess, satisfaction, or availability.
Thomas Habinek has argued that "Ovid invents the category of the heterosexual male," since it was considered normal for a Roman man to have same-sex relations. Ovid radically rejects the Roman tradition of pederasty, and says he takes more pleasure (voluptas) in making love with a woman as his equal. Sexual pleasure, he emphasizes, should be mutual, and he advises men not to conclude the sex act without enabling their female partner to achieve orgasm
. In one passage, he seems to be recommending simultaneous orgasm:
but is popular in Roman art. Ovid recommends it for the petite woman, as a tall woman may not wish to seem too towering in relation to the man. It was supposedly favored by the mythological couple Hector and Andromache, even though she was of legendary height, and was jokingly called "the Hector horse." One relief
from Roman Gaul
showing the mulier equitans plays on the metaphor by picturing a galloping horse within a frame in the background (see first image in gallery below).
In art, the mulier equitans convention has the woman posed frontally to expose her body in full to the viewer, often emphasizing her depilated pubic area. The significance of this position in Roman culture has been interpreted variously. Kenneth Dover
thought it might represent the relative sexual emancipation of Roman women. From a woman's perspective, the position would grant an independence of movement for her own pleasure. Paul Veyne
, however, thought it emphasized that the woman had to do the work of servicing the man, who lies there and receives pleasure without effort. The position may have been favored for art because it pleased both male and female viewers: for men, it offered an unobstructed view of the woman's body, as recommended by Ovid, and of the penis entering the vagina; women saw the visually dominant female figure playing the active role.
The position is also called Venus pendula conversa, "perpendicular Venus with the woman facing toward (the man)"; for its reverse (Venus pendula aversa, "perpendicular Venus with the woman facing away"), the man lies down with the woman on top, but she turns her back and faces his feet. This version is rarely mentioned or depicted, but is found in Roman art set in Nilotic Egypt.
An equestrian metaphor is also found for the cinaedus "riding" on top in anal sex, and at least once of lesbians who "take turns riding and move with the Moon as witness."
" is pedicare. The object was usually but not always male. Pedicare was a blunt and non-euphemistic word, and can be used in a threatening manner, as notoriously by Catullus in Carmen 16
, or in general to mean "fuck you." The etymology of pedicare is unclear, but some have thought it derived from Greek paidika, having to do with pederasty. The basic word for "anus" was culus. Common metaphors are ficus, "fig," and anus, "ring," which was considered a decorous term and was standard in medical texts.
Men were said to "take it like a woman" (muliebria pati, "to undergo womanly things") when they were anally penetrated, but when a man performed anal sex on a woman, she was thought of as playing the boy's role. Martial, for instance, is emphatic that anal sex is better with boys than with women; when his wife objects that she provides him with anal sex in an effort to preserve his fidelity, he taunts her with the inferiority of her anus compared to a boy's.
The figura veneris in which the woman crouches to lift her buttocks, called "the lioness," may be intended for anal penetration, since boys in Greek art can be portrayed in the same position; with a female partner, it may be difficult to distinguish in art from a tergo (rear entry). Culibonia ("good anal") was a humorous term for a prostitute with this speciality. Avoiding pregnancy may have been one motive for female prostitutes to offer anal intercourse, since literary sources indicate that boys were preferred.
. "Oral turpitude" was a favorite form of invective
for Catullus, Horace, and Martial. An accusation of having an os impurum is an "extreme obscenity," so vile that Cicero reserved it for men of lower standing than himself, only implying that their debasement tainted their more powerful patrons
who were his real targets.
It was a convention of obscenely comic verse that oral sex caused bad breath that was nearly toxic. "Whores of the alleyways" are contaminated from giving oral sex; Catullus refers to "the foul saliva of a pissed-over whore." The urinary function of the penis makes oral sex particulary repulsive to Catullus, who elsewhere reviles a Celtiberian
for brushing his teeth in piss. Martial jokes that a fine perfume turned to garum
, fish sauce
, when it was sniffed by a man whose breath was putrid from oral sex. In another of Martial's epigrams, a fellator breathes on a hot cake to cool it down and turns it to excrement. The bad breath and rotten teeth that are attributed to performing oral sex represent moral decay and a general corruption of the mouth's positive functions as the organ of a citizen's persuasive speech.
typically appears in Roman art only as part of a reciprocal act, with the woman fellating
her male partner in some variation of the "69" position. A wall painting from Pompeii, however, represents a virtually unique role reversal in the giving of oral sex. The woman who receives cunnilingus is tall and shapely, well-groomed, and brazenly nude except for jewelry. The male figure is relatively small, crouching subserviently, and fully clothed; he has an anxious or furtive look. The situation is so extreme that it was probably meant to be humorous as well as titillating; other paintings in this group show a series of sex acts, at least some of which could be seen as transgressive or parodic
.
There is some evidence that women could hire male prostitutes to provide cunnilingus. Graffiti at Pompeii advertises the prices male prostitutes charged for cunnilingus, in the same price range as females performing fellatio; however, the graffiti could be intended as insults to the men named, and not as actual advertisements. One graffito is perhaps intended as political invective: "Vote Isidore for aedile
; he's the best at licking cunt!"
The Latin verb fellare is usually used for a woman performing oral sex on a man. Accusing a man of fellating another man was possibly the worst insult in all Roman invective. It was an act that might be requested from women who were infames, and not something a husband in a respectable household would have expected from his wife. Fellatio was seen as a "somewhat laughable" preference for older men who have trouble maintaining an erection, but graffiti show that the skills of a good fellatrix were enthusiastically utilized. Fellatio was a fairly uncommon subject in Roman art.
and the poems of Catullus and Martial. It was also threatened as a punishment, particularly for adulterers. Martial urges a wronged husband who has already cut off the adulterous man's ears and nose to complete the humiliation by befouling his mouth with oral rape.
Group sex appears in literary sources, graffiti, and art. Suetonius
says that the emperor Tiberius
enjoyed watching group sex, and described "chains" arranged of girls and boys:
Most threesomes depict two men penetrating a woman. A medallion from Roman Gaul
shows two men reclining on a bed, one on the right and one on the left, with their legs extended under a woman between them. Another shows a woman "riding" a man who reclines, while a man standing behind her parts her legs to enter. A far less common variation has one man entering a woman from the rear while he in turn receives anal sex from a man standing behind him, a scenario found in Catullus, Carmen 56 as well as art. Catullus makes it clear that this concatenation was considered humorous, possibly because the man in the center could be a cinaedus, a male who liked to receive anal sex but who was also considered seductive to women.
Foursomes also appear in Roman art, typically with two women and two men, sometimes in same-sex pairings. One example of a foursome from the Suburban Baths at Pompeii demonstrates what Romans saw as the superior role. A woman on the far right kneels beside a bed to perform cunnilingus on a woman lying on it; this woman in turn fellates a man who kneels above her. The man is himself receiving anal sex from a fourth figure, who is represented as the "victor": he acts only to fulfill his own sexual gratification without providing it to others, and looks directly at the viewer with a triumphant wave of the hand.
A Latin epigram
by the Gallo-Roman
poet Ausonius
(4th century AD) is a riddle that depends on familiarity with the configurations of group sex:
is little noted in the sources for Roman sexuality. Martial
has a few mentions in his poems, but considers it an inferior form of sexual release resorted to by slaves, though he admits to masturbating when a beautiful slave-boy is too expensive to obtain: "my hand relieved me as a subsitute for Ganymede
."
Masturbation was a longstanding if infrequent theme in Latin satire; one of the few surviving fragments of Lucilius
, Rome's earliest satirist, jokes about a personified penis (Mutto) whose girlfriend Laeva ("Lefty") wipes away his "tears." The Romans preferred the left hand for masturbation. A graffito from Pompeii reads "when my worries oppress my body, with my left hand I release my pent up fluids."
The etymology of the Latin verb masturbari is vexed. It has been argued that it is a compound of turbare, "agitate," and mas, "male" in an otherwise unattested usage for "penis." One traditional view sees man(u)-, "hand," with an altered form of stuprare, "to defile, commit a sexual wrong against." Calvert Watkins
proposed that it derives from a Proto-Indo-European root
meaning "marrow, brain," since ancient medical writers believed that semen descended from the brain through the bones; if this is correct, the word turbare may still have influenced the formation in Latin.
is full of sexual encounters between humans and animals, especially mortal women and gods in the guise of animals. Bestiality is a particular characteristic of intercourse with Jupiter
(Greek Zeus
), who visits Leda
as a swan and Europa
as a bull. The Minotaur
is born when Pasiphaë
feels such sexual attraction for a bull that she has herself disguised as a cow to mate with him. Satyr
s, known for their sexual voracity, are often pictured with bestial features.
Mock bestiality is recorded as a form of sexual roleplay in Imperial Rome. Nero
is supposed to have enjoyed a form of bondage
with either male or female partners in which he dressed in animal skins to attack their genitals, just as condemned prisoners were bound and attacked by wild animals in the arena (see Damnatio ad bestias
). The historian Dio tells of how a prostitute pretended to be a leopard for the gratification of a senator. The actor Bathyllus
was known for an erotic dance in which he dressed as Leda having sex with the swan; the women watching were variously aroused. Bestiality is also a theme of Apuleius
' novel Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass
), in which the protagonist, transformed into an ass, is desired by a wealthy noble matron, just as Pasiphaë desired the bull.
There is some indication that violent sexual encounters, like other mythological scenarios, were acted out as punitive entertainments in the arena. The poet Martial
praises a scenario for its fidelity to the Pasiphaë myth. The logistics of staging a sex act between a woman and a bull is a matter of speculation; if "Pasiphaë" were a condemned criminal to be tortured and killed, the animal may have been induced by the application of "vaginal secretion from a cow in season
." In Apuleius's novel, a female poisoner
condemned ad bestias is scheduled to appear in the arena for intercourse with the protagonist in his bestial form.
s, at one time androgyni" (andr-, "man," and gyn-, "woman," from the Greek). The Sicilian historian Diodorus
(latter 1st-century BC) wrote that "there are some who declare that the coming into being of creatures of a kind such as these are marvels (terata
), and being born rarely, they announce the future, sometimes for evil and sometimes for good." Isidore of Seville
(ca. 560–636) described a hermaphrodite fancifully as those who "have the right breast of a man and the left of a woman, and after coitus in turn can both sire and bear children."
In contemporary English, "hermaphrodite" is used in biology but has acquired pejorative connotations in referring to people born with physical characteristics of both sexes (see intersex
); in antiquity, however, the figure of the so-called hermaphrodite was a primary focus of questions pertaining to gender identity
. The hermaphrodite represented a "violation of social boundaries, especially those as fundamental to daily life as male and female." In traditional Roman religion
, a hermaphroditic birth was a kind of prodigium, an occurrence that signalled a disturbance of the pax deorum
, Rome's treaty with the gods, as Diodorus indicated. Livy
records an incident during the Second Punic War
when the discovery of a four-year-old hermaphrodite prompted an elaborate series of expiations: on the advice of the haruspices
, the child was enclosed in a chest, carried out to sea, and allowed to drown. Other rituals followed. A hermaphrodite found in 133 BC was drowned in the local river; committing the hermaphroditic person to the element of water seems to have been the prescribed way to repair the perceived violation of the natural order.
Pliny observed that while hermaphrodites were once considered portents (prodigia), in his day they had become objects of delight (deliciae); they were among the human curiosities of the sort that the wealthy might acquire at the "monsters' market" at Rome described by Plutarch. Under Roman law, a hermaphrodite had to be classed as either male or female; no third gender
existed as a legal category.
In the mythological tradition
, Hermaphroditus
was a beautiful youth who was the son of Hermes
(Roman Mercury
) and Aphrodite (Venus). Like many other divinities and heroes, he had been nursed by nymph
s, but the evidence that he himself received cult among the Greeks is sparse. Ovid wrote the most influential narrative of how Hermaphroditus became androgynous, emphasizing that although the handsome youth was on the cusp of sexual adulthood, he rejected love as Narcissus
had, and likewise at the site of a reflective pool. There the water nymph Salmacis
saw and desired him. He spurned her, and she pretended to withdraw until, thinking himself alone, he undressed to bathe in her waters. She then flung herself upon him, and prayed that they might never be parted. The gods granted this request, and thereafter the body of Hermaphroditus contained both male and female. As a result, men who drank from the waters of the spring Salmacis supposedly "grew soft with the vice of impudicitia," according to the lexicographer Festus
. The myth of Hylas
, the young companion of Hercules who was abducted by water nymphs, shares with Hermaphroditus and Narcissus the theme of the dangers that face the beautiful adolescent male as he transitions to adult masculinity, with varying outcomes for each.
Depictions of Hermaphroditus were very popular among the Romans. The dramatic situation in paintings often elicits a "double take" on the part of the viewer, or expresses the theme of sexual frustration. Hermaphroditus is often in the company of a satyr
, a figure of bestial sexuality known for subjecting an unsuspecting or often sleeping victim to non-consensual sex; the satyr in scenes with Hermaphroditus is usually shown to be surprised or repulsed, to humorous effect. In a few works, Hermaphroditus is strong enough to ward off his would-be attacker, but in others he shows his willingness to engage in sex, even if the satyr seems no longer inclined:
Macrobius describes a masculine form of "Venus" (Aphrodite) who received cult on Cyprus
; she had a beard and male genitals, but wore women's clothing. The deity's worshippers cross-dressed, men wearing women's clothes, and women men's. The Latin poet Laevius
wrote of worshipping "nurturing Venus" whether female or male (sive femina sive mas
). The figure was sometimes called Aphroditos. In the attitude
of anasyrmene found in several surviving examples of Greek and Roman sculpture, the love goddess pulls up her garments to reveal her male genitalia, a gesture that traditionally held apotropaic or magical power.
as a venue for performing arts, literature, landscape design, visual art, and architecture. The Theater of Pompey was in many ways the permanent monument of his military triumph
six years earlier. Among the displays were portrait galleries of female writers and of courtesans; a series of images illustrated freakish births that had served as war omens. In general, intellectuality and culture are represented as feminine and Hellenized, while war and politics are Roman and masculine. Statues personified fourteen conquered nationes ("nations, peoples") as women in ethnic or "barbarian" dress. Other monuments throughout the Empire, including the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias
and the altar of the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls
at Lugdunum
(modern Lyon
, France), as well as various coins, embody conquered territories and peoples as women: Roman military power defeats a "feminized" nation. Although the figures from Pompey's theater have not survived, relief panels from Aphrodisias include scenes such as a heroically nude
Claudius forcing the submission of Britannia
, whose right breast is bare, and Nero dragging away a dead Armenia
, a composition that recalls the defeat of the Amazon
Penthesilea
by Achilles
. A particularly well-documented series of coins depicts Iudaea Capta
, a female personification of the Jewish nation, issued after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem
in 70 AD.
Sexual conquest is a metaphor widely used by the Romans for imperialism, but not always straightforwardly for Roman domination. Horace famously described the Romans as taken captive by captive Greece: the image of Roman culture colonized from within by a civilization they had defeated but perceived as intellectually and aesthetically superior might be expressed by myths in which a man raped, abducted, or enslaved a woman but fell in love with her, as embodied for instance by Achilles and Briseis
.
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
are indicated by Roman art
Roman art
Roman art has the visual arts made in Ancient Rome, and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Major forms of Roman art are architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work...
, literature
Latin literature
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...
and inscriptions
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history...
, and to a lesser extent by archaeological remains
Classical archaeology
Classical archaeology is the archaeological investigation of the great Mediterranean civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Nineteenth century archaeologists such as Heinrich Schliemann were drawn to study the societies they had read about in Latin and Greek texts...
such as erotic artifacts and architecture
Roman architecture
Ancient Roman architecture adopted certain aspects of Ancient Greek architecture, creating a new architectural style. The Romans were indebted to their Etruscan neighbors and forefathers who supplied them with a wealth of knowledge essential for future architectural solutions, such as hydraulics...
. It has sometimes been assumed that "unlimited sexual license" was characteristic of ancient Rome:
The sexuality of the Romans has never had good press in the West ever since the rise of Christianity. In the popular imagination and culture, it is synonymous with sexual license and abuse.
But sexuality was not excluded as a concern of the mos maiorum
Mos maiorum
The mos maiorum is the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms. It is the core concept of Roman traditionalism, distinguished from but in dynamic complement to written law. The mos maiorum The mos maiorum ("ancestral custom") is the unwritten code from which the...
, the traditional social norms that affected public, private, and military life. Pudor, "shame, modesty," was a regulating factor in behavior, as were legal strictures on certain sexual transgressions in both the Republican
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
and Imperial
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
periods. The censors were public officials who determined the social rank
Social class in ancient Rome
Social class in ancient Rome was hierarchical, but there were multiple and overlapping social hierarchies. The status of free-born Romans was established by:* ancestry ;...
of individuals and who could and did on occasion remove citizens
Roman citizenship
Citizenship in ancient Rome was a privileged political and legal status afforded to certain free-born individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance....
from the senatorial
Roman Senate
The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
or equestrian order for sexual misconduct. The mid-20th-century sexuality theorist Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
regarded sex throughout the Greco-Roman world
Greco-Roman world
The Greco-Roman world, Greco-Roman culture, or the term Greco-Roman , when used as an adjective, as understood by modern scholars and writers, refers to those geographical regions and countries that culturally were directly, protractedly and intimately influenced by the language, culture,...
as governed by restraint and the art of managing sexual pleasure.
Roman society was patriarchal
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
(see paterfamilias), and masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
was premised on a capacity for governing oneself and others of lower status, not only in war and politics, but in bed. "Virtue" (virtus
Virtus (virtue)
Virtus was a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carries connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths...
), related by etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
to the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
word for "man," vir, was an active masculine ideal of self-discipline. The corresponding ideal for a woman was pudicitia
Pudicitia
Pudicitia was a central concept in ancient Roman sexual ethics. The word is derived from the more general pudor, the sense of shame that regulated an individual's behavior as socially acceptable...
, often translated as chastity or modesty, but a more positive and even competitive personal quality that displayed both her attractiveness and self-control. Roman women of the upper classes were expected to be well-educated, strong of character, and active in maintaining their family's standing in society. But with extremely few exceptions, surviving Latin literature preserves the voices only of educated male Romans on the subject of sexuality. While visual art was created by those of lower social status and of a greater range of ethnicity, it was commissioned by people wealthy enough to afford it, including in the Imperial era
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
former slaves, and was tailored to their taste and inclinations.
Some sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Roman culture
Culture of ancient Rome
Ancient Roman culture existed throughout the almost 1200-year history of the civilization of Ancient Rome. The term refers to the culture of the Roman Republic, later the Roman Empire, which, at its peak, covered an area from Lowland Scotland and Morocco to the Euphrates.Life in ancient Rome...
differ markedly from those in later Western societies
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
. Roman religion
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...
supported sexuality as an aspect of prosperity for the state, and individuals might turn to private religious practice or "magic
Magic in the Greco-Roman world
The study of magic in the Greco-Roman world is a branch of the disciplines of classics, ancient history and religious studies. In the ancient post-hellenistic world of the Greeks and Romans , the public and private rituals associated with religion are accepted by historians and archaeologists to...
" for improving their erotic lives or reproductive health. Prostitution
Prostitution in ancient Rome
Prostitution in ancient Rome reflects the ambivalent attitudes of Romans toward pleasure and sexuality. Prostitution was legal and licensed. Some large brothels in the 4th century, when Rome was becoming officially Christianized, seem to have been counted as tourist attractions and were possibly...
was legal, public, and widespread. Pornographic paintings were featured among the art collections in respectable upperclass households. It was considered natural and unremarkable for adult males to be sexually attracted to teen-aged youths of both sexes, and pederasty was condoned as long as the younger partner was not a freeborn Roman. "Homosexual" and "heterosexual" did not form the primary dichotomy of Roman thinking about sexuality, and no Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
words for these concepts exist. No moral censure was directed at the adult male who enjoyed sex acts with either women or males of inferior status, as long as his behaviors revealed no weaknesses or excesses, nor infringed on the rights and prerogatives of his male peers. While perceived effeminacy was denounced, especially in political rhetoric, sex in moderation with male prostitutes or slaves was not regarded as improper or vitiating to masculinity, if the male citizen took the active and not the receiving role. Hypersexuality
Hypersexuality
Hypersexuality is extremely frequent or suddenly increased sexual urges or sexual activity. Hypersexuality is typically associated with lowered sexual inhibitions. Although hypersexuality can be caused by some medical conditions or medications, in most cases the cause is unknown...
, however, was condemned morally and medically in both men and women. Women were held to a stricter moral code
Double standard
A double standard is the unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations. The concept implies that a single set of principles encompassing all situations is the desirable ideal. The term has been used in print since at least 1895...
, and same-sex relations between women are poorly documented, but the sexuality of women is variously celebrated or reviled throughout Latin literature. In general the Romans had more flexible gender categories than the ancient Greeks.
A late 20th-century paradigm analyzed Roman sexuality in terms of a "penetrator-penetrated" binary model
Binary opposition
In critical theory, a binary opposition is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. It is the contrast between two mutually...
, a misleadingly rigid analysis that may obscure expressions of sexuality among individual Romans. Even the relevance of the word "sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
" to ancient Roman culture has been disputed, but in the absence of any other label for "the cultural interpretation of erotic experience," the term continues to be used.
Erotic literature and art
Ancient literature pertaining to Roman sexuality falls mainly into four categories: legal texts; medical texts; poetry; and political discourse. Forms of expression having lower cultural cachet in antiquity—comedy, satire, invectiveInvective
Invective , from Middle English "invectif", or Old French and Late Latin "invectus", is an abusive, reproachful or venomous language used to express blame or censure; also, a rude expression or discourse intended to offend or hurt. Vituperation, or deeply-seated ill will, vitriol...
, love poetry, graffiti, magic spells
Magic in the Greco-Roman world
The study of magic in the Greco-Roman world is a branch of the disciplines of classics, ancient history and religious studies. In the ancient post-hellenistic world of the Greeks and Romans , the public and private rituals associated with religion are accepted by historians and archaeologists to...
, inscriptions
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history...
, and interior decoration—have more to say about sex than those which were elevated
High culture
High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...
, such as epic
Epic (genre)
An epic is traditionally a genre of poetry, known as epic poetry. However in modern terms, epic is often extended to other art forms, such as novels, plays, films, and video games where the story is centered on heroic characters, and the action takes place on a grand scale, just as in epic poetry...
and tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
. Information about the sex lives of the Romans is scattered in historiography
Roman historiography
Roman Historiography is indebted to the Greeks, who invented the form. The Romans had great models to base their works upon, such as Herodotus and Thucydides. Roman historiographical forms are different from the Greek ones however, and voice very Roman concerns. Unlike the Greeks, Roman...
, oratory, philosophy, and writings on medicine, agriculture
Roman agriculture
Agriculture in ancient Rome was not only a necessity, but was idealized among the social elite as a way of life. Cicero considered farming the best of all Roman occupations...
, and other technical topics. Legal texts
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
point to behaviors Romans wanted to regulate or prohibit, without necessarily reflecting what people actually did or refrained from doing.
Major Latin authors whose works contribute significantly to an understanding of Roman sexuality include:
- the comic playwright PlautusPlautusTitus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
(d. 184 BC), whose plots often revolve around sex comedySex comedySex comedy is a term for comedy movies with sexual content usually referring to those made in the United Kingdom in the mid 1970s. They may range from comic pornographic films like the Confessions series to relatively innocent comedies that include jokes about sex and other sexual related humour,...
and young lovers kept apart by circumstances; - the statesman and moralist Cato the ElderCato the ElderMarcus Porcius Cato was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Censorius , Sapiens , Priscus , or Major, Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor, to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger.He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some...
(d. 149 BC), who offers glimpses of sexuality at a time that later Romans regarded as having higher moral standards; - the poet LucretiusLucretiusTitus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...
(d. ca. 55 BC), who presents an extended treatment of Epicurean sexuality in his philosophical work De rerum natura; - CatullusCatullusGaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
(fl.FloruitFloruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...
50s BC), whose poems explore a range of erotic experience near the end of the RepublicRoman RepublicThe Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
, from delicate romanticism to brutally obscene invective; - CiceroCiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
(d. 43 BC), with courtroom speeches that often attack the opposition's sexual conduct and letters peppered with gossip about Rome's elite; - the Augustan elegistsAugustan literature (ancient Rome)Augustan literature is the period of Latin literature written during the reign of Augustus , the first Roman emperor. In literary histories of the first part of the 20th century and earlier, Augustan literature was regarded along with that of the Late Republic as constituting the Golden Age of...
Propertius and TibullusTibullusAlbius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority...
, who reveal social attitudes in describing love affairs with mistresses; - OvidOvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
(d. 17 AD), especially his Amores ("Love Affairs") and Ars AmatoriaArs AmatoriaThe Ars amatoria is an instructional love elegy in three books by the Roman poet Ovid, penned around 2 CE. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.-Background:After...
("Art of Love"), which according to tradition contributed to AugustusAugustusAugustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
's decision to exile the poet, and his epic, the Metamorphoses, which presents a range of sexuality, with an emphasis on rape, through the lens of mythologyClassical mythologyClassical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is the cultural reception of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture.Classical mythology has provided...
; - the epigramEpigramAn epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
matist MartialMartialMarcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...
(d. ca. 102/4 AD), whose observations of society are braced by sexually explicit invective; - the satirist JuvenalJuvenalThe Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a...
(d. early 2nd century AD), who rails against the sexual mores of his time.
Ovid lists a number of writers known for salacious material whose works are now lost. Greek sex manuals and "straightforward pornography" were published under the name of famous heterai
Hetaera
In ancient Greece, hetaerae were courtesans, that is to say, highly educated, sophisticated companions...
(courtesans), and circulated in Rome. The robustly sexual Milesiaca of Aristides
Milesian tale
The Milesian tale originates in ancient Greek and Roman literature. According to most authorities, it is a short story, fable, or folktale featuring love and adventure, usually being erotic and titillating. M. C...
was translated by Sisenna
Lucius Cornelius Sisenna
Lucius Cornelius Sisenna was a Roman soldier, historian, and annalist. He was killed in action during Pompey's campaign against pirates after the Third Mithridatic War. Sisenna had been commander of the forces on the coast of Greece....
, one of the praetor
Praetor
Praetor was a title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to men acting in one of two official capacities: the commander of an army, usually in the field, or the named commander before mustering the army; and an elected magistratus assigned varied duties...
s of 78 BC. Ovid calls the book a collection of misdeeds (crimina), and says the narrative was laced with dirty jokes. After the Battle of Carrhae
Battle of Carrhae
The Battle of Carrhae, fought in 53 BC near the town of Carrhae, was a major battle between the Parthian Empire and the Roman Republic. The Parthian Spahbod Surena decisively defeated a Roman invasion force led by Marcus Licinius Crassus...
, the Parthians
Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire , also known as the Arsacid Empire , was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Persia...
were reportedly shocked to find the Milesiaca in the baggage of Marcus Crassus's officers.
Erotic art, especially as preserved in Pompeii and Herculaneum
Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum
Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum was discovered in the ancient cities around the bay of Naples after extensive excavations began in the 18th century. The city was found to be full of erotic art and frescoes, symbols, and inscriptions regarded by its excavators as pornographic. Even many...
, is a rich if not unambiguous source; some images contradict sexual preferences stressed in literary sources and may be intended to provoke laughter or challenge conventional attitudes. Everyday objects such as mirrors and serving vessels might be decorated with erotic scenes; on Arretine ware, these range from "elegant amorous dalliance" to explicit views of the penis entering the vagina. Erotic paintings were found in the most respectable houses of the Roman nobility
Nobiles
During the Roman Republic, nobilis was a descriptive term of social rank, usually indicating that a member of the family had achieved the consulship. Those who belonged to the hereditary patrician families were noble, but plebeians whose ancestors were consuls were also considered nobiles...
, as Ovid notes:
Just as venerable figures of men, painted by the hand of an artist, are resplendent in our houses, so too there is a small painting (tabella) in some spot which depicts various couplings and sexual positions: just as Telamonian Ajax sits with an expression that declares his anger, and the barbarian mother (MedeaMedeaMedea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...
) has crime in her eyes, so too a wet Venus dries her dripping hair with her fingers and is viewed barely covered by the maternal waters.
The pornographic tabella and the erotically charged Venus appear among various images that a connoisseur of art might enjoy. A series of paintings from the Suburban Baths at Pompeii
Pompeii
The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning...
, discovered in 1986 and published in 1995, presents erotic scenarios that seem intended "to amuse the viewer with outrageous sexual spectacle," including a variety of positions, oral sex, and group sex featuring male-female, male-male, and female-female relations.
The décor of a Roman bedroom could reflect quite literally its sexual use: the Augustan poet Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
supposedly had a mirrored room for sex, so that when he hired a prostitute he could watch from all angles. The emperor Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...
had his bedrooms decorated with "the most lascivious" paintings and sculptures, and stocked with Greek sex manuals by Elephantis
Elephantis
Elephantis was a Greek poetess apparently renowned in the classical world as the author of a notorious sex manual. Her works have not survived.-Works:...
in case those employed in sex needed direction.
In the 2nd century AD, "there is a boom in texts about sex in Greek and Latin," along with romance novels
Ancient Greek novel
Five ancient Greek novels survive complete from antiquity: Chariton's Callirhoe, Xenophon of Ephesus' Ephesian romance, Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon and Heliodorus of Emesa's Ethiopian Romance. There are also numerous fragments preserved on papyrus or in...
. But frank sexuality all but disappears from literature thereafter, and sexual topics are reserved for medical writing or Christian theology. In the 3rd century, as Christianity became institutionalized, Church Fathers
Church Fathers
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were early and influential theologians, eminent Christian teachers and great bishops. Their scholarly works were used as a precedent for centuries to come...
such as Tertullian
Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...
and Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria
Titus Flavius Clemens , known as Clement of Alexandria , was a Christian theologian and the head of the noted Catechetical School of Alexandria. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen...
debated the permissibility of marital sex for procreation in relation to an ideal of celibacy
Celibacy
Celibacy is a personal commitment to avoiding sexual relations, in particular a vow from marriage. Typically celibacy involves avoiding all romantic relationships of any kind. An individual may choose celibacy for religious reasons, such as is the case for priests in some religions, for reasons of...
. The sexuality of martyrology
Martyrology
A martyrology is a catalogue or list of martyrs , arranged in the calendar order of their anniversaries or feasts. Local martyrologies record exclusively the custom of a particular Church. Local lists were enriched by names borrowed from neighbouring churches...
focuses on tests against the Christian's chastity and sexual torture; Christian women are more often than men subjected to sexual mutilation, in particular of the breasts. The obscene humor of Martial was briefly revived in 4th-century Bordeaux
Gallia Aquitania
Gallia Aquitania was a province of the Roman Empire, bordered by the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Narbonensis, and Hispania Tarraconensis...
by the Gallo-Roman
Roman Gaul
Roman Gaul consisted of an area of provincial rule in the Roman Empire, in modern day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and western Germany. Roman control of the area lasted for less than 500 years....
scholar-poet Ausonius
Ausonius
Decimius Magnus Ausonius was a Latin poet and rhetorician, born at Burdigala .-Biography:Decimius Magnus Ausonius was born in Bordeaux in ca. 310. His father was a noted physician of Greek ancestry and his mother was descended on both sides from long-established aristocratic Gallo-Roman families...
, who shunned pederasty and was at least nominally a Christian.
Sex, religion and the state
Like other aspects of Roman life, sexuality was supported and regulated by religious traditionsReligion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...
, both the public cult of the state and private religious practices and magic. Sexuality was an important category of Roman religious thought. The complement of male and female was vital to the Roman concept of deity. The Dii Consentes
Dii Consentes
The Dii Consentes were a list of twelve major deities, six gods and six goddesses, in the pantheon of Ancient Rome. Their gilt statues stood in the Forum, later apparently in the Porticus Deorum Consentium....
were a council of deities in male-female pairs, to some extent Rome's equivalent to the Twelve Olympians
Twelve Olympians
The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal deities of the Greek pantheon, residing atop Mount Olympus. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, and Hades were siblings. Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, and Artemis were children of Zeus...
of the Greeks. At least two state priesthoods were held jointly by a married couple. The Vestal Virgins, the one state priesthood reserved for women, took a vow of chastity that granted them relative independence from male control; among the religious objects in their keeping was a sacred phallus
Phallus
A phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...
: "Vesta
Vesta (mythology)
Vesta was the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. Vesta's presence was symbolized by the sacred fire that burned at her hearth and temples...
's fire … evoked the idea of sexual purity in the female" and "represented the procreative power of the male." The men who served in the various colleges
Collegium (ancient Rome)
In Ancient Rome, a collegium was any association with a legal personality. Such associations had various functions.-Functioning:...
of priests
College of Pontiffs
The College of Pontiffs or Collegium Pontificum was a body of the ancient Roman state whose members were the highest-ranking priests of the polytheistic state religion. The college consisted of the Pontifex Maximus, the Vestal Virgins, the Rex Sacrorum, and the flamines...
were expected to marry and have families. Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
held that the desire (libido
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
) to procreate was "the seedbed of the republic," as it was the cause for the first form of social institution, marriage. Marriage produced children and in turn a "house" (domus
Domus
In ancient Rome, the domus was the type of house occupied by the upper classes and some wealthy freedmen during the Republican and Imperial eras. They could be found in almost all the major cities throughout the Roman territories...
) for family unity that was the building block of urban life.
Many Roman religious festivals had an element of sexuality. The February Lupercalia
Lupercalia
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility...
, celebrated as late as the 5th century of the Christian era, included an archaic fertility rite. The Floralia
Floralia
The Floralia, also known as the "Florifertum," was an ancient Roman festival dedicated to Flora, the goddess of flowers and vegetation. It was held on the IV Calends of May, April 27 to May 3, and symbolized the renewal of the cycle of life, marked with dancing, drinking, and flowers. These days...
featured nude dancing. At certain religious festivals throughout April, prostitutes participated or were officially recognized.
The connections among human reproduction, general prosperity, and the wellbeing of the state is embodied by the Roman cult
Cult (religious practice)
In traditional usage, the cult of a religion, quite apart from its sacred writings , its theology or myths, or the personal faith of its believers, is the totality of external religious practice and observance, the neglect of which is the definition of impiety. Cult in this primary sense is...
of Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
, who differs from her Greek counterpart Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
in her role as a mother of the Roman people through her half-mortal son Aeneas
Aeneas
Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...
. During the civil wars of the 80s BC
Roman civil wars
There were several Roman civil wars, especially during the late Republic. The most famous of these are the war in the 40s BC between Julius Caesar and the optimate faction of the senatorial elite initially led by Pompey and the subsequent war between Caesar's successors, Octavian and Mark Antony in...
, Sulla, about to invade his own country with the legions
Roman legion
A Roman legion normally indicates the basic ancient Roman army unit recruited specifically from Roman citizens. The organization of legions varied greatly over time but they were typically composed of perhaps 5,000 soldiers, divided into maniples and later into "cohorts"...
under his command, issued a coin depicting a crowned Venus as his personal patron deity, with Cupid
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...
holding a palm branch
Palm branch (symbol)
A palm branch , usually refers to the leaves of the Arecaceae ....
of victory; on the reverse military trophies
Tropaion
A tropaion , whence English "trophy" is an ancient Greek and later Roman monument set up to commemorate a victory over one's foes. Typically this takes the shape of a tree, sometimes with a pair of arm-like branches upon which is hung the armour of a defeated and dead foe...
flank symbols of the augur
Augur
The augur was a priest and official in the classical world, especially ancient Rome and Etruria. His main role was to interpret the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds: whether they are flying in groups/alone, what noises they make as they fly, direction of flight and what kind of...
s, the state priests who read the will of the gods. The iconography links deities of love and desire with military success and religious authority; Sulla adopted the title Epaphroditus, "Aphrodite's own," before he became a dictator
Roman dictator
In the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...
. The fascinum, a phallic charm, was ubiquitous in Roman culture, appearing on everything from jewelry to bells and wind chime
Wind chime
Wind chimes are chimes constructed from suspended tubes, rods, bells or other objects and are often made of metal or wood. Wind chimes are usually hung outside of a building or residence, as a visual and aural garden ornament, and are to be played by the wind....
s to lamps, including as an amulet
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
to protect children and triumphing generals
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
.
Cupid inspired desire; the imported god Priapus
Priapus
In Greek mythology, Priapus or Priapos , was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Priapus is marked by his absurdly oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism...
represented gross or humorous lust; Mutunus Tutunus
Mutunus Tutunus
In ancient Roman religion, Mutunus Tutunus or Mutinus Titinus was a phallic marriage deity, in some respects equated with Priapus. His shrine was located on the Velian Hill, supposedly since the founding of Rome, until the 1st century BC....
promoted marital sex. The god Liber
Liber
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber , also known as Liber Pater was a god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia became associated with free speech and the rights...
(understood as the "Free One") oversaw physiological responses during sexual intercourse. When a male assumed the toga virilis, "toga of manhood," Liber became his patron
Patronage in ancient Rome
Patronage was the distinctive relationship in ancient Roman society between the patronus and his client . The relationship was hierarchical, but obligations were mutual. The patronus was the protector, sponsor, and benefactor of the client...
; according to the love poets, he left behind the innocent modesty (pudor) of childhood and acquired the sexual freedom (libertas) to begin his course of love.
Classical myths
Classical mythology
Classical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is the cultural reception of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture.Classical mythology has provided...
often deal with sexual themes such as gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
, adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
, incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, and rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
. Roman art and literature continued the Hellenistic
Alexandrian school
The Alexandrian school is a collective designation for certain tendencies in literature, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences that developed in the Hellenistic cultural center of Alexandria, Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods....
treatment of mythological figures having sex as humanly erotic and at times humorous, often removed from the religious dimension.
Castitas
The Latin word castitas, from which the English "chastityChastity
Chastity refers to the sexual behavior of a man or woman acceptable to the moral standards and guidelines of a culture, civilization, or religion....
" derives, is an abstract noun denoting "a moral and physical purity usually in a specifically religious context," sometimes but not always referring to sexual chastity. The related adjective castus (feminine
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
casta, neuter castum), "pure," can be used of places and objects as well as people; the adjective pudicus ("chaste, modest") describes more specifically a person who is sexually moral. The goddess Ceres was concerned with both ritual and sexual castitas, and the torch carried in her honor as part of the Roman wedding procession was associated with the bride's purity; Ceres also embodied motherhood. The goddess Vesta was the primary deity of the Roman pantheon associated with castitas; a virgin goddess herself, her priestesses the Vestals were virgins who took a vow to remain celibate.
Incestum
Pax Deorum
Pax Deorum may refer to:*"Pax Deorum", a song from The Memory of Trees, an album by Enya*"Pax Deorum", a cover of the aforementioned song from the album Maiden of Mysteries: The Music of Enya, by the Taliesin Orchestra...
), and was typically accompanied by the observation of bad omens (prodigia). Prosecutions for incestum involving a Vestal often coincide with political unrest, and some charges of incestum seem politically motivated: Marcus Crassus was acquitted of incestum with a Vestal who shared his family name. Although the English word "incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
" derives from the Latin, incestuous relations are only one form of Roman incestum, which can sometimes be translated as "sacrilege
Sacrilege
Sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object. In a less proper sense, any transgression against the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege. It can come in the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things...
." When Clodius Pulcher dressed as a woman and intruded on the all-female rites of the Bona Dea
Bona Dea
Bona Dea was a divinity in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility in women, healing, and the protection of the Roman state and people...
, he was charged with incestum.
Stuprum
In Latin legalRoman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
and moral discourse, stuprum is illicit sexual intercourse, translatable as "criminal debauchery" or "sex crime." Stuprum encompasses diverse sexual offenses including incestum, rape ("unlawful sex by force"), and adultery. In early Rome, stuprum was a disgraceful act in general, or any public disgrace, including but not limited to illicit sex. By the time of the comic playwright Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
(ca. 254–184 BC) it had acquired its more restricted sexual meaning. Stuprum can occur only among citizens; protection from sexual misconduct was among the legal rights that distinguished the citizen from the non-citizen. Although the noun stuprum may be translated into English as fornication
Fornication
Fornication typically refers to consensual sexual intercourse between two people not married to each other. For many people, the term carries a moral or religious association, but the significance of sexual acts to which the term is applied varies between religions, societies and cultures. The...
, the intransitive verb
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
"to fornicate" is an inadequate translation of the Latin stuprare, which is a transitive verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
requiring a direct object (the person who is the target of the misconduct) and a male agent (the stuprator).
Raptus
The English word "rape" derives ultimately from the Latin verb rapio, rapere, raptus, "to snatch, carry away, abduct." In Roman law, raptus (or raptio) meant primarily kidnapping or abduction; the mythological "rape" of the Sabine women is a form of bride abduction in which sexual violation is a secondary issue. The "abduction" of an unmarried girl from her father's household in some circumstances was a matter of the couple eloping without her father's permission to marry. Rape in the English sense was more often expressed as stuprum committed through violence or coercion (cum vi or per vim). As laws pertaining to violence were codified toward the end of the Republic, raptus ad stuprum, "abduction for the purpose of committing a sex crime," emerged as a legal distinction. (See further discussion of rape under "The rape of men" and "Rape and the law" below.)Healing and magic
Divine aid might be sought in private religious rituals along with medical treatments to enhance or block fertility, or to cure diseases of the reproductive organs. Votive offerings (votaVotum
In ancient Roman religion, a votum, plural vota, is a vow or promise made to a deity. The word comes from the past participle of the Latin verb voveo, vovere, "vow, promise." As the result of this verbal action, a votum is also that which fulfills a vow, that is, the thing promised, such as...
; compare ex-voto
Ex-voto
An ex-voto is a votive offering to a saint or divinity. It is given in fulfillment of a vow or in gratitude or devotion...
) in the form of breasts and penises have been found at healing sanctuaries.
A private ritual under some circumstances might be considered "magic," an indistinct category in antiquity. An amatorium (Greek philtron) was a love charm or potion; binding spells (defixiones) were supposed to "fix" a person's sexual affection. The Greek Magical Papyri
Greek magical papyri
The Greek Magical Papyri is the name given by scholars to a body of papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, which each contain a number of magical spells, formulae, hymns and rituals. The materials in the papyri date from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD...
, a collection of syncretic magic
Magic in the Greco-Roman world
The study of magic in the Greco-Roman world is a branch of the disciplines of classics, ancient history and religious studies. In the ancient post-hellenistic world of the Greeks and Romans , the public and private rituals associated with religion are accepted by historians and archaeologists to...
texts, contain many love spells that indicate "there was a very lively market in erotic magic in the Roman period," catered by freelance priests who at times claimed to derive their authority from the Egyptian religious tradition. Canidia, a witch described by Horace, performs a spell using a female effigy to dominate a smaller male doll.
Aphrodisiac
Aphrodisiac
An aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire. The name comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexuality and love. Throughout history, many foods, drinks, and behaviors have had a reputation for making sex more attainable and/or pleasurable...
s, anaphrodisiac
Anaphrodisiac
An anaphrodisiac or antiaphrodisiac is something that quells or blunts the libido. It is the opposite of an aphrodisiac, something that enhances sexual appetite...
s, contraceptives, and abortifacient
Abortifacient
An abortifacient is a substance that induces abortion. Abortifacients for animals that have mated undesirably are known as mismating shots....
s are preserved by both medical handbooks and magic texts; potions can be difficult to distinguish from pharmacology. In his Book 33 De medicamentis, Marcellus of Bordeaux, a contemporary of Ausonius, collected more than 70 sexually-related treatments—for growths and lesions on the testicles and penis, undescended testicles, erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual performance....
, hydrocele
Hydrocele
A hydrocoele denotes a pathological accumulation of serous fluid in a body cavity. It can also be noted as a minor malformation of newborns due to high levels of lead in the mother's blood during pregnancy....
, "creating a eunuch
Eunuch
A eunuch is a person born male most commonly castrated, typically early enough in his life for this change to have major hormonal consequences...
without surgery," ensuring a woman's fidelity, and compelling or diminishing a man's desire—some of which involve ritual procedures:
If you’ve had a woman, and you don't want another man ever to get inside her, do this: Cut off the tail of a live green lizard with your left hand and release it while it’s still alive. Keep the tail closed up in the palm of the same hand until it dies and touch the woman and her private parts when you have intercourse with her.
There is an herb called nymphaeaNymphaeaNymphaea is a genus of aquatic plants in the family Nymphaeaceae. There are about 50 species in the genus, which has a cosmopolitan distribution.-Name:The common name, shared with some other genera in the same family, is Water Lily....
in Greek, 'Hercules’ club' in Latin, and baditis in Gaulish. Its root, pounded to a paste and drunk in vinegar for ten consecutive days, has the astonishing effect of turning a boy into a eunuch.
If the spermatic veins of an immature boy should become enlarged, split a young cherry-tree down the middle to its roots while leaving it standing, in such a way that the boy can be passed through the cleft. Then join the sapling together again and seal it with cow manure and other dressings, so that the parts that were split may intermingle within themselves more easily. The speed with which the sapling grows together and its scar forms will determine how quickly the swollen veins of the boy will return to health.
Marcellus also records which herbs could be used to induce menstruation
Menstruation
Menstruation is the shedding of the uterine lining . It occurs on a regular basis in sexually reproductive-age females of certain mammal species. This article focuses on human menstruation.-Overview:...
, or to purge the womb after childbirth or abortion; these herbs include potential abortifacients and may have been used as such. Other sources advise remedies such as coating the penis with a mixture of honey and pepper to get an erection, or boiling an ass's genitals in oil as an ointment.
Theories of sexuality
Ancient theories of sexuality are produced by and for an educated elite. The extent to which theorizing about sex affected behavior is debatable, even among those who were attentive to the philosophical and medical writings that presented such views. This elite discourse, while often deliberately critical of common or typical behaviors, at the same time cannot be assumed to exclude values broadly held within the society.Epicurean sexuality
The fourth book of LucretiusLucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...
' De rerum natura provides one of the most extended passages on human sexuality in Latin literature. Yeats
Yeats
W. B. Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright.Yeats may also refer to:* Yeats ,* Yeats , an impact crater on Mercury* Yeats , an Irish thoroughbred racehorse-See also:...
, describing the translation by Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
, called it "the finest description of sexual intercourse ever written." Lucretius was the contemporary of Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
and Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
in the mid-1st century BC. His didactic poem De rerum natura is a presentation of Epicurean philosophy
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
within the Ennian
Ennius
Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...
tradition of Latin poetry. Epicureanism is both materialist
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
and hedonic. The highest good
Value (ethics)
In ethics, value is a property of objects, including physical objects as well as abstract objects , representing their degree of importance....
is pleasure, defined as the absence of physical pain and emotional distress. The Epicurean seeks to gratify his desires with the least expenditure of passion and effort. Desires are ranked as those that are both natural and necessary, such as hunger and thirst; those that are natural but unnecessary, such as sex; and those that are neither natural nor necessary, including the desire to rule over others and glorify oneself. It is within this context that Lucretius presents his analysis of love and sexual desire, which counters the erotic ethos of Catullus and influenced the love poets of the Augustan period
Augustan literature (ancient Rome)
Augustan literature is the period of Latin literature written during the reign of Augustus , the first Roman emperor. In literary histories of the first part of the 20th century and earlier, Augustan literature was regarded along with that of the Late Republic as constituting the Golden Age of...
.
Lucretius treats male desire, female sexual pleasure, heredity, and infertility as aspects of sexual physiology. In the Epicurean view, sexuality arises from impersonal physical causes without divine or supernatural influence. The onset of physical maturity generates semen, and wet dreams
Wet Dreams
Wet Dreams is a 2002 South Korean film. Inspired partly by American gross-out comedies like American Pie, it follows the sexual misadventures of four boys through middle and high school. While American Pie had been a flop in Korea, Wet Dreams was a surprise box office hit and spawned a sequel, Wet...
occur as the sexual instinct develops. Sense perception, specifically the sight of a beautiful body, provokes the movement of semen into the genitals and toward the object of desire. The engorgement of the genitals creates an urge to ejaculate, coupled with the anticipation of pleasure. The body's response to physical attractiveness is automatic, and neither the character of the person desired nor one's own choice is a factor. With a combination of scientific detachment and ironic humor, Lucretius treats the human sex drive as muta cupido, "dumb desire", comparing the physiological response of ejaculation to the blood spurting from a wound. Love (amor) is merely an elaborate cultural posturing that obscures a glandular condition; love taints sexual pleasure just as life is tainted by the fear of death. Lucretius is writing primarily for a male audience, and assumes that love is a male passion, directed at either boys or women. Male desire is viewed as pathological, frustrating, and violent.
Lucretius thus expresses an Epicurean ambivalence toward sexuality, which threatens one's peace of mind with agitation if desire becomes a form of bondage and torment, but his view of female sexuality is less negative. While men are driven by unnatural expectations to engage in onesided and desperate sex, women act on a purely animal instinct toward affection which leads to mutual satisfaction. The comparison with female animals in heat is meant not as an insult, though there are a few traces of conventional misogyny in the work, but to indicate that desire is natural and should not be experienced as torture.
Having analyzed the sex act, Lucretius then considers conception and what in modern terms would be called genetics. Both the man and the woman, he says, produce genital fluids which in a successful procreative act mingle. The characteristics of the child are formed by the relative proportions of the mother's "seed" to the father's. A child who most resembles its mother is born when the female seed dominates the male's, and vice versa; when neither the male nor female seed dominates, the child will have traits of both mother and father evenly. Infertility occurs when the two partners fail to make a satisfactory match of their seed after several attempts; the explanation for infertility is physiological and rational, and has nothing to do with the gods. The transfer of genital "seed" (semina) is consonant with Epicurean physics and the theme of the work as a whole: the invisible semina rerum, "seeds of things," continually dissolve and recombine in universal flux. The vocabulary of biological procreation underlies Lucretius's presentation of how matter is formed from atoms.
Lucretius' purpose is to correct ignorance and to give the knowledge necessary for managing one's sex life rationally. He distinguishes between pleasure and conception as goals of copulation; both are legitimate, but require different approaches. He recommends casual sex as a way of releasing sexual tension without becoming obsessed with a single object of desire; a "streetwalking Venus"—a common prostitute—should be used as a surrogate. Sex without passionate attachment produces a superior form of pleasure free of uncertainty, frenzy, and mental disturbance. Lucretius calls this form of sexual pleasure venus, in contrast to amor, passionate love. The best sex is that of happy animals, or of gods. Lucretius combines an Epicurean wariness of sex as a threat to peace of mind with the Roman cultural value placed on sexuality as an aspect of marriage and family life, pictured as an Epicurean man in a tranquil and friendly marriage with a good but homely woman, beauty being a disquieting prompt to excessive desire. Lucretius reacts against the Roman tendency to display sex ostentatiously, as in erotic art, and rejects the aggressive, "Priapic" model of sexuality spurred by visual stimulus.
Stoic sexual morality
In early StoicismStoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
among the Greeks, sex was regarded as a good
Value (ethics)
In ethics, value is a property of objects, including physical objects as well as abstract objects , representing their degree of importance....
, if enjoyed between people who maintained the principles of respect and friendship; in the ideal society, sex should be enjoyed freely, without bonds of marriage that treated the partner as property. Some Greek Stoics privileged same-sex relations between a man and a younger male partner (see "Pederasty in ancient Greece
Pederasty in ancient Greece
Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged relationship between an adult and a younger male usually in his teens. It was characteristic of the Archaic and Classical periods...
"). Stoics in the Roman Imperial era
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, however, departed from the view of human beings as "communally sexual animals" and emphasized sex within marriage, which as an institution helped sustain social order. Although they distrusted strong passions, including sexual desire, sexual vitality was necessary for procreation.
Roman-era Stoics such as Seneca
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
and Musonius Rufus
Musonius Rufus
Gaius Musonius Rufus, was a Roman Stoic philosopher of the 1st century AD. He taught philosophy in Rome during the reign of Nero, as consequence of which he was sent into exile in 65 AD, only returning to Rome under Galba...
, both active about a hundred years after Lucretius, emphasized "sex unity" over the polarity of the sexes. Although Musonius is predominately a Stoic, his philosophy also partakes of Platonism
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In a narrower sense the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism...
and Pythagoreanism
Pythagoreanism
Pythagoreanism was the system of esoteric and metaphysical beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans, who were considerably influenced by mathematics. Pythagoreanism originated in the 5th century BCE and greatly influenced Platonism...
. He rejected the Aristotelian tradition
Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings...
which portrayed sexual dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism is a phenotypic difference between males and females of the same species. Examples of such differences include differences in morphology, ornamentation, and behavior.-Examples:-Ornamentation / coloration:...
as expressing a proper relation of those ruling (male) and those being ruled (female), and which distinguished men from women as biologically lacking
Aristotle's views on women
Aristotle's views on women influenced later Western thinkers, who quoted him as an authority until the end of the Middle Ages, and are thus an important topic in women's history.-Women held to be colder than men:...
. Dimorphism exists, according to Musonius, simply to create difference, and difference in turn creates the desire for a complementary relationship, that is, a couple who will bond for life for the sake of each other and for their children. The Roman ideal of marriage was a partnership of companions who work together to produce and rear children, manage everyday affairs, lead exemplary lives, and enjoy affection; Musonius drew on this ideal to promote the Stoic view that the capacity for virtue and self-mastery was not gender-specific.
Double standard
A double standard is the unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations. The concept implies that a single set of principles encompassing all situations is the desirable ideal. The term has been used in print since at least 1895...
, cultural and legal, that granted Roman men greater sexual freedom than women. Men, Musonius argues, are excused by society for resorting to prostitutes and slaves to satisfy their sexual appetites, while such behavior from a woman would not be tolerated; therefore, if men presume to exercise authority over women because they believe themselves to have greater self-control, they ought to be able to manage their sex drive. The argument, then, is not that sexual freedom is a human good, but that men as well as women should exercise sexual restraint. A man visiting a prostitute does harm to himself by lacking self-discipline; disrespect for his wife and her expectations of fidelity would not be at issue. Similarly, a man should not be so self-indulgent as to exploit a female slave sexually; her right not to be used, however, is not a motive for his restraint. Musonius maintained that even within marriage, sex should be undertaken as an expression of affection and for procreation, and not for "bare pleasure".
Musonius did not approve of same-sex relations in general, because they lacked a procreative purpose. Seneca and Epictetus
Epictetus
Epictetus was a Greek sage and Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until banishment when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece where he lived the rest of his life. His teachings were noted down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses...
also thought that procreation privileged male-female sexual pairing within marriage, and Seneca strongly opposed adultery, finding it particularly offensive by women.
Seneca is known primarily as a Stoic philosopher, but he draws on Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism was a Graeco-Alexandrian school of philosophy, reviving Pythagorean doctrines, which became prominent in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE...
for his views on sexual austerity. Neopythagoreans characterized sexuality outside marriage as disordered and undesirable; celibacy was not an ideal, but chastity within marriage was. To Seneca, sexual desire for pleasure (libido) is a "destructive force (exitium) insidiously fixed in the innards"; unregulated, it becomes cupiditas, lust. The only justification for sex is reproduction within marriage. Although other Stoics see potential in beauty to be an ethical stimulus, a way to attract and develop affection and friendship within sexual relations, Seneca distrusts the love of physical beauty as destroying reason to the point of insanity. A man should have no sexual partner other than his wife, and the wise man (sapiens, Greek sophos) will make love to his wife by exercising good judgment (iudicium), not emotion (affectus). This is a far stricter view than that of other Stoics who advocate sex as a means of promoting mutual affection within marriage.
The philosophical view of the body as a corpse that carries around the soul could result in outright contempt for sexuality: "as for sexual intercourse," the emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius writes, "it is the friction of a piece of gut and, following a sort of convulsion, the expulsion of some mucus." Seneca rails "at great length" against the perversity of one Hostius Quadra, who surrounded himself with the equivalent of funhouse mirrors
Curved mirror
A curved mirror is a mirror with a curved reflective surface, which may be either convex or concave . Most curved mirrors have surfaces that are shaped like part of a sphere, but other shapes are sometimes used in optical devices...
so he could view sex parties
Sex party
A sex party is a gathering at which sexual activity takes place. Sex parties may be organized to enable people to engage in casual sexual activity or for swinging couples or people interested in group sex to meet, but any gathering where sexual activity is anticipated can be called a sex party.Sex...
from distorted angles and penises would look bigger.
Sexual severity opened the Roman Stoics to charges of hypocrisy: Juvenal
Juvenal
The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a...
satirizes those who affect a rough and manly Stoic façade but privately indulge. It was routinely joked that not only were Stoics inclined toward pederasty, they liked young men who were acquiring beards, contrary to Roman sexual custom. Martial
Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...
repeatedly makes insinuations about those who were outwardly Stoic but privately enjoyed the passive homosexual role.
Stoic physics
Stoic physics refers to the natural philosophy adopted by the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome used to explain the natural processes at work in the universe. To the Stoics the universe is a single pantheistic God, but one which is also a material substance. The primitive substance of...
and cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
. The 5th-century writer Macrobius preserves a Stoic interpretation of the myth of the birth of Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
as a result of the primal castration of the deity Heaven (Latin Caelus
Caelus
Caelus or Coelus was a primal god of the sky in Roman myth and theology, iconography, and literature...
). The myth, Macrobius indicates, could be understood as an allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
of the doctrine of seminal reason
Stoic physics
Stoic physics refers to the natural philosophy adopted by the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome used to explain the natural processes at work in the universe. To the Stoics the universe is a single pantheistic God, but one which is also a material substance. The primitive substance of...
. The elements derive from the semina, "seeds," that are generated by heaven; "love" brings together the elements in the act of creation, like the sexual union of male and female. Cicero suggests that in Stoic allegory the severing of reproductive organs signifies "that the highest heavenly aether, that seed-fire which generates all things, did not require the equivalent of human genitals to proceed in its generative work."
Male sexuality
During the Republic, a Roman citizen's political liberty (libertas) was defined in part by the right to preserve his body from physical compulsion, including both corporal punishment and sexual abuse. VirtusVirtus (virtue)
Virtus was a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carries connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths...
, "valor" as that which made a man most fully a man, was among the active virtues. Roman ideals of masculinity were thus premised on taking an active role that was also, as Craig A. Williams has noted, "the prime directive of masculine sexual behavior for Romans." The impetus toward action might express itself most intensely in an ideal of dominance that reflects the hierarchy of Roman patriarchal society. The "conquest mentality" was part of a "cult of virility" that particularly shaped Roman homosexual practices. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, an emphasis on domination has led scholars to view expressions of Roman male sexuality in terms of a "penetrator-penetrated" binary model
Binary opposition
In critical theory, a binary opposition is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. It is the contrast between two mutually...
; that is, the proper way for a Roman male to seek sexual gratification was to insert his penis in his partner. Allowing himself to be penetrated threatened his liberty as a free citizen as well as his sexual integrity.
It was expected and socially acceptable for a freeborn Roman man to want sex with both female and male partners, as long as he took the dominating role. Acceptable objects of desire were women of any social or legal status, male prostitutes, or male slaves, but sexual behaviors outside marriage were to be confined to slaves and prostitutes, or less often a concubine or "kept woman." Lack of self-control, including in managing one's sex life, indicated that a man was incapable of governing others; the enjoyment of "low sensual pleasure" threatened to erode the elite male's identity as a cultured person. It was a point of pride for Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was a Roman Populari politician in the 2nd century BC and brother of the ill-fated reformer Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus...
to claim that during his term as a provincial governor
Roman governor
A Roman governor was an official either elected or appointed to be the chief administrator of Roman law throughout one or more of the many provinces constituting the Roman Empire...
he kept no slave-boys chosen for their good looks, no female prostitutes visited his house, and he never accosted other men's slave-boys.
In the Imperial era, anxieties about the loss of political liberty and the subordination of the citizen to the emperor were expressed by a perceived increase in passive homosexual behavior among free men, accompanied by a documentable increase in the execution and corporal punishment of citizens. The dissolution of Republican ideals of physical integrity in relation to libertas contributes to and is reflected by the sexual license and decadence associated with the Empire.
Male nudity
The poet EnniusEnnius
Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...
(ca. 239–169 BC) declared that "exposing naked bodies among citizens is the beginning of public disgrace (flagitium)," a sentiment echoed by Cicero that again links the self-containment of the body with citizenship. Roman attitudes toward nudity differed from those of the Greeks, whose ideal of masculine excellence was expressed by the nude male body in art and in such real-life venues as athletic contests. The toga
Toga
The toga, a distinctive garment of Ancient Rome, was a cloth of perhaps 20 ft in length which was wrapped around the body and was generally worn over a tunic. The toga was made of wool, and the tunic under it often was made of linen. After the 2nd century BC, the toga was a garment worn...
, by contrast, distinguished the body of the sexually privileged adult Roman male. Even when stripping down for exercises, Roman men kept their genitals and buttocks covered, an Italic custom shared also with the Etruscans, whose art mostly shows them wearing a loincloth
Loincloth
A loincloth is a one-piece male garment, sometimes kept in place by a belt, which covers the genitals and, at least partially, the buttocks.-History and types:Loincloths are being and have been worn:*in societies where no other clothing is needed or wanted...
, a skirt-like garment, or the earliest form of "shorts" for athletics. Romans who competed in the Olympic Games presumably followed the Greek custom of nudity, but athletic nudity at Rome has been dated variously, possibly as early as the introduction of Greek-style games in the 2nd century BC but perhaps not regularly till the time of Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
around 60 AD.
Public nudity might be offensive or distasteful even in traditional settings; Cicero derides Mark Antony
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius , known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general. As a military commander and administrator, he was an important supporter and loyal friend of his mother's cousin Julius Caesar...
as undignified for appearing near-naked as a participant in the Lupercalia
Lupercalia
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility...
, even though it was ritually required. Nudity is one of the themes of this religious festival that most consumes Ovid's attention in the Fasti, his long-form poem on the Roman calendar
Roman calendar
The Roman calendar changed its form several times in the time between the founding of Rome and the fall of the Roman Empire. This article generally discusses the early Roman or pre-Julian calendars...
. Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
, during his program of religious revivalism, attempted to reform the Lupercalia, in part by suppressing the use of nudity despite its fertility aspect.
Negative connotations of nudity include defeat in war, since captives were stripped, and slavery, since slaves for sale were often displayed naked. The disapproval of nudity was thus less a matter of trying to suppress inappropriate sexual desire than of dignifying and marking the citizen's body.
The influence of Greek art, however, led to "heroic" nude portrayals
Heroic nudity
Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the use of nudity in classical sculpture to indicate that a sculpture's apparently mortal human subject is in fact a hero or semi-divine being. This convention began in archaic and classical Greece and was later adopted...
of Roman men and gods, a practice that began in the 2nd century BC. When statues of Roman generals nude in the manner of Hellenistic kings first began to be displayed, they were shocking not simply because they exposed the male figure, but because they evoked concepts of royalty and divinity that were contrary to Republican ideals of citizenship as embodied by the toga. The god Mars is presented as a mature, bearded man in the attire of a Roman general when he is conceived of as the dignified father of the Roman people, while depictions of Mars as youthful, beardless, and nude show the influence of the Greek Ares
Ares
Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent aspect of war, in contrast to the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and...
. In art produced under Augustus, the programmatic adoption of Hellenistic and Neo-Attic style
Neo-Attic
Neo-Attic or Atticizing is a sculptural style, beginning in Hellenistic sculpture and vase-painting of the 2nd century BCE and climaxing in Roman art of the 2nd century CE, copying, adapting or closely following the style shown in reliefs and statues of the Classical and Archaic periods...
led to more complex signification of the male body shown nude, partially nude, or costumed in a muscle cuirass
Muscle cuirass
In classical antiquity, the muscle cuirass or heroic cuirass is a type of body armor cast to fit the wearer's torso and designed to mimic an idealized human physique. It first appears in late Archaic Greece and became widespread throughout the 5th– 4th centuries BC...
.
One exception to public nudity was the baths
Thermae
In ancient Rome, thermae and balnea were facilities for bathing...
, though attitudes toward nude bathing also changed over time. In the 2nd century BC, Cato
Cato the Elder
Marcus Porcius Cato was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Censorius , Sapiens , Priscus , or Major, Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor, to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger.He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some...
preferred not to bathe in the presence of his son, and Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
implies that for Romans of these earlier times it was considered shameful for mature men to expose their bodies to younger males. Later, however, men and women might even bathe together.
Phallic sexuality
Roman sexuality as framed by Latin literature has been described as phallocentric. The phallus was supposed to have powers to ward off the evil eyeEvil eye
The evil eye is a look that is believed by many cultures to be able to cause injury or bad luck for the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike...
and other malevolent supernatural forces. It was used as an amulet
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
(fascinum), many examples of which have survived, particularly in the form of wind chime
Wind chime
Wind chimes are chimes constructed from suspended tubes, rods, bells or other objects and are often made of metal or wood. Wind chimes are usually hung outside of a building or residence, as a visual and aural garden ornament, and are to be played by the wind....
s (tintinnabula
Tintinnabulum (Ancient Rome)
In ancient Rome, a tintinnabulum was a wind chime or assemblage of bells. A tintinnabulum often took the form of a bronze phallic figure or fascinum, a magico-religious phallus thought to ward off the evil eye and bring good fortune and prosperity.A tintinnabulum was hung outdoors in locations...
). Some scholars have even interpreted the plan of the Forum Augustum as phallic, "with its two semi-circular galleries or exedra
Exedra
In architecture, an exedra is a semicircular recess or plinth, often crowned by a semi-dome, which is sometimes set into a building's facade. The original Greek sense was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for a philosophical...
e as the testicles and its long projecting forecourt as the shaft."
The outsized phallus
Phallus
A phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...
of Roman art
Roman art
Roman art has the visual arts made in Ancient Rome, and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Major forms of Roman art are architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work...
was associated with the god Priapus
Priapus
In Greek mythology, Priapus or Priapos , was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Priapus is marked by his absurdly oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism...
, among others. It was laughter-provoking, grotesque, or used for magical purposes. Originating in the Greek town of Lampsacus
Lampsacus
Lampsacus was an ancient Greek city strategically located on the eastern side of the Hellespont in the northern Troad. An inhabitant of Lampsacus was called a Lampsacene. The name has been transmitted in the nearby modern town of Lapseki.-Ancient history:...
, Priapus was a fertility deity whose statue was placed in gardens to ward off thieves. The poetry collection called the Priapea deals with phallic sexuality, including poems spoken in the person of Priapus. In one, for instance, Priapus threatens anal rape against any potential thief. The wrath of Priapus might cause impotence, or a state of perpetual arousal with no means of release: one curse of Priapus upon a thief was that he might lack women or boys to relieve him of his erection, and burst.
There are approximately 120 recorded Latin terms and metaphors for the penis, with the largest category treating the male member as an instrument of aggression, a weapon. This metaphorical tendency is exemplified by actual lead sling-bullets which are sometimes found inscribed with the image of a phallus, or messages that liken the target to a sexual conquest, for instance "I seek Octavian's asshole." The most common obscenity for the penis is mentula, which Martial argues for in place of polite terms: his privileging of the word as time-honored Latin from the era of Numa
Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius was the legendary second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus. What tales are descended to us about him come from Valerius Antias, an author from the early part of the 1st century BC known through limited mentions of later authors , Dionysius of Halicarnassus circa 60BC-...
may be compared to the unvarnished integrity of "four letter Anglo-Saxon words
Four-letter word
The phrase four-letter word refers to a set of English-language words written with four letters which are considered profane, including common popular or slang terms for excretory functions, sexual activity and genitalia, and sometimes also certain terms relating to Hell and damnation when used...
." Cicero does not use the word even when discussing the nature of obscene language in a letter to his friend Atticus
Titus Pomponius Atticus
Titus Pomponius Atticus, born Titus Pomponius , came from an old but not strictly noble Roman family of the equestrian class and the Gens Pomponia. He was a celebrated editor, banker, and patron of letters with residences in both Rome and Athens...
; Catullus famously uses it as a pseudonym for the disreputable Mamurra
Mamurra
Mamurra was a Roman military officer who served under Julius Caesar.Mamurra was an equestrian who originally came from the Italian city of Formiae...
, Julius Caesar's friend ("Dick" or "Peter" might be English equivalents). Mentula appears frequently in graffiti and the Priapea, but while obscene the word was not inherently abusive or vituperative. Verpa, by contrast, was "an emotive and highly offensive word" for the penis with its foreskin drawn back, as the result of an erection, excessive sexual activity, or circumcision. Virga, as well as other words for "branch, rod, stake, beam," is a common metaphor, as is vomer, "plough."
Classical Latin
Classical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
was used regularly as a "risqué colloquialism" for the male organ. Later, penis becomes the standard word in polite Latin, as used for example by the scholiast to Juvenal and by Arnobius
Arnobius
Arnobius of Sicca was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian . According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria , a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a...
, but did not pass into usage among the Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
. It was not a term used by medical writers, except for Marcellus of Bordeaux. In medieval Latin
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...
, a vogue for scholarly obscenity led to a perception of the dactyl
Dactyl
Dactyl may refer to:* Dactyl , a creature in Greek mythology* Dactyl , a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable and two short* Dactyl , the small natural satellite orbiting the asteroid Ida...
, a metrical unit of verse represented as an image of the penis, with the long syllable (longum) the shaft and the two short syllables (breves) the testicles.
The apparent connection between Latin testes, "testicles," and testis, plural testes, "witness" (the origin of English "testify" and "testimony") may lie in archaic ritual. Some ancient Mediterranean cultures swore binding oaths upon the male genitalia, symbolizing that "the bearing of false witness brings a curse upon not only oneself, but one's house and future line." Latin writers make frequent puns and jokes based on the two meanings of testis: it took balls to become a legally functioning male citizen. The English word "testicle" derives from the diminutive
Diminutive
In language structure, a diminutive, or diminutive form , is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment...
testiculum. The obscene word for "testicle" was coleus.
Castration and circumcision
In the Roman mind, castrationCastration
Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testicles or a female loses the functions of the ovaries.-Humans:...
and circumcision
Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
were linked as barbaric mutilations of the male genitalia. When the cult of Cybele
Cybele
Cybele , was a Phrygian form of the Earth Mother or Great Mother. As with Greek Gaia , her Minoan equivalent Rhea and some aspects of Demeter, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth...
was imported to Rome at the end of the 3rd century BC, its traditional eunuch
Eunuch
A eunuch is a person born male most commonly castrated, typically early enough in his life for this change to have major hormonal consequences...
ism was confined to foreign priests (the Galli
Galli
A Gallus was a eunuch priest of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, whose worship was incorporated into the state religious practices of ancient Rome.-About the Galli:...
), while Roman citizens formed sodalities to perform honors in keeping with their own customs. It has been argued that the Apostle Paul's exhortation of the Galatians
Epistle to the Galatians
The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, often shortened to Galatians, is the ninth book of the New Testament. It is a letter from Paul of Tarsus to a number of Early Christian communities in the Roman province of Galatia in central Anatolia...
not to undergo circumcision
Circumcision controversy in early Christianity
There is evidence of a controversy over religious male circumcision in Early Christianity. A Council of Jerusalem, possibly held in approximately 50 AD, decreed that male circumcision was not a requirement for Gentile converts. This became known as the "Apostolic Decree" and may be one of the...
should be understood not only in the context of Jewish circumcision
Brit milah
The brit milah is a Jewish religious circumcision ceremony performed on 8-day old male infants by a mohel. The brit milah is followed by a celebratory meal .-Biblical references:...
, but also of the ritual castration associated with Cybele, whose cult was centered in Galatia
Galatia
Ancient Galatia was an area in the highlands of central Anatolia in modern Turkey. Galatia was named for the immigrant Gauls from Thrace , who settled here and became its ruling caste in the 3rd century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC. It has been called the "Gallia" of...
. Among Jews, circumcision was a marker of the Covenant
Covenant (biblical)
A biblical covenant is an agreement found in the Bible between God and His people in which God makes specific promises and demands. It is the customary word used to translate the Hebrew word berith. It it is used in the Tanakh 286 times . All Abrahamic religions consider the Biblical covenant...
; diaspora Jews
Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות , or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Iudaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel....
circumcised their male slaves and adult male converts
Conversion to Judaism
Conversion to Judaism is a formal act undertaken by a non-Jewish person who wishes to be recognised as a full member of the Jewish community. A Jewish conversion is both a religious act and an expression of association with the Jewish people...
, in addition to Jewish male infants. Although Greco-Roman writers view circumcision as an identifying characteristic of Jews, they believed the practice to have originated in Egypt, and recorded it among peoples they identified as Arab
Pre-Islamic Arabia
Pre-Islamic Arabia refers to the Arabic civilization which existed in the Arabian Plate before the rise of Islam in the 630s. The study of Pre-Islamic Arabia is important to Islamic studies as it provides the context for the development of Islam.-Studies:...
, Syrian
Syria (Roman province)
Syria was a Roman province, annexed in 64 BC by Pompey, as a consequence of his military presence after pursuing victory in the Third Mithridatic War. It remained under Roman, and subsequently Byzantine, rule for seven centuries, until 637 when it fell to the Islamic conquests.- Principate :The...
, Phoenician, Colchian
Colchis
In ancient geography, Colchis or Kolkhis was an ancient Georgian state kingdom and region in Western Georgia, which played an important role in the ethnic and cultural formation of the Georgian nation.The Kingdom of Colchis contributed significantly to the development of medieval Georgian...
, and Ethiopian. The Neoplatonic philosopher Sallustius
Sallustius
Sallustius or Sallust was a 4th-century Latin writer, a friend of the Roman Emperor Julian. He wrote the treatise On the Gods and the Cosmos, a kind of catechism of 4th-century Hellenic paganism. Sallustius' work owes much to that of Iamblichus of Chalcis, who synthesized Platonism with...
associates circumcision with the strange familial–sexual customs of the Massagetae
Massagetae
The Massageteans or Massagetaeans were an Iranian nomadic confederation in antiquity known primarily from the writings of Herodotus. Their name was probably akin to Thyssagetae.-Name:...
who "eat their fathers" and of the Persians who "preserve their nobility by begetting children on their mothers."
Some Romans kept beautiful male slaves as deliciae or delicati ("toys, delights") who were sometimes castrated in an effort to preserve the androgynous looks of their youth. The emperor Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
had his favorite Sporus castrated, and married him in a public ceremony.
By the end of the 1st century AD, bans against castration had been enacted by the emperors Domitian
Domitian
Domitian was Roman Emperor from 81 to 96. Domitian was the third and last emperor of the Flavian dynasty.Domitian's youth and early career were largely spent in the shadow of his brother Titus, who gained military renown during the First Jewish-Roman War...
and Nerva
Nerva
Nerva , was Roman Emperor from 96 to 98. Nerva became Emperor at the age of sixty-five, after a lifetime of imperial service under Nero and the rulers of the Flavian dynasty. Under Nero, he was a member of the imperial entourage and played a vital part in exposing the Pisonian conspiracy of 65...
in the face of a burgeoning trade in eunuch slaves. Sometime between 128 and 132 AD, Hadrian
Hadrian
Hadrian , was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138. He is best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome, he re-built the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma. In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and was philhellene in...
seems to have temporarily banned circumcision, on pain of death. Antoninus Pius
Antoninus Pius
Antoninus Pius , also known as Antoninus, was Roman Emperor from 138 to 161. He was a member of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty and the Aurelii. He did not possess the sobriquet "Pius" until after his accession to the throne...
exempted Jews from the ban,, as well as Egyptian priests, and Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...
says that in his time only Jews were permitted to practice circumcision. Legislation under Constantine
Constantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
, the first Christian emperor, freed any slave who was subjected to circumcision; in 339 AD, circumcising a slave became punishable by death.
A surgical procedure (epispasm) existed to restore the foreskin
Foreskin
In male human anatomy, the foreskin is a generally retractable double-layered fold of skin and mucous membrane that covers the glans penis and protects the urinary meatus when the penis is not erect...
and cover the glans
Glans penis
The glans penis is the sensitive bulbous structure at the distal end of the penis. The glans penis is anatomically homologous to the clitoral glans of the female...
"for the sake of decorum." Some Hellenized or Romanized Jews resorted to epispasm in order to make themselves less conspicuous at the baths or during athletics. Of these, some had themselves circumcised again later.
Regulating semen
Too-frequent ejaculationEjaculation
Ejaculation is the ejecting of semen from the male reproductory tract, and is usually accompanied by orgasm. It is usually the final stage and natural objective of male sexual stimulation, and an essential component of natural conception. In rare cases ejaculation occurs because of prostatic disease...
was thought to weaken men. Greek medical theories based on the classical elements and humors
Humorism
Humorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers, positing that an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily fluids in a person directly influences their temperament and health...
recommended limiting the production of semen by means of cooling, drying, and astringent therapies, including cold baths and the avoidance of flatulence-causing foods. In the 2nd century AD, the medical writer Galen
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamon , was a prominent Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher...
explains semen
Semen
Semen is an organic fluid, also known as seminal fluid, that may contain spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals and can fertilize female ova...
as a concoction of blood (conceived of as a humor) and pneuma
Pneuma
Pneuma is an ancient Greek word for "breath," and in a religious context for "spirit" or "soul." It has various technical meanings for medical writers and philosophers of classical antiquity, particularly in regard to physiology, and is also used in Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible and in...
(the "vital air
Air (classical element)
Air is often seen as a universal power or pure substance. Its supposed fundamental importance to life can be seen in words such as aspire, inspire, perspire and spirit, all derived from the Latin spirare.-Greek and Roman tradition:...
" required by organs to function) formed within the man's coiled spermatic vessels, with the humor turning white through heat as it enters into the testicles. In his treatise On Semen, Galen warns that immoderate sexual activity results in a loss of pneuma and hence vitality:
It is not at all surprising that those who are less moderate sexually turn out to be weaker, since the whole body loses the purest part of both substances, and there is besides an accession of pleasure, which by itself is enough to dissolve the vital tone, so that before now some persons have died from excess of pleasure.
The uncontrolled dispersing of pneuma in semen could lead to loss of physical vigor, mental acuity, masculinity, and a strong manly voice, a complaint registered also in the Priapea. Sexual activity was thought particularly to affect the voice: singers and actors might be infibulated to preserve their voices. Quintilian
Quintilian
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
advises that the orator who wished to cultivate a deep masculine voice for court should abstain from sexual relations. This concern was felt intensely by Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
's friend Calvus
Licinius Macer Calvus
Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus was an orator and poet of ancient Rome.Son of Licinius Macer and thus a member of the gens Licinia, he was a friend of the poet Catullus, whose style and subject matter he shared. Calvus' oratical style opposed the "Asian" school in favor of a simpler Attic model: he...
, the 1st-century BC avant-garde poet
Neoteric
The Neotericoi , Neoterics or the Neoteric period refers to avant-garde poets and their poetry, specifically those Greek and Latin poets in the Hellenistic Period who propagated a new style of Greek poetry, deliberately turning away from the classical Homeric epic poetry.Their poems featured...
and orator, who slept with lead plates over his kidneys to control wet dreams. Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
reports that:
When plates of lead are bound to the area of the loins and kidneys, it is used, owing to its rather cooling nature, to check the attacks of sexual desire and sexual dreams in one's sleep that cause spontaneous eruptions to the point of becoming a sort of disease. With these plates the orator Calvus is reported to have restrained himself and to have preserved his body's strength for the labor of his studies.
Lead plates, cupping therapy, and depilatories
Hair removal
Hair removal is the removal of body hair, and describes the methods used to achieve that result.Hair typically grows all over the human body during and after puberty. Men tend to have more body hair than women. Both men and women tend to have hair on the head, eyebrows, eyelashes, armpits, pubic...
were prescribed for three sexual disorders thought to be related to nocturnal emissions: satyriasis, or hypersexuality
Hypersexuality
Hypersexuality is extremely frequent or suddenly increased sexual urges or sexual activity. Hypersexuality is typically associated with lowered sexual inhibitions. Although hypersexuality can be caused by some medical conditions or medications, in most cases the cause is unknown...
; priapism
Priapism
Priapism is a potentially harmful and painful medical condition in which the erect penis or clitoris does not return to its flaccid state, despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation, within four hours. There are two types of priapism: low-flow and high-flow. Low-flow...
, a chronic erection without an accompanying desire for sex; and the involuntary discharge of semen (seminis lapsus or seminis effusio).
Effeminacy and transvestism
Effeminacy
Effeminacy describes traits in a human male, that are more often associated with traditional feminine nature, behaviour, mannerisms, style or gender roles rather than masculine nature, behaviour, mannerisms, style or roles....
was a favorite accusation in Roman political invective, and was aimed particularly at populares
Populares
Populares were aristocratic leaders in the late Roman Republic who relied on the people's assemblies and tribunate to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite...
, the politicians of the faction who represented themselves as champions of the people, sometimes called Rome's "democratic" party in contrast to the optimates
Optimates
The optimates were the traditionalist majority of the late Roman Republic. They wished to limit the power of the popular assemblies and the Tribunes of the Plebs, and to extend the power of the Senate, which was viewed as more dedicated to the interests of the aristocrats who held the reins of power...
, a conservative elite of nobles
Nobiles
During the Roman Republic, nobilis was a descriptive term of social rank, usually indicating that a member of the family had achieved the consulship. Those who belonged to the hereditary patrician families were noble, but plebeians whose ancestors were consuls were also considered nobiles...
. In the last years of the Republic, the popularists Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius , known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general. As a military commander and administrator, he was an important supporter and loyal friend of his mother's cousin Julius Caesar...
), and Clodius Pulcher, as well as the Catilinarian conspirators, were all derided as effeminate, overly-groomed, too-good-looking men who might be on the receiving end of sex from other males; at the same time, they were supposed to be womanizers or possessed of devastating sex appeal.
Perhaps the most notorious incident of cross-dressing
Cross-dressing
Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...
in ancient Rome occurred in 62 BC, when Clodius Pulcher intruded on annual rites of the Bona Dea
Bona Dea
Bona Dea was a divinity in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility in women, healing, and the protection of the Roman state and people...
that were restricted to women only. The rites were held at a senior magistrate
Executive Magistrates of the Roman Republic
The Executive Magistrates of the Roman Republic were officials of the ancient Roman Republic , elected by the People of Rome...
's home, in this year that of Julius Caesar, nearing the end of his term as praetor
Praetor
Praetor was a title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to men acting in one of two official capacities: the commander of an army, usually in the field, or the named commander before mustering the army; and an elected magistratus assigned varied duties...
and only recently invested as Pontifex Maximus
Pontifex Maximus
The Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome. This was the most important position in the ancient Roman religion, open only to patricians until 254 BC, when a plebeian first occupied this post...
. Clodius disguised himself as a female musician to gain entrance, as described in a "verbal striptease" by Cicero, who prosecuted him for sacrilege (incestum):
Take away his saffron dress, his tiara, his girly shoes and purple laces, his bra, his Greek harpPsalteryA psaltery is a stringed musical instrument of the harp or the zither family. The psaltery of Ancient Greece dates from at least 2800 BC, when it was a harp-like instrument...
, take away his shameless behavior and his sex crime, and Clodius is suddenly revealed as a democrat.
The actions of Clodius, who had just been elected quaestor
Quaestor
A Quaestor was a type of public official in the "Cursus honorum" system who supervised financial affairs. In the Roman Republic a quaestor was an elected official whereas, with the autocratic government of the Roman Empire, quaestors were simply appointed....
and was probably about to turn thirty, are often regarded as a last juvenile prank. The all-female nature of these nocturnal rites attracted much prurient speculation from men; they were fantasized as drunken lesbian orgies that might be fun to watch. Clodius is supposed to have intended to seduce Caesar's wife, but his masculine voice gave him away before he got a chance. The scandal prompted Caesar to seek an immediate divorce to control the damage to his own reputation, giving rise to the famous line "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." The incident "summed up the disorder of the final years of the republic."
In addition to political invective, cross-dressing appears in Roman literature and art as a mythological trope (as in the story of Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
and Omphale
Omphale
In Greek mythology, Omphale was a daughter of Iardanus, either a king of Lydia, or a river-god. Omphale was queen of the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor; according to Bibliotheke she was the wife of Tmolus, the oak-clad mountain king of Lydia; after he was gored to death by a bull, she continued...
exchanging roles and attire), religious investiture
Investiture
Investiture, from the Latin is a rather general term for the formal installation of an incumbent...
, and rarely or ambiguously as transvestic fetishism
Transvestic fetishism
Transvestic fetishism is having a sexual or erotic interest in cross-dressing. It differs from cross-dressing for entertainment or other purposes that do not involve sexual arousal and is categorized as a paraphilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association...
. A section of the Digest by Ulpian
Ulpian
Gnaeus Domitius Annius Ulpianus , anglicized as Ulpian, was a Roman jurist of Tyrian ancestry.-Biography:The exact time and place of his birth are unknown, but the period of his literary activity was between AD 211 and 222...
categorizes Roman clothing
Clothing in ancient Rome
Clothing in ancient Rome generally consisted of the toga, the tunic, the stola, brooches for these, and breeches.-Fibers:The Romans used several different types of [fiber]s. Wool was likely used most often, as it was obtained easily and was rather easy to prepare...
on the basis of who may appropriately wear it; a man who wore women's clothes, Ulpian notes, would risk making himself the object of scorn. A fragment from the playwright Accius
Lucius Accius
Lucius Accius , or Lucius Attius, was a Roman tragic poet and literary scholar. The son of a freedman, Accius was born at Pisaurum in Umbria, in 170 BC...
(170–86 BC) seems to refer to a father who secretly wore "virgin's finery." An instance of transvestism
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
is noted in a legal case, in which "a certain senator accustomed to wear women's evening clothes" was disposing of the garments in his will. In a "mock trial
Mock trial
A Mock Trial is an act or imitation trial. It is similar to a moot court, but mock trials simulate lower-court trials, while moot court simulates appellate court hearings. Attorneys preparing for a real trial might use a mock trial consisting of volunteers as role players to test theories or...
" exercise presented by the elder Seneca
Seneca the Elder
Lucius or Marcus Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Elder and Seneca the Rhetorician , was a Roman rhetorician and writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Cordoba, Hispania...
, a young man (adulescens) is gang-raped while wearing women's clothes in public, but his attire is explained as his acting on a dare by his friends, not as a choice based on gender identity or the pursuit of erotic pleasure.
Gender ambiguity was a characteristic of the priests of the goddess Cybele
Cybele
Cybele , was a Phrygian form of the Earth Mother or Great Mother. As with Greek Gaia , her Minoan equivalent Rhea and some aspects of Demeter, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth...
known as Galli
Galli
A Gallus was a eunuch priest of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, whose worship was incorporated into the state religious practices of ancient Rome.-About the Galli:...
, whose ritual attire included items of women’s clothing. They are sometimes considered a transgendered priesthood, since they were required to be castrated in imitation of Attis
Attis
Attis was the consort of Cybele in Phrygian and Greek mythology. His priests were eunuchs, as explained by origin myths pertaining to Attis and castration...
. The complexities of gender identity in the religion of Cybele and the Attis myth are explored by Catullus in one of his longest poems, Carmen 63.
Male-male sex
Roman men were free to have sex with males of lower status without a perceived loss of masculinity. Those who took the receiving role in sex acts, sometimes referred to as the "passive" or "submissive" role, were disparaged. Mastery of one's own body was an aspect of the citizen's libertas, political liberty. The use of one's body to give pleasure to others was servile. A man who enjoyed the receiving role was subject to mockery for weakness and effeminacy. Laws such as the poorly understood Lex ScantiniaLex Scantinia
The Lex Scantinia is a poorly documented ancient Roman law that penalized a sex crime against a freeborn male minor . The law may also have been used to prosecute adult male citizens who willingly took a passive role in having sex with other men...
and various pieces of Augustan moral legislation were meant to restrict same-sex activity among freeborn males, viewed as threatening a man's status and independence as a citizen.
Latin had such a wealth of words for men outside the masculine norm that some scholars argue for the existence of a homosexual subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
at Rome; that is, although the noun "homosexual" has no straightforward equivalent in Latin, literary sources reveal a pattern of behaviors among a minority of free men that indicate same-sex preference or orientation. Some terms, such as exoletus
Exoletus
Exoletus is a Latin term, the perfect passive participle of the verb exolescere, which means "to wear out with age." In ancient Rome the word referred to a certain class of homosexual males or male prostitutes, although its precise meaning is unclear to historians.In his essay on sexual morality,...
, specifically refer to an adult; Romans who were socially marked as "masculine" did not confine their same-sex penetration of male prostitutes or slaves to those who were "boys" under the age of 20.
Homoerotic Latin literature includes the "Juventius" poems of Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
, elegies by Tibullus
Tibullus
Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority...
and Propertius, the second Eclogue of Vergil, and several poems by Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
. Lucretius addresses the love of boys in De rerum natura (4.1052–1056). Although Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
includes mythological treatments of homoeroticism in the Metamorphoses, he is unusual among Latin love poets, and indeed among Romans in general, for his aggressively heterosexual stance. The Satyricon
Satyricon
Satyricon is a Latin work of fiction in a mixture of prose and poetry. It is believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as a certain Titus Petronius...
of Petronius
Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...
is so permeated with the culture of male-male sexuality that in 18th-century European literary circles, his name became "a byword for homosexuality."
Although Roman law did not recognize marriage between men, in the early Imperial period some male couples were celebrating traditional marriage rites. Same-sex weddings are reported by sources that mock them; the feelings of the participants are not recorded.
Apart from measures to protect the liberty of citizens, the prosecution of homosexuality as a general crime began in the 3rd century of the Christian era when male prostitution was banned by Philip the Arab
Philip the Arab
Philip the Arab , also known as Philip or Philippus Arabs, was Roman Emperor from 244 to 249. He came from Syria, and rose to become a major figure in the Roman Empire. He achieved power after the death of Gordian III, quickly negotiating peace with the Sassanid Empire...
. By the end of the 4th century, passive homosexuality under the Christian Empire
State church of the Roman Empire
The state church of the Roman Empire was a Christian institution organized within the Roman Empire during the 4th century that came to represent the Empire's sole authorized religion. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches claim to be the historical continuation of this...
was punishable by burning. "Death by sword" was the punishment for a "man coupling like a woman" under the Theodosian Code. Under Justinian, all same-sex acts, passive or active, no matter who the partners, were declared contrary to nature and punishable by death. Homosexual behaviors were pointed to as causes for God's wrath
Divine retribution
Divine retribution is supernatural punishment of a person, a group of people, or all humanity by a deity in response to some human action.Many cultures have a story about how a deity exacted punishment on previous inhabitants of their land, causing their doom.An example of divine retribution is the...
following a series of disasters around 542 and 559.
The rape of men
Men who had been raped were exempt from the loss of legal or social standing (infamiaInfamia
In ancient Roman culture, infamia was a loss of legal or social standing. As a technical term of Roman law, infamia was an official exclusion from the legal protections enjoyed by a Roman citizen, as imposed by a censor or praetor...
) suffered by males who prostituted themselves or willingly took the receiving role in sex. According to the jurist Pomponius
Sextus Pomponius
Sextus Pomponius was a jurist who lived during the reigns of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He wrote a book on the law up to the time of Hadrian, the Enchiridion of Sextus Pomponius.-References:...
, "whatever man has been raped by the force of robbers or the enemy in wartime (vi praedonum vel hostium)" ought to bear no stigma. Fears of mass rape following a military defeat extended equally to male and female potential victims.
Ingenui
Ingenui or ingenuitas , was a legal term of ancient Rome indicating those freemen who were born free, as distinct from, for example, freedmen, who were freemen who had once been slaves....
) is equated with that of a materfamilias as a capital crime. The Lex Julia de vi publica, recorded in the early 3rd century AD but "probably dating from the dictatorship
Roman dictator
In the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...
of Julius Caesar," defined rape as forced sex against "boy, woman, or anyone"; the rapist was subject to execution, a rare penalty in Roman law. It was a capital crime for a man to abduct a free-born boy for sexual purposes, or to bribe the boy's chaperon (comes) for the opportunity. Negligent chaperones could be prosecuted under various laws, placing the blame on those who failed in their responsibilities as guardians rather than on the victim. Although the law recognized the victim's blamelessness, rhetoric used by the defense indicates that attitudes of blame among jurors could be exploited.
In his collection of twelve anecdotes dealing with assaults on chastity, the historian Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius .-Biography:...
features male victims in equal number to female. In the "mock trial
Mock trial
A Mock Trial is an act or imitation trial. It is similar to a moot court, but mock trials simulate lower-court trials, while moot court simulates appellate court hearings. Attorneys preparing for a real trial might use a mock trial consisting of volunteers as role players to test theories or...
" case described by the elder Seneca
Seneca the Elder
Lucius or Marcus Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Elder and Seneca the Rhetorician , was a Roman rhetorician and writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Cordoba, Hispania...
, an adulescens (a man young enough not to have begun his formal career) was gang-raped by ten of his peers; although the case is imaginary, Seneca assumes that the law permitted the successful prosecution of the rapists. Another hypothetical case imagines the extremity to which a rape victim could be driven: the free-born male who was raped commits suicide. The rape of an ingenuus is among the worst crimes that could be committed in Rome, along with parricide
Parricide
Parricide is defined as:*the act of murdering one's father , mother or other close relative, but usually not children ....
, the rape of a female virgin, and robbing a temple. Rape was nevertheless one of the traditional punishments inflicted on a male adulterer by the wronged husband, though perhaps more in revenge fantasy than in practice. The threat of one man to subject another to anal or oral rape (irrumatio
Irrumatio
Irrumatio, also called irrumation, is a type of sexual intercourse performed by actively thrusting one's penis into a partner's mouth and throat. It may also be the thrusting of the penis between the legs, breasts, feet, upper thighs , or between the abdomens of two partners."Latin erotic...
) is a theme of invective poetry, most notably in Catullus's notorious Carmen 16
Catullus 16
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo is the first line, sometimes used as a title, of Carmen 16 in the collected poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus . The poem, written in a hendecasyllabic meter, was considered so explicit that a full English translation was not openly published until the late twentieth...
, and was a form of masculine braggadocio.
Sex in the military
The Roman soldier, like any free and respectable Roman male of status, was expected to show self-discipline in matters of sex. Soldiers convicted of adultery were given a dishonorable discharge; convicted adulterers were barred from enlisting. Strict commanders might ban prostitutes and pimps from camp, though in general the Roman armyRoman army
The Roman army is the generic term for the terrestrial armed forces deployed by the kingdom of Rome , the Roman Republic , the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine empire...
, whether on the march or at a permanent fort (castra
Castra
The Latin word castra, with its singular castrum, was used by the ancient Romans to mean buildings or plots of land reserved to or constructed for use as a military defensive position. The word appears in both Oscan and Umbrian as well as in Latin. It may have descended from Indo-European to Italic...
), was attended by a number of camp followers who might include prostitutes. Their presence seems to have been taken for granted, and mentioned mainly when it became problematic; for instance, when Scipio Aemilianus was setting out for Numantia
Siege of Numantia
The Celtiberian oppidum of Numantia was attacked more than once by Roman forces, but the Siege of Numantia refers to the culminating and pacifying action of the long-running Numantine War between the forces of the Roman Republic and those of the native population of Hispania Citerior. The...
in 133 BC, he dismissed the camp followers as one of his measures for restoring discipline.
Perhaps most peculiar is the prohibition against marriage in the Imperial army. In the early period, Rome had an army of citizens who left their families and took up arms as the need arose. During the expansionism of the Middle Republic, Rome began acquiring vast territories to be defended as provinces, and during the time of Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...
(d. 86 BC), the army had been professionalized. The ban on marriage began under Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
(ruled 27 BC–14 AD), perhaps to discourage families from following the army and impairing its mobility. The marriage ban applied to all ranks up to the centurion
Centurion
A centurion was a professional officer of the Roman army .Centurion may also refer to:-Military:* Centurion tank, British battle tank* HMS Centurion, name of several ships and a shore base of the British Royal Navy...
ate; men of the governing classes were exempt. By the 2nd century AD, the stability of the Empire
Pax Romana
Pax Romana was the long period of relative peace and minimal expansion by military force experienced by the Roman Empire in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Since it was established by Caesar Augustus it is sometimes called Pax Augusta...
kept most units in permanent forts, where attachments with local women often developed. Although legally these unions could not be formalized as marriages, their value in providing emotional support for the soldiers was recognized. After a soldier was discharged, the couple were granted the right of legal marriage as citizens (conubium), and any children they already had were considered to have been born to citizens. Septimius Severus
Septimius Severus
Septimius Severus , also known as Severus, was Roman Emperor from 193 to 211. Severus was born in Leptis Magna in the province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through the customary succession of offices under the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Severus seized power after the death of...
rescinded the ban in 197 AD.
Other forms of sexual gratification available to soldiers were the use of male slaves, war rape
War rape
War rapes are rapes committed by soldiers, other combatants or civilians during armed conflict or war, or during military occupation, distinguished from sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service...
, and same-sex relations. Homosexual behavior among soldiers was subject to harsh penalties, including death, as a violation of military discipline. Polybius
Polybius
Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...
(2nd century BC) reports that same-sex activity in the military was punishable by the fustuarium
Fustuarium
In the military of ancient Rome, fustuarium or fustuarium supplicium was a severe form of military discipline in which a soldier was cudgeled to death...
, clubbing to death. Sex among fellow soldiers violated the Roman decorum against intercourse with another free-born male. A soldier maintained his masculinity by not allowing his body to be used for sexual purposes. This physical integrity stood in contrast to the limits placed on his actions as a free man within the military hierarchy; most strikingly, Roman soldiers were the only citizens regularly subjected to corporal punishment, reserved in the civilian world mainly for slaves. Sexual integrity helped distinguish the status of the soldier, who otherwise sacrificed a great deal of his civilian autonomy, from that of the slave. In warfare, rape signified defeat, another motive for the soldier not to compromise his body sexually.
An incident related by Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
in his biography of Marius illustrates the soldier's right to maintain his sexual integrity. A good-looking young recruit named Trebonius had been sexually harassed
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
over a period of time by his superior officer, who happened to be Marius's nephew, Gaius Luscius. One night, having fended off unwanted advances on numerous occasions, Trebonius was summoned to Luscius's tent. Unable to disobey the command of his superior, he found himself the object of a sexual assault and drew his sword, killing Luscius. A conviction for killing an officer typically resulted in execution. When brought to trial, he was able to produce witnesses to show that he had repeatedly had to fend off Luscius, and "had never prostituted his body to anyone, despite offers of expensive gifts." Marius not only acquitted Trebonius in the killing of his kinsman, but gave him a crown for bravery. Roman historians record other cautionary tales of officers who abuse their authority to coerce sex from their soldiers, and then suffer dire consequences. The youngest officers, who still might retain some of the adolescent attraction that Romans favored in male-male relations, were advised to beef up their masculine qualities, such as not wearing perfume, nor trimming nostril and underarm hair.
During wartime, the violent use of war captives for sex was not considered criminal rape. Mass rape
War rape
War rapes are rapes committed by soldiers, other combatants or civilians during armed conflict or war, or during military occupation, distinguished from sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service...
was one of the acts of punitive violence during the sack of a city, but if the siege had ended through diplomatic negotiations rather than storming the walls, by custom the inhabitants were neither enslaved nor subjected to personal violence. Mass rape as a form of warfare was thus permissible only when part of an overall strategy for gaining control of a population. An ethical ideal of sexual self-control among enlisted men was vital to preserving peace once hostilities ceased. In territories and provinces
Roman province
In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...
brought under treaty with Rome, soldiers who committed rape against the local people might be subjected to harsher punishments than civilians. Sertorius, the long-time governor
Roman governor
A Roman governor was an official either elected or appointed to be the chief administrator of Roman law throughout one or more of the many provinces constituting the Roman Empire...
of Roman Spain whose policies emphasized respect and cooperation with provincials, executed an entire cohort
Cohort (military unit)
A cohort was the basic tactical unit of a Roman legion following the reforms of Gaius Marius in 107 BC.-Legionary cohort:...
when a single soldier had attempted to rape a local woman.
Female sexuality
Because of the Roman emphasis on family, female sexuality was regarded as one of the bases for social order and prosperity. Female citizens were expected to exercise their sexuality within marriage, and were honored for their sexual integrity (pudicitiaPudicitia
Pudicitia was a central concept in ancient Roman sexual ethics. The word is derived from the more general pudor, the sense of shame that regulated an individual's behavior as socially acceptable...
) and fecundity: Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
granted special honors and privileges to women who had given birth to three children (see "Ius trium liberorum
Ius trium liberorum
The ius trium liberorum was part of the social legislation of Augustus aimed at motivating larger families by granting privileges to parents of three or more freeborn children. It was formally introduced as part of the Lex Papia Poppaea of AD 9, though there were instances of it being granted...
"). Control of female sexuality was regarded as necessary for the stability of the state, as embodied most conspicuously in the absolute virginity of the Vestals. A Vestal who violated her vow was entombed alive in a ritual that mimicked some aspects of a Roman funeral
Roman funerals and burial
Ancient Roman funerary practices were part of the mos maiorum, "tradition," that is, "the way of the ancestors," and drew on the beliefs embodied in Roman public and domestic religion....
; her lover was executed. Female sexuality, either disorderly or exemplary, often impacts state religion in times of crisis for the Republic. The moral legislation of Augustus focused on harnessing the sexuality of women.
As was the case for men, free women who displayed themselves sexually, such as prostitutes and performers, or who made themselves available indiscriminately were excluded from legal protections and social respectability.
Many Roman literary sources approve of respectable women exercising sexual passion within marriage. While ancient literature overwhelmingly takes a male-centered view of sexuality, the Augustan poet Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
expresses an explicit and virtually unique interest in how women experience intercourse.
The female body
Roman attitudes toward female nudity differed from but were influenced by those of the Greeks, who idealized the male body in the nude while portraying respectable women clothed. Partial nudity of goddesses in Roman Imperial art, however, can highlight the breasts as dignified but pleasurable images of nurturing, abundance, and peacefulness. Erotic art indicates that women with small breasts and wide hips had the ideal body type. By the 1st century AD, Roman art shows a broad interest in the female nude engaged in varied activities, including sex. Pornographic art that depicts women presumed to be prostitutes performing sex acts may show the breasts covered by a strophium even when the rest of the body is naked.In the real world as described in literature, prostitutes sometimes displayed themselves naked at the entrance to their brothel cubicles, or wore see-through silk garments; slaves for sale were often displayed naked to allow buyers to inspect them for defects, and to symbolize that they lacked the right to control their own body. As Seneca the Elder
Seneca the Elder
Lucius or Marcus Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Elder and Seneca the Rhetorician , was a Roman rhetorician and writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Cordoba, Hispania...
described a woman for sale:
Naked she stood on the shore, at the pleasure of the purchaser; every part of her body was examined and felt. Would you hear the result of the sale? The pirate sold; the pimp bought, that he might employ her as a prostitute.
The display of the female body made it vulnerable. Varro
Varro
Varro was a Roman cognomen carried by:*Marcus Terentius Varro, sometimes known as Varro Reatinus, the scholar*Publius Terentius Varro or Varro Atacinus, the poet*Gaius Terentius Varro, the consul defeated at the battle of Cannae...
said sight was the greatest of the senses, because while the others were limited by proximity, sight could penetrate even to the stars; he thought the Latin word for "sight, gaze
Gaze
Gaze is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses some sense of autonomy upon realizing that he or she is a visible object...
", visus, was etymologically related to vis, "force, power". But the connection between visus and vis, he said, also implied the potential for violation, just as Actaeon
Actaeon
Actaeon , in Greek mythology, son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. Like Achilles in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron....
gazing on the naked Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
violated the goddess. The completely nude female body as portrayed in sculpture was thought to embody a universal concept of Venus, whose counterpart Aphrodite is the goddess most often depicted as a nude in Greek art.
Female genitals
Although women's genitals appear often in invective and satiric verse as objects of disgust, they are rarely referred to in Latin love elegy. Ovid, the most heterosexual of the classic love poets, is the only one to refer to giving a woman pleasure through genital stimulation. Martial writes of female genitalia only insultingly, describing one woman's vagina as "loose … as the foul gullet of a pelican." The vagina is often compared to a boy's anus as a receptacle for the phallus.One of the slang words women used for their genitals was porcus, "pig," particularly when mature women spoke of girls. Varro connects this usage of the word to the sacrifice of a pig to the goddess Ceres in preliminary wedding rites. The "basic obscenity" for the female genitalia is cunnus, "cunt
Cunt
Cunt is a vulgarism, primarily referring to the female genitalia, specifically the vulva, and including the cleft of Venus. The earliest citation of this usage in the 1972 Oxford English Dictionary, c 1230, refers to the London street known as Gropecunt Lane...
," though perhaps not as strongly offensive as the English. Martial uses the word more than thirty times, Catullus once, and Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
thrice only in his early work; it also appears in the Priapea and graffiti. Metaphors of fields, gardens, and meadows are common, as is the image of the masculine "plough" in the feminine "furrow." Other metaphors include cave, ditch, pit, bag, vessel, door, hearth, oven, and altar.
The function of the clitoris
Clitoris
The clitoris is a sexual organ that is present only in female mammals. In humans, the visible button-like portion is located near the anterior junction of the labia minora, above the opening of the urethra and vagina. Unlike the penis, which is homologous to the clitoris, the clitoris does not...
(landica) was "well understood." In classical Latin
Classical Latin
Classical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
, landica was a highly indecorous obscenity found in graffiti and the Priapea; the clitoris was usually referred to with a metaphor, such as Juvenal's crista ("crest"). Cicero records that a hapless speaker of consular rank
Roman consul
A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...
broke up the senate
Roman Senate
The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
just by saying something that sounded like landica: hanc culpam maiorem an il-lam dicam? ("Shall I call this fault greater or that one?" heard as "this greater fault or a clitoris?"). "Could he have been more obscene?" Cicero exclaims, observing at the same time that cum nos, "when we," sounds like cunnus. A lead sling-bullet uncovered through archaeology was inscribed "I aim for Fulvia's clit" (Fulviae landicam peto), Fulvia
Fulvia
Fulvia Flacca Bambula , commonly referred to as simply Fulvia, was an aristocratic Roman woman who lived during the Late Roman Republic. Through her marriage to three of the most promising Roman men of her generation, Publius Clodius Pulcher, Gaius Scribonius Curio and Mark Antony, she gained...
being the wife of Mark Antony who commanded troops during the civil wars of the 40s and 30s.
Latin lacked a standard word for labia; two terms found in medical writers are orae, "edges" or "shores," and pinnacula, "little wings." The first recorded instance of the word vulva occurs in Varro's work on agriculture (1st century BC), where it refers to the membrane that surrounds a fetus. In the early Empire, vulva came into usage for "womb," the usual word for which had been uterus in the Republic, or sometimes more vaguely venter or alvus, both words for "belly." Vulva seems originally to have referred to the womb of animals, but is "extremely common" in Pliny's Natural History for a human uterus. In the Imperial era, vulva can mean "female reproductive organs" collectively or vaguely, or sometimes refers to the vagina alone. Early Latin Bible translators
Bible translations into Latin
The Bible translations into Latin are the versions used in the Western part of the former Roman Empire until the Reformation, and still used, to some extent, in the Roman Catholic Church and at the Vatican.-Pre-Christian Latin translations:...
used vulva as the correct and proper word for the womb. At some point during the Imperial era, matrix became the common word for "uterus," particularly in the gynecological writers of late antiquity
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
, who also employ a specialized vocabulary for parts of the reproductive organs.
Both women and men often removed their pubic hair, but grooming may have varied over time and by individual preference. A fragment from the early satirist Lucilius
Gaius Lucilius
Gaius Lucilius , the earliest Roman satirist, of whose writings only fragments remain, was a Roman citizen of the equestrian class, born at Suessa Aurunca in Campania.-The Problem of his birthdate:...
refers to penetrating a "hairy bag," and a graffito from Pompeii declares that "a hairy cunt is fucked much better than one which is smooth; it's steamy and wants cock."
At the entrance to a caldarium
Caldarium
right|thumb|230px|Caldarium from the Roman Baths at [[Bath, England]]. The floor has been removed to reveal the empty space where the hot air flowed through to heat the floor....
in the bath complex
Thermae
In ancient Rome, thermae and balnea were facilities for bathing...
of the House of Menander
House of Menander
The House of Menander is a building in Pompeii, Italy. It is located in the southern half of the town, just northeast of the Little and Large Theaters, as well as the Gladiators’ barracks...
at Pompeii, an unusual graphic device appears on a mosaic: a phallic oil can is surrounded by strigil
Strigil
A strigil was a small, curved, metal tool used in ancient Greece and Rome to scrape dirt and sweat from the body before effective soaps became available. First perfumed oil was applied to the skin, and then it would be scraped off, along with the dirt. For wealthier people, this process was often...
s in the shape of female genitalia, juxtaposed with an "Ethiopian" water-bearer who has an "unusually large and comically detailed" penis.
Breasts
Latin words for "breasts" include mammae (cf. English "mammary"), papillae (more specifically for "nipples"), and ubera. Ubera are breasts in their capacity to provide nourishment, including the teats or udder of an animal, but papillae is the preferred word when Catullus and the Augustan poetsAugustan literature (ancient Rome)
Augustan literature is the period of Latin literature written during the reign of Augustus , the first Roman emperor. In literary histories of the first part of the 20th century and earlier, Augustan literature was regarded along with that of the Late Republic as constituting the Golden Age of...
take note of breasts in an erotic context.
The breasts of a beautiful woman were supposed to be "unobtrusive." Idealized breasts in the tradition of Hellenistic poetry were compared to apples; Martial makes fun of large breasts. Old women who were stereotypically ugly and undesirable in every way had "pendulous" breasts. On the Roman stage
Theatre of ancient Rome
The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus's broadly appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca...
, exaggerated breasts were part of the costuming for comically unattractive female characters, since in classic Roman comedy women's roles were played by male actors in drag
Drag (clothing)
Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early...
.
While Greek epigrams describe ideal breasts, Latin poets take limited interest in them, at least as compared to the modern focus on admiring and fondling a woman's breasts. They are observed mainly as aspects of a woman's beauty or perfection of form, though Ovid finds them inviting to touch. In one poem celebrating a wedding, Catullus remarks on the bride's "tender nipples" (teneris … papillis) which would keep a good husband sleeping with her; erotic appeal supports fidelity within marriage and leads to children and a long life together.
Because all infants were breastfed in antiquity, the breast was viewed primarily as an emblem of nurturing and of motherhood. Mastoi, breast-shaped drinking cups, and representations of breasts are among the votive offerings (vota
Votum
In ancient Roman religion, a votum, plural vota, is a vow or promise made to a deity. The word comes from the past participle of the Latin verb voveo, vovere, "vow, promise." As the result of this verbal action, a votum is also that which fulfills a vow, that is, the thing promised, such as...
) found at sanctuaries of deities such as Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
and Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
, sometimes having been dedicated by wet nurse
Wet nurse
A wet nurse is a woman who is used to breast feed and care for another's child. Wet nurses are used when the mother is unable or chooses not to nurse the child herself. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some cultures the families are linked by a special relationship of...
s. The breast-shaped cup may have a religious significance; the drinking of breast milk by an adult who is elderly or about to die symbolized potential rebirth in the afterlife. In the Etruscan tradition
Etruscan mythology
The Etruscans were a diachronically continuous population, with a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing, in the Mediterranean Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium BC...
, the goddess Juno
Juno (mythology)
Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...
(Uni
Uni (mythology)
Uni was the supreme goddess of the Etruscan pantheon and the patron goddess of Perugia. Uni was identified by the Etruscans as their equivalent of Juno in Roman mythology and Hera in Greek mythology....
) offers her breast to Hercules as a sign that he may enter the ranks of the immortals. The religious meaning may underlie the story of how Pero offered breast milk to her elderly father when he was imprisoned and sentenced to death by starvation (see Roman Charity
Roman Charity
Roman Charity is the exemplary story of a daughter, Pero, who secretly breastfeeds her father, Cimon, after he is incarcerated and sentenced to death by starvation...
). The scene is among the moral paintings in a Pompeiian bedroom that belonged to a child, along with the legend "in sadness is the meeting of modesty and piety." Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
records medicinal uses of breast milk, and ranks it as one of the most useful remedies, especially for ailments of the eyes and ears. Wrapping one's head in a bra was said to cure a headache.
Baring the breasts is one of the gestures made by women, particularly mothers or nurses, to express mourning or as an appeal for mercy. The baring and beating of breasts ritually in grief was interpreted by Servius as producing milk to feed the dead. In Greek and Latin literature, mythological mothers sometimes expose their breasts in moments of extreme emotional duress to demand that their nurturing role be respected. Breasts exposed with such intensity held apotropaic power. Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
indicates that the gesture had a similar significance in Celtic culture: during the siege of Avaricum, the female heads of household (matres familiae) expose their breasts and extend their hands to ask that the women and children be spared. Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
notes Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
women who exhorted their reluctant men to valorous battle by aggressively baring their breasts. Although in general "the gesture is meant to arouse pity rather than sexual desire," the beauty of the breasts so exposed is sometimes in evidence and remarked upon.
Because women were normally portrayed clothed in art, bared breasts can signify vulnerability or erotic availability by choice, accident, or force. Baring a single breast was a visual motif of Classical Greek sculpture, where among other situations, including seductions, it often represented impending physical violence or rape. Some scholars have attempted to find a "code" in which exposing the right breast had an erotic significance, while the left breast signified nurturing. Although art produced by the Romans may imitate or directly draw on Greek conventions, during the Classical period
Classical Greece
Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...
of Greek art images of women nursing were treated as animalistic or barbaric; by contrast, the coexisting Italic tradition emphasized the breast as a focus of the mother-child relationship and as a source of female power.
The erogenous power of the breast was not utterly neglected: in comparing sex with a woman to sex with a boy, a Greek novel
Ancient Greek novel
Five ancient Greek novels survive complete from antiquity: Chariton's Callirhoe, Xenophon of Ephesus' Ephesian romance, Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon and Heliodorus of Emesa's Ethiopian Romance. There are also numerous fragments preserved on papyrus or in...
of the Roman Imperial era notes that "her breast when it is caressed provides its own particular pleasure." Propertius connects breast development with girls reaching an age to "play". Tibullus
Tibullus
Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority...
observes that a woman just might wear loose clothing so that her breasts "flash
Exhibitionism
Exhibitionism refers to a desire or compulsion to expose parts of one's body – specifically the genitals or buttocks of a man or woman, or the breasts of a woman – in a public or semi-public circumstance, in crowds or groups of friends or acquaintances, or to strangers...
" when she reclines at dinner. An astrological tradition
Hellenistic astrology
Hellenistic astrology is a tradition of horoscopic astrology that was developed and practiced in Hellenistic Egypt and the Mediterranean, whose texts were written in Greek , mainly around the late 2nd or early 1st century B.C.E...
held that mammary intercourse
Mammary intercourse
Mammary intercourse describes a sex act, performed as foreplay or as non-penetrative sex, that involves the stimulation of the male penis by the female breasts. Commonly, this sex act involves the man placing his penis in the woman's cleavage and thrusting between her breasts, while the breasts are...
was enjoyed by men born under the conjunction of Venus, Mercury, and Saturn. Even in the most sexually explicit Roman paintings, however, the breasts are sometimes kept covered by the strophium (breast band). The women so depicted may be prostitutes, but it can be difficult to discern why an artist decides in a given scenario to portray the breasts covered or exposed.
Female-female sex
Greek words for a woman who prefers sex with another woman include hetairistria (compare hetairaHetaira
Hetaira is a genus of bush cricket in family Tettigoniidae subfamily Phaneropterinae....
, "courtesan" or "companion"), tribas (plural tribades), and Lesbia; Latin words include the loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
tribas, fricatrix ("she who rubs"), and virago
Virago
Virago is a term used to describe a woman who demonstrates exemplary and heroic qualities. The word comes from the Latin word vir, meaningvirile 'man,' to which the suffix -ago is added, a suffix that effectively re-genders the word to be female...
. References to sex between women are infrequent in the Roman literature of the Republic and early Principate
Principate
The Principate is the first period of the Roman Empire, extending from the beginning of the reign of Caesar Augustus to the Crisis of the Third Century, after which it was replaced with the Dominate. The Principate is characterized by a concerted effort on the part of the Emperors to preserve the...
. Ovid, who advocates generally for a heterosexual lifestyle, finds it "a desire known to no one, freakish, novel … among all animals no female is seized by desire for female."
During the Roman Imperial era, sources for same-sex relations among women are more abundant, in the form of love spells, medical writing, texts on astrology and the interpretation of dreams, and other sources. A graffito from Pompeii expresses the desire of one woman for another:
I wish I could hold to my neck and embrace the little arms, and bear kisses on the tender lips. Go on, doll, and trust your joys to the winds; believe me, light is the nature of men.
An early reference to same-sex relations among women as "lesbianism" is found in Lucian
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.His ethnicity is disputed and is attributed as Assyrian according to Frye and Parpola, and Syrian according to Joseph....
(2nd century AD): "They say there are women like that in Lesbos, masculine-looking, but they don't want to give it up for men. Instead, they consort with women, just like men."
Since Romans thought a sex act required an active or dominant partner who was "phallic" (see "Phallic sexuality" above), male writers imagined that in lesbian sex one of the women would use a dildo
Dildo
A dildo is a sex toy, often explicitly phallic in appearance, intended for bodily penetration during masturbation or sex with partners.- Description and uses :...
or have an exceptionally large clitoris for penetration, and that she would be the one experiencing pleasure. Martial describes lesbians as having outsized sexual appetites and performing penetrative sex on both women and boys. Imperial portrayals of women who sodomize boys, drink and eat like men, and engage in vigorous physical regimens, may reflect cultural anxieties about the growing independence of Roman women.
Rape
The mythology of rape
The rape of women is a pervasive theme in the myths and legends of early RomeRoman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans...
. The legendary founders Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus are Rome's twin founders in its traditional foundation myth, although the former is sometimes said to be the sole founder...
were born from the rape of the Vestal Rhea Silvia
Rhea Silvia
Rhea Silvia , and also known as Ilia, was the mythical mother of the twins Romulus and Remus, who founded the city of Rome...
by the god Mars
Mars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...
. Romulus and his "band of freebooters" can transform their all-male settlement into a city only by the "rape" of the Sabine women
The Rape of the Sabine Women
The Rape of the Sabine Women is an episode in the legendary history of Rome in which the first generation of Roman men acquired wives for themselves from the neighboring Sabine families. The English word "rape" is a conventional translation of Latin raptio, which in this context means "abduction"...
, that is, by forcibly abducting the daughters of their Sabine neighbors to take as wives. The overthrow of the Roman monarchy and the establishment of the Republic was precipitated by the rape of the much-admired Lucretia
Lucretia
Lucretia is a legendary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. According to the story, told mainly by the Roman historian Livy and the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus , her rape by the king's son and consequent suicide were the immediate cause of the revolution that overthrew the...
by Sextus Tarquinius
Sextus Tarquinius
Sextus Tarquinius was a Roman prince, the third and youngest son of the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus . He is primarily known for his rape of Lucretia, daughter of Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, wife of Collatinus....
, the king's son. The legend crystallizes the Roman view of unchecked libido as a form of tyranny.
The Augustan
Augustan literature (ancient Rome)
Augustan literature is the period of Latin literature written during the reign of Augustus , the first Roman emperor. In literary histories of the first part of the 20th century and earlier, Augustan literature was regarded along with that of the Late Republic as constituting the Golden Age of...
historian
Roman historiography
Roman Historiography is indebted to the Greeks, who invented the form. The Romans had great models to base their works upon, such as Herodotus and Thucydides. Roman historiographical forms are different from the Greek ones however, and voice very Roman concerns. Unlike the Greeks, Roman...
Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
seems "embarrassed" by the rape motif of early Roman history, and emphasizes the redeeming political dimension of these events. Lucretius condemns rape as a primitive behavior outside the bounds of an advanced civilization, describing it as "a man's use of violent force and imposition of sexual impulse."
Rape and the law
Roman lawRoman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
recognized rape as a crime: the rape victim was not guilty of anything. Intercourse by force or compulsion (vis), even if it took place under circumstances that were otherwise unlawful for a woman (see "Moral and legal concepts" above), left the woman legally without blame. The official position under Diocletian
Diocletian
Diocletian |latinized]] upon his accession to Diocletian . c. 22 December 244 – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305....
(reigned 284–305 AD) held that:
The laws punish the foul wickedness of those who prostitute their modesty to the lusts of others, but they do not attach blame to those who are compelled to stuprum by force, since it has, moreover, been quite properly decided that their reputations are unharmed and that they are not prohibited from marriage to others.
Although literary sources from the Republican era make it clear that rape was wrong and severely penalized, the statute
Statute
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations...
s under which it might be charged as a crime are unknown until passage of the Lex Iulia de vi publica
Lex Julia
Lex Julia are ancient Roman laws, introduced by any member of the Julian family....
, dating probably to the dictatorship of Juius Caesar in the 40s BC. Rome had no state prosecutors; cases could be prosecuted by any citizen with the legal expertise and speaking ability to do so. Since emancipated women were allowed to bring criminal prosecutions in the Republic, it is conceivable that a rape victim could have brought charges against her rapist herself. Otherwise, the case could be prosecuted by her father or husband, or by anyone who saw fit to do so. There was no statute of limitations
Statute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...
for rape; by contrast adultery, which was criminalized under Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
, had to be prosecuted within five years. Rape was a capital crime.
As a matter of law, rape could be committed only against a citizen in good standing. A woman who worked as a prostitute or entertainer lost her social standing and became infamis; by making her body publicly available, she had in effect surrendered her right to be protected from sexual abuse or physical violence. Cicero defended a client whose misdeeds included the gang rape of an actress on the grounds that young men took customary license with entertainers. The rape of a slave could be prosecuted only as damage to her owner's property, under the Lex Aquilia
Lex Aquilia
The lex Aquilia was a Roman law which provided compensation to the owners of property injured by someone's fault.- The provisions of the Lex Aquilia :...
. Consent would have been an issue in rape cases only rarely; if the accused argued that the woman had consented, he could still be charged with committing the more general sex crime of stuprum against a citizen, since male sexual freedom was limited to prostitutes or slaves. If rape against a married woman could not be proven, the Augustan legislation criminalizing adultery would make the man liable to a charge of adulterium, criminal adultery, though a charge of either adultery or stuprum without force would implicate the woman as well. An acquittal for rape, as with any other crime, would open the prosecutor to a retaliatory charge of calumnia
Calumnia (Roman law)
In Roman law during the Republic, calumnia was the willful bringing of a false accusation, that is, malicious prosecution. The English word "calumny" derives from the Latin....
, malicious prosecution. The prosecution of rape might also be hindered by psychological and social pressures, such as embarrassment or a reluctance to expose one's private life.
Attitudes toward rape changed when the Empire became Christianized. St. Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
interpreted Lucretia's suicide as a possible admission that she had secretly encouraged the rapist, and Christian apologists regarded her as having committed the sin of involuntary sexual pleasure. The first Christian emperor Constantine redefined rape as a public offense rather than as a private wrong. Earlier Roman law had blurred the line between abduction and elopement, since in either case it was the right of the paterfamilias to give or withhold his consent to his daughter's marriage that had been violated. The word raptus thus could refer to a successful seduction as well as abduction or rape. If the girl consented, Constantine ordered that she be punished along with the male "abductor" by being burnt alive. If she had not consented, she was still considered an accomplice, "on the grounds that she could have saved herself by screaming for help." As a participant to the rape, she was punished under law by being disinherited, regardless of the wishes of her family. Even if she and her family consented to a marriage as the result of an elopement, the marriage was legally void. In the Republic and the pre-Christian Empire, the consequences of an abduction or an elopement had been up to the couple and their families.
Sexuality and children
Both male and female freeborn children wore the toga praetexta, a purple-bordered garment that marked its wearer as having "inviolable" status. An oath could be sworn upon the "sacred praetexta," a marker of how "we make sacred and venerable the weakness of childhood." It was religiously impermissible (nefas) to use obscene language in front of those wearing the praetexta, and CatoCato the Elder
Marcus Porcius Cato was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Censorius , Sapiens , Priscus , or Major, Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor, to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger.He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some...
claimed that in front of his son he tried to speak as though Vestal Virgins were present.
Freeborn Roman boys also wore an apotropaic amulet called the bulla
Bulla (amulet)
Bulla, an amulet worn like a locket, was given to male children in Ancient Rome nine days after birth. They were enigmatic objects of lead covered in gold foil. A bulla was worn around the neck as a locket to protect against evil spirits and forces. A bulla was made of differing substances...
which incorporated a phallic talisman
Talisman
Talisman have several meanings:*TalismanBooks and novels* The Talisman , a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott* The Talisman , a novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub...
(fascinum) inside a locket of gold, silver, or bronze, or in a leather pouch. In addition to its magical function, the bulla would have been a visible warning that the boy was sexually off-limits. The equivalent for the girl was the lunula, a crescent moon amulet.
There were laws protecting freeborn children from sexual predator
Sexual predator
The term sexual predator is used pejoratively to describe a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically "predatory" manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to "hunt" for his or her sex partners...
s, and the rape of a freeborn boy was a capital crime; this severity was directed at protecting the integrity of the young citizen. Fictional license was not a defense; Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius .-Biography:...
reports that a poetic boast of seducing a puer praetextatus ("praetextate boy") and a freeborn virgin (ingenua virgo) was used in court to impugn a prosecutor's moral authority. In denouncing the debaucheries of Quintus Apronius, Cicero builds to the worst offence: Apronius danced naked at a banquet in front of a boy still of an age to wear the praetexta. Although children were taken to dinner parties (convivia) to accustom them to proper adult social behavior, Quintilian
Quintilian
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
scolds parents of his day for being poor role models: they parade their mistresses and male concubines and behave indiscreetly even when their children are present, and think it's cute when their children say things that are age-inappropriate. Quintilian regards this misbehavior as a sign of general moral decline. At weddings, however, boys were by ancient custom given license to speak obscenely, peppering the new couple with dirty jokes, as humor and laughter were thought to promote fecundity.
Protections applied only to freeborn children, not those born to slaves, sold into slavery, or taken captive in war. The social acceptance of pederasty among the Romans was focused on the exploitation of young male slaves or prostitutes by men of the upper classes.
Rites of passage
Adolescents in ritual preparation to transition to adult status wore the tunica recta, the "upright tunic," so called because it was woven ritually on the type of upright loom that was the earliest used by Romans. The tunic, worn by both youths and maidens, may have had the purple band of inviolability, though this is unclear from the evidence. Girls wove their own tunica recta.The puberty ritual for the young male involved shaving his first beard and taking off his bulla
Bulla (amulet)
Bulla, an amulet worn like a locket, was given to male children in Ancient Rome nine days after birth. They were enigmatic objects of lead covered in gold foil. A bulla was worn around the neck as a locket to protect against evil spirits and forces. A bulla was made of differing substances...
, which he dedicated to the household gods, the Lares
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
. He assumed the toga virilis ("toga of manhood"), was enrolled as a citizen on the census, and soon began his military service. Traditionally, the ceremony was held on the Liberalia
Liberalia
The Liberalia is the festival of Liber Pater and his consort Libera. The Romans celebrated Liberalia with sacrifices, processions, ribald and gauche songs, and masks which were hung on trees....
, the festival in honor of the god Liber
Liber
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber , also known as Liber Pater was a god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia became associated with free speech and the rights...
, who embodied both political and sexual liberty. Following his rite of passage
Rite of passage
A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's progress from one status to another. It is a universal phenomenon which can show anthropologists what social hierarchies, values and beliefs are important in specific cultures....
, the young male citizen was permitted the avenues of sexual activity that were generally acceptable for Roman men of his social rank. Often a young man would be introduced to heterosexual intercourse by an experienced female prostitute.
Roman women were expected to remain virgins until marriage; the higher the social rank of a girl, the sooner she was likely to become betrothed and married. The general age of betrothal for women of the upper classes was fourteen, but for patricians as early as twelve. Weddings, however, were often postponed until the girl was considered mature enough. The wedding ceremony was in part a rite of passage for the bride, as Rome lacked the elaborate female puberty rituals of ancient Greece. On the night before the wedding, the bride bound up her hair with a yellow hairnet she had woven. The confining of her hair signifies the harnessing of her sexuality within marriage. Her weaving of the tunica recta and the hairnet demonstrated her skill and her capacity for acting in the traditional matron's role as custos domi, "guardian of the house." On her wedding day, she belted her tunic with the cingulum, made from the wool of a ewe to symbolize fertility and tied with the "knot of Hercules", which was supposed to be hard to untie. The knot symbolized wifely chastity, in that it was to be untied only by her husband, but the cingulum also symbolized that the bridegroom "was belted and bound" to his wife. The bride's hair was ritually styled in "six tresses" (seni crines), and she was veiled until uncovered by her husband at the end of the ceremony, a ritual of surrendering her virginity to him.
Marital sex
Because men could enjoy sexual relations outside marriage with relative impunity, it has sometimes been assumed that satisfying sex was not an expectation of Roman marriage. The jurist UlpianUlpian
Gnaeus Domitius Annius Ulpianus , anglicized as Ulpian, was a Roman jurist of Tyrian ancestry.-Biography:The exact time and place of his birth are unknown, but the period of his literary activity was between AD 211 and 222...
noted that "it is not sexual intercourse that makes a marriage but rather marital affection," but the warnings by moralists and philosophers against a preoccupation with sex within marriage recognize the potential for marital passion.
Sexual intimacy between a married couple was a private matter, and not usually the subject of literature. An exception was the epithalamium
Epithalamium
Epithalamium refers to a form of poem that is written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber...
, a genre of poetry that celebrated a wedding. A wedding hymn by Catullus, for instance, praises the love goddess Venus because "nothing is possible without you." Ovid, whose love poetry early in his career was directed at fictional mistresses, wrote elegies during his exile in which he longed for his wife. Among the collected letters
Epistulae (Pliny)
The Epistulae are a series of personal missives by Pliny the Younger directed to his friends and associates. These letters are a unique testimony of Roman administrative history and everyday life in the 1st century. The style is very different from that in the Panegyricus, and some commentators...
of Pliny Minor
Pliny the Younger
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo , better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him...
is one he writes about his feelings for his wife:
I am seized by an unbelievable longing for you. The reason is above all my love, but secondarily the fact that we are not used to being apart. This is why I spend the greater part of the night haunted by your image; this is why from time to time my feet lead me (the right expression!) of their own accord to your room at the times I was accustomed to frequent you; this is why, in short, I retreat, morbid and disconsolate, like an excluded lover from an unwelcoming doorway.
Pliny adopts the rhetoric of love poetry, conventionally directed at an illicit or hard-to-attain lover, as appropriate for expressing his wedded desire.
Although it was a point of pride for a woman to be univira, married only once, there was no stigma attached to divorce. Speedy remarriage after divorce or the death of a spouse was common and even expected among the Roman elite, since marriage was considered right and natural for adults. Although widows were usually expected to wait ten months before remarrying, even a pregnant woman was not barred from taking a new husband, as long as the paternity of her child was not in doubt for legal purposes. If a first marriage ended, women seem to have had more say in arranging subsequent marriages. While having children was a primary goal of marriage, other social and familial bonds were enhanced, not excluding personal companionship and sexual pleasure between husband and wife, as indicated by marriages involving women past their childbearing years.
The Trojan
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
royal couple Hector
Hector
In Greek mythology, Hectōr , or Hektōr, is a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. As the first-born son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, a descendant of Dardanus, who lived under Mount Ida, and of Tros, the founder of Troy, he was a prince of the royal house and the...
and Andromache
Andromache
In Greek mythology, Andromache was the wife of Hector and daughter of Eetion, and sister to Podes. She was born and raised in the city of Cilician Thebe, over which her father ruled...
became a mythological trope
Trope (literature)
A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...
of wedded sex. Latin love elegy focuses on their sex life rather than the tragic end of their marriage with Hector's death at the hands of Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
. They were known for the "woman on top" position, with a verb suggesting that the woman "rides" the man like a horse. In general, Hector was portrayed as markedly heterosexual and an exemplary husband.
The wedding night
An epithalamium by Catullus paints the wedding night as a time of ripe eroticism, spiced with humorous and bawdy songsFescennine Verses
Fescennine Verses , one of the earliest kinds of Italian poetry, subsequently developed into satire and Roman comic drama.-History:...
from the guests. "Look inside," the poet advises the bride, who burns with an "intimate flame," "where your man lies on the richly arrayed bed, completely available to you." The husband is reminded that "good Venus" has blessed him, since he can now desire openly what he desires, and need not conceal a "good love." The couple is encouraged to enjoy themselves as they please (ludite ut lubet); the goal is to produce children soon.
A pair of paintings in a bedroom of the Casa della Farnesina has been interpreted as "a narrative of the modest bride becoming the immodest lover — perhaps fulfilling a ribald male fantasy."
Fidelity and adultery
- For the legal aspects, see Adultery in ancient Rome.
Some literary passages suggest that a newlywed might break off his outside sexual relations for a time and focus on bonding with his wife in the hope of starting a family. Some Stoics maintained that marital fidelity was as much a virtue for men as for women (see "Stoic sexual morality" above). Legally, however, a Roman husband did not commit adultery when he had sex outside marriage as long as his partner was considered sexually available; sexual misconduct (stuprum) was adultery depending on the status of a female partner. A character in a play by Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
expresses a man's sexual freedom in comic terms:
No one prohibits anyone from going down the public way (publica via); as long as you do not make a path through posted landTrespass to landTrespass to land is a common law tort that is committed when an individual or the object of an individual intentionally enters the land of another without a lawful excuse. Trespass to land is actionable per se. Thus, the party whose land is entered upon may sue even if no actual harm is done...
, as long as you hold off from brides, single women, maidens, the youth and free boys, love whatever you want.
A married or marriageable woman and young male citizens are off-limits, just as if they were the property of someone else, and in fact adultery as a crime was committed contrary to the rights of the paterfamilias to control his household. For a man, adultery was a sexual offense committed with a woman who was neither his wife nor a permissible partner such as a prostitute
Prostitution in ancient Rome
Prostitution in ancient Rome reflects the ambivalent attitudes of Romans toward pleasure and sexuality. Prostitution was legal and licensed. Some large brothels in the 4th century, when Rome was becoming officially Christianized, seem to have been counted as tourist attractions and were possibly...
or slave
Slavery in ancient Rome
The institution of slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the Roman economy. Besides manual labor on farms and in mines, slaves performed many domestic services and a variety of other tasks, such as accounting...
, in effect when his female partner was another man's wife or his unmarried daughter. The later jurists emphasize that adulterium in the strict sense was committed with a married woman.
For a married woman, no infidelity was acceptable, and first-time brides were expected to be virgins. According to Cato
Cato the Elder
Marcus Porcius Cato was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Censorius , Sapiens , Priscus , or Major, Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor, to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger.He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some...
(2nd century BC), a husband had an ancient right (ius
Ius
Ius or Jus etymologically means "that which is binding" and comes from the same root as iungere, "to join." In ancient Rome it was used primarily to mean a right to which a citizen was entitled by virtue of his citizenship...
) to kill his wife if he caught her in the act of adultery, but if this "right" existed, it was a matter of custom and not statute law. In the Republic, adultery was normally considered a private matter for families to deal with, not a serious criminal offense requiring the attention of the courts. No source records the justified killing of a woman for adultery by either a father or husband during the Republican era, though adultery was grounds for divorce.
Following the collapse of the Republic
Crisis of the Roman Republic
The Crisis of the Roman Republic refers to an extended period of political instability and social unrest that culminated in the demise of the Roman Republic and the advent of the Roman Empire, from about 134 BC to 44 BC....
, moral legislation became part of the new political order under Rome's first emperor, Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
. Laws pertaining to adultery passed in 18 BC were part of his program to restore the mos maiorum
Mos maiorum
The mos maiorum is the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms. It is the core concept of Roman traditionalism, distinguished from but in dynamic complement to written law. The mos maiorum The mos maiorum ("ancestral custom") is the unwritten code from which the...
, traditional social norms, while consolidating his political authority and codifying a more rigid social hierarchy
Social class in ancient Rome
Social class in ancient Rome was hierarchical, but there were multiple and overlapping social hierarchies. The status of free-born Romans was established by:* ancestry ;...
in the wake of the recent civil wars
Roman civil wars
There were several Roman civil wars, especially during the late Republic. The most famous of these are the war in the 40s BC between Julius Caesar and the optimate faction of the senatorial elite initially led by Pompey and the subsequent war between Caesar's successors, Octavian and Mark Antony in...
. The appeal to old-fashioned values cloaked the radical overthrow of the Republic's participatory political institutions by top-down, one-man rule. The Lex Iulia de adulteriis ("Julian Law concerning acts of adultery") was directed at punishing married women who engaged in extra-marital affairs. Scholars have often assumed that the Lex Iulia was meant to address a virulent outbreak of adultery in the Late Republic. An androcentric perspective in the early 20th century held that the Lex Iulia had been "a very necessary check upon the growing independence and recklessness of women." A more sympathetic view in the late 20th to early 21st century saw love affairs as a way for the intelligent, independent women of the elite to form emotionally meaningful relationships outside marriages arranged for political purposes. It is possible, however, that no such epidemic of adultery even existed; the law should perhaps be understood not as addressing a real problem that threatened society, but as one of the instruments of social control exercised by Augustus that cast the state, and by extension himself, in the role of paterfamilias to all Rome.
Personal anxieties about infidelity, within marriage or not, are reflected in magic spells intended to "fix" (defixiones) or bind the other person's erotic attachment. Spells were also available for interrogating the beloved about any fidelity. One magical papyrus
Greek magical papyri
The Greek Magical Papyri is the name given by scholars to a body of papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, which each contain a number of magical spells, formulae, hymns and rituals. The materials in the papyri date from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD...
from Roman Egypt recommends placing the heart of a hoopoe on a sleeping woman's genitals to induce truthful answers; another says that the tongue of a hen placed on her lips or breast will cause her to reveal the name of the man she loves.
Literature of the Late Republic and Principate
Principate
The Principate is the first period of the Roman Empire, extending from the beginning of the reign of Caesar Augustus to the Crisis of the Third Century, after which it was replaced with the Dominate. The Principate is characterized by a concerted effort on the part of the Emperors to preserve the...
, particularly the satires of Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
and Juvenal
Juvenal
The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a...
, offer various depictions, or perhaps fantasies, of how a wronged husband might subject his wife's lover to humiliation and punishment. In these literary treatments, the adulterer is castrated, beaten, raped by the husband himself or his slaves, or penetrated anally with a mullet
Red mullet
The red mullets or surmullets are two species of goatfish, Mullus barbatus and Mullus surmuletus, found in the Mediterranean Sea, east North Atlantic Ocean, and the Black Sea. Both "red mullet" and "surmullet" can also refer to the Mullidae in general.Though they can easily be distinguished—M...
, a type of prized fish cultivated by elite Romans as a leisure activity (otium). References to such acts do not appear in the letters of Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
nor the histories of Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
, and may be fictional exaggerations. Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
makes fun of the jealous husband as lacking in sophistication: "The man who's excessively wounded by his wife's adulterous affairs is a hick." Ovid's predecessor Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
wrote poetry celebrating his adulterous affair with "Lesbia," his social superior
Social class in ancient Rome
Social class in ancient Rome was hierarchical, but there were multiple and overlapping social hierarchies. The status of free-born Romans was established by:* ancestry ;...
, traditionally identified as Clodia Metelli. The cultivation of a laissez-faire attitude as a sign of urbanity may have prompted the provision of Augustus's adultery law that required a husband to divorce his wife and bring formal legal charges against her, or face charges himself for pimping
Procuring (prostitution)
Procuring or pandering is the facilitation or provision of a prostitute in the arrangement of a sex act with a customer. Examples of procuring include:*trafficking a prostitute into a country for the purpose of soliciting sex...
(lenocinium).
Master-slave relations
Sexuality was a "core feature" of ancient Roman slavery. Because slaves were regarded as property under Roman lawRoman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
, an owner could use them for sex or hire them out to service other people. The letters of Cicero have suggested to some scholars that he had a long-term homosexual relationship with his slave Tiro. As Eva Cantarella
Eva Cantarella
Eva Cantarella is a leading Italian classicist noted for examining ancient law by relating it to modern legal issues through law and society perspective...
stated bluntly, "the Roman paterfamilias was an absolute master, … he exercised a power outside any control of society and the state. In this situation why on earth should he refrain from sodomising
Sodomy
Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
his houseboys?" But this form of sexual release thus held little erotic cachet: to use one's own slaves was "one step up from masturbation." In describing the ideal partner in pederasty, Martial prefers a slave boy who "acts more like a free man than his master," that is, one who can frame the affair as a stimulating game of courtship. When figures identifiable as slaves appear in erotic art, they are performing routine tasks in the background, not taking part in sex acts. In his work on the interpretation of dreams
Oneirocritica
Oneirocritica is an ancient Greek treatise on dream interpretation written by Artemidorus in the 2nd century AD, and is the first extant Greek work on the subject, in five books...
(ca. 170 AD), Artemidorus
Artemidorus
Artemidorus Daldianus or Ephesius was a professional diviner who lived in the 2nd century. He is known from an extant five-volume Greek work the Oneirocritica, .-Life and work:...
takes a symbolic view of the sexual value of slaves: to dream of having sex with one's own female slave was a good thing, "for slaves are the dreamer's possession; therefore taking pleasure in them signifies the dreamer's being pleased with his own possessions."
A Roman could exploit his own slaves for sex, but was not entitled to compel any enslaved person he chose to have sex, since the owner had the right to control his own property. In the pursuit of sex with a slave who belonged to someone else, persuasion or threats might be employed. A charge of rape could not be brought against a free man who forced a slave to have sex, since a slave lacked the legal standing that protected a citizen's body, but the owner could prosecute the rapist under the Lex Aquilia
Lex Aquilia
The lex Aquilia was a Roman law which provided compensation to the owners of property injured by someone's fault.- The provisions of the Lex Aquilia :...
, a law pertaining to property damage.
A slave's sexuality was closely controlled. Slaves had no right to legal marriage (conubium), though they could live together as husband and wife (contubernales). An owner usually restricted the heterosexual activities of his male slaves to females he also owned; any children born from these unions added to his wealth. Cato
Cato the Elder
Marcus Porcius Cato was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Censorius , Sapiens , Priscus , or Major, Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor, to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger.He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some...
, at a time when Rome's large-scale slave economy was still in early development, thought it good practice to monitor his slaves' sex lives, and required male slaves to pay a fee for access to their fellow female slaves.
If an owner found that his male slave was having a sexual relationship with a free woman, by law he had to warn the couple three times to break it off; if the affair continued, he had the right to take ownership of the woman. References to women from respectable families having sex with a male slave are infrequent, indicating that male writers were not preoccupied with the risk of it. Cicero offers no examples in either the gossipy parts of his letters or in court cases where he attacks the reputation of a woman: he accuses Clodia of incest and of running her house like a brothel, but not of sleeping with slaves. Not even Messalina
Messalina
Valeria Messalina, sometimes spelled Messallina, was a Roman empress as the third wife of the Emperor Claudius. She was also a paternal cousin of the Emperor Nero, second cousin of the Emperor Caligula, and great-grandniece of the Emperor Augustus...
or Sallust
Sallust
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, generally known simply as Sallust , a Roman historian, belonged to a well-known plebeian family, and was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines...
's Sempronia is accused in the hostile sources of having sex with a slave.
Despite the external controls and restrictions placed on a slave's sexuality, Roman art and literature perversely often portray slaves as lascivious, voyeuristic, and even sexually knowing. One of the themes of Roman comedy that distinguishes it from its Greek models is the depiction of master-slave relations.
Freeborn Romans who fell into slavery were supposed to be protected from sexual exploitation, as indicated by two different stories recorded by ancient historians. Before the abolition of debt bondage
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
in the 4th century BC, free Romans were sometimes driven to sell themselves or their children into slavery when they were overwhelmed by debt. According to Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
, debt slavery (nexum
Nexum
Nexum was a debt bondage contract in the early Roman Republic. The debtor pledged his person as collateral should he default on his loan. Nexum was abolished by the Lex Poetelia Papiria in 326 BC.- The contract :...
) was abolished as a direct result of the attempted sexual abuse of a freeborn youth who served as surety for his father's debt with the usurer Lucius Papirius. The boy, Gaius Publilius, was notably beautiful, and Papirius insisted that as a bond slave he was required to provide sexual services. When Publilius refused, Papirius had him stripped and whipped. The youth then took to the streets to display his injuries, and an outcry among the people led the consuls
Roman consul
A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...
to convene the senate
Roman Senate
The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
. The political process eventually led to the Lex Poetelia Papiria
Lex Poetelia Papiria
The Lex Poetelia Papiria was a law passed in Ancient Rome that abolished the contractual form of Nexum, or debt bondage. Livy dates the law in 326 BC, during the third consulship of Gaius Poetelius Libo Visolus, whereas...
, which prohibited holding debtors in bondage for their debt and required instead that the debtor’s property be used as collateral. The law thus established that the integrity of a Roman citizen's body was fundamental to the concept of libertas, political liberty, in contrast to the uses to which a slave's body was subject. In this and a similar incident reported by Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius .-Biography:...
, corporal punishment and sexual abuse are seen as similar violations of the citizen's freedom from physical compulsion, in contrast to the slave's physical vulnerability.
Some sexual protections could be extended to slaves. The conduct of slaves reflected generally on the respectability of the household, and the materfamilias in particular was judged by her female slaves' sexual behavior, which was expected to be moral or at least discreet. This decorum may have limited the exploitation of female slaves that were part of the familia. Seneca
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
expressed Stoic indignation that a male slave should be groomed effeminately and used sexually, because a slave's human dignity should not be debased. The burgeoning trade in eunuch slaves during the early Empire prompted legislation under the emperor Hadrian
Hadrian
Hadrian , was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138. He is best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome, he re-built the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma. In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and was philhellene in...
that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will "for lust or gain." Legal agreements on the sale of a slave might include a ne serva prostituatur covenant that prohibited the employment of the slave as a prostitute. Although concern for the slave's welfare may have been a factor in individual cases, this legal restriction seems also to have been intended to shield the male citizen owner from the shame or infamia associated with pimping and prostitution. The ne serva covenant remained in force for subsequent sales, even if the buyer was initially unaware of it, and if it was violated, the illegally prostituted slave was granted freedom.
Prostitution
Prostitution was legal throughout the Roman Empire in all periods. Most prostitutes were slaves or freedwomenSlavery in ancient Rome
The institution of slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the Roman economy. Besides manual labor on farms and in mines, slaves performed many domestic services and a variety of other tasks, such as accounting...
. Prostitutes in Rome had to register with the aedile
Aedile
Aedile was an office of the Roman Republic. Based in Rome, the aediles were responsible for maintenance of public buildings and regulation of public festivals. They also had powers to enforce public order. There were two pairs of aediles. Two aediles were from the ranks of plebeians and the other...
s. Despite what might seem to be a clear distinction as a matter of law, the jurist Ulpian
Ulpian
Gnaeus Domitius Annius Ulpianus , anglicized as Ulpian, was a Roman jurist of Tyrian ancestry.-Biography:The exact time and place of his birth are unknown, but the period of his literary activity was between AD 211 and 222...
opined that an openly promiscuous woman brought the status of prostitute upon herself, even if she accepted no money. The Augustan moral legislation that criminalized adultery exempted prostitutes, who could legally have sex with a married man. Encouraged to think of adultery as a matter of law rather than morality, a few socially prominent women even chose to avoid prosecution for adultery by registering themselves as prostitutes.
Confused status frequently results in plot complications in the comedies of Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
and Terence
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on,...
. Obstacles to love arise when a young man falls in love with, and wishes to marry, a non-citizen prostitute, and are overcome when the young woman's true status as a freeborn virgin is revealed. The well-brought-up freeborn virgin is marriageable, and the non-citizen prostitute is not. The relation of these comic situations to real life is problematic: Plautus and Terence drew on Greek models which are often little known, and so the extent to which they incorporated Roman social behaviors and attitudes is hard to determine. Elaine Fantham
Elaine Fantham
Elaine Fantham is a British classicist. She was Giger Professor of Latin at Princeton University from 1986 to 1999. She was chair of the Department of Classics at Princeton from 1989 to 1992 and the president of the American Philological Association for 2004....
has observed that prolonged military campaigning in Greece and Asia Minor had introduced Roman men to a more sophisticated standard of luxury and pleasure, perhaps reflected by comedy: the young man acts out his infatuation with an expensive courtesan instead of a family slave or common prostitute.
Prostitutes appear in erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum
Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum
Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum was discovered in the ancient cities around the bay of Naples after extensive excavations began in the 18th century. The city was found to be full of erotic art and frescoes, symbols, and inscriptions regarded by its excavators as pornographic. Even many...
, including wall paintings from buildings identified as brothels, in which they are often nude except for a strapless bra (strophium). The paintings illustrate various sexual positions that contradict some scholarly claims about the preferences of Roman men in heterosexual acts. Literary sources record that prostitutes wore distinctive clothing, often gaudy dresses of see-through silk. They were the only Roman women who wore the toga
Toga
The toga, a distinctive garment of Ancient Rome, was a cloth of perhaps 20 ft in length which was wrapped around the body and was generally worn over a tunic. The toga was made of wool, and the tunic under it often was made of linen. After the 2nd century BC, the toga was a garment worn...
, the distinctive dress of a free Roman male. This crossing of gender boundaries has been interpreted variously.
Pleasure and infamy
Prostitutes were among those persons in Rome categorized as infames, enjoying few legal protections even if they were technically not slaves. InfamiaInfamia
In ancient Roman culture, infamia was a loss of legal or social standing. As a technical term of Roman law, infamia was an official exclusion from the legal protections enjoyed by a Roman citizen, as imposed by a censor or praetor...
as a legal status once entered into could not be escaped: a prostitute was "not only a woman who practices prostitution, but also one who has formerly done so, even though she has ceased to act in this manner; for the disgrace is not removed even if the practice is subsequently discontinued."
In the Roman moral tradition, pleasure (voluptas) was a dubious pursuit. The Stoic moralist Seneca contrasts pleasure with virtue (virtus):
Virtue you will find in the templeRoman templeAncient Roman temples are among the most visible archaeological remains of Roman culture, and are a significant source for Roman architecture. Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion. The main room housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was...
, in the forumForum (Roman)A forum was a public square in a Roman municipium, or any civitas, reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls...
, in the senate houseRoman SenateThe Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
, standing before the city walls, dusty and sunburnt, her hands rough; pleasure you will most often find lurking around the baths and sweating roomsThermaeIn ancient Rome, thermae and balnea were facilities for bathing...
, and places that fear the policeAedileAedile was an office of the Roman Republic. Based in Rome, the aediles were responsible for maintenance of public buildings and regulation of public festivals. They also had powers to enforce public order. There were two pairs of aediles. Two aediles were from the ranks of plebeians and the other...
, in search of darkness, soft, effete, reeking of wine and perfume, pallid or else painted and made up with cosmetics like a corpse.
Roman ambivalence toward physical pleasure is expressed by the infamia of those whose bodies provided it publicly. In a technical sense, infamia was an official loss of legal standing for a freeborn person as a result of misconduct, including sexual misconduct, but the word could be used for ill repute in general. Infamia was an "inescapable consequence" of certain professions, including not only prostitutes and pimps but performers such as actors
Theatre of ancient Rome
The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus's broadly appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca...
, dancers, and gladiator
Gladiator
A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the...
s: "These figures were the objects of other people's desires. They served the pleasure of others. They were tarnished by exposure to the public gaze
Gaze
Gaze is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses some sense of autonomy upon realizing that he or she is a visible object...
."
Those labeled infames (singular infamis) were liable to corporal punishment, usually reserved for slaves. Under the Republic and early Empire, one of the ways in which the citizen's liberty was defined was through the freedom of his body from physical coercion or punishment such as flogging by authorities. Citizens who chose to become public performers, however, and to use their bodies to offer public pleasure, were excluded from these physical protections, and could be beaten or otherwise subjected to violence. Any free man who became a gladiator took an oath to suffer branding, bondage, and beating, as well as potential death by the sword. Both glamorized and despised, the gladiator was supposed to exert a compelling sexual allure over women.
Actors were sexually ambiguous, in part because they could imitate women, and were attractive to both men and women. The dictator
Roman dictator
In the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...
Sulla had a long-term affair with an actor; Maecenas, the arts patron and advisor to Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
, was in love with an actor named Bathyllus
Bathyllus
Bathyllus was a dancer/performer of pantomimus in Rome during the period of Augustus. Born in Alexandria, he was the favourite comedic performer of Maecenas....
; and women of the Imperial family are alleged to have had affairs with actors. Actresses were assumed to be prostitutes.
A man who enjoyed receiving anal sex or providing oral sex, often characterized as a cinaedus, might also be stigmatized as infamis, though if he was a citizen he could retain his legal standing.
Private sex clubs
Archaeological evidence, primarily from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and literary sources seem to indicate the existence of private "sex clubs" in some Roman homes (domūsDomus
In ancient Rome, the domus was the type of house occupied by the upper classes and some wealthy freedmen during the Republican and Imperial eras. They could be found in almost all the major cities throughout the Roman territories...
). Most Romans lived in apartments (insulae
Insulae
In Roman architecture, an insula was a kind of apartment building that housed most of the urban citizen population of ancient Rome, including ordinary people of lower- or middle-class status and all but the wealthiest from the upper-middle class...
); the domus was a large, independent dwelling owned by a family of considerable means, and in Rome was central to the family's social identity. A few of these residences have rooms decorated with pornographic art not differing from that found in identified brothels; in some cases, an erotically decorated room has its own exterior door to admit visitors who would normally enter the home through the main doors leading to the atrium, where the family displayed ancestral images and other trophies of respectability.
It has been suggested that these rooms were meant to evoke the ambience of a brothel for the hosting of exclusive sex parties, such as the one described by the historian Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius .-Biography:...
as occurring in 52 BC with a consul
Roman consul
A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...
and the tribunes of the plebs
Tribune
Tribune was a title shared by elected officials in the Roman Republic. Tribunes had the power to convene the Plebeian Council and to act as its president, which also gave them the right to propose legislation before it. They were sacrosanct, in the sense that any assault on their person was...
in attendance:
Just as notorious was that party arranged for Metellus Scipio when he was consul and for the people's tribunes — by Gemellus, their tribunicial errand boy. He was a free man by birth, but twisted by his business to play the servant's role. Society gave a collective blush: he established a whorehouse in his own house, and pimped out MuciaMucia (gens)The gens Mucia was an ancient and noble patrician house at Rome. The gens is first mentioned at the earliest period of the Republic, but in later times the family was known primarily by its plebeian branches.-Origin of the gens:...
and FlaviaFlaviusFlavius was a gens of ancient Rome, meaning "blond". The feminine form was Flavia.After the end of the popular Flavian dynasty of emperors, Flavius/Flavia became a praenomen, common especially among royalty: the adoption of this praenomen by Constantine I set a precedent for some imperial...
, each of them notable for her father and husband, along with the aristocratic boy Saturninus. Bodies in shameless submission, ready to come for a game of drunken sex! A banquet not for honoring consul and tribunes, but indicting them!
The existence of sex clubs may provide background for Late Republican political smears about public figures whose party guests included prostitutes, and for the notorious Imperial whorehouse Caligula
Caligula
Caligula , also known as Gaius, was Roman Emperor from 37 AD to 41 AD. Caligula was a member of the house of rulers conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Caligula's father Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius, was a very successful general and one of Rome's most...
established on the Palatine
Palatine Hill
The Palatine Hill is the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome and is one of the most ancient parts of the city...
, where he prostituted married women and freeborn youths.
Sex acts and positions
Around 90 positions for intercourse are recorded in the ancient world. Both Roman erotic art and Latin literature, most famously a passage from Ovid's Art of LoveArs Amatoria
The Ars amatoria is an instructional love elegy in three books by the Roman poet Ovid, penned around 2 CE. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.-Background:After...
, depict various forms of copulation (concubitus varii) and sexual positions (figurae veneris). The Latin terms are Ovid's, from his description of how the most aristocratic households displayed erotic paintings among their art collections. According to Suetonius
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....
, the emperor Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...
had a vast collection of sex manuals and erotic art, including a painting of the mythological huntress Atalanta
Atalanta
Atalanta is a character in Greek mythology.-Legend:Atalanta was the daughter of Iasus , a Boeotian or an Arcadian princess . She is often described as a goddess. Apollodorus is the only one who gives an account of Atalanta’s birth and upbringing...
performing oral sex on Meleager
Meleager
In Greek mythology, Meleager was a hero venerated in his temenos at Calydon in Aetolia. He was already famed as the host of the Calydonian boar hunt in the epic tradition that was reworked by Homer....
, a work that he regarded as worth more than a million sesterces. Sexual variety fascinated Romans. Astrology was thought to influence one's preferences and pursuits: people born when the sun, moon, and planets were in certain astrological sign
Astrological sign
Astrological signs represent twelve equal segments or divisions of the zodiac. According to astrology, celestial phenomena reflect or govern human activity on the principle of "as above, so below", so that the twelve signs are held to represent twelve basic personality types or characteristic modes...
s were supposed to be inclined toward secret vice or "unnatural" forms of intercourse, or to becoming pathici.
Lucretius observes that prostitutes employ certain movements aimed at giving their customers pleasure and at avoiding pregnancy. His point is that sex acts may have different goals. Wives wishing to conceive are therefore advised against vigorous movement during intercourse, since such movements "knock the ploughshare from the furrow and misdirect the sowing of the seed." Lucretius recommends "doggy style
Doggy style
Doggy style is a group of sex positions in which the receiving partner crouches on all fours with the legs slightly apart...
" (a tergo) for couples trying to conceive, because it mimics the natural procreative sex of animals.
Male-female sex
The basic obscene verb for a man having sex with a woman is futuo, "I fuckFuck
"Fuck" is an English word that is generally considered obscene which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. By extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed."Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb,...
." Although not found in polite literature, futuo was not necessarily insulting or aggressive; it was used transactionally for sex between a prostitute and her client, and in a passionate or loving setting may have been spoken as an arousing intimacy. A fragment from a play by Plautus suggests that acquiring an erotic vocabulary was part of a woman's introduction to sexuality within marriage: a virgin explains that she has not yet learned the words suitable for the wedding night (nupta verba). The easy use of the word by a woman in other settings indicates her independence of social norms; "either fuck me or let's fight it out," the formidable Fulvia
Fulvia
Fulvia Flacca Bambula , commonly referred to as simply Fulvia, was an aristocratic Roman woman who lived during the Late Roman Republic. Through her marriage to three of the most promising Roman men of her generation, Publius Clodius Pulcher, Gaius Scribonius Curio and Mark Antony, she gained...
is quoted as challenging the future Augustus. In graffiti at Pompeii written by both men and women, forms of the word are used to announce prowess, satisfaction, or availability.
Thomas Habinek has argued that "Ovid invents the category of the heterosexual male," since it was considered normal for a Roman man to have same-sex relations. Ovid radically rejects the Roman tradition of pederasty, and says he takes more pleasure (voluptas) in making love with a woman as his equal. Sexual pleasure, he emphasizes, should be mutual, and he advises men not to conclude the sex act without enabling their female partner to achieve orgasm
Orgasm
Orgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
. In one passage, he seems to be recommending simultaneous orgasm:
But don't you fail your lady, hoisting bigger sails, and don't let her get ahead of you on the track either; race to the finish together: that's when pleasure is full, when man and woman lie there, equally vanquished.
Mulier equitans
"Riding" is a common metaphor for the sex act, particularly used of the woman-on-top position. The mulier equitans ("woman riding") does not appear in Greek vase paintingPottery of Ancient Greece
As the result of its relative durability, pottery is a large part of the archaeological record of Ancient Greece, and because there is so much of it it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society...
but is popular in Roman art. Ovid recommends it for the petite woman, as a tall woman may not wish to seem too towering in relation to the man. It was supposedly favored by the mythological couple Hector and Andromache, even though she was of legendary height, and was jokingly called "the Hector horse." One relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
from Roman Gaul
Roman Gaul
Roman Gaul consisted of an area of provincial rule in the Roman Empire, in modern day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and western Germany. Roman control of the area lasted for less than 500 years....
showing the mulier equitans plays on the metaphor by picturing a galloping horse within a frame in the background (see first image in gallery below).
In art, the mulier equitans convention has the woman posed frontally to expose her body in full to the viewer, often emphasizing her depilated pubic area. The significance of this position in Roman culture has been interpreted variously. Kenneth Dover
Kenneth Dover
Sir Kenneth James Dover, FRSE, FBA was a distinguished British Classical scholar and academic, who was head of an Oxford college and from 1981 until his retirement in December 2005 was Chancellor of the University of St Andrews....
thought it might represent the relative sexual emancipation of Roman women. From a woman's perspective, the position would grant an independence of movement for her own pleasure. Paul Veyne
Paul Veyne
Paul Veyne, born 13 June 1930 in Aix-en-Provence, is a French archaeologist and historian, and a specialist on Ancient Rome. A former student of the École normale supérieure and member of the École française de Rome, he is now honorary professor at the Collège de France.-Biography:From an ordinary...
, however, thought it emphasized that the woman had to do the work of servicing the man, who lies there and receives pleasure without effort. The position may have been favored for art because it pleased both male and female viewers: for men, it offered an unobstructed view of the woman's body, as recommended by Ovid, and of the penis entering the vagina; women saw the visually dominant female figure playing the active role.
The position is also called Venus pendula conversa, "perpendicular Venus with the woman facing toward (the man)"; for its reverse (Venus pendula aversa, "perpendicular Venus with the woman facing away"), the man lies down with the woman on top, but she turns her back and faces his feet. This version is rarely mentioned or depicted, but is found in Roman art set in Nilotic Egypt.
An equestrian metaphor is also found for the cinaedus "riding" on top in anal sex, and at least once of lesbians who "take turns riding and move with the Moon as witness."
Anal sex
The Latin verb for "to penetrate anally, buggerAnal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
" is pedicare. The object was usually but not always male. Pedicare was a blunt and non-euphemistic word, and can be used in a threatening manner, as notoriously by Catullus in Carmen 16
Catullus 16
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo is the first line, sometimes used as a title, of Carmen 16 in the collected poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus . The poem, written in a hendecasyllabic meter, was considered so explicit that a full English translation was not openly published until the late twentieth...
, or in general to mean "fuck you." The etymology of pedicare is unclear, but some have thought it derived from Greek paidika, having to do with pederasty. The basic word for "anus" was culus. Common metaphors are ficus, "fig," and anus, "ring," which was considered a decorous term and was standard in medical texts.
Men were said to "take it like a woman" (muliebria pati, "to undergo womanly things") when they were anally penetrated, but when a man performed anal sex on a woman, she was thought of as playing the boy's role. Martial, for instance, is emphatic that anal sex is better with boys than with women; when his wife objects that she provides him with anal sex in an effort to preserve his fidelity, he taunts her with the inferiority of her anus compared to a boy's.
The figura veneris in which the woman crouches to lift her buttocks, called "the lioness," may be intended for anal penetration, since boys in Greek art can be portrayed in the same position; with a female partner, it may be difficult to distinguish in art from a tergo (rear entry). Culibonia ("good anal") was a humorous term for a prostitute with this speciality. Avoiding pregnancy may have been one motive for female prostitutes to offer anal intercourse, since literary sources indicate that boys were preferred.
Os impurum
Os impurum, "filthy mouth" or "impure mouth", was a term of abuse especially for those who provided oral sexOral sex
Oral sex is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a sex partner by the use of the mouth, tongue, teeth or throat. Cunnilingus refers to oral sex performed on females while fellatio refer to oral sex performed on males. Anilingus refers to oral stimulation of a person's anus...
. "Oral turpitude" was a favorite form of invective
Invective
Invective , from Middle English "invectif", or Old French and Late Latin "invectus", is an abusive, reproachful or venomous language used to express blame or censure; also, a rude expression or discourse intended to offend or hurt. Vituperation, or deeply-seated ill will, vitriol...
for Catullus, Horace, and Martial. An accusation of having an os impurum is an "extreme obscenity," so vile that Cicero reserved it for men of lower standing than himself, only implying that their debasement tainted their more powerful patrons
Patronage in ancient Rome
Patronage was the distinctive relationship in ancient Roman society between the patronus and his client . The relationship was hierarchical, but obligations were mutual. The patronus was the protector, sponsor, and benefactor of the client...
who were his real targets.
It was a convention of obscenely comic verse that oral sex caused bad breath that was nearly toxic. "Whores of the alleyways" are contaminated from giving oral sex; Catullus refers to "the foul saliva of a pissed-over whore." The urinary function of the penis makes oral sex particulary repulsive to Catullus, who elsewhere reviles a Celtiberian
Celtiberians
The Celtiberians were Celtic-speaking people of the Iberian Peninsula in the final centuries BC. The group used the Celtic Celtiberian language.Archaeologically, the Celtiberians participated in the Hallstatt culture in what is now north-central Spain...
for brushing his teeth in piss. Martial jokes that a fine perfume turned to garum
Garum
Garum, similar to liquamen, was a type of fermented fish sauce condiment that was an essential flavour in Ancient Roman cooking, the supreme condiment....
, fish sauce
Fish sauce
Fish sauce is a condiment that is derived from fish that have been allowed to ferment. It is an essential ingredient in many curries and sauces. Fish sauce is a staple ingredient in numerous cultures in Southeast Asia and the coastal regions of East Asia, and features heavily in Thai and Vietnamese...
, when it was sniffed by a man whose breath was putrid from oral sex. In another of Martial's epigrams, a fellator breathes on a hot cake to cool it down and turns it to excrement. The bad breath and rotten teeth that are attributed to performing oral sex represent moral decay and a general corruption of the mouth's positive functions as the organ of a citizen's persuasive speech.
Cunnilingus and fellatio
Because of the stigma attached to providing physical pleasure, a man who performed oral sex on a woman was subject to mockery. CunnilingusCunnilingus
Cunnilingus is an oral sex act performed on a female. It involves the use by a sex partner of the mouth, lips and tongue to stimulate the female's clitoris, vulva, or vagina...
typically appears in Roman art only as part of a reciprocal act, with the woman fellating
Fellatio
Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...
her male partner in some variation of the "69" position. A wall painting from Pompeii, however, represents a virtually unique role reversal in the giving of oral sex. The woman who receives cunnilingus is tall and shapely, well-groomed, and brazenly nude except for jewelry. The male figure is relatively small, crouching subserviently, and fully clothed; he has an anxious or furtive look. The situation is so extreme that it was probably meant to be humorous as well as titillating; other paintings in this group show a series of sex acts, at least some of which could be seen as transgressive or parodic
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
.
There is some evidence that women could hire male prostitutes to provide cunnilingus. Graffiti at Pompeii advertises the prices male prostitutes charged for cunnilingus, in the same price range as females performing fellatio; however, the graffiti could be intended as insults to the men named, and not as actual advertisements. One graffito is perhaps intended as political invective: "Vote Isidore for aedile
Aedile
Aedile was an office of the Roman Republic. Based in Rome, the aediles were responsible for maintenance of public buildings and regulation of public festivals. They also had powers to enforce public order. There were two pairs of aediles. Two aediles were from the ranks of plebeians and the other...
; he's the best at licking cunt!"
The Latin verb fellare is usually used for a woman performing oral sex on a man. Accusing a man of fellating another man was possibly the worst insult in all Roman invective. It was an act that might be requested from women who were infames, and not something a husband in a respectable household would have expected from his wife. Fellatio was seen as a "somewhat laughable" preference for older men who have trouble maintaining an erection, but graffiti show that the skills of a good fellatrix were enthusiastically utilized. Fellatio was a fairly uncommon subject in Roman art.
Irrumatio
Irrumatio is a forced form of fellatio, almost always against another man. Forcing someone to receive oral sex was proof of virility, something to boast about, as indicated by the PriapeiaPriapeia
The Priapeia is a collection of ninety-five poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. It was compiled from literary works and inscriptions on images of the god by an unknown editor, who composed the introductory epigram. From their style and versification it is...
and the poems of Catullus and Martial. It was also threatened as a punishment, particularly for adulterers. Martial urges a wronged husband who has already cut off the adulterous man's ears and nose to complete the humiliation by befouling his mouth with oral rape.
Group sex
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....
says that the emperor Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...
enjoyed watching group sex, and described "chains" arranged of girls and boys:
In his retreat at Capri, he put together a bedroom that was the theater of his secret debauches. There he assembled from all over companies of male and female prostitutes, and inventors of monstrous couplings (which he called spintriae), so that, intertwining themselves and forming a triple chain (triplici serie connexi), they mutually prostituted themselves in front of him to fire up his flagging desires.
Most threesomes depict two men penetrating a woman. A medallion from Roman Gaul
Gallo-Roman culture
The term Gallo-Roman describes the Romanized culture of Gaul under the rule of the Roman Empire. This was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman mores and way of life in a uniquely Gaulish context...
shows two men reclining on a bed, one on the right and one on the left, with their legs extended under a woman between them. Another shows a woman "riding" a man who reclines, while a man standing behind her parts her legs to enter. A far less common variation has one man entering a woman from the rear while he in turn receives anal sex from a man standing behind him, a scenario found in Catullus, Carmen 56 as well as art. Catullus makes it clear that this concatenation was considered humorous, possibly because the man in the center could be a cinaedus, a male who liked to receive anal sex but who was also considered seductive to women.
Foursomes also appear in Roman art, typically with two women and two men, sometimes in same-sex pairings. One example of a foursome from the Suburban Baths at Pompeii demonstrates what Romans saw as the superior role. A woman on the far right kneels beside a bed to perform cunnilingus on a woman lying on it; this woman in turn fellates a man who kneels above her. The man is himself receiving anal sex from a fourth figure, who is represented as the "victor": he acts only to fulfill his own sexual gratification without providing it to others, and looks directly at the viewer with a triumphant wave of the hand.
A Latin epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
by the Gallo-Roman
Gallo-Roman culture
The term Gallo-Roman describes the Romanized culture of Gaul under the rule of the Roman Empire. This was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman mores and way of life in a uniquely Gaulish context...
poet Ausonius
Ausonius
Decimius Magnus Ausonius was a Latin poet and rhetorician, born at Burdigala .-Biography:Decimius Magnus Ausonius was born in Bordeaux in ca. 310. His father was a noted physician of Greek ancestry and his mother was descended on both sides from long-established aristocratic Gallo-Roman families...
(4th century AD) is a riddle that depends on familiarity with the configurations of group sex:
"Three men in bed together: two are committing debauchery (stuprum), two are being debauched."
"Doesn't that make four men?"
"You're mistaken: the man on either end each counts as a single offense, but the one in the middle both acts and is acted on."
Masturbation
MasturbationMasturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
is little noted in the sources for Roman sexuality. Martial
Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...
has a few mentions in his poems, but considers it an inferior form of sexual release resorted to by slaves, though he admits to masturbating when a beautiful slave-boy is too expensive to obtain: "my hand relieved me as a subsitute for Ganymede
Ganymede (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Ganymede is a divine hero whose homeland was Troy. Homer describes Ganymede as the most beautiful of mortals. In the best-known myth, he is abducted by Zeus, in the form of an eagle, to serve as cup-bearer in Olympus. Some interpretations of the myth treat it as an allegory of...
."
Masturbation was a longstanding if infrequent theme in Latin satire; one of the few surviving fragments of Lucilius
Gaius Lucilius
Gaius Lucilius , the earliest Roman satirist, of whose writings only fragments remain, was a Roman citizen of the equestrian class, born at Suessa Aurunca in Campania.-The Problem of his birthdate:...
, Rome's earliest satirist, jokes about a personified penis (Mutto) whose girlfriend Laeva ("Lefty") wipes away his "tears." The Romans preferred the left hand for masturbation. A graffito from Pompeii reads "when my worries oppress my body, with my left hand I release my pent up fluids."
The etymology of the Latin verb masturbari is vexed. It has been argued that it is a compound of turbare, "agitate," and mas, "male" in an otherwise unattested usage for "penis." One traditional view sees man(u)-, "hand," with an altered form of stuprare, "to defile, commit a sexual wrong against." Calvert Watkins
Calvert Watkins
Calvert Watkins is a professor Emeritus of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and professor-in-residence at UCLA.His doctoral dissertation, Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb I...
proposed that it derives from a Proto-Indo-European root
Proto-Indo-European root
The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots always have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run", as opposed to nouns , adjectives , or other parts of speech. Roots never occur alone in the language...
meaning "marrow, brain," since ancient medical writers believed that semen descended from the brain through the bones; if this is correct, the word turbare may still have influenced the formation in Latin.
Bestiality
The mythological traditionClassical mythology
Classical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is the cultural reception of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture.Classical mythology has provided...
is full of sexual encounters between humans and animals, especially mortal women and gods in the guise of animals. Bestiality is a particular characteristic of intercourse with Jupiter
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....
(Greek Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
), who visits Leda
Leda (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Leda was daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius, and wife of the king Tyndareus , of Sparta. Her myth gave rise to the popular motif in Renaissance and later art of Leda and the Swan...
as a swan and Europa
Europa (mythology)
In Greek mythology Europa was a Phoenician woman of high lineage, from whom the name of the continent Europe has ultimately been taken. The name Europa occurs in Hesiod's long list of daughters of primordial Oceanus and Tethys...
as a bull. The Minotaur
Minotaur
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...
is born when Pasiphaë
Pasiphaë
In Greek mythology, Pasiphaë , "wide-shining" was the daughter of Helios, the Sun, by the eldest of the Oceanids, Perse; Like her doublet Europa, her origins were in the East, in her case at Colchis, the palace of the Sun; she was given in marriage to King Minos of Crete. With Minos, she was the...
feels such sexual attraction for a bull that she has herself disguised as a cow to mate with him. Satyr
Satyr
In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus — "satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains. In myths they are often associated with pipe-playing....
s, known for their sexual voracity, are often pictured with bestial features.
Mock bestiality is recorded as a form of sexual roleplay in Imperial Rome. Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
is supposed to have enjoyed a form of bondage
Bondage (sexual)
Bondage is the use of restraints for the sexual pleasure of the parties involved. It may be used in its own right, as in the case of rope bondage and breast bondage, or as part of sexual activity or BDSM activity.- Private bondage :...
with either male or female partners in which he dressed in animal skins to attack their genitals, just as condemned prisoners were bound and attacked by wild animals in the arena (see Damnatio ad bestias
Damnatio ad bestias
Damnatio ad bestias was a form of capital punishment in which the condemned were maimed on the circus arena or thrown to a cage with animals, usually lions. It was brought to ancient Rome around the 2nd century BC from Asia, where a similar penalty existed from at least the 6th century BC...
). The historian Dio tells of how a prostitute pretended to be a leopard for the gratification of a senator. The actor Bathyllus
Bathyllus
Bathyllus was a dancer/performer of pantomimus in Rome during the period of Augustus. Born in Alexandria, he was the favourite comedic performer of Maecenas....
was known for an erotic dance in which he dressed as Leda having sex with the swan; the women watching were variously aroused. Bestiality is also a theme of Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
' novel Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass
The Golden Ass
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....
), in which the protagonist, transformed into an ass, is desired by a wealthy noble matron, just as Pasiphaë desired the bull.
There is some indication that violent sexual encounters, like other mythological scenarios, were acted out as punitive entertainments in the arena. The poet Martial
Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...
praises a scenario for its fidelity to the Pasiphaë myth. The logistics of staging a sex act between a woman and a bull is a matter of speculation; if "Pasiphaë" were a condemned criminal to be tortured and killed, the animal may have been induced by the application of "vaginal secretion from a cow in season
Estrous cycle
The estrous cycle comprises the recurring physiologic changes that are induced by reproductive hormones in most mammalian placental females. Estrous cycles start after puberty in sexually mature females and are interrupted by anestrous phases or pregnancies...
." In Apuleius's novel, a female poisoner
Venefica sorceress
A Venefica was a Roman sorceress who used drugs, potions, and poison for several reasons. Venefica means "a female who poisons" in Latin. The word appears in one of Sir Francis Bacon's Essays,"Of Friendship" in the following lines:...
condemned ad bestias is scheduled to appear in the arena for intercourse with the protagonist in his bestial form.
Hermaphroditism and androgyny
In his chapter on anthropology and human physiology in the encyclopedic Natural History, Pliny notes that "there are even those who are born of both sexes, whom we call hermaphroditeHermaphrodite
In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...
s, at one time androgyni" (andr-, "man," and gyn-, "woman," from the Greek). The Sicilian historian Diodorus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
(latter 1st-century BC) wrote that "there are some who declare that the coming into being of creatures of a kind such as these are marvels (terata
Teratology
Teratology is the study of abnormalities of physiological development. It is often thought of as the study of human birth defects, but it is much broader than that, taking in other non-birth developmental stages, including puberty; and other non-human life forms, including plants.- Etymology :The...
), and being born rarely, they announce the future, sometimes for evil and sometimes for good." Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...
(ca. 560–636) described a hermaphrodite fancifully as those who "have the right breast of a man and the left of a woman, and after coitus in turn can both sire and bear children."
In contemporary English, "hermaphrodite" is used in biology but has acquired pejorative connotations in referring to people born with physical characteristics of both sexes (see intersex
Intersex
Intersex, in humans and other animals, is the presence of intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male...
); in antiquity, however, the figure of the so-called hermaphrodite was a primary focus of questions pertaining to gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
. The hermaphrodite represented a "violation of social boundaries, especially those as fundamental to daily life as male and female." In traditional Roman religion
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...
, a hermaphroditic birth was a kind of prodigium, an occurrence that signalled a disturbance of the pax deorum
Pax Deorum
Pax Deorum may refer to:*"Pax Deorum", a song from The Memory of Trees, an album by Enya*"Pax Deorum", a cover of the aforementioned song from the album Maiden of Mysteries: The Music of Enya, by the Taliesin Orchestra...
, Rome's treaty with the gods, as Diodorus indicated. Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
records an incident during the Second Punic War
Second Punic War
The Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War and The War Against Hannibal, lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. This was the second major war between Carthage and the Roman Republic, with the participation of the Berbers on...
when the discovery of a four-year-old hermaphrodite prompted an elaborate series of expiations: on the advice of the haruspices
Haruspex
In Roman and Etruscan religious practice, a haruspex was a man trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy, hepatoscopy or hepatomancy. Haruspicy is the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry...
, the child was enclosed in a chest, carried out to sea, and allowed to drown. Other rituals followed. A hermaphrodite found in 133 BC was drowned in the local river; committing the hermaphroditic person to the element of water seems to have been the prescribed way to repair the perceived violation of the natural order.
Pliny observed that while hermaphrodites were once considered portents (prodigia), in his day they had become objects of delight (deliciae); they were among the human curiosities of the sort that the wealthy might acquire at the "monsters' market" at Rome described by Plutarch. Under Roman law, a hermaphrodite had to be classed as either male or female; no third gender
Third gender
The terms third gender and third sex describe individuals who are categorized as neither man nor woman, as well as the social category present in those societies who recognize three or more genders...
existed as a legal category.
In the mythological tradition
Classical mythology
Classical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is the cultural reception of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture.Classical mythology has provided...
, Hermaphroditus
Hermaphroditus
In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus or Hermaphroditos was the child of Aphrodite and Hermes. He was a minor deity of bisexuality and effeminacy. According to Ovid, born a remarkably handsome boy, he was transformed into an androgynous being by union with the water nymph Salmacis...
was a beautiful youth who was the son of Hermes
Hermes
Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...
(Roman Mercury
Mercury (mythology)
Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces...
) and Aphrodite (Venus). Like many other divinities and heroes, he had been nursed by nymph
Nymph
A nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing;...
s, but the evidence that he himself received cult among the Greeks is sparse. Ovid wrote the most influential narrative of how Hermaphroditus became androgynous, emphasizing that although the handsome youth was on the cusp of sexual adulthood, he rejected love as Narcissus
Narcissus (mythology)
Narcissus or Narkissos , possibly derived from ναρκη meaning "sleep, numbness," in Greek mythology was a hunter from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was exceptionally proud, in that he disdained those who loved him...
had, and likewise at the site of a reflective pool. There the water nymph Salmacis
Salmacis
In Greek mythology, Salmacis was an atypical naiad who rejected the ways of the virginal Greek goddess Artemis in favour of vanity and idleness. Her attempted rape of Hermaphroditus places her as the only nymph rapist in the Greek mythological canon ."There dwelt a Nymph, not up for hunting or...
saw and desired him. He spurned her, and she pretended to withdraw until, thinking himself alone, he undressed to bathe in her waters. She then flung herself upon him, and prayed that they might never be parted. The gods granted this request, and thereafter the body of Hermaphroditus contained both male and female. As a result, men who drank from the waters of the spring Salmacis supposedly "grew soft with the vice of impudicitia," according to the lexicographer Festus
Sextus Pompeius Festus
Sextus Pompeius Festus was a Roman grammarian, who probably flourished in the later 2nd century AD, perhaps at Narbo in Gaul.He made an epitome in 20 volumes of the encyclopedic treatise in many volumes De verborum significatu, of Verrius Flaccus, a celebrated grammarian who flourished in the...
. The myth of Hylas
Hylas
In Greek mythology, Hylas was the son of King Theiodamas of the Dryopians. Roman sources such as Ovid state that Hylas' father was Hercules and his mother was the nymph Melite, or that his mother was the wife of Theiodamas, whose adulterous affair with Heracles caused the war between him and her...
, the young companion of Hercules who was abducted by water nymphs, shares with Hermaphroditus and Narcissus the theme of the dangers that face the beautiful adolescent male as he transitions to adult masculinity, with varying outcomes for each.
Depictions of Hermaphroditus were very popular among the Romans. The dramatic situation in paintings often elicits a "double take" on the part of the viewer, or expresses the theme of sexual frustration. Hermaphroditus is often in the company of a satyr
Satyr
In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus — "satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains. In myths they are often associated with pipe-playing....
, a figure of bestial sexuality known for subjecting an unsuspecting or often sleeping victim to non-consensual sex; the satyr in scenes with Hermaphroditus is usually shown to be surprised or repulsed, to humorous effect. In a few works, Hermaphroditus is strong enough to ward off his would-be attacker, but in others he shows his willingness to engage in sex, even if the satyr seems no longer inclined:
Artistic representations of Hermaphroditus bring to the fore the ambiguities in sexual differences between women and men as well as the ambiguities in all sexual acts. … Hermaphroditus gives an eternally ambiguous answer to a man's curiosity about a woman's sexual experience—and vice versa. … (A)rtists always treat Hermaphroditus in terms of the viewer finding out his/her actual sexual identity. … Hermaphroditus stands for both the physical and, more important, the psychological impossibility of ever understanding the feelings of the beloved. Hermaphroditus is a highly sophisticated representation, invading the boundaries between the sexes that seem so clear in classical thought and representation.
Macrobius describes a masculine form of "Venus" (Aphrodite) who received cult on Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
; she had a beard and male genitals, but wore women's clothing. The deity's worshippers cross-dressed, men wearing women's clothes, and women men's. The Latin poet Laevius
Laevius
Laevius was a Latin poet, of whom practically nothing is known.The earliest reference to him is perhaps in Suetonius , though it is not certain that the "Laevius Milissus" there referred to is the same person. Definite references do not occur before the 2nd century Laevius (? c. 80 BC) was a Latin...
wrote of worshipping "nurturing Venus" whether female or male (sive femina sive mas
Si deus si dea
Si deus si dea is an Archaic Latin phrase meaning "whether god or goddess", used to address a deity of unknown gender. It was also written sive deus sive dea, sei deus sei dea, or sive mas sive femina ....
). The figure was sometimes called Aphroditos. In the attitude
Attitude (art)
Attitude as a term of fine art refers to the posture or gesture given to a figure by a painter or sculptor. It applies to the body and not to a mental state, but the arrangement of the body is presumed to serve a communicative or expressive purpose...
of anasyrmene found in several surviving examples of Greek and Roman sculpture, the love goddess pulls up her garments to reveal her male genitalia, a gesture that traditionally held apotropaic or magical power.
Sexual conquest and imperialism
In 55 BC, Pompeius Magnus ("Pompey the Great") opened his theater complex dedicated to Venus Victrix, "Venus the Conquerer," which continued into late antiquityLate Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
as a venue for performing arts, literature, landscape design, visual art, and architecture. The Theater of Pompey was in many ways the permanent monument of his military triumph
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
six years earlier. Among the displays were portrait galleries of female writers and of courtesans; a series of images illustrated freakish births that had served as war omens. In general, intellectuality and culture are represented as feminine and Hellenized, while war and politics are Roman and masculine. Statues personified fourteen conquered nationes ("nations, peoples") as women in ethnic or "barbarian" dress. Other monuments throughout the Empire, including the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias
Aphrodisias
Aphrodisias was a small city in Caria, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Its site is located near the modern village of Geyre, Turkey, about 230 km from İzmir....
and the altar of the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls
Sanctuary of the Three Gauls
The Sanctuary of the Three Gauls was the focal structure within an administrative and religious complex established by Rome in the very late 1st century BC at Lugdunum . Its institution served to federalise and Romanise Gallia Comata as an Imperial province under Augustus, following the Gallic...
at Lugdunum
Lugdunum
Colonia Copia Claudia Augusta Lugdunum was an important Roman city in Gaul. The city was founded in 43 BC by Lucius Munatius Plancus. It served as the capital of the Roman province Gallia Lugdunensis. To 300 years after its foundation Lugdunum was the most important city to the west part of Roman...
(modern Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, France), as well as various coins, embody conquered territories and peoples as women: Roman military power defeats a "feminized" nation. Although the figures from Pompey's theater have not survived, relief panels from Aphrodisias include scenes such as a heroically nude
Heroic nudity
Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the use of nudity in classical sculpture to indicate that a sculpture's apparently mortal human subject is in fact a hero or semi-divine being. This convention began in archaic and classical Greece and was later adopted...
Claudius forcing the submission of Britannia
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...
, whose right breast is bare, and Nero dragging away a dead Armenia
Roman Armenia
From the end of the 1st century BC onwards, Armenia was, in part or whole, subject to the Roman Empire and its successor, the East Roman or Byzantine Empire...
, a composition that recalls the defeat of the Amazon
Amazons
The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...
Penthesilea
Penthesilea
Penthesilea or Penthesileia was an Amazonian queen in Greek mythology, the daughter of Ares and Otrera and the sister of Hippolyta, Antiope and Melanippe...
by Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
. A particularly well-documented series of coins depicts Iudaea Capta
Judaea (Roman province)
Judaea or Iudaea are terms used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel...
, a female personification of the Jewish nation, issued after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem
Siege of Jerusalem (70)
The Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD was the decisive event of the First Jewish-Roman War. The Roman army, led by the future Emperor Titus, with Tiberius Julius Alexander as his second-in-command, besieged and conquered the city of Jerusalem, which had been occupied by its Jewish defenders in...
in 70 AD.
Sexual conquest is a metaphor widely used by the Romans for imperialism, but not always straightforwardly for Roman domination. Horace famously described the Romans as taken captive by captive Greece: the image of Roman culture colonized from within by a civilization they had defeated but perceived as intellectually and aesthetically superior might be expressed by myths in which a man raped, abducted, or enslaved a woman but fell in love with her, as embodied for instance by Achilles and Briseis
Briseis
Brisēís was a mythical queen in Asia Minor at the time of the Trojan War. Her character lies at the center of a dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon that drives the plot of Homer's Iliad.-Story:...
.
See also
- Homosexuality in ancient RomeHomosexuality in Ancient RomeSame-sex attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome often differ markedly from those of the contemporary West. Latin lacks words that would precisely translate "homosexual" and "heterosexual." The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality was active/dominant/masculine and...
- Erotic art in Pompeii and HerculaneumErotic art in Pompeii and HerculaneumErotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum was discovered in the ancient cities around the bay of Naples after extensive excavations began in the 18th century. The city was found to be full of erotic art and frescoes, symbols, and inscriptions regarded by its excavators as pornographic. Even many...
- Latin profanityLatin profanityLatin profanity is the profane, indecent, or impolite vocabulary of Latin, and its uses. The profane vocabulary of early Vulgar Latin was largely sexual and scatological: the abundance of religious profanity found in some of the Romance languages is a Christian development, and as such does not...
- ExoletusExoletusExoletus is a Latin term, the perfect passive participle of the verb exolescere, which means "to wear out with age." In ancient Rome the word referred to a certain class of homosexual males or male prostitutes, although its precise meaning is unclear to historians.In his essay on sexual morality,...
- History of human sexualityHistory of human sexualityThe social construction of sexual behavior—its taboos, regulation and social and political impact—has had a profound effect on the various cultures of the world since prehistoric times.- Sources :...
- Homosexuality in ancient GreeceHomosexuality in ancient GreeceIn classical antiquity, writers such as Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, Athenaeus and many others explored aspects of same-sex love in ancient Greece. The most widespread and socially significant form of same-sex sexual relations in ancient Greece was between adult men and pubescent or adolescent boys,...
Selected bibliography
- Adams, J.N. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. ISBN 978-0-8018-4106-4.
- Brown, Robert D. Lucretius on Love and Sex. Brill, 1987.
- Cantarella, EvaEva CantarellaEva Cantarella is a leading Italian classicist noted for examining ancient law by relating it to modern legal issues through law and society perspective...
. Bisexuality in the Ancient World. Yale University Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-300-04844-5. - Clarke, John R. Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art 100 B.C.–A.D. 250. University of California Press, 1998, 2001.
- Edwards, Catharine. The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
- Fantham, ElaineElaine FanthamElaine Fantham is a British classicist. She was Giger Professor of Latin at Princeton University from 1986 to 1999. She was chair of the Department of Classics at Princeton from 1989 to 1992 and the president of the American Philological Association for 2004....
. "Stuprum: Public Attitudes and Penalties for Sexual Offences in Republican Rome." In Roman Readings: Roman Response to Greek Literature from Plautus to Statius and Quintilian. Walter de Gruyter, 2011. - Frederic, David, ed. The Roman Gaze: Vision, Power, and the Body. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
- Gaca, Kathy L. The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity. University of California Press, 2003.
- Gardner, Jane F. Women in Roman Law and Society. Indiana University Press, 1991.
- Hallett, Judith P., and Skinner, Marilyn, eds. Roman Sexualities. Princeton University Press, 1997.
- Hubbard, Thomas K. Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-520-23430-7.
- Langlands, Rebecca. Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- McGinn, Thomas A.J. Prostitution, Sexuality and the Law in Ancient Rome. Oxford University Press, 1998.
- McGinn, Thomas A.J. The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World. University of Michigan Press, 2004.
- Nussbaum, Martha C. "The Incomplete Feminism of Musonius Rufus, Platonist, Stoic, and Roman." In The Sleep of Reason: Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome. University of Chicago Press, 2002.
- Phang, Sara Elise. The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (13 B.C.–A.D. 235): Law and Family in the Imperial Army. Brill, 2001.
- Richlin, Amy. "Not before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men." Journal of the History of Sexuality 3.4 (1993) 523-573.
- Richlin, Amy. The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor. Oxford University Press, 1983, 1992.
- Verstraete, Beert C. and Provencal, Vernon, eds. Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition. Haworth Press, 2005.
- Williams, Craig A. Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Younger, John G. Sex in the Ancient World from A to Z. Routledge, 2005.
Further reading
- Ancona, Ronnie, and Greene, Ellen eds. Gender Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8018-8198-5.
- Skinner, Marilyn. Sexuality in Greek And Roman Culture. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0-631-23234-6.