Homosexuality in Ancient Rome
Encyclopedia
Same-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 passive/submissive
/"feminized". Roman society was patriarchal
, and the freeborn
male citizen
possessed political liberty (libertas) and the right to rule both himself and those of his household (familia). "Virtue" (virtus
) was seen as an active quality through which a man (vir) defined himself. The conquest mentality and "cult of virility" shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status, as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves
, prostitutes
, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia
, excluded from the normal protections accorded a citizen even if they were technically free. Although Roman men in general seem to have preferred youths between the ages of 12 and 20 as sexual partners, freeborn male minors were strictly off-limits, and professional prostitutes and entertainers might be considerably older.
Same-sex relations among women are less documented. Although Roman women of the upperclasses were educated, and are known to have written poetry and corresponded with male relatives, very few fragments of anything that might have been written by women survive. Male writers took little interest in how women experienced sexuality in general; the Augustan poet
Ovid takes an exceptionally keen interest, but advocates for a heterosexual lifestyle contrary to Roman sexual norms. During the Republic
and Principate
, little is recorded of sexual relations among women, but better and more varied evidence, though scattered, exists for the later Imperial period
.
, 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. Roman society was patriarchal
(see paterfamilias), and masculinity
was premised on a capacity for governing oneself and others of lower status. Virtus
, "valor" as that which made a man most fully a man, was among the active virtues. Sexual conquest was a common metaphor for imperialism
in Roman discourse, and the "conquest mentality" was part of a "cult of virility" that particularly shaped Roman homosexual practices. 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." In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, scholars have tended 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 penetrative role. The morality of the behavior depended on the social standing of the partner, not gender per se. Both women and young men were considered normal objects of desire, but outside marriage a man was supposed to act on his desires only with slaves, prostitutes (who were often slaves), and the infames. Gender did not determine whether a sexual partner was acceptable, as long as a man's enjoyment did not encroach on another's man integrity. It was immoral to have sex with another freeborn man's wife, his marriageable daughter, his underage son, or with the man himself; sexual use of another man's slave was subject to the owner's permission. Lack of self-control, including in managing one's sex life, indicated that a man was incapable of governing others; too much indulgence in "low sensual pleasure" threatened to erode the elite male's identity as a cultured person.
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 voluntary 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.
during a period of increasing Greek influence
on Roman culture in the 2nd century BCE. The consul
Quintus Lutatius Catulus
was among a circle of poets who made short, light Hellenistic poems fashionable. One of his few surviving fragments is a poem of desire addressed to a male with a Greek name. The elevation of Greek literature
and art as models of expression promoted the celebration of homoeroticism as the mark of an urbane and sophisticated person. No assumptions or generalizations should be made about any effect on sexual orientation
or real-life behavior among the Romans.
"Greek love
" influences aesthetics or the means of expression, not the nature of Roman homosexuality as such. Greek homosexuality
differed from Roman primarily in idealizing eros between freeborn male citizens of equal status, though usually with a difference of age (see "Pederasty in ancient Greece
"). An attachment to a male outside the family, seen as a positive influence among the Greeks, within Roman society threatened the authority of the paterfamilias. Since Roman women were active in educating their sons and mingled with men socially, and women of the governing classes often continued to advise and influence their sons and husbands in political life, homosociality
was not as pervasive in Rome as it had been in Classical Athens
, where it is thought to have contributed to the particulars of pederastic culture.
The "new poetry
" introduced at the end of the 2nd century came to fruition in the 50s BCE with Gaius Valerius Catullus, whose poems include several expressing desire for a freeborn youth explicitly named "Youth" (Iuventius). The Latin name and freeborn status of the beloved subvert Roman tradition. Catullus's contemporary Lucretius
also recognizes the attraction of "boys" (pueri, which can designate an acceptable submissive partner and not specifically age). Homoerotic themes occur throughout the works of poets writing during the reign of Augustus
, including elegies by Tibullus
and Propertius, the second Eclogue of Vergil, and several poems by Horace
. In the Aeneid
, Vergil draws on the Greek tradition of homosexuality in a military setting
by portraying the love between Nisus and Euryalus
, whose military valor marks them as solidly Roman men (viri). Vergil describes their love as pius, linking it to the supreme virtue of pietas
as possessed by the hero Aeneas
himself, and endorsing it as "honorable, dignified and connected to central Roman values."
By the end of the Augustan period Ovid
, Rome's leading literary figure, proposed a radically new heterosexual agenda: making love with a woman is more enjoyable, he says, because unlike the forms of same-sex behavior permissible within Roman culture, the pleasure is mutual. Ovid does include mythological treatments of homoeroticism in the Metamorphoses, but Thomas Habinek has pointed out that the significance of Ovid's rupture of human sexuality into categorical preferences has been obscured in the history of sexuality by a later heterosexual bias in Western culture.
In literature of the Imperial period
, 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." The poet Martial
often derides women as sexual partners, and celebrates the charms of pueri.
at the Suburban Baths in Pompeii
shows a series of sixteen sex scenes, including a male-male and a female-female couple, and same-sex pairings within scenes of group sex.
Threesome
s in Roman art typically show two men penetrating a woman, but one of the Suburban scenes has one man entering a woman from the rear while he in turn receives anal sex from a man standing behind him. This scenario is described also by Catullus, Carmen 56, who considers it humorous. The man in the center may 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.
Roman attitudes toward male nudity differ from those of the ancient Greeks, who regarded idealized portrayals of the nude male as an expression of masculine excellence. The wearing of the toga
marked a Roman man as a free citizen. Negative connotations of nudity include defeat in war, since captives were stripped, and slavery, since slaves for sale were often displayed naked.
At the same time, the phallus
was displayed ubiquitously in the form of the fascinum, a magic charm thought to ward off malevolent forces; it became a customary decoration, found widely in the ruins of Pompeii
, especially in the form of wind chime
s (tintinnabula
). The outsized phallus of the god Priapus
may originally have served an apotropaic purpose, but in art it is frequently laughter-provoking or grotesque. Hellenization, however, influenced the depiction of male nudity in Roman art, leading to more complex signification of the male body shown nude, partially nude, or costumed in a muscle cuirass
.
(1st century CE), that depicts two scenes of male-male sex. It has been argued that the two sides of this cup represent the duality of pederastic tradition at Rome, the Greek in contrast to the Roman. On the "Greek" side, a bearded, mature man is mounted by a young but muscularly developed male in a rear-entry position. The young man, probably meant to be 17 or 18, holds on to a sexual apparatus for maintaining an otherwise awkward or uncomfortable sexual position. A child-slave watches the scene furtively through a door ajar. The "Roman" side of the cup shows a puer delicatus, age 12 to 13, held for intercourse in the arms of an older male, clean-shaven and fit. The bearded pederast may be Greek, with a partner who participates more freely and with a look of pleasure. His counterpart, who has a more severe haircut, appears to be Roman, and thus uses a slave boy; the myrtle wreath he wears symbolizes his role as an "erotic conqueror". The cup may have been designed as a conversation piece
to provoke the kind of dialogue on ideals of love and sex that took place at a Greek symposium
.
A man or boy who took the "receptacle" role in sex was variously called cinaedus, pathicus, exoletus
, concubinus (male concubine), spintria ("analist"), puer ("boy"), pullus ("chick"), pusio, delicatus (especially in the phrase puer delicatus, "exquisite" or "dainty boy"), mollis ("soft," used more generally as an aesthetic quality counter to aggressive masculinity), tener ("delicate"), debilis ("weak" or "disabled"), effeminatus, discinctus ("loose-belted"), and morbosus ("sick"). As Amy Richlin has noted, "'gay
' is not exact, 'penetrated' is not self-defined, 'passive' misleadingly connotes inaction" in translating this group of words into English.
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. Some older men may have at times preferred the passive role. Martial describes, for example, the case of an older man who played the passive role and let a younger slave occupy the active role. An adult male's desire to be penetrated was considered a sickness (morbus); the desire to penetrate a handsome youth was thought normal.
. Although in some contexts cinaedus may denote "passive homosexual" and is the most frequent word for a male who allowed himself to be penetrated anally, it is not equivalent to the English vulgarism "faggot," and a man called cinaedus might also have sex with and be considered highly attractive to women. His clothing, use of cosmetics, and mannerisms marked him as effeminate, but the same effeminacy that Roman men might find alluring in a puer was unattractive in the physically mature cinaedus. The cinaedus thus represented the absence of what Romans considered true manhood, and the word is virtually untranslatable into English.
Originally, a cinaedus (Greek kinaidos) was a professional dancer, characterized as non-Roman or "Eastern"; the word itself may come from a language of Asia Minor
. His performance featured tambourine
-playing and movements of the buttocks that suggested anal intercourse.
has described this form of concubinage as "a stable sexual relationship, not exclusive but privileged." Within the hierarchy of household slaves, the concubinus seems to have been regarded as holding a special or elevated status that was threatened by the introduction of a wife. In a wedding hymn
, Catullus portrays the groom's concubinus as anxious about his future and fearful of abandonment. His long hair will be cut, and he will have to resort to the female slaves for sexual gratification—indicating that he is expected to transition from being a receptive sex object to one who performs penetrative sex. The concubinus might father children with women of the household, not excluding the wife (at least in invective poetry). The feelings and situation of the concubinus are treated as significant enough to occupy five stanzas of Catullus's wedding poem. He plays an active role in the ceremonies, distributing the traditional nuts that boys threw (rather like rice or birdseed in the modern Western tradition).
The relationship with a concubinus might be discreet or more open: male concubines sometimes attended dinner parties with the man whose companion they were. Martial
even suggests that a prized concubinus might pass from father to son as an especially coveted inheritance. A military officer on campaign might be accompanied by a concubinus. Like the catamite
or puer delicatus, the role of the concubine was regularly compared to that of Ganymede
, the Trojan
prince abducted by Jove
(Greek Zeus
) to serve as his cupbearer.
Although the concubina, a female concubine who might be free, had a legal status under Roman law
, the concubinus did not, and was usually a slave.
patior, pati, passus, "undergo, submit to, endure, suffer." The English word "passive" derives from the Latin passus.
The puer delicatus was an "exquisite" or "dainty" child-slave chosen by his master for his beauty as a "boy toy
", also referred to as deliciae ("sweets" or "delights"). Unlike the freeborn Greek eromenos ("beloved"), who was protected by social custom, the Roman delicatus was in a physically and morally vulnerable position. The "coercive and exploitative" relationship between the Roman master and the delicatus, who might be prepubescent, can be characterized as pedophilic
, in contrast to Greek paiderasteia
. The boy was sometimes castrated in an effort to preserve his youthful qualities; the emperor Nero
had a puer delicatus named Sporus, whom he castrated and married.
Pueri delicati might be idealized in poetry. In the erotic elegies of Tibullus
, the delicatus Marathus wears lavish and expensive clothing. The beauty of the delicatus was measured by Apollo
nian standards, especially in regard to his long hair, which was supposed to be wavy, fair, and scented with perfume. The mythological type of the delicatus was represented by Ganymede
, the Trojan
youth abducted by Jove
(Greek Zeus
) to be his divine companion and cupbearer. In the Satyricon
, the tastelessly wealthy freedman Trimalchio
says that as a child-slave he had been a puer delicatus servicing both the master and the mistress of the household.
. It was an affectionate word traditionally used for a boy (puer) who was loved by someone "in an obscene sense."
The lexicographer Festus
provides a definition and illustrates with a comic anecdote. Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus
, a consul
in 116 BC and later a censor known for his moral severity, earned his cognomen
meaning "Ivory
" (the modern equivalent might be "Porcelain
") because of his fair good looks (candor). Eburnus was said to have been struck by lightning on his buttocks, perhaps a reference to a birthmark
. It was joked that he was marked as "Jove
's chick" (pullus Iovis), since the characteristic instrument of the king of the gods was the lightning bolt (see also the relation of Jove's cupbearer Ganymede to "catamite
"). Although the sexual inviolability of underage male citizens is usually emphasized, this anecdote is among the evidence that even the most well-born youths might go through a phase in which they could be viewed as "sex objects." Perhaps tellingly, this same member of the illustrious Fabius family ended his life in exile, as punishment for killing his own son for impudicitia.
The 4th-century Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius
records the word pullipremo, "chick-squeezer," which he says was used by the early satirist Lucilius
.
indicates the pusio was desirable because he was more compliant and undemanding to sleep with than a woman. Pusio was also used as a personal name
(cognomen
).
. It is gloss
ed as "Those who bestow for free their scultima, that is, their anal orifice, which is called the scultima as if from the inner parts of whores" (scortorum intima).
, "sexual morality, chastity." As a characteristic of males, it often implies the willingness to be penetrated. Dancing was an expression of male impudicitia.
Impudicitia might be associated with behaviors in young men who retained a degree of boyish attractiveness but were old enough to be expected to behave according to masculine norms. Julius Caesar
was accused of bringing the notoriety of infamia upon himself, both when he was about 19, for taking the passive role in an affair with King Nicomedes of Bithynia, and later for many adulterous affairs with women. Seneca the Elder
noted that "impudicita is a crime for the freeborn, a necessity in a slave, a duty for the freedman": homosexual practice in Rome asserted the power of the citizen over slaves, confirming his masculinity.
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. Plautus
mentions a street known for male prostitutes. Public baths are also referred to as a place to find sexual partners. Juvenal
states that such men scratched their heads with a finger to identify themselves.
Apuleius
indicates that cinaedi might form social alliances for mutual enjoyment, such as hosting dinner parties. In his novel The Golden Ass
, he describes one group who jointly purchased and shared a concubinus. On one occasion, they invited a "well-endowed" young hick (rusticanus iuvenis) to their party, and took turns performing oral sex on him.
Other scholars, primarily those who argue from the perspective of "cultural constructionism
", maintain that there is not an identifiable social group of males who would have self-identified as "homosexual" as a community.
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. It was ruled that even a man who was "disreputable and questionable" (famosus, related to infamis, and suspiciosus) had the same right as other free men not to have his body subjected to forced sex. 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. Men who had been raped were exempt from the loss of legal or social standing suffered by those who submitted their bodies to use for the pleasure of others; a male prostitute or entertainer was infamis and excluded from the legal protections extended to citizens in good standing. As a matter of law, a slave could not be raped; he was considered property and not legally a person. The slave's owner, however, could prosecute the rapist for property damage.
Fears of mass rape following a military defeat extended equally to male and female potential victims. According to the jurist Pomponius
, "whatever man has been raped by the force of robbers or the enemy in wartime" ought to bear no stigma.
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. Rape was one of the traditional punishments inflicted on a male adulterer by the wronged husband, though perhaps more in revenge fantasy than in practice.
In a collection of twelve anecdotes dealing with assaults on chastity, the historian Valerius Maximus
features male victims in equal number to female. In a "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 hypothetical, Seneca assumes that the law permitted the successful prosecution of the rapists. Another hypothetical case imagines the extremity to which a rape victim might be driven: the freeborn male (ingenuus
) who was raped commits suicide. The Romans considered the rape of an ingenuus to be among the worst crimes that could be committed, along with parricide
, the rape of a female virgin, and robbing a temple
.
(reigned 27 BC–14 AD) even prohibited soldiers from marrying, a ban that remained in force for the Imperial army nearly two centuries. Other forms of sexual gratification available to soldiers were prostitutes of any gender, male slaves, war rape
, and same-sex relations. The Bellum Hispaniense, about Caesar's civil war
on the front in Roman Spain, mentions an officer who has a male concubine (concubinus) on campaign
. Sex among fellow soldiers, however, violated the Roman decorum against intercourse with another freeborn male. A soldier maintained his masculinity by not allowing his body to be used for sexual purposes.
In warfare, rape symbolized defeat, a motive for the soldier not to make his body sexually vulnerable in general. During the Republic, homosexual behavior among fellow soldiers was subject to harsh penalties, including death, as a violation of military discipline. Polybius
(2nd century BC) reports that the punishment for a soldier who willingly submitted to penetration was the fustuarium
, clubbing to death.
Roman historians record 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 by not wearing perfume, nor trimming nostril and underarm hair. An incident related by Plutarch
in his biography of Marius
illustrates the soldier's right to maintain his sexual integrity despite pressure from his superiors. 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.
is unambiguous: "Secundus is a fellator of rare ability." ("Secundus felator rarus") In contrast to ancient Greece, a large penis was a major element in attractiveness. In Petronius
is a description of how a man with such a large penis in a public bathroom looked up, excited. Several emperors are reported in a negative light for surrounding themselves with men with large sexual organs.
The Gallo-Roman
poet Ausonius
(4th century AD) makes a joke about a male threesome that depends on imagining the configurations of group sex:
. 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:
Greek words for a woman who prefers sex with another woman include hetairistria (compare hetaira
, "courtesan" or "companion"), tribas (plural tribades), and Lesbia; Latin words include the loanword
tribas, fricatrix ("she who rubs"), and virago
. An early reference to same-sex relations among women as "lesbianism" is found in the Roman-era Greek writer Lucian
(2nd century CE): "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", 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. Dildos are rarely mentioned in Roman sources, but were a popular comic item in Classical Greek literature and art. 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.
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Cross-dressing appears in Roman literature and art in various ways to mark the uncertainties and ambiguities of gender:
A section of the Digest by Ulpian
categorizes Roman clothing
on the basis of who may appropriately wear it: vestimenta virilia, "men's clothing," is defined as the attire of the paterfamilias, "head of household"; puerilia is clothing that serves no purpose other than to mark its wearer as a "child" or minor; muliebria are the garments that characterize a materfamilias; communia, those that are "common," that is, worn by either sex; and familiarica, clothing for the familia, the subordinates in a household, including the staff and slaves. 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 the "mock trial
" exercise presented by the elder Seneca
, the young man (adulescens) was 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 or transsexual 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.
" 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
. Pliny notes that "there are even those who are born of both sexes, whom we call hermaphrodites, 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." Under Roman law, a hermaphrodite had to be classed as either male or female; no third gender
existed as a legal category. The hermaphrodite thus 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. But Pliny observed that while hermaphrodites were once considered portents, in his day they had become objects of delight (deliciae) who were trafficked
in an exclusive slave market.
In the mythological tradition
, Hermaphroditus
was a beautiful youth who was the son of Hermes
(Roman Mercury
) and Aphrodite (Venus). 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. 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:
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 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.
. A series of laws regulating homosexuality were promulgated during the social crisis of the 3rd century
, from the statutory rape
of minors to gay marriage.
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.
The circumstances surrounding the massacre of Thessalonica in 390 suggest that even in the late 4th century homosexuality was still accepted in large parts of the population, while officially prosecuted. When a popular charioteer
was arrested for having sexually harassed an army-commander or servant of the emperor, the people of the town were calling for his release, though this is more likely due to his popularity than to the nature of the allegation.
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....
often differ markedly from those of the contemporary West. 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...
lacks words that would precisely translate "homosexual" and "heterosexual." The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality
Sexuality in Ancient Rome
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...
was active/dominant
Top (BDSM)
In BDSM, a top or dominant is the partner in a BDSM relationship or in a BDSM scene who takes the active or controlling role over that of the bottom or submissive partner....
/masculine and passive/submissive
Bottom (BDSM)
In BDSM, a bottom or submissive is the partner in a BDSM relationship or a BDSM scene who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or dominant....
/"feminized". 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...
, and the freeborn
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....
male citizen
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....
possessed political liberty (libertas) and the right to rule both himself and those of his household (familia). "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...
) was seen as an active quality through which a man (vir) defined himself. The conquest mentality and "cult of virility" shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status, as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves
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...
, prostitutes
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...
, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia
Infamia
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...
, excluded from the normal protections accorded a citizen even if they were technically free. Although Roman men in general seem to have preferred youths between the ages of 12 and 20 as sexual partners, freeborn male minors were strictly off-limits, and professional prostitutes and entertainers might be considerably older.
Same-sex relations among women are less documented. Although Roman women of the upperclasses were educated, and are known to have written poetry and corresponded with male relatives, very few fragments of anything that might have been written by women survive. Male writers took little interest in how women experienced sexuality in general; the Augustan poet
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...
Ovid takes an exceptionally keen interest, but advocates for a heterosexual lifestyle contrary to Roman sexual norms. During the Republic
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 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...
, little is recorded of sexual relations among women, but better and more varied evidence, though scattered, exists for the later Imperial period
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....
.
Background
During the RepublicRoman 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...
, 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. 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. 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...
, "valor" as that which made a man most fully a man, was among the active virtues. Sexual conquest was a common metaphor for imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
in Roman discourse, and the "conquest mentality" was part of a "cult of virility" that particularly shaped Roman homosexual practices. 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." In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, scholars have tended 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 penetrative role. The morality of the behavior depended on the social standing of the partner, not gender per se. Both women and young men were considered normal objects of desire, but outside marriage a man was supposed to act on his desires only with slaves, prostitutes (who were often slaves), and the infames. Gender did not determine whether a sexual partner was acceptable, as long as a man's enjoyment did not encroach on another's man integrity. It was immoral to have sex with another freeborn man's wife, his marriageable daughter, his underage son, or with the man himself; sexual use of another man's slave was subject to the owner's permission. Lack of self-control, including in managing one's sex life, indicated that a man was incapable of governing others; too much indulgence in "low sensual pleasure" threatened to erode the elite male's identity as a cultured person.
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 voluntary 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.
Homoerotic literature and art
Homoerotic themes are introduced to Latin literatureLatin 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...
during a period of increasing Greek influence
Hellenization
Hellenization is a term used to describe the spread of ancient Greek culture, and, to a lesser extent, language. It is mainly used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon...
on Roman culture in the 2nd century BCE. The 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...
Quintus Lutatius Catulus
Quintus Lutatius Catulus
Quintus Lutatius Catulus was consul of the Roman Republic in 102 BC, and the leading public figure of the gens Lutatia of the time. His colleague in the consulship was Gaius Marius, but the two feuded and Catulus sided with Sulla in the civil war of 88–87 BC...
was among a circle of poets who made short, light Hellenistic poems fashionable. One of his few surviving fragments is a poem of desire addressed to a male with a Greek name. The elevation of Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature refers to literature written in the Ancient Greek language until the 4th century.- Classical and Pre-Classical Antiquity :...
and art as models of expression promoted the celebration of homoeroticism as the mark of an urbane and sophisticated person. No assumptions or generalizations should be made about any effect on sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
or real-life behavior among the Romans.
Greek love
In the history of sexuality, Greek love is a concept of homoeroticism within the classical tradition. It is one of the "classically inspired erotic imaginings" by means of which later cultures have articulated their own discourse about homosexuality...
" influences aesthetics or the means of expression, not the nature of Roman homosexuality as such. Greek homosexuality
Homosexuality in ancient Greece
In 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,...
differed from Roman primarily in idealizing eros between freeborn male citizens of equal status, though usually with a difference of age (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...
"). An attachment to a male outside the family, seen as a positive influence among the Greeks, within Roman society threatened the authority of the paterfamilias. Since Roman women were active in educating their sons and mingled with men socially, and women of the governing classes often continued to advise and influence their sons and husbands in political life, homosociality
Homosociality
In sociology, homosociality describes same-sex relationships that are not of a romantic or sexual nature, such as friendship, mentorship, or others. The opposite of homosocial is heterosocial, preferring non-sexual relations with the opposite sex...
was not as pervasive in Rome as it had been in Classical Athens
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...
, where it is thought to have contributed to the particulars of pederastic culture.
The "new poetry
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...
" introduced at the end of the 2nd century came to fruition in the 50s BCE with Gaius Valerius Catullus, whose poems include several expressing desire for a freeborn youth explicitly named "Youth" (Iuventius). The Latin name and freeborn status of the beloved subvert Roman tradition. Catullus's contemporary Lucretius
Lucretius
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...
also recognizes the attraction of "boys" (pueri, which can designate an acceptable submissive partner and not specifically age). Homoerotic themes occur throughout the works of poets writing during the reign of Augustus
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...
, including 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:...
. In the Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, Vergil draws on the Greek tradition of homosexuality in a military setting
Homosexuality in the militaries of ancient Greece
When the topic of homosexuality in the militaries of Ancient Greece is discussed, the Sacred Band of Thebes is usually considered as the prime example of how the Ancient army use homoerotic or homosexual relationships between soldiers in a troop to boost the fighting spirit of their militaries, or...
by portraying the love between Nisus and Euryalus
Nisus and Euryalus
Nisus and Euryalus are a pair of friends serving under Aeneas in the Aeneid, the Augustan epic by Vergil. Their foray among the enemy, narrated in Book 9, demonstrates their stealth and prowess as warriors, but ends as a tragedy: the loot Euryalus acquires attracts attention, and the two die...
, whose military valor marks them as solidly Roman men (viri). Vergil describes their love as pius, linking it to the supreme virtue of pietas
Pietas
Pietas was one of the Roman virtues, along with gravitas and dignitas. It is usually translated as "duty" or "devotion."-Definition:The word pietas is originally from Latin. The first printed record of the word’s use in English is from Anselm Bayly’s The Alliance of Music, Poetry, and Oratory,...
as possessed by the hero 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...
himself, and endorsing it as "honorable, dignified and connected to central Roman values."
By the end of the Augustan period 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...
, Rome's leading literary figure, proposed a radically new heterosexual agenda: making love with a woman is more enjoyable, he says, because unlike the forms of same-sex behavior permissible within Roman culture, the pleasure is mutual. Ovid does include mythological treatments of homoeroticism in the Metamorphoses, but Thomas Habinek has pointed out that the significance of Ovid's rupture of human sexuality into categorical preferences has been obscured in the history of sexuality by a later heterosexual bias in Western culture.
In literature of the Imperial period
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....
, 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." 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...
often derides women as sexual partners, and celebrates the charms of pueri.
Erotic art and everyday objects
Representations of male-male and female-female sexuality are less well-represented in the erotic art of ancient Rome than are male-female sex acts. A friezeFrieze
thumb|267px|Frieze of the [[Tower of the Winds]], AthensIn architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon...
at the Suburban Baths in 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...
shows a series of sixteen sex scenes, including a male-male and a female-female couple, and same-sex pairings within scenes of group sex.
Threesome
A threesome is a group of three engaged in the same activity. In relation to a sexual activity a threesome refer to the activity involving three people of any gender or sexual orientation...
s in Roman art typically show two men penetrating a woman, but one of the Suburban scenes has one man entering a woman from the rear while he in turn receives anal sex from a man standing behind him. This scenario is described also by Catullus, Carmen 56, who considers it humorous. The man in the center may 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.
Roman attitudes toward male nudity differ from those of the ancient Greeks, who regarded idealized portrayals of the nude male as an expression of masculine excellence. The wearing of 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...
marked a Roman man as a free citizen. Negative connotations of nudity include defeat in war, since captives were stripped, and slavery, since slaves for sale were often displayed naked.
At the same time, the 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...
was displayed ubiquitously in the form of the fascinum, a magic charm thought to ward off malevolent forces; it became a customary decoration, found widely in the ruins of 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...
, especially 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...
). The outsized phallus of 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...
may originally have served an apotropaic purpose, but in art it is frequently laughter-provoking or grotesque. Hellenization, however, influenced the depiction of male nudity in Roman art, leading 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...
.
Warren Cup
The Warren Cup is a piece of convivial silver, usually dated to the time of the Julio-Claudian dynastyJulio-Claudian Dynasty
The Julio-Claudian dynasty normally refers to the first five Roman Emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula , Claudius, and Nero, or the family to which they belonged; they ruled the Roman Empire from its formation, in the second half of the 1st century BC, until AD 68, when the last of the line,...
(1st century CE), that depicts two scenes of male-male sex. It has been argued that the two sides of this cup represent the duality of pederastic tradition at Rome, the Greek in contrast to the Roman. On the "Greek" side, a bearded, mature man is mounted by a young but muscularly developed male in a rear-entry position. The young man, probably meant to be 17 or 18, holds on to a sexual apparatus for maintaining an otherwise awkward or uncomfortable sexual position. A child-slave watches the scene furtively through a door ajar. The "Roman" side of the cup shows a puer delicatus, age 12 to 13, held for intercourse in the arms of an older male, clean-shaven and fit. The bearded pederast may be Greek, with a partner who participates more freely and with a look of pleasure. His counterpart, who has a more severe haircut, appears to be Roman, and thus uses a slave boy; the myrtle wreath he wears symbolizes his role as an "erotic conqueror". The cup may have been designed as a conversation piece
Conversation piece
Conversation piece is a term for an informal group portrait, especially those painted in Britain in the 18th century, beginning in the 1720s. They are distinguished by their portrayal of the group apparently engaged in genteel conversation or some activity, very often outdoors...
to provoke the kind of dialogue on ideals of love and sex that took place at a Greek symposium
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
.
Roles
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,...
, concubinus (male concubine), spintria ("analist"), puer ("boy"), pullus ("chick"), pusio, delicatus (especially in the phrase puer delicatus, "exquisite" or "dainty boy"), mollis ("soft," used more generally as an aesthetic quality counter to aggressive masculinity), tener ("delicate"), debilis ("weak" or "disabled"), effeminatus, discinctus ("loose-belted"), and morbosus ("sick"). As Amy Richlin has noted, "'gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
' is not exact, 'penetrated' is not self-defined, 'passive' misleadingly connotes inaction" in translating this group of words into English.
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. Some older men may have at times preferred the passive role. Martial describes, for example, the case of an older man who played the passive role and let a younger slave occupy the active role. An adult male's desire to be penetrated was considered a sickness (morbus); the desire to penetrate a handsome youth was thought normal.
Cinaedus
Cinaedus is a derogatory word denoting a male who was gender-deviant; his choice of sex acts, or preference in sexual partner, was secondary to his perceived deficiencies as a "man" (vir). Catullus directs the slur cinaedus at his friend Furius in his notoriously obscene Carmen 16Catullus 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...
. Although in some contexts cinaedus may denote "passive homosexual" and is the most frequent word for a male who allowed himself to be penetrated anally, it is not equivalent to the English vulgarism "faggot," and a man called cinaedus might also have sex with and be considered highly attractive to women. His clothing, use of cosmetics, and mannerisms marked him as effeminate, but the same effeminacy that Roman men might find alluring in a puer was unattractive in the physically mature cinaedus. The cinaedus thus represented the absence of what Romans considered true manhood, and the word is virtually untranslatable into English.
Originally, a cinaedus (Greek kinaidos) was a professional dancer, characterized as non-Roman or "Eastern"; the word itself may come from a language of Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
. His performance featured tambourine
Tympanum (hand drum)
In ancient Greece and Rome, the tympanum, Greek tympanon, was a type of frame drum or tambourine. It was circular, shallow, and beaten with the hand. Some representations show decorations or zill-like objects around the rim...
-playing and movements of the buttocks that suggested anal intercourse.
Concubinus
Some Roman men kept a male concubine (concubinus, "one who lies with; a bed-mate") before they married a woman. Eva CantarellaEva 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...
has described this form of concubinage as "a stable sexual relationship, not exclusive but privileged." Within the hierarchy of household slaves, the concubinus seems to have been regarded as holding a special or elevated status that was threatened by the introduction of a wife. In a wedding hymn
Epithalamium
Epithalamium refers to a form of poem that is written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber...
, Catullus portrays the groom's concubinus as anxious about his future and fearful of abandonment. His long hair will be cut, and he will have to resort to the female slaves for sexual gratification—indicating that he is expected to transition from being a receptive sex object to one who performs penetrative sex. The concubinus might father children with women of the household, not excluding the wife (at least in invective poetry). The feelings and situation of the concubinus are treated as significant enough to occupy five stanzas of Catullus's wedding poem. He plays an active role in the ceremonies, distributing the traditional nuts that boys threw (rather like rice or birdseed in the modern Western tradition).
The relationship with a concubinus might be discreet or more open: male concubines sometimes attended dinner parties with the man whose companion they were. 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...
even suggests that a prized concubinus might pass from father to son as an especially coveted inheritance. A military officer on campaign might be accompanied by a concubinus. Like the catamite
Catamite
A catamite was a handsome youth kept as a sexual companion in ancient Rome, usually in a pederastic relationship. The word derives from the proper noun Catamitus, the Latinized form of Ganymede, the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer...
or puer delicatus, the role of the concubine was regularly compared to that of 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...
, 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...
prince abducted by Jove
JOVE
JOVE is an open-source, Emacs-like text editor, primarily intended for Unix-like operating systems. It also supports MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. JOVE was inspired by Gosling Emacs but is much smaller and simpler, lacking Mocklisp...
(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...
) to serve as his cupbearer.
Although the concubina, a female concubine who might be free, had a legal status under Roman law
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...
, the concubinus did not, and was usually a slave.
Pathicus
Pathicus was a "blunt" word for a male who was penetrated sexually. It derived from the unattested Greek adjective pathikos, from the verb paskhein, equivalent to the Latin deponentDeponent verb
In linguistics, a deponent verb is a verb that is active in meaning but takes its form from a different voice, most commonly the middle or passive. A deponent verb doesn't have active forms; it can be said to have deposited them .-Greek:...
patior, pati, passus, "undergo, submit to, endure, suffer." The English word "passive" derives from the Latin passus.
Puer
In the discourse of sexuality, puer ("boy") was a role as well as an age group. Both puer and the feminine equivalent puella, "girl," could refer to a man's sexual partner, regardless of age. As an age designation, the freeborn puer made the transition from childhood at around age 14, when he assumed the "toga of manhood", but he was 17 or 18 before he began to take part in public life. A slave would never be considered a vir, a "real man"; he would be called puer, "boy," throughout his life. Pueri might be "functionally interchangeable" with women as receptacles for sex, but freeborn male minors were strictly off-limits. To accuse a Roman man of being someone's "boy" was an insult that impugned his manhood, particularly in the political arena. The aging cinaedus or a passive homosexual might wish to present himself as a puer.Puer delicatus
The puer delicatus was an "exquisite" or "dainty" child-slave chosen by his master for his beauty as a "boy toy
Age disparity in sexual relationships
Age disparity in sexual relationships refers to sexual relations between people with a significant difference in age. Whether these relationships are accepted and the question of what counts as a significant difference in age has varied over time; and varies over cultures, different legal systems,...
", also referred to as deliciae ("sweets" or "delights"). Unlike the freeborn Greek eromenos ("beloved"), who was protected by social custom, the Roman delicatus was in a physically and morally vulnerable position. The "coercive and exploitative" relationship between the Roman master and the delicatus, who might be prepubescent, can be characterized as pedophilic
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
, in contrast to Greek paiderasteia
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...
. The boy was sometimes castrated in an effort to preserve his youthful qualities; 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 a puer delicatus named Sporus, whom he castrated and married.
Pueri delicati might be idealized in poetry. In the erotic elegies of 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...
, the delicatus Marathus wears lavish and expensive clothing. The beauty of the delicatus was measured by Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
nian standards, especially in regard to his long hair, which was supposed to be wavy, fair, and scented with perfume. The mythological type of the delicatus was represented by 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...
, 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...
youth abducted by Jove
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...
) to be his divine companion and cupbearer. In 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...
, the tastelessly wealthy freedman Trimalchio
Trimalchio
Trimalchio is a character in the Roman novel The Satyricon by Petronius. He plays a part only in the section titled Cena Trimalchionis . Trimalchio is a freedman who through hard work and perseverance has attained power and wealth...
says that as a child-slave he had been a puer delicatus servicing both the master and the mistress of the household.
Pullus
Pullus was a term for a young animal, and particularly a chickChicken
The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...
. It was an affectionate word traditionally used for a boy (puer) who was loved by someone "in an obscene sense."
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...
provides a definition and illustrates with a comic anecdote. Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus
Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus
Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus was a Roman statesman of the patrician gens Fabia. He was consul in 116 BC.-Family:Eburnus was the son of Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, consul in 142 BC, himself adopted from the gens Servilia into the gens Fabia, allegedly by one of the two adoptive sons of...
, 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...
in 116 BC and later a censor known for his moral severity, earned his cognomen
Cognomen
The cognomen nōmen "name") was the third name of a citizen of Ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. The cognomen started as a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary. Hereditary cognomina were used to augment the second name in order to identify a particular branch within...
meaning "Ivory
Ivory
Ivory is a term for dentine, which constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals, when used as a material for art or manufacturing. Ivory has been important since ancient times for making a range of items, from ivory carvings to false teeth, fans, dominoes, joint tubes, piano keys and...
" (the modern equivalent might be "Porcelain
Porcelain
Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...
") because of his fair good looks (candor). Eburnus was said to have been struck by lightning on his buttocks, perhaps a reference to a birthmark
Birthmark
A birthmark is a benign irregularity on the skin which is present at birth or appears shortly after birth, usually in the first month. They can occur anywhere on the skin. Birthmarks are caused by overgrowth of blood vessels, melanocytes, smooth muscle, fat, fibroblasts, or...
. It was joked that he was marked as "Jove
JOVE
JOVE is an open-source, Emacs-like text editor, primarily intended for Unix-like operating systems. It also supports MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. JOVE was inspired by Gosling Emacs but is much smaller and simpler, lacking Mocklisp...
's chick" (pullus Iovis), since the characteristic instrument of the king of the gods was the lightning bolt (see also the relation of Jove's cupbearer Ganymede to "catamite
Catamite
A catamite was a handsome youth kept as a sexual companion in ancient Rome, usually in a pederastic relationship. The word derives from the proper noun Catamitus, the Latinized form of Ganymede, the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer...
"). Although the sexual inviolability of underage male citizens is usually emphasized, this anecdote is among the evidence that even the most well-born youths might go through a phase in which they could be viewed as "sex objects." Perhaps tellingly, this same member of the illustrious Fabius family ended his life in exile, as punishment for killing his own son for impudicitia.
The 4th-century Gallo-Roman 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...
records the word pullipremo, "chick-squeezer," which he says was used by 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:...
.
Pusio
Pusio is etymologically related to puer, and means "boy, lad." It often had a distinctly sexual or sexually demeaning connotation. JuvenalJuvenal
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...
indicates the pusio was desirable because he was more compliant and undemanding to sleep with than a woman. Pusio was also used as a personal name
Personal name
A personal name is the proper name identifying an individual person, and today usually comprises a given name bestowed at birth or at a young age plus a surname. It is nearly universal for a human to have a name; except in rare cases, for example feral children growing up in isolation, or infants...
(cognomen
Cognomen
The cognomen nōmen "name") was the third name of a citizen of Ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. The cognomen started as a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary. Hereditary cognomina were used to augment the second name in order to identify a particular branch within...
).
Scultimidonus
Scultimidonus ("asshole-bestower") was rare and "florid" slang that appears in a fragment from the early Roman satirist LuciliusGaius 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:...
. It is gloss
Gloss
A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....
ed as "Those who bestow for free their scultima, that is, their anal orifice, which is called the scultima as if from the inner parts of whores" (scortorum intima).
Impudicitia
The abstract noun impudicitia (adjective impudicus) was the negation of 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...
, "sexual morality, chastity." As a characteristic of males, it often implies the willingness to be penetrated. Dancing was an expression of male impudicitia.
Impudicitia might be associated with behaviors in young men who retained a degree of boyish attractiveness but were old enough to be expected to behave according to masculine norms. 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....
was accused of bringing the notoriety of infamia upon himself, both when he was about 19, for taking the passive role in an affair with King Nicomedes of Bithynia, and later for many adulterous affairs with women. 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...
noted that "impudicita is a crime for the freeborn, a necessity in a slave, a duty for the freedman": homosexual practice in Rome asserted the power of the citizen over slaves, confirming his masculinity.
Subculture
Latin had such a wealth of words for men outside the masculine norm that some scholars argue for the existence of a homosexual subcultureSubculture
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. 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...
mentions a street known for male prostitutes. Public baths are also referred to as a place to find sexual partners. 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...
states that such men scratched their heads with a finger to identify themselves.
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...
indicates that cinaedi might form social alliances for mutual enjoyment, such as hosting dinner parties. In his novel 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....
, he describes one group who jointly purchased and shared a concubinus. On one occasion, they invited a "well-endowed" young hick (rusticanus iuvenis) to their party, and took turns performing oral sex on him.
Other scholars, primarily those who argue from the perspective of "cultural constructionism
Social constructionism
Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...
", maintain that there is not an identifiable social group of males who would have self-identified as "homosexual" as a community.
Gay marriage
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.Male-male rape
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...
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. It was ruled that even a man who was "disreputable and questionable" (famosus, related to infamis, and suspiciosus) had the same right as other free men not to have his body subjected to forced sex. 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. Men who had been raped were exempt from the loss of legal or social standing suffered by those who submitted their bodies to use for the pleasure of others; a male prostitute or entertainer was infamis and excluded from the legal protections extended to citizens in good standing. As a matter of law, a slave could not be raped; he was considered property and not legally a person. The slave's owner, however, could prosecute the rapist for property damage.
Fears of mass rape following a military defeat extended equally to male and female potential victims. 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" ought to bear no stigma.
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. Rape was one of the traditional punishments inflicted on a male adulterer by the wronged husband, though perhaps more in revenge fantasy than in practice.
In a 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 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...
" 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 hypothetical, Seneca assumes that the law permitted the successful prosecution of the rapists. Another hypothetical case imagines the extremity to which a rape victim might be driven: the freeborn male (ingenuus
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....
) who was raped commits suicide. The Romans considered the rape of an ingenuus to be among the worst crimes that could be committed, 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
Roman temple
Ancient 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...
.
Same-sex relations 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. AugustusAugustus
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...
(reigned 27 BC–14 AD) even prohibited soldiers from marrying, a ban that remained in force for the Imperial army nearly two centuries. Other forms of sexual gratification available to soldiers were prostitutes of any gender, 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. The Bellum Hispaniense, about Caesar's civil war
Caesar's civil war
The Great Roman Civil War , also known as Caesar's Civil War, was one of the last politico-military conflicts in the Roman Republic before the establishment of the Roman Empire...
on the front in Roman Spain, mentions an officer who has a male concubine (concubinus) on campaign
Military campaign
In the military sciences, the term military campaign applies to large scale, long duration, significant military strategy plan incorporating a series of inter-related military operations or battles forming a distinct part of a larger conflict often called a war...
. Sex among fellow soldiers, however, violated the Roman decorum against intercourse with another freeborn male. A soldier maintained his masculinity by not allowing his body to be used for sexual purposes.
In warfare, rape symbolized defeat, a motive for the soldier not to make his body sexually vulnerable in general. During the Republic, homosexual behavior among fellow 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 the punishment for a soldier who willingly submitted to penetration was 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.
Roman historians record 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 by not wearing perfume, nor trimming nostril and underarm hair. 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
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...
illustrates the soldier's right to maintain his sexual integrity despite pressure from his superiors. 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.
Sex acts
In addition to repeatedly described anal intercourse, oral sex was common. A graffito from PompeiiPompeii
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...
is unambiguous: "Secundus is a fellator of rare ability." ("Secundus felator rarus") In contrast to ancient Greece, a large penis was a major element in attractiveness. In 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 a description of how a man with such a large penis in a public bathroom looked up, excited. Several emperors are reported in a negative light for surrounding themselves with men with large sexual organs.
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) makes a joke about a male threesome that depends on imagining the configurations of group sex:
"Three men in bed together: two are sinning, two are sinned against."
"Doesn't that make four men?"
"You're mistaken: the man on either end sins once, but the one in the middle both sins and is sinned against."
Female-female sexuality
References to sex between women are infrequent in the Roman literature of the Republic and early PrincipatePrincipate
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.
Greek words for a woman who prefers sex with another woman include hetairistria (compare hetaira
Hetaira
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...
. An early reference to same-sex relations among women as "lesbianism" is found in the Roman-era Greek writer 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 CE): "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", 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. Dildos are rarely mentioned in Roman sources, but were a popular comic item in Classical Greek literature and art. 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.
Transvestism and cross-dressing
- as political invective, when a politician is accused of dressing seductively or effeminately;
- as a mythological tropeTrope (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...
, as in the story of HerculesHerculesHercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
and OmphaleOmphaleIn 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; - as a form of religious investitureInvestitureInvestiture, from the Latin is a rather general term for the formal installation of an incumbent...
, as for the priesthood of the GalliGalliA 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:...
; - and rarely or ambiguously as transvestic fetishismTransvestic fetishismTransvestic 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: vestimenta virilia, "men's clothing," is defined as the attire of the paterfamilias, "head of household"; puerilia is clothing that serves no purpose other than to mark its wearer as a "child" or minor; muliebria are the garments that characterize a materfamilias; communia, those that are "common," that is, worn by either sex; and familiarica, clothing for the familia, the subordinates in a household, including the staff and slaves. 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 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...
" 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...
, the young man (adulescens) was 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, whose ritual attire included items of women’s clothing. They are sometimes considered a transgendered or transsexual 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.
Hermaphroditism and androgyny
In contemporary English, "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...
" 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...
. Pliny notes that "there are even those who are born of both sexes, whom we call hermaphrodites, 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." 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. The hermaphrodite thus 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. But Pliny observed that while hermaphrodites were once considered portents, in his day they had become objects of delight (deliciae) who were trafficked
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...
in an exclusive slave market.
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). 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. 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:
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. … (A)rtists always treat Hermaphroditus in terms of the viewer finding out his/her actual sexual identity. … 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 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.
Under Christian rule
Attitudes toward same-sex behavior changed as Christianity became more pervasive in the Empire. The modern perception of Roman sexual decadence can be traced to early Christian polemic. 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 ArabPhilip 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...
. A series of laws regulating homosexuality were promulgated during the social crisis of the 3rd century
Crisis of the Third Century
The Crisis of the Third Century was a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression...
, from the statutory rape
Statutory rape
The phrase statutory rape is a term used in some legal jurisdictions to describe sexual activities where one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior...
of minors to gay marriage.
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 circumstances surrounding the massacre of Thessalonica in 390 suggest that even in the late 4th century homosexuality was still accepted in large parts of the population, while officially prosecuted. When a popular charioteer
Chariot racing
Chariot racing was one of the most popular ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine sports. Chariot racing was often dangerous to both driver and horse as they frequently suffered serious injury and even death, but generated strong spectator enthusiasm...
was arrested for having sexually harassed an army-commander or servant of the emperor, the people of the town were calling for his release, though this is more likely due to his popularity than to the nature of the allegation.
See also
- Societal attitudes toward homosexuality
- LGBT rights by country or territory
- Lex ScantiniaLex ScantiniaThe 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...
, a poorly document Roman law that protected minors from sexual predators
Literature
- Boswell, John: Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (University of Chicago) 1980, "Rome: The Foundation", pp 61-87
- Thomas K. Hubbard: Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, a Sourcebook of Basic Documents. Los Angeles, London 2003. ISBN 0-520-23430-8
- Craig Williams: Roman Homosexuality, Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. in: Oxford University Press (Editor): Ideologies of Desire. Oxford 1999
- William Percy: The Age of Marriage in Ancient Rome, Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003 (together with Arnold Lelis and Beert Verstraete)
See also
- 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,...
- Sexuality in ancient RomeSexuality in Ancient RomeSexual 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...
- Greek loveGreek loveIn the history of sexuality, Greek love is a concept of homoeroticism within the classical tradition. It is one of the "classically inspired erotic imaginings" by means of which later cultures have articulated their own discourse about homosexuality...