Mens Erotica: The Roman Slave Girl

The Great Market macellum magnum was in this district, along with many cook-shops, stalls, barber shops, the office of the public executioner, and the barracks for foreign soldiers quartered at Rome. Regio II was one of the busiest and most densely populated quarters in the entire city — an ideal location for the brothel owner or pimp. Rent from a brothel was a legitimate source of income. The regular brothels are described as exceedingly dirty, smelling of characteristic odors lingering in poorly ventilated spaces and of the smoke from burning lamps, as noted accusingly by Seneca: Some brothels aspired to a loftier clientele.

Hair dressers were on hand to repair the ravages wrought by frequent amorous conflicts, and water boys aquarioli waited by the door with bowls for washing up. The licensed houses seem to have been of two kinds: In the former, the owner kept a secretary, villicus puellarum , or an overseer for the girls.

This manager assigned a girl her name, fixed her prices, received the money and provided clothing and other necessities. The mural decoration was also in keeping with the object for which the house was maintained; see erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Over the door of each cubicle was a tablet titulus upon which was the name of the occupant and her price; the reverse bore the word occupata "occupied, in service, busy" and when the inmate was engaged the tablet was turned so that this word was out.

Plautus [37] speaks of a less pretentious house when he says: The cubicle usually contained a lamp of bronze or, in the lower dens, of clay, a pallet or cot of some sort, over which was spread a blanket or patch-work quilt, this latter being sometimes employed as a curtain. Some brothels may have had their own token coin system, called spintria. Because intercourse with a meretrix was almost normative for the adolescent male of the period, and permitted for the married man as long as the prostitute was properly registered, [38] brothels were commonly dispersed around Roman cities, often found between houses of respected families.

The arches under the circus were a favorite location for prostitutes or potential prostitutes. These arcade dens were called " fornices ", from which derives the English word fornication. The taverns were generally regarded by the magistrates as brothels and the waitresses were so regarded by the law. This passage, it should be remarked, is the only one in all his works in which he is absolutely sincere in what he says of women. The bill for the services of a girl amounted to 8 asses. This inscription is of great interest to the antiquary, and to the archeologist.

That bakers were not slow in organizing the grist mills is shown by a passage from Paulus Diaconus: For, as the mill stones were fixed in places under ground, they set up booths on either side of these chambers and caused prostitutes to stand for hire in them, so that by these means they deceived very many, some that came for bread, others that hastened thither for the base gratification of their wantonness.

Prostitutes had a role in several ancient Roman religious observances , mainly in the month of April. According to Ovid, [49] prostitutes joined married women matronae in the ritual cleansing and reclothing of the cult statue of Fortuna Virilis. On April 23, prostitutes made offerings at the Temple of Venus Erycina that had been dedicated on that date in BC, as the second temple in Rome to Venus Erycina Venus of Eryx , a goddess associated with prostitutes.

The date coincided with the Vinalia , a wine festival. On April 27, the Floralia , held in honor of the goddess Flora and first introduced about BC, featured erotic dancing and stripping by women characterized as prostitutes. According to the Christian writer Lactantius , "in addition to the freedom of speech that pours forth every obscenity, the prostitutes, at the importunities of the rabble, strip off their clothing and act as mimes in full view of the crowd, and this they continue until full satiety comes to the shameless lookers-on, holding their attention with their wriggling buttocks".

Medieval Christian authors often discouraged prostitution, but did not consider it a serious offence and under some circumstances even considered marrying a harlot to be an act of piety. Certain modern professors of feminism have argued that a meretrix in the medieval mindset is closer to our modern understanding of a sexual identity or orientation. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

July Learn how and when to remove this template message. For the clam species, see Meretrix lusoria. Horace dwells at length on the inspection of female flesh: It is the custom among kings that, when buying horses, they inspect them in the open, lest, as is often the case, a beautiful head is sustained by a tender hoof and the eager purchaser may be seduced by shapely hocks, a short head, or an arching neck.

Are these experts right in this? Thou canst appraise a figure with the eyes of Lynceus and discover its beauties; though blinder than Hypoesea herself thou canst see what deformities there are. Ah, what a leg! But how thin her buttocks are, in very truth what a huge nose she has, she's short-waisted, too, and her feet are out of proportion! Of the matron, except for the face, nothing is open to your scrutiny unless she is a Catia who has dispensed with her clothing so that she may be felt all over thoroughly, the rest will be hidden.

But as for the other, no difficulty there! Through the Coan silk it is as easy for you to see as if she were naked, whether she has an unshapely leg, whether her foot is ugly; her waist you can examine with your eyes" Satire I, ii. Journal of the History of Sexuality. See also Horace , Satire i, 2, 30 "on the other hand, another will have none at all except she be standing in the evil-smelling cell" of the brothel ; Petronius , Satyricon" xxii "worn out by all his troubles, Ascyltos commenced to nod, and the maid, whom he had slighted, and, of course, insulted, smeared lamp-black all over his face" ; Priapeia xiii, 9 "whoever likes may enter here, smeared with the black soot of the brothel".

Ritter; Ulpian liiii, 23, De Ritu Nupt. Foundation Kingdom overthrow Republic. The speed with which the sapling grows together and its scar forms will determine how quickly the swollen veins of the boy will return to health.

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Marcellus also records which herbs [81] could be used to induce menstruation , or to purge the womb after childbirth or abortion; these herbs include potential abortifacients and may have been used as such. Ancient theories of sexuality were produced by and for an educated elite. The extent to which theorizing about sex actually affected behavior is debatable, even among those who were attentive to the philosophical and medical writings that presented such views.

This elite discourse, while often deliberately critical of common or typical behaviors, at the same time cannot be assumed to exclude values broadly held within the society. Lucretius , De rerum natura 4. The fourth book of Lucretius ' De rerum natura provides one of the most extended passages on human sexuality in Latin literature. Yeats , describing the translation by Dryden , called it "the finest description of sexual intercourse ever written.

Sexuality in ancient Rome - Wikipedia

His didactic poem De rerum natura is a presentation of Epicurean philosophy within the Ennian tradition of Latin poetry. Epicureanism is both materialist and hedonic. The highest good is pleasure, defined as the absence of physical pain and emotional distress. Desires are ranked as those that are both natural and necessary, such as hunger and thirst; those that are natural but unnecessary, such as sex; and those that are neither natural nor necessary, including the desire to rule over others and glorify oneself.

Lucretius treats male desire, female sexual pleasure, heredity, and infertility as aspects of sexual physiology. In the Epicurean view, sexuality arises from impersonal physical causes without divine or supernatural influence. The onset of physical maturity generates semen, and wet dreams occur as the sexual instinct develops. The engorgement of the genitals creates an urge to ejaculate, coupled with the anticipation of pleasure. The body's response to physical attractiveness is automatic, and neither the character of the person desired nor one's own choice is a factor.

With a combination of scientific detachment and ironic humor, Lucretius treats the human sex drive as muta cupido , "dumb desire", comparing the physiological response of ejaculation to the blood spurting from a wound. Lucretius thus expresses an Epicurean ambivalence toward sexuality, which threatens one's peace of mind with agitation if desire becomes a form of bondage and torment, [98] but his view of female sexuality is less negative. Having analyzed the sex act, Lucretius then considers conception and what in modern terms would be called genetics.

Both man and woman, he says, produce genital fluids that mingle in a successful procreative act. The characteristics of the child are formed by the relative proportions of the mother's "seed" to the father's. A child who most resembles its mother is born when the female seed dominates the male's, and vice versa; when neither the male nor female seed dominates, the child will have traits of both mother and father evenly.

Lucretius' purpose is to correct ignorance and to give the knowledge necessary for managing one's sex life rationally. In early Stoicism among the Greeks , sex was regarded as a good , if enjoyed between people who maintained the principles of respect and friendship; in the ideal society, sex should be enjoyed freely, without bonds of marriage that treated the partner as property. Some Greek Stoics privileged same-sex relations between a man and a younger male partner [] [] see " Pederasty in ancient Greece ". However, stoics in the Roman Imperial era departed from the view of human beings as "communally sexual animals" [] and emphasized sex within marriage, [] which as an institution helped sustain social order.

Roman-era Stoics such as Seneca and Musonius Rufus , both active about years after Lucretius, emphasized "sex unity" over the polarity of the sexes. Dimorphism exists, according to Musonius, simply to create difference, and difference in turn creates the desire for a complementary relationship, that is, a couple who will bond for life for the sake of each other and for their children. Both Musonius and Seneca criticized the double standard , cultural and legal, that granted Roman men greater sexual freedom than women.

The argument, then, is not that sexual freedom is a human good, but that men as well as women should exercise sexual restraint. Musonius disapproved of same-sex relations because they lacked a procreative purpose. Although Seneca is known primarily as a Stoic philosopher, he draws on Neopythagoreanism for his views on sexual austerity. The only justification for sex is reproduction within marriage. The philosophical view of the body as a corpse that carries around the soul [] could result in outright contempt for sexuality: Sexual severity opened the Roman Stoics to charges of hypocrisy: Stoic sexual ethics are grounded in their physics and cosmology.

The elements derive from the semina , "seeds," that are generated by heaven; "love" brings together the elements in the act of creation, like the sexual union of male and female. During the Republic, a Roman citizen's political liberty libertas was defined in part by the right to preserve his body from physical compulsion, including both corporal punishment and sexual abuse.

It was expected and socially acceptable for a freeborn Roman man to want sex with both female and male partners, as long as he took the dominating role. In the Imperial era, anxieties about the loss of political liberty and the subordination of the citizen to the emperor were expressed by a perceived increase in passive homosexual behavior among free men, accompanied by a documentable increase in the execution and corporal punishment of citizens.

The poet Ennius ca. The toga , by contrast, distinguished the body of the sexually privileged adult Roman male. Public nudity might be offensive or distasteful even in traditional settings; Cicero derides Mark Antony as undignified for appearing near-naked as a participant in the Lupercalia , even though it was ritually required. Negative connotations of nudity include defeat in war, since captives were stripped, and slavery, since slaves for sale were often displayed naked.

The disapproval of nudity was thus less a matter of trying to suppress inappropriate sexual desire than of dignifying and marking the citizen's body. When statues of Roman generals nude in the manner of Hellenistic kings first began to be displayed, they were shocking not simply because they exposed the male figure, but because they evoked concepts of royalty and divinity that were contrary to Republican ideals of citizenship as embodied by the toga. In art produced under Augustus, the programmatic adoption of Hellenistic and Neo-Attic style led to more complex signification of the male body shown nude, partially nude, or costumed in a muscle cuirass.

One exception to public nudity was the baths , though attitudes toward nude bathing also changed over time. In the 2nd century BC, Cato preferred not to bathe in the presence of his son, and Plutarch implies that for Romans of these earlier times it was considered shameful for mature men to expose their bodies to younger males. Roman sexuality as framed by Latin literature has been described as phallocentric. It was used as an amulet fascinum , many examples of which survive, particularly in the form of wind chimes tintinnabula.

The outsized phallus of Roman art was associated with the god Priapus , among others.

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It was laughter-provoking, grotesque, or used for magical purposes. The poetry collection called the Priapea deals with phallic sexuality, including poems spoken in the person of Priapus. In one, for instance, Priapus threatens anal rape against any potential thief. The wrath of Priapus might cause impotence, or a state of perpetual arousal with no means of release: There are approximately recorded Latin terms and metaphors for the penis, with the largest category treating the male member as an instrument of aggression, a weapon.

Verpa , by contrast, was "an emotive and highly offensive word" for the penis with its foreskin drawn back, as the result of an erection, excessive sexual activity, or circumcision. The penis might also be referred to as the "vein" vena , "tail" penis or cauda , or "tendon" nervus. Later, penis becomes the standard word in polite Latin, as used for example by the scholiast to Juvenal and by Arnobius , but did not pass into usage among the Romance languages.

The apparent connection between Latin testes , "testicles," and testis , plural testes , "witness" the origin of English "testify" and "testimony" [] may lie in archaic ritual. Some ancient Mediterranean cultures swore binding oaths upon the male genitalia, symbolizing that "the bearing of false witness brings a curse upon not only oneself, but one's house and future line". To Romans, castration and circumcision were linked as barbaric mutilations of the male genitalia. Some Romans kept beautiful male slaves as deliciae or delicati "toys, delights" who were sometimes castrated in an effort to preserve the androgynous looks of their youth.

The emperor Nero had his freedman Sporus castrated, and married him in a public ceremony. By the end of the 1st century AD, bans against castration had been enacted by the emperors Domitian and Nerva in the face of a burgeoning trade in eunuch slaves. A surgical procedure epispasm existed to restore the foreskin and cover the glans "for the sake of decorum".

Of these, some had themselves circumcised again later. Too-frequent ejaculation was thought to weaken men. Greek medical theories based on the classical elements and humors recommended limiting the production of semen by means of cooling, drying, and astringent therapies, including cold baths and the avoidance of flatulence-causing foods.

It is not at all surprising that those who are less moderate sexually turn out to be weaker, since the whole body loses the purest part of both substances, and there is besides an accession of pleasure, which by itself is enough to dissolve the vital tone, so that before now some persons have died from excess of pleasure. The uncontrolled dispersing of pneuma in semen could lead to loss of physical vigor, mental acuity, masculinity, and a strong manly voice, [] a complaint registered also in the Priapea.

When plates of lead are bound to the area of the loins and kidneys, it is used, owing to its rather cooling nature, to check the attacks of sexual desire and sexual dreams in one's sleep that cause spontaneous eruptions to the point of becoming a sort of disease. With these plates the orator Calvus is reported to have restrained himself and to have preserved his body's strength for the labor of his studies. Lead plates, cupping therapy , and hair removal were prescribed for three sexual disorders thought to be related to nocturnal emissions: Effeminacy was a favorite accusation in Roman political invective, and was aimed particularly at populares , the politicians of the faction who represented themselves as champions of the people, sometimes called Rome's "democratic" party in contrast to the optimates , a conservative elite of nobles.

The rites were held at a senior magistrate 's home, in this year that of Julius Caesar, nearing the end of his term as praetor and only recently invested as Pontifex Maximus. Clodius disguised himself as a female musician to gain entrance, as described in a "verbal striptease" by Cicero, who prosecuted him for sacrilege incestum: Take away his saffron dress, his tiara, his girly shoes and purple laces, his bra, his Greek harp , take away his shameless behavior and his sex crime, and Clodius is suddenly revealed as a democrat.

The actions of Clodius, who had just been elected quaestor and was probably about to turn thirty, are often regarded as a last juvenile prank. The all-female nature of these nocturnal rites attracted much prurient speculation from men; they were fantasized as drunken lesbian orgies that might be fun to watch. The scandal prompted Caesar to seek an immediate divorce to control the damage to his own reputation, giving rise to the famous line "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion".

The incident "summed up the disorder of the final years of the republic". In addition to political invective, cross-dressing appears in Roman literature and art as a mythological trope as in the story of Hercules and Omphale exchanging roles and attire , [] religious investiture , and rarely or ambiguously as transvestic fetishism. A section of the Digest by Ulpian [] categorizes Roman clothing on the basis of who may appropriately wear it; a man who wore women's clothes, Ulpian notes, would risk making himself the object of scorn.

They are sometimes considered a transgender 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 Roman men were free to have sex with males of lower status without a perceived loss of masculinity, or even as an enhancement of it. Those who took the receiving role in sex acts, sometimes referred to as the "passive" or "submissive" role, were disparaged as weak and effeminate, regardless of the sex of their partner see the section below on cunnilungus and fellatio , [] while having sex with males in the active position was proof of one's masculinity.

Laws such as the poorly understood Lex Scantinia and various pieces of Augustan moral legislation were meant to restrict same-sex activity among freeborn males, viewed as threatening a man's status and independence as a citizen.

Erotica for Men: Roman Slave Girl: The Island Harem

Latin had such a wealth of words for men outside the masculine norm that some scholars [] argue for the existence of a homosexual subculture at Rome; that is, although the noun "homosexual" has no straightforward equivalent in Latin, literary sources reveal a pattern of behaviors among a minority of free men that indicate same-sex preference or orientation. Some terms, such as exoletus , specifically refer to an adult; Romans who were socially marked as "masculine" did not confine their same-sex penetration of male prostitutes or slaves to those who were "boys" under the age of And some older men may have at times preferred the passive role with a same age or younger partner, though this was socially frowned upon.

Homoerotic Latin literature includes the "Juventius" poems of Catullus , [] elegies by Tibullus [] and Propertius , [] the second Eclogue of Vergil , and several poems by Horace. Lucretius addresses the love of boys in De rerum natura 4. The poet Martial , despite being married to a woman, often derides women as sexual partners, and celebrates the charms of pueri boys. Although Roman law did not recognize marriage between men, in the early Imperial period some male couples were celebrating traditional marriage rites. Same-sex weddings are reported by sources that mock them; the feelings of the participants are not recorded.

Apart from measures to protect the liberty of citizens, the prosecution of homosexuality as a general crime began in the 3rd century when male prostitution was banned by Philip the Arab. By the end of the 4th century, passive homosexuality under the Christian Empire was punishable by burning. Men who had been raped were exempt from the loss of legal or social standing infamia suffered by males who prostituted themselves or willingly took the receiving role in sex. Roman law addressed the rape of a male citizen as early as the 2nd century BC, when a ruling was issued in a case that may have involved a male of same-sex orientation.

Although a man who had worked as a prostitute could not be raped as a matter of law, it was ruled that even a man who was "disreputable famosus and questionable suspiciosus " had the same right as other free men not to have his body subjected to forced sex. In his collection of twelve anecdotes dealing with assaults on chastity, the historian Valerius Maximus features male victims in equal number to female. The Roman soldier, like any free and respectable Roman male of status, was expected to show self-discipline in matters of sex.

Soldiers convicted of adultery were given a dishonorable discharge ; convicted adulterers were barred from enlisting. Strict commanders might ban prostitutes and pimps from camp, [] though in general the Roman army , whether on the march or at a permanent fort castrum , was attended by a number of camp followers who might include prostitutes. Perhaps most peculiar is the prohibition against marriage in the Imperial army.

In the early period, Rome had an army of citizens who left their families and took up arms as the need arose. During the expansionism of the Middle Republic , Rome began acquiring vast territories to be defended as provinces, and during the time of Gaius Marius d. The marriage ban applied to all ranks up to the centurionate ; men of the governing classes were exempt.

By the 2nd century AD, the stability of the Empire kept most units in permanent forts, where attachments with local women often developed. Although legally these unions could not be formalized as marriages, their value in providing emotional support for the soldiers was recognized. After a soldier was discharged, the couple were granted the right of legal marriage as citizens conubium , and any children they already had were considered to have been born to citizens.

Other forms of sexual gratification available to soldiers were the use of male slaves , war rape , and same-sex relations. Polybius 2nd century BC reports that same-sex activity in the military was punishable by the fustuarium , clubbing to death. A soldier maintained his masculinity by not allowing his body to be used for sexual purposes. This physical integrity stood in contrast to the limits placed on his actions as a free man within the military hierarchy; most strikingly, Roman soldiers were the only citizens regularly subjected to corporal punishment, reserved in the civilian world mainly for slaves.

Sexual integrity helped distinguish the status of the soldier, who otherwise sacrificed a great deal of his civilian autonomy, from that of the slave. An incident related by Plutarch in his biography of Marius illustrates the soldier's right to maintain his sexual integrity. A good-looking young recruit named Trebonius [] had been sexually harassed over a period of time by his superior officer, who happened to be Marius's nephew, Gaius Luscius.

One night, having fended off unwanted advances on numerous occasions, Trebonius was summoned to Luscius's tent. Unable to disobey the command of his superior, he found himself the object of a sexual assault and drew his sword, killing Luscius. A conviction for killing an officer typically resulted in execution. When brought to trial, he was able to produce witnesses to show that he had repeatedly had to fend off Luscius, and "had never prostituted his body to anyone, despite offers of expensive gifts".

Marius not only acquitted Trebonius in the killing of his kinsman, but gave him a crown for bravery. During wartime, the violent use of war captives for sex was not considered criminal rape. Mass rape occurred in some circumstances, and is likely to be underreported in the surviving sources, but was not a deliberate or pervasive strategy for controlling a population. In territories and provinces brought under treaty with Rome, soldiers who committed rape against the local people might be subjected to harsher punishments than civilians.

Because of the Roman emphasis on family, female sexuality was regarded as one of the bases for social order and prosperity. Female citizens were expected to exercise their sexuality within marriage, and were honored for their sexual integrity pudicitia and fecundity: Augustus granted special honors and privileges to women who had given birth to three children see " Ius trium liberorum ".

Control of female sexuality was regarded as necessary for the stability of the state, as embodied most conspicuously in the absolute virginity of the Vestals. As was the case for men, free women who displayed themselves sexually, such as prostitutes and performers, or who made themselves available indiscriminately were excluded from legal protections and social respectability. Many Roman literary sources approve of respectable women exercising sexual passion within marriage. Roman attitudes toward female nudity differed from but were influenced by those of the Greeks, who idealized the male body in the nude while portraying respectable women clothed.

Partial nudity of goddesses in Roman Imperial art, however, can highlight the breasts as dignified but pleasurable images of nurturing, abundance, and peacefulness. In the real world as described in literature, prostitutes sometimes displayed themselves naked at the entrance to their brothel cubicles, or wore see-through silk garments; slaves for sale were often displayed naked to allow buyers to inspect them for defects, and to symbolize that they lacked the right to control their own body. Naked she stood on the shore, at the pleasure of the purchaser; every part of her body was examined and felt.

Would you hear the result of the sale? The pirate sold; the pimp bought, that he might employ her as a prostitute. The display of the female body made it vulnerable. Varro said sight was the greatest of the senses, because while the others were limited by proximity, sight could penetrate even to the stars; he thought the Latin word for "sight, gaze ", visus , was etymologically related to vis , "force, power". But the connection between visus and vis , he said, also implied the potential for violation , just as Actaeon gazing on the naked Diana violated the goddess.

The completely nude female body as portrayed in sculpture was thought to embody a universal concept of Venus, whose counterpart Aphrodite is the goddess most often depicted as a nude in Greek art. The "basic obscenity" for the female genitalia is cunnus , " cunt ", though perhaps not as strongly offensive as the English. Varro connects this usage of the word to the sacrifice of a pig to the goddess Ceres in preliminary wedding rites.

Although women's genitals appear often in invective and satiric verse as objects of disgust, they are rarely referred to in Latin love elegy. The function of the clitoris landica was "well understood". Latin lacked a standard word for labia ; [] two terms found in medical writers are orae , "edges" or "shores", [] and pinnacula , "little wings". Vulva seems originally to have referred to the womb of animals, but is "extremely common" in Pliny's Natural History for a human uterus. Both women and men often removed their pubic hair, [] but grooming may have varied over time and by individual preference.

A fragment from the early satirist Lucilius refers to penetrating a "hairy bag", [] and a graffito from Pompeii declares that "a hairy cunt is fucked much better than one which is smooth; it's steamy and wants cock". At the entrance to a caldarium in the bath complex of the House of Menander at Pompeii, an unusual graphic device appears on a mosaic: Latin words for "breasts" include mammae cf.

English "mammary" , papillae more specifically for "nipples" , and ubera , breasts in their capacity to provide nourishment, including the teats or udder of an animal. The breasts of a beautiful woman were supposed to be "unobtrusive. While Greek epigrams describe ideal breasts, [] Latin poets take limited interest in them, at least as compared to the modern focus on admiring and fondling a woman's breasts.

Because all infants were breastfed in antiquity, the breast was viewed primarily as an emblem of nurturing and of motherhood. Wrapping one's head in a bra was said to cure a headache. Baring the breasts is one of the gestures made by women, particularly mothers or nurses, to express mourning or as an appeal for mercy. Because women were normally portrayed clothed in art, bared breasts can signify vulnerability or erotic availability by choice, accident, or force. Baring a single breast was a visual motif of Classical Greek sculpture , where among other situations, including seductions, [] it often represented impending physical violence or rape.

The erogenous power of the breast was not utterly neglected: 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. Ovid, who advocates generally for a heterosexual lifestyle, finds it "a desire known to no one, freakish, novel During the Roman Imperial era, which many Roman writers perceived as more decadent than the Republican period, 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.

I wish I could hold to my neck and embrace the little arms, and bear kisses on the tender lips. Go on, doll, and trust your joys to the winds; believe me, light is the nature of men. An early reference to same-sex relations among women as "lesbianism" is found in Lucian 2nd century AD: Instead, they consort with women, just like men. Since Romans thought a sex act required an active or dominant partner who was "phallic" see "Phallic sexuality" above , male writers imagined that in lesbian sex one of the women would use a dildo or have an exceptionally large clitoris for penetration, and that she would be the one experiencing pleasure.

The rape of women is a pervasive theme in the myths and legends of early Rome. The overthrow of the Roman monarchy and the establishment of the Republic was precipitated by the rape of the much-admired Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius , the king's son. The legend crystallizes the Roman view of unchecked libido as a form of tyranny. The Augustan historian Livy seems "embarrassed" by the rape motif of early Roman history, and emphasizes the redeeming political dimension of these events.

Roman law recognized rape as a crime: The laws punish the foul wickedness of those who prostitute their modesty to the lusts of others, but they do not attach blame to those who are compelled to stuprum by force, since it has, moreover, been quite properly decided that their reputations are unharmed and that they are not prohibited from marriage to others. Since emancipated women were allowed to bring criminal prosecutions in the Republic, [] it is conceivable that a rape victim could have brought charges against her rapist herself.

Otherwise, the case could be prosecuted by her father or husband, or by anyone who saw fit to do so. There was no statute of limitations for rape; by contrast adultery , which was criminalized under Augustus , had to be prosecuted within five years. As a matter of law, rape could be committed only against a citizen in good standing. A woman who worked as a prostitute or entertainer lost her social standing and became infamis ; by making her body publicly available, she had in effect surrendered her right to be protected from sexual abuse or physical violence.

If rape against a married woman could not be proven, the Augustan legislation criminalizing adultery would make the man liable to a charge of adulterium , criminal adultery, though a charge of either adultery or stuprum without force would implicate the woman as well. Attitudes toward rape changed when the Empire became Christianized. Augustine interpreted Lucretia's suicide as a possible admission that she had secretly encouraged the rapist, [n 7] and Christian apologists regarded her as having committed the sin of involuntary sexual pleasure.

The word raptus thus could refer to a successful seduction as well as abduction or rape. If the girl consented, Constantine ordered that she be punished along with the male "abductor" by being burnt alive. If she had not consented, she was still considered an accomplice, "on the grounds that she could have saved herself by screaming for help". In the Republic and the pre-Christian Empire, the consequences of an abduction or an elopement had been up to the couple and their families. Both male and female freeborn children wore the toga praetexta , a purple-bordered garment that marked its wearer as having "inviolable" status.

Freeborn Roman boys also wore an apotropaic amulet called the bulla which incorporated a phallic talisman fascinum inside a locket of gold, silver, or bronze, or in a leather pouch. There were laws protecting freeborn children from sexual predators , [] [] and the rape of a freeborn boy was a capital crime; this severity was directed at protecting the integrity of the young citizen. Apronius danced naked at a banquet in front of a boy still of an age to wear the praetexta. Quintilian regards this misbehavior as a sign of general moral decline.

Protections applied only to freeborn children, not those born to slaves, sold into slavery, or taken captive in war. The social acceptance of pederasty among the Romans was focused on the exploitation of young male slaves or prostitutes by men of the upper classes. Adolescents in ritual preparation to transition to adult status wore the tunica recta , the "upright tunic", so called because it was woven ritually on the type of upright loom that was the earliest used by Romans.

The puberty ritual for the young male involved shaving his first beard and taking off his bulla , which he dedicated to the household gods, the Lares. Roman women were expected to remain virgins until marriage; the higher a girl's social rank, the earlier she was likely to become betrothed and married. Weddings were often postponed until the girl was considered mature enough. The wedding ceremony was in part a rite of passage for the bride, as Rome lacked the elaborate female puberty rituals of ancient Greece.

The confining of her hair signified the harnessing of her sexuality within marriage. Her weaving of the tunica recta and the hairnet demonstrated her skill and her capacity for acting in the traditional matron's role as custos domi , "guardian of the house". Because men could enjoy sexual relations outside marriage with relative impunity, it has sometimes been assumed that satisfying sex was not an expectation of Roman marriage.

Sexual intimacy between a married couple was a private matter, and not usually the subject of literature. A wedding hymn by Catullus, for instance, praises the love goddess Venus because "nothing is possible without you". I am seized by an unbelievable longing for you. The reason is above all my love, but secondarily the fact that we are not used to being apart. This is why I spend the greater part of the night haunted by your image; this is why from time to time my feet lead me the right expression!

Pliny adopts the rhetoric of love poetry, conventionally directed at an illicit or hard-to-attain lover, as appropriate for expressing his wedded desire. Although it was a point of pride for a woman to be univira , married only once, [] there was no stigma attached to divorce. Speedy remarriage after divorce or the death of a spouse was common and even expected among the Roman elite, since marriage was considered right and natural for adults.

While having children was a primary goal of marriage, other social and familial bonds were enhanced, not excluding personal companionship and sexual pleasure between husband and wife, as indicated by marriages involving women past their childbearing years. The Trojan royal couple Hector and Andromache became a mythological trope of wedded sex. Latin love elegy focuses on their sex life rather than the tragic end of their marriage with Hector's death at the hands of Achilles.

An epithalamium by Catullus [] paints the wedding night as a time of ripe eroticism, spiced with humorous and bawdy songs from the guests. The husband is reminded that "good Venus" has blessed him, since he can now desire openly what he desires, and need not conceal a "good love". The couple is encouraged to enjoy themselves as they please ludite ut lubet ; the goal is to produce children soon.

A pair of paintings in a bedroom of the Casa della Farnesina has been interpreted as "a narrative of the modest bride becoming the immodest lover—perhaps fulfilling a ribald male fantasy". Some literary passages suggest that a newlywed might break off his outside sexual relations for a time and focus on bonding with his wife in the hope of starting a family. Legally, however, a Roman husband did not commit adultery when he had sex outside marriage as long as his partner was considered sexually available; sexual misconduct stuprum was adultery depending on the status of a female partner.

A character in a play by Plautus expresses a man's sexual freedom in comic terms:. No one prohibits anyone from going down the public way publica via ; as long as you do not make a path through posted land , as long as you hold off from brides, single women, maidens, the youth and free boys, love whatever you want. A married or marriageable woman and young male citizens are off-limits, just as if they were the property of someone else, [] and in fact adultery as a crime was committed contrary to the rights of the paterfamilias to control his household. For a married woman, no infidelity was acceptable, and first-time brides were expected to be virgins.

Following the collapse of the Republic , moral legislation became part of the new political order under Rome's first emperor, Augustus. The appeal to old-fashioned values cloaked the radical overthrow of the Republic's participatory political institutions by top-down, one-man rule. Scholars have often assumed that the Lex Iulia was meant to address a virulent outbreak of adultery in the Late Republic. An androcentric perspective in the early 20th century held that the Lex Iulia had been "a very necessary check upon the growing independence and recklessness of women".

Personal anxieties about infidelity, within marriage or not, are reflected in magic spells intended to "fix" defixiones or bind the other person's erotic attachment. One magical papyrus from Roman Egypt recommends placing the heart of a hoopoe on a sleeping woman's genitals to induce truthful answers; another says that the tongue of a hen placed on her lips or breast will cause her to reveal the name of the man she loves.

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Literature of the Late Republic and Principate , particularly the satires of Horace and Juvenal , offer various depictions, or perhaps fantasies, of how a wronged husband might subject his wife's lover to humiliation and punishment. In these literary treatments, the adulterer is castrated, beaten, raped by the husband himself or his slaves, or penetrated anally with a mullet , a type of prized fish cultivated by elite Romans as a leisure activity otium.

References to such acts do not appear in the letters of Cicero nor the histories of Tacitus , and may be fictional exaggerations. The cultivation of a laissez-faire attitude as a sign of urbanity may have prompted the provision of Augustus's adultery law that required a husband to divorce his wife and bring formal legal charges against her, or face charges himself for pimping lenocinium. Sexuality was a "core feature" of ancient Roman slavery.

In this situation why on earth should he refrain from sodomising his houseboys? A Roman could exploit his own slaves for sex, but was not entitled to compel any enslaved person he chose to have sex, since the owner had the right to control his own property. A slave's sexuality was closely controlled.

Slaves had no right to legal marriage conubium , though they could live together as husband and wife contubernales. An owner usually restricted the heterosexual activities of his male slaves to females he also owned; any children born from these unions added to his wealth. If an owner found that his male slave was having a sexual relationship with a free woman, the law required that he warn the couple three times to break it off. If the affair continued, he had the right to take ownership of the woman.



Not even Messalina or Sallust 's Sempronia is accused in the hostile sources of having sex with a slave. Despite the external controls and restrictions placed on a slave's sexuality, Roman art and literature perversely often portray slaves as lascivious, voyeuristic, and even sexually knowing. Freeborn Romans who fell into slavery were supposed to be protected from sexual exploitation, as indicated by two different stories recorded by ancient historians.

According to Livy , debt slavery nexum was abolished as a direct result of the attempted sexual abuse of a freeborn youth who served as surety for his father's debt [] with the usurer Lucius Papirius. The boy, Gaius Publilius, was notably beautiful, and Papirius insisted that as a bond slave he was required to provide sexual services. When Publilius refused, Papirius had him stripped and whipped. The youth then took to the streets to display his injuries, and an outcry among the people led the consuls to convene the senate. The law thus established that the integrity of a Roman citizen's body was fundamental to the concept of libertas , political liberty, in contrast to the uses to which a slave's body was subject.

Some sexual protections could be extended to slaves. The conduct of slaves reflected generally on the respectability of the household, and the materfamilias in particular was judged by her female slaves' sexual behavior, which was expected to be moral or at least discreet. This decorum may have limited the exploitation of female slaves that were part of the familia. Although concern for the slave's welfare may have been a factor in individual cases, this legal restriction seems also to have been intended to shield the male citizen owner from the shame or infamia associated with pimping and prostitution.

The ne serva covenant remained in force for subsequent sales, even if the buyer was initially unaware of it, and if it was violated, the illegally prostituted slave was granted freedom. Prostitution was legal throughout the Roman Empire in all periods.

Free Women and Male Slaves, or Mandingo meets the Roman Empire

Prostitutes in Rome had to register with the aediles. Despite what might seem to be a clear distinction as a matter of law, the jurist Ulpian opined that an openly promiscuous woman brought the status of prostitute upon herself, even if she accepted no money. Encouraged to think of adultery as a matter of law rather than morality, a few socially prominent women even chose to avoid prosecution for adultery by registering themselves as prostitutes.

Confused status frequently results in plot complications in the comedies of Plautus and Terence. Obstacles to love arise when a young man falls in love with, and wishes to marry, a non-citizen prostitute, and are overcome when the young woman's true status as a freeborn virgin is revealed. The well-brought-up freeborn virgin is marriageable, and the non-citizen prostitute is not. Plautus and Terence drew on Greek models which are often little known, and so the extent to which they incorporated Roman social behaviors and attitudes is hard to determine. Elaine Fantham has observed that prolonged military campaigning in Greece and Asia Minor had introduced Roman men to a more sophisticated standard of luxury and pleasure, perhaps reflected by comedy: Prostitutes appear in erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum , including wall paintings from buildings identified as brothels, in which they are often nude except for a strapless bra strophium.

The paintings illustrate various sexual positions that contradict some scholarly claims about the preferences of Roman men in heterosexual acts. They were the only Roman women who wore the toga , the distinctive dress of a free Roman male. This crossing of gender boundaries has been interpreted variously. Prostitutes were among those persons in Rome categorized as infames , enjoying few legal protections even if they were technically not slaves. In the Roman moral tradition, pleasure voluptas was a dubious pursuit.

The Stoic moralist Seneca contrasts pleasure with virtue virtus:. Virtue you will find in the temple , in the forum , in the senate house , standing before the city walls, dusty and sunburnt, her hands rough; pleasure you will most often find lurking around the baths and sweating rooms , and places that fear the police , in search of darkness, soft, effete, reeking of wine and perfume, pallid or else painted and made up with cosmetics like a corpse.

Roman ambivalence toward physical pleasure is expressed by the infamia of those whose bodies provided it publicly. They served the pleasure of others. They were tarnished by exposure to the public gaze. Those labeled infames singular infamis were liable to corporal punishment, usually reserved for slaves.

Actors were sexually ambiguous, in part because they could imitate women, [] [] and were attractive to both men and women. The dictator Sulla had a long-term affair with an actor; [] Maecenas , the arts patron and advisor to Augustus , was in love with an actor named Bathyllus ; [] and women of the Imperial family are alleged to have had affairs with actors. A man who enjoyed receiving anal sex or providing oral sex, often characterized as a cinaedus , might also be stigmatized as infamis , though if he was a citizen he could retain his legal standing.

A few of these residences have rooms decorated with pornographic art [] not differing from that found in identified brothels; in some cases, an erotically decorated room has its own exterior door to admit visitors [] who would normally enter the home through the main doors leading to the atrium, where the family displayed ancestral images and other trophies of respectability. Just as notorious was that party arranged for Metellus Scipio when he was consul and for the people's tribunes—by Gemellus, their tribunicial errand boy.

He was a free man by birth, but twisted by his business to play the servant's role.