Sex Lives of the Roman Emperors

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Ausonius, Epigram 43 Green (39); Matthew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 92. Habinek, "The Invention of Sexuality in the World-City of Rome," in The Roman Cultural Revolution, p. 39. Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," p. 534; Ronnie Ancona, "(Un)Constrained Male Desire: An Intertextual Reading of Horace Odes 2.8 and Catullus Poem 61," in Gendered Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), p. 47; Mark Petrini, The Child and the Hero: Coming of Age in Catullus and Vergil (University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 19–20. Lelis, Arnold A., William A. Percy, and Beert C. Verstraete. The Age of Marriage in Ancient Rome. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. 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. [202] Female prostitutes were the only women in ancient Rome who wore the distinctively masculine toga. The wearing of the toga may signal that prostitutes were outside the normal social and legal category of "woman". [203]

Johns, Catherine (1982). Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome. British Museum. pp.102–104. The phallus (the erect penis), whether on Pan, Priapus or a similar deity, or on its own, was a common image. It was not seen as threatening or even necessarily erotic, but as a ward against the evil eye. [1] [2] The phallus was sculpted in bronze as tintinnabula (wind chimes). Phallus-animals were common household items. References to homosexual desire or practice, in fact, also appear in Roman authors who wrote in literary styles seen as originally Roman, that is, where the influence of Greek fashions or styles is less likely. In an Atellan farce authored by Quintus Novius (a literary style seen as originally Roman), it is said by one of the characters that "everyone knows that a boy is superior to a woman"; the character goes on to list physical attributes, most of which denoting the onset of puberty, that mark boys when they are at their most attractive in the character's view. [25] Also remarked elsewhere in Novius' fragments is that the sexual use of boys ceases after "their butts become hairy". [26] A preference for smooth male bodies over hairy ones is also avowed elsewhere in Roman literature (e.g., in Ode 4.10 by Horace and in some epigrams by Martial or in the Priapeia), and was likely shared by most Roman men of the time. [27] Sex between two males. Ceramic bowl. Late 1st century BCESame-sex relations among women are far less documented [2] and, if Roman writers are to be trusted, female homoeroticism may have been very rare, to the point that Ovid, in the Augustine era describes it as "unheard-of". [3] However, there is scattered evidence—for example, a couple of spells in the Greek Magical Papyri—which attests to the existence of individual women in Roman-ruled provinces in the later Imperial period who fell in love with members of the same sex. [4] Overview [ edit ] John R. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art 100 B.C.–A.D. 250 (University of California Press, 1998, 2001), p. 234. Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (University of Michigan Press, 1988), pp. 239–240, 249–250 et passim. Potter, David S., ed. (2009). "Sexuality in the Roman Empire". A Companion to the Roman Empire. John Wiley & Sons. p.335. ISBN 978-1-4051-9918-6. Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World, pp. xi–xii; Skinner, introduction to Roman Sexualities, pp. 11–12.

The boy was sometimes castrated in an effort to preserve his youthful qualities; Caroline Vout asserts that the emperor Nero's eunuch Sporus, whom he castrated and married, may have been a puer delicatus. [123] as a mythological trope, as in the story of Hercules and Omphale exchanging roles and attire; [201] verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

A Symbol of Roman Vanity

Michael Groneberg, "Reasons for Homophobia: Three Types of Explanation," in Combatting Homophobia: Experiences and Analyses Pertinent to Education (LIT Verlag, 2011), p. 193. Ovid adduces the story of Hercules and Omphale as an explanation for the ritual nudity of the Lupercalia; see "Male nudity in ancient Rome" and Richard J. King, Desiring Rome: Male Subjectivity and Reading Ovid's Fasti (Ohio State University Press, 2006), pp. 185, 195, 200, 204. Maria Teresa Marabini Moevs, “Per una storia del gusto: riconsiderazioni sul Calice Warren,” Bollettino d’Arte 146 (2008): 1-16. James L. Butrica (2005). "Some Myths and Anomalies in the Study of Roman Sexuality". Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition. Haworth Press. p.210. The Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius (4th century AD) makes a joke about a male threesome that depends on imagining the configurations of group sex:

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1.2.8, who disapproves of consorting with either concubini or "girlfriends" ( amicae) in front of one's children. Ramsey MacMullen, "Roman Attitudes to Greek Love," Historia 31 (1982), p. 496. The second image, from Schefold, Karl: Vergessenes Pompeji: Unveröffentlichte Bilder römischer Wanddekorationen in geschichtlicher Folge. München 1962., with its much more brilliant colors, has been used to retouch the younger, higher resolution image here.Latin had such a wealth of words for men outside the masculine norm that some scholars [147] 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. Plautus mentions a street known for male prostitutes. [148] 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. In his 9th satire, Juvenal describes the life of a male gigolo who earned his living servicing rich passive homosexual men.