Sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome are indicated by art, literature, and inscriptions, and to a lesser extent by archaeological remains such as erotic artifacts and architecture. It has sometimes been assumed that "unlimited sexual license" was characteristic of ancient Rome,Edwards, p. 65."The sexuality of the Romans has never had good press in the West ever since the rise of Christianity. In the popular imagination and culture, it is synonymous with sexual license and abuse": Beert C. Verstraete and , Vernon, eds., Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition (Haworth Press, 2005), p. 5. For an extended discussion of how the modern perception of Roman sexual decadence can be traced to early Christian polemic, see Alastair J. L. Blanshard, "Roman Vice," in Sex: Vice and Love from Antiquity to Modernity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 1–88. but sexuality was not excluded as a concern of the mos maiorum, the traditional social norms that affected public, private, and military life.Karl-J. Hölkeskamp, Reconstructing the Roman Republic: An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research (Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 17–18. Pudor, "shame, modesty", was a regulating factor in behavior,Langlands, p. 17. as were legal strictures on certain sexual transgressions in both the Republican and Imperial periods.Langlands, p. 20. The censors—public officials who determined the social rank of individuals—had the power to remove citizens from the senatorial or equestrian order for sexual misconduct, and on occasion did so.Fantham, p. 121Richlin (1993), p. 556. Under the Empire, the emperor assumed the powers of the censors (p. 560). The mid-20th-century sexuality theorist Michel Foucault regarded sex throughout the Greco-Roman world as governed by restraint and the art of managing sexual pleasure.Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: The Care of the Self (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), vol. 3, p. 239 (on the contrast with the Christian view of sex as "linked to evil") et passim, as summarized by Inger Furseth and Pål Repstad, An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives (Ashgate, 2006), p. 64.
Roman society was patriarchal (see paterfamilias), and masculinity was premised on a capacity for governing oneself and others of lower status, not only in war and politics, but also in sexual relations.Cantarella, p. xii. Virtus, "virtue", was an active masculine ideal of self-discipline, related to the Latin word for "man", vir. The corresponding ideal for a woman was pudicitia, often translated as chastity or modesty, but it was a more positive and even competitive personal quality that displayed both her attractiveness and self-control.Langlands, pp. 37–38. Roman women of the upper classes were expected to be well educated, strong of character, and active in maintaining their family's standing in society.Cantarella, pp. xii–xiii. With extremely few exceptions, surviving Latin literature preserves the voices of educated male Romans on sexuality. Visual art was created by those of lower social status and of a greater range of ethnicity, but was tailored to the taste and inclinations of those wealthy enough to afford it, including, in the Imperial era, former slaves.Clarke, pp. 9, 153ff.
Some sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Roman culture differ markedly from those in later Western societies.Langlands, p. 31, especially note 55Clarke, p. 11. Roman religion promoted sexuality as an aspect of prosperity for the state, and individuals might turn to private religious practice or "magic" for improving their erotic lives or reproductive health. Prostitution was legal, public, and widespread. "Pornographic" paintings were featured among the art collections in respectable upperclass households.McGinn (2004), p. 164. "Homosexual" and "heterosexual" did not form the primary dichotomy of Roman thinking about sexuality, and no Latin words for these concepts exist.Williams, p. 304, citing Saara Lilja, Homosexuality in Republican and Augustan Rome (Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1983), p. 122. Sexual relations of a man with either women or men of inferior status seems to have been generally tolerated, as long as his behaviors revealed no weaknesses or excesses, nor infringed on the rights and prerogatives of his masculine peers. While perceived effeminacy was denounced, especially in political rhetoric, sex in moderation with male prostitutes or slaves, usually documented in the form of pederasty was accepted, though not necessarily viewed as positive, so long as the male citizen took the active role and the slave or prostitute the receptive role.
A late-20th-century paradigm analyzed Roman sexuality in relation to a "penetrator–penetrated" binary model. This model, however, has limitations, especially in regard to expressions of sexuality among individual Romans.Langlands, p. 13. Even the relevance of the word "sexuality" to ancient Roman culture has been disputed;Clarke, p. 8, maintains that the ancient Romans "did not have a self-conscious idea of their sexuality".Penner, pp. 15–16Habinek, pp. 2ff. but in the absence of any other label for "the cultural interpretation of erotic experience", the term continues to be used.Edwards, pp. 66–67, especially note 12.
Erotic literature and art
Ancient literature pertaining to Roman sexuality falls mainly into four categories: legal texts; medical texts; poetry; and political discourse.Clarke, p. 9. Forms of expression with lower cultural cachet in antiquity—such as comedy, satire, invective, love poetry, graffiti, magic spells, inscriptions, and interior decoration—have more to say about sex than elevated genres such as epic and tragedy. Information about the sex lives of the Romans is scattered in historiography, oratory, philosophy, and writings on medicine, agriculture, and other technical topics.Potter (2009), p. 330. Legal texts point to behaviors Romans wanted to regulate or prohibit, without necessarily reflecting what people actually did or refrained from doing.Potter (2009), p. 331.
Major Latin authors whose works contribute significantly to an understanding of Roman sexuality include:
the comic playwright Plautus (d. 184 BC), whose plots often revolve around sex comedy and young lovers kept apart by circumstances; the statesman and moralist Cato the Elder (d. 149 BC), who offers glimpses of sexuality at a time that later Romans regarded as having higher moral standards; the poet Lucretius (d. c. 55 BC), who presents an extended treatment of Epicurean sexuality in his philosophical work De rerum natura; Catullus (fl. 50s BC), whose poems explore a range of erotic experience near the end of the Republic, from delicate romanticism to brutally obscene invective; Cicero (d. 43 BC), with courtroom speeches that often attack the opposition's sexual conduct and letters peppered with gossip about Rome's elite; the Augustan elegists Propertius and Tibullus, who reveal social attitudes in describing love affairs with mistresses; Ovid (d. 17 AD), especially his Amores ("Love Affairs") and Ars Amatoria ("Art of Love"), which according to tradition contributed to Augustus's decision to exile the poet, and his epic, the Metamorphoses, which presents a range of sexuality, with an emphasis on rape, through the lens of mythology; the epigrammatist Martial (d. c. 102/4 AD), whose observations of society are braced by sexually explicit invective; the satirist Juvenal (d. early 2nd century AD), who rails against the sexual mores of his time.
Ovid lists a number of writers known for salacious material whose works are now lost.Ovid, Tristia 2.431ff. Greek sex manuals and "straightforward pornography" were published under the name of famous heterai (courtesans), and circulated in Rome. The robustly sexual Milesiaca of Aristides was translated by Sisenna, one of the praetors of 78 BC. Ovid calls the book a collection of misdeeds (crimina), and says the narrative was laced with dirty jokes.Ovid, Tristia 2.413 and 443–444; Heinz Hofmann, Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context (Routledge, 1999), p. 85. After the Battle of Carrhae, the Parthians were reportedly shocked to find the Milesiaca in the baggage of Marcus Crassus's officers.Plutarch, Life of Crassus 32.
Erotic art, especially as preserved in Pompeii and Herculaneum, is a rich if not unambiguous source; some images contradict sexual preferences stressed in literary sources and may be intended to provoke laughter or challenge conventional attitudes.Clarke, p. 3. Everyday objects such as mirrors and serving vessels might be decorated with erotic scenes; on Arretine ware, these range from "elegant amorous dalliance" to explicit views of the penis entering the vagina.Clarke, p. 108. Erotic paintings were found in the most respectable houses of the Roman nobility, as Ovid notes:
Just as venerable figures of men, painted by the hand of an artist, are resplendent in our houses, so too there is a small painting (tabella)The tabella was a small, portable painting, as distinguished from an architecturally permanent wall painting. in some spot which depicts various couplings and sexual positions: just as Telamonian Ajax sits with an expression that declares his anger, and the barbarian mother (Medea) has crime in her eyes, so too a wet Venus dries her dripping hair with her fingers and is viewed barely covered by the maternal waters.Ovid, Tristia 2, as cited in Clarke, pp. 91–92.
The pornographic tabella and the erotically charged Venus appear among various images that a connoisseur of art might enjoy.Clarke, p. 93. A series of paintings from the Suburban Baths at Pompeii, discovered in 1986 and published in 1995, presents erotic scenarios that seem intended "to amuse the viewer with outrageous sexual spectacle," including a variety of positions, oral sex, and group sex featuring male–female, male–male, and female–female relations.Clarke, pp. 3 and 212 ff., quotation on p. 216.
The décor of a Roman bedroom could reflect quite literally its sexual use: the Augustan poet Horace supposedly had a mirrored room for sex, so that when he hired a prostitute he could watch from all angles.As criticized by Suetonius, Life of Horace: Ad res Venerias intemperantior traditur; nam speculato cubiculo scorta dicitur habuisse disposita, ut quocumque respexisset ibi ei imago coitus referretur; Clarke, p. 92. The emperor Tiberius had his bedrooms decorated with "the most lascivious" paintings and sculptures, and stocked with Greek sex manuals by Elephantis in case those employed in sex needed direction.Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 44.2; Clarke, pp. 92–93.