Exoletus

Exoletus is a Latin term, the perfect passive participle of the verb exolescere, which means "to wear out with age".

In his essay on sexual morality, Offences Against One's Self, the nineteenth-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham provided the following definition of the term: However, the word is sometimes also applied to adolescents, puberes exoleti, as in the Historia Augusta 7.5.4.4.

In an essay on Roman erotic art, John Pollini has argued that the term referred not to age but to prostitutes who had become physically "worn out" by frequent anal penetration.

[2] John Boswell argued that the term "exoletus" distinguished an active from a passive male prostitute, or "catamitus", from which the English word "catamite" is derived.

[3] In the article "Some Myths and Anomalies in the Study of Roman Sexuality" in the Journal of Homosexuality, James L. Butrica argued that the term did not refer to prostitutes at all.