Sexuality in ancient Rome

[17] No moral censure was directed at the man who enjoyed sex acts with either women or males of inferior status, as long as his behaviors revealed no weaknesses or excesses, nor infringed on the rights and prerogatives of his masculine peers.

They tightly press what they have sought and cause bodily pain, and often drive their teeth into little lips and give crushing kisses, because the pleasure is not pure and there are goads underneath which prod them to hurt that very thing, whatever it is, from which those [torments] of frenzy spring.

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.

Lack of self-control, including in managing one's sex life, indicated that a man was incapable of governing others;[146] the enjoyment of "low sensual pleasure" threatened to erode the elite male's identity as a cultured person.

[156] Even when stripping down for exercises, Roman men kept their genitals and buttocks covered, an Italic custom shared also with the Etruscans, whose art mostly shows them wearing a loincloth, a skirt-like garment, or the earliest form of "shorts" for athletics.

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.

[179][192][193][194][195][196][197] When the cult of Cybele was imported to Rome at the end of the 3rd century BC, its traditional eunuchism was confined to foreign priests (the Galli), while Roman citizens formed sodalities to perform honors in keeping with their own customs.

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.

[233] Lead plates, cupping therapy, and hair removal were prescribed for three sexual disorders thought to be related to nocturnal emissions: satyriasis, or hypersexuality; priapism, a chronic erection without an accompanying desire for sex; and the involuntary discharge of semen.

[234] 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.

[240][241] 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),[242] religious investiture, and rarely or ambiguously as transvestic fetishism.

[245] In a "mock trial" exercise presented by the elder Seneca, a young man (adulescens) is 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.

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.

[270][271] The Lex Julia de vi publica,[272] 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.

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.

[359] In one poem celebrating a wedding, Catullus remarks on the bride's "tender nipples" (teneris ... papillis), which would keep a good husband sleeping with her; erotic appeal supports fidelity within marriage and leads to children and a long life together.

[375][159] Julius Caesar indicates that the gesture had a similar significance in Celtic culture: during the siege of Avaricum, the female heads of household (matres familiae) expose their breasts and extend their hands to ask that the women and children be spared.

[409][410] The official position under Diocletian (reigned 284–305 AD) held that:[411] 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.

[412] Although literary sources from the Republican era make it clear that rape was wrong and severely penalized, the statutes under which it might be charged as a crime are unknown until passage of the Lex Iulia de vi publica, dating probably to the dictatorship of Julius Caesar in the 40s BC.

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.

[437] Fictional license was not a defense; Valerius Maximus reports that a poetic boast of seducing a puer praetextatus ("praetextate boy") and a freeborn virgin (ingenua virgo) was used in court to impugn a prosecutor's moral authority.

[485] It is possible, however, that no such epidemic of adultery even existed; the law should perhaps be understood not as addressing a real problem that threatened society, but as one of the instruments of social control exercised by Augustus that cast the state, and by extension himself, in the role of paterfamilias to all Rome.

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: the young man acts out his infatuation with an expensive courtesan instead of a family slave or common prostitute.

[561] A fragment from a play by Plautus suggests that acquiring an erotic vocabulary was part of a woman's introduction to sexuality within marriage: a virgin explains that she has not yet learned the words suitable for the wedding night (nupta verba).

[642][643][644] The logistics of staging a sex act between a woman and a bull is a matter of speculation; if "Pasiphaë" were a condemned criminal to be tortured and killed, the animal may have been induced by the application of "vaginal secretion from a cow in season".

[653][654] 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.

[663] In his chapter on anthropology and human physiology in the encyclopedic Natural History, 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).

[668] Livy records an incident during the Second Punic War when the discovery of a four-year-old hermaphrodite prompted an elaborate series of expiations: on the advice of the haruspices, the child was enclosed in a chest, carried out to sea, and allowed to drown.

[675][676] Other monuments throughout the Empire, including the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias and the altar of the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls at Lugdunum (modern Lyon, France), as well as various coins, embody conquered territories and peoples as women: Roman military power defeats a "feminized" nation.

[677][678][679] Although the figures from Pompey's theater have not survived, relief panels from Aphrodisias include scenes such as a heroically nude Claudius forcing the submission of Britannia, whose right breast is bare, and Nero dragging away a dead Armenia, a composition that recalls the defeat of the Amazon Penthesilea by Achilles.

Satyr and nymph , mythological symbols of sexuality on a mosaic from a bedroom in Pompeii .
Romantic scene from a mosaic (Villa at Centocelle, Rome, 20 BC–20 AD)
A man prepares the nocturnal sacrifice of a pig to Priapus , with Cupid as the swineherd [ 41 ] (wall painting, Villa of the Mysteries )
Denarius issued ca. 84–83 BC under Sulla picturing Venus with a diadem and a standing Cupid with a palm branch, and on the reverse two military trophies and religious implements (jug and lituus )
Fragmentary Augustan -era relief depicting the punishment of Tarpeia , a Vestal who in Roman legend broke her vows and betrayed her country by consorting with the enemy
Vestal from the time of Hadrian , fragment of a marble relief from the Palatine , Rome
Votive offerings from Pompeii representing breasts, penises, and a uterus
Lucretius recommended the "doggy" position for couples who wanted to conceive (wall painting from Pompeii)
Marcus Aurelius wrote that sex "is the friction of a piece of gut and, following a sort of convulsion, the expulsion of some mucus "
Venus rising from the sea , a wall painting from Pompeii
Male–female couple on an oil lamp ( Römisch-Germanisches Museum )
Roman Neo-Attic stele depicting a warrior in a muscle cuirass , idealizing the male form without nudity (1st century BC)
Portrait head of Marcellus, nephew of Augustus (1st century CE), on a body of the Greek Hermes Ludovisi type
Polyphallic [ n 9 ] bronze tintinnabulum ; the tip of each phallus was outfitted with a ring to dangle a bell
Ithyphallic satyrs as oil lamps (from Pompeii, 1st century AD)
Priapus , wearing a Phrygian cap and weighing his phallus in a balance scale ( House of the Vettii )
A castration clamp from Roman Britain thought to have been used either by devotees of Cybele [ 210 ] or by veterinarians, with the heads of deities and animals having ritual significance [ 211 ]
Hercules and Omphale cross-dressed (mosaic from Roman Spain , 3rd century AD)
Pederastic sex on the "Roman" side of the Warren Cup ( British Museum , London, 15 BCE – 15 CE)
Cameo glass perfume bottle, found in the Roman necropolis of Ostippo, Spain (25 BCE–14 CE), showing two males on a bed; the other side, not shown, has a female and a male (George Ortiz Collection)
The mythological abduction or "rape" of Hylas by the nymphs ( opus sectile , basilica of Junius Bassus , 4th century AD)
Reverse side of a denarius issued by Julius Caesar , depicting a military trophy with a nude captured Gaul and a female personification of defeated Gallia ; Venus is pictured on the obverse
A Roman woman with a Flavian-era hairstyle portrayed as Venus pudica , 98-117 CE
Divine semi-nudity on the Augustan Altar of Peace , combining Roman symbolism with a Greek stylistic influence
Female genitalia formed from strigils on a mosaic
Pompeiian wall painting ( Secret Museum, Naples )
Baked-clay votive breast
Pero offering her breast milk to her aged father in an act of " Roman Charity "
Scenes of Diana and a woodland coterie, such as this Diana and Callisto (1658/59) on a theme Pietro Liberi often painted, [ 396 ] became opportunities in the classical tradition to explore fleshy female homosociality [ 397 ]
Botticelli 's Death of Lucretia ( c. 1500): in Roman legend, Lucretia's rape and suicide brought about the overthrow of the monarchy and the formation of the Roman Republic
Rape was embedded in the most familiar founding myth of Rome: Romulus and Remus were born from the rape of Rhea Silvia by the god Mars ( Roman sarcophagus , 3rd century CE)
Roman boy wearing a bulla , which contained a phallic charm
Roman couple joining hands; the knot in a bride's belt , symbolizing that her husband was "belted and bound" to her, was to be untied by him on the wedding night (from a 4th century sarcophagus) [ 449 ]
The woman "riding" in a marble bas-relief from Pompeii (National Archaeological Museum, Naples) 1st century CE
The mythological adultery of Venus and Mars, here attended by Cupid, was a popular subject for painting
Wall painting from Pompeii (50–79 CE)
Grotesque figurine of an ithyphallic slave: in Roman comedy, slaves are often portrayed as oversexed
Wall painting from the lupanar (brothel) of Pompeii showing the use of a kline , an angled board for maintaining a position
A prostitute having sex with a client; though fragmentary, an uncommonly found depiction of such a scene in sculpture [ citation needed ] (Glyptothek Museum, 1st century CE)
Juvenal thought the retiarius (left) , a gladiator who fought with face and flesh exposed, was effeminate and prone to sexual deviance. [ 528 ]
Bronze spintriae tokens ( c. 22–37 CE) depicting a range of sex acts are archaeologically abundant, but it is unclear what they were used for (Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery)
Back of bronze hand mirror ( c. 70–90 CE, found on the Esquiline Hill ); above the couple is a picture with an erotic scene
The "woman riding" position was a favorite in Roman art; here, the breasts remain covered, but the " mound of venus " is depilated [ 570 ]
The Venus pendula aversa position in a wall painting from Pompeii
"The lioness" position (Casa del Ristorante, Pompeii)
Fellatio on an oil lamp
Wall painting from Pompeii depicting cunnilingus
Threesome (from Pompeii) arranged in the manner described by Catullus , poem 56 [ 620 ]
Foursome from the Suburban Baths at Pompeii
Fresco from Pompeii showing Leda and the swan
Leopard attacking a condemned person in the arena ( Zliten mosaic , c. 200 AD)
Hermaphroditus on a mosaic from Roman North Africa, 2nd-3rd century CE
A satyr and Hermaphroditus, 2nd century CE (Altes Museum, Berlin)
Roman imperial bronze figurine of Aphroditus, 1st–3rd century CE
The emperor Claudius, heroically nude , overpowering the female personification of Britannia, from Aphrodisias in present-day Turkey