Roman Sex: Orthodoxy or Perversity?

Ask most people what Ancient Rome means to them and soon, amidst the flood of different answers, sex will rear its head. The moral corruption (or the fun bit, depending on your viewpoint) of Rome is something of a modern given; from the supposed depravity of Tiberius on Capri to Caligula turning the palace into a brothel, from the sex workers who inhabited the arches around the Coliseum to the dirty murals discovered in Pompeii, Rome seems to have had 'it' on the brain. Rome itself was even based, certainly in myth and perhaps in some basis of truth, on sexual violence: the first women of Rome were the Sabines, and the story of how they came to be Roman is told in the Rape of the Sabines.

But how much of our perceptions of Roman sexuality are misplaced? What, to a Roman, was *ahem* 'normal', and what was kinky-kink-kink, orgies and empresses taking on sex workers in games of endurance? In this brief overview, I intend to try to answer that 'simple' question, putting it into the context of time, class, gender and status. The answer will, *spoiler alert*, be very much 'it depends'. But first some qualifiers.

The Roman 'overseas' Empire, first under the Republic and subsequently under the Principate, was vast. It encompassed a wide range of cultures and cultural ideas, most of which the Romans were content to let be provided they received what they wanted; political obedience, economic advantage and, of course, taxes. Other than that, the provincials could worship their own gods and order their families and relationships in whatever way suited them best. The Romans might mock them for not being Roman, but they didn't interfere. Thus, the Empire contained a huge range of cultural attitudes to sex and there was certainly no uniformity; the views of an Egyptian or a Briton, a Syrian or a Greek, a Gaul or a Libyan might bear no relation to each other.

For this reason, I intend to restrict this brief survey to the Romans themselves, loosely defined as those people living in the city of Rome (although this is difficult, it being a 'world' city with immigrants, and thus attitudes, from everywhere) and those people defined as Latins, who lived in what became the province of Italia; basically, what is now modern Italy. Of course, many Romans emigrated to other provinces, or settled there having been given land as part of their discharge from military service. And many Romans entered into cross-cultural marriages, taking local wives (and sometimes local husbands) from across the Empire. Whilst these partnerships are hugely interesting, they also vary widely, too widely in fact, and thus I will view them as general extensions of Rome/Italia and the attitudes of the home territory.

The next important element to remember is that Rome, in common with every state or nation in the region and time, was a slave state. Every culture had free and unfree members, and whilst Rome is negatively viewed particularly through this lens, it should be remembered that this is largely because they were particularly good at it, not that they were uniquely morally bad. Estimates of the numbers of slaves in Rome and Italia vary, but it is not unusual to find educated guesses in the region of two thirds of the entire population of the city of Rome being unfree in the early and middle Principate. That is, effectively, about 700,000 people who did not have the right to determine what happened to their own bodies and whose sexual interactions could occur at the whim of an owner whose attitudes might be pleasing or sadistic, heterosexual or same sex, multiple-partnered or solely focussed on one individual, but were, uniformly, inflicted on a person who was in all respects a victim of sexual violence. And the Romans were ok with this, by and large.

The last thing to note before delving into the subject matter is the paucity of sources. Of all the ancient cultures the one we know most about is Rome, to the point where we feel we might have a real handle on Roman life and attitudes. It feels as if we almost know the Romans as people. This is mistaken. What we actually know is a fraction of a slice of Roman life, based on writings that have survived by chance, authored by those members of society (the 1%) who actually had the leisure time to write and thus reflecting their particular attitudes and beliefs. Our understanding is also limited by the chance that the material that survived largely covers the period between 100 BCE to 200 CE (or 100 BC to 200 AD in old money), and thus excludes ideas and attitudes prior to and following this period. Thus, of a roughly one-thousand-year period, we are left with a glimpse of the attitudes of rich men in the middle three hundred years of classical Rome, and not even all of them.

So what, to the Romans, was counted as normal sexually, and what was out-there kink, moral depravity and the evidence of the terminal decay of society? As ever, with such questions, the first answer is that it depends on who you ask. The Romans were a patriarchal society, but noting this doesn't quite convey the strength of their particular brand of patriarchy. Roman patriarchy was unlike anything we can see in our own time. A Roman father was the owner of his family, able to dictate all the life decisions even of his adult children. A Roman daughter was a member of her father's family even after marriage, expected to further her father's interests with her husband and his family. A Roman son was a son, not an adult partner of his father, until the day his father died, at which point he assumed his father's mantle. A crime against a father in Roman society was uniquely horrific, whilst any action a severe father might take against his children was presumed to be an act of love. Of course, there were good, loving fathers, and there were absolute tyrants, but the basic thing to understand is that whatever the decision of a father, it was 'correct'.

From this it follows that the decisions of free men, generally, were 'correct', at least in as far as they related to women and children, and slaves. The reverse is then generally true, too; the decisions of women and children, and slaves, were generally 'incorrect', unless the responsible man had agreed to them. And from this, it follows that the sexual activities or desires of free men were 'correct' whilst the activities or desires of anyone else were 'incorrect'. In fact, it was even worse than that -- the desires of everyone else were indeed morally depraved and the evidence, generally, of the terminal decay of society unless they conformed to the ideas and desires of free men.

What, then, were Roman male attitudes to sex? This can be neatly summarised as, 'it's ok if you're on top'. In the uber-macho world of the Roman man it was fine to be in a same-sex encounter, provided said Roman man was the one doing the penetrating. Conversely, it was shame to be the one penetrated. The same was true in a heterosexual relationship, though here the shame was less likely to be connected to being penetrated, although there are enough surviving sex toys from the period for us to conjecture that there were men who liked having their prostates tickled by their wives or concubines (or paid a sex worker to do it). However, in heterosexual relationships, the shame for a man would come from showing too obviously their strength of romantic feelings for their wife or partner. Basically, showing that you were a tough, emotionless man of steel was good, showing that you cared about your wife, girlfriend and/or children was bad.

There is a massive 'but' here, however. What we are seeing is the attitudes of the nobility, and a particular group of them, at that. How far such an ideal reflected reality, or penetrated through Roman society to the masses is a matter for debate, and doubt. Simple evidence such as the number of loving memorials and epitaphs suggests that many, and probably most, Romans displayed the normal emotions common to human beings everywhere. But in politics, of course, normal human emotions, however much every politician feels them, can be used as a stick to beat one's opponents, and this may well be the reason behind the accusations of excessive emotion levelled at certain members of the aristocracy.

The evidence that we have for Roman men, in general, suggests then that they liked to be on top (or behind), with their partner underneath (or bent over). Their attitudes to oral sex seem to have been rather 'unreconstructed' as well: in short, all forms of oral sex equated to the worst forms of moral depravity. To give oral sex to someone was to debase oneself and, for a man, to receive oral sex was to have one's essence sucked from one, stolen almost. Basically, simple penetration was all, presumably fast, hard, deep and without nuance. It is, of course, hard to believe that in a thousand years of a culture spanning the entire Mediterranean world, that this was the long and the short of it, and there must have been caring lovers who rocked their partners' worlds. But the ideal, the perfection held up to Roman men to emulate, was rough, coarse and largely primitive. And many men must have followed this ideal.

But what of the kink? What of the excesses that Rome was famous for? Well, here we must at least consider Lord Acton's famous quote about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely. Roman power can be seen to be corrupting on two levels; firstly, the general power of men over everyone else noted above. And then we have the power of the nobility over the rest of society and in particular, the power of the emperors over absolutely everyone else in the Empire (at least until someone poisoned their mushrooms or stuck a knife in their jugular).

Thus, we have that most famous of all Romans, Julius Caesar himself, described as 'a man for every woman, and a woman for every man', and sometimes mocked as the 'Queen of Bithynia,' for supposedly offering himself, whilst a young diplomat, to the king of that region to secure a favourable outcome in some negotiations. However, the stories surrounding Julius are rather run-of-the-mill.

For real depravity we must look to his successors. There are the stories of the Emperor Tiberius, in his paranoid retreat from Rome on the island of Capri, indulging himself in the kind of monstrosities that will get this essay moderated if mentioned in any detail at all. Or there are the infamous stories of the Emperor Caligula and his potential incestuous relationship with his sister Drusilla, followed by his decision to turn the palace into a brothel in which the wives and daughters of the nobility were required to be the 'staff'.

Then, we have the stories of Nero and his scandalous affair, subsequent marriage, and finally murder of the love of his life, Poppea. Though the real scandal was what followed; after her death Nero noted that a male slave, Sporus, resembled Poppea, and so Nero had him castrated and then married him, presenting him as Poppea. Suffice to say, what followed for Sporus was tragedy piled upon tragedy at the hands of Nero and at least two of his successors.

Other emperors were also accused of sexual depravity, notably Commodus and, in particular, Elagabalus. This last Emperor was noted for being bi-sexual (and he was, perhaps, transgender) though that was hardly unusual. Much worse, however, was his marriage to a Vestal Virgin. The closest comparison we might make in our own time would be if President Kennedy had married a young Mother Teresa, though even that fails to come anywhere close to the reverence in which the Vestals were held. The penalty for any normal citizen who engaged in sexual activity with a Vestal was death, alongside the death of the Vestal herself.

These Emperors surely provide us with ample evidence of the worst kinds of moral depravities. Or do they? Apart from their reported crimes against any form of decency these men are also connected by one other, extremely important, factor: to a man they were detested by the aristocracy. And when we remember that it was the aristocracy who were putting pen to paper, we would do well to take the stories spread by writers such as Suetonius and Cassius Dio with a pinch of salt. This is not to suggest that the stories were totally invented, but to note that the stories almost certainly grew wildly in the telling.

So, was Tiberius a disgusting old goat? Probably, but not to the extent that Suetonius (writing one hundred years after the event, it should be added) might have us believe. And did Caligula really have a sexual relationship with his sister Drusilla? Perhaps, though the main evidence Roman writers put forward for this was his 'excessive' grief when she died -- remember, the ideal Roman was an emotionless man of steel archetype, so an emperor grieving for the loss of a favourite sister might easily be perceived as 'unmanly', and perhaps the only explanation for that might surely be that they were lovers. QED.

That the most powerful men in the Empire were able to indulge themselves, seemingly without limit, is probably true. But the extent to which they did this has almost certainly been exaggerated, and it is perhaps more telling that most of the emperors didn't indulge themselves in wild orgies of pansexual abandon, and weren't accused of moral depravity, at least in matters of sex.

So far, we have looked exclusively at men. So what of the women? The first thing to note is that, in the literature we have, strong sexual appetites amongst women were viewed as disgraceful. Infamous examples of women engaging in sexual activities include Julia, daughter of the first Emperor Augustus, who was recorded as taking multiple lovers, one after the other in the Forum at night. Then we have the afore-mentioned Drusilla, supposed lover of her brother the Emperor Caligula, or her sister Agrippina the Younger, who married her uncle, Emperor Claudius, and supposedly offered herself to her own son, the Emperor Nero. And having mentioned Claudius, we must mention his second wife Messalina, who supposedly engaged in a competition with the sex worker Scylla to see who could satisfy the most men in twenty-four hours. Messalina, blessed (or cursed) with an over-sized clitoris according to the story, won.

However, whilst these women were damned for their appetites or activities, we must remember that, as with the emperors they were of a rank that attracted scurrilous gossip, whether based on truth or exaggeration, or simply outright fabrication. Nevertheless, the stories that attached themselves to these 'scandalous' women, demonstrate that regardless of their truth, there was a standard that women were expected to conform to.

Other women in the public eye attracted reverence for their modesty, itself a revealing attitude. Thus Octavia, for example, daughter of Claudius and wife of Nero, was accused of infidelity and immorality as a means of Nero ridding himself of her, yet even with absolute power Nero was unable to make the charges stick against a woman renowned for her modesty and adherence to the old Roman values of virtue (he still got rid of her, naturally).

But there were other women who attracted criticism, rather than praise, for a seeming lack of sexual appetite. Two in particular, stand out. The first was Clodia Metelli, a contemporary of Julius Caesar. Clodia was a fixture on the social scene, a hostess who presided over the most glittering dinner parties in the late republic, and a member of the fearsomely patrician Claudian family. She is presented to us, however, as a shameless flirt who used feminine wiles to achieve her political aims (basically, advancing her male relatives) but who was actually somewhat frigid in the bedroom. Whether that assessment is based on her actual sexual interests and activities we cannot tell, and we must always be aware that, as with all reports of a woman's 'performance', the man telling the tale might have been either uninspired between the sheets himself, someone bitter at a rejection, or simply someone Clodia was only 'entertaining' for political purposes rather than from any genuine desire.

The other woman with a somewhat negative reputation for sexual disinterest was the first empress, Livia. Livia, of all Roman women, is the one who has attracted the most divisive opinions. Either she was a monstrous murderer, responsible for the deaths by poison of most of the Imperial family, or she was a paragon of homely virtue and an ideal for all Roman matrons to emulate. However, one element of her reputation that seems to be accepted by all the contemporary writers was that she had little interest in sex. So far, so acceptable for a Roman woman, who should, by rights, be lying back and thinking of the seven hills, however in Livia's case it was problematic; she had no children by her second husband, the first emperor, Augustus, and this failure to produce heirs (and as a woman it was naturally viewed as her fault) caused many political problems down the line.

But so much for the rich. What about the normal woman in the street? Sadly, we have little evidence and almost no voice for such women -- if men of this class are hard to hear, their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters are simply silent. There are some epitaphs that speak of loving relationships, but whether these translated to pleasurable sexual relations for both parties within these partnerships we cannot tell, though we could guess that sometimes it worked out well for all concerned.

One group of women for which we do have evidence, though, are sex workers. Sex work was plentiful and legal in Rome and Italia, and the evidence we have suggests a range of conditions in which sex workers may have worked, from high class bordellos such as the Lupanar of Pompeii to street work, in particular that associated with the Coliseum. Sex workers were regarded as the dregs of society, though perhaps unsurprisingly male sex workers had a slightly worse reputation that women, and overall, sex workers occupied a similar social rung as *eek* actors and *gasp* gladiators (though gladiators had a certain glamour and respect, as might be expected of men who knew how to kill their betters with their bare hands).

Of course, sex workers were mostly the unfree however, as with most societies, there can be a real difficulty in identifying the subtle differences in status of those at the bottom, and it would be unusual if, to stave off starvation in a society with only the most minimal social welfare (free men qualified for a dole of free grain, but nobody else got anything except at the whim of the rich), those at the bottom hadn't sold their bodies as the price for food.

Sex work increasingly came into the orbit of criminal gangs during the Principate. The gangs originated in the chariot racing teams (the Greens, the Blues, the Whites and the Purples) of the Circus. These teams grew into organisations we might see parallels in with the American Mafia of the Prohibition years, or even more closely, the Yakuza in Japan, and this association further muddied the reputation of sex work. However, regardless of the handwringing of moralists, such work persisted, as it always has, as both a target of social disgust and an outlet for social frustration, often, probably, by the same people.

But didn't any Romans just have honest to goodness fun between the sheets, with both parties engaging in activities that brought mutual pleasure? Surely the answer is yes, and the first person to look to for this aspect of sex in Rome is the poet Ovid. He lived during the reign of Augustus, but whilst Augustus was seemingly a bit of a prude who exiled his daughter for her affairs, Ovid was his opposite. He talks of the pleasures of love and sex, of the best places to pick up girls, and his views find parallels in elements of other works such as the Satyricon of Petronius. Ovid, of all the Roman authors, was the most heterosexual in his tastes, certainly the writer most willing to advocate for female sexual fulfilment (though he couldn't quite understand same-sex relationships between women), and he was certainly the most public Roman whose views we might understand today.