Roman Sex: Orthodoxy or Perversity?

Further, as noted earlier, there have been finds of dildos across the Roman world, and we have plenty of sexual depictions in preserved paintings and mosaics. Quite what some of those depictions might be telling us is open to interpretation, with one painting discovered at Pompeii in what is thought to have been the slave quarters of a house put forward as a warning of what immoral behaviour looked like rather than as a piece of titillation (for who would bother to provide their slaves with pornography?). Other pieces of art though, surely, were erotic, pure and simple, aimed at pleasing the viewer. And given the location of many of the mosaics, in particular, the viewers would be anyone in the family.

When it comes to the sex toys that have been excavated, we come to the hard problem that we have no way of knowing whether such items were only used by women, or whether they were used indiscriminately according to taste. Again, here we are left to speculate that over centuries, and amongst millions of citizens, the use of such toys might have mostly been by women, but was almost certainly not exclusively so.

Further indications of some expectation of sexual pleasure in 'normal' married relationships can be found in ideas surrounding the wedding night. There are some mentions of eroticism surrounding the wedding night, and even an expectation that a man might limit his extra-marital affairs for a time following his wedding to enable a level of bonding between man and wife (with the aim, naturally, of fostering a greater probability of procreation).

Having mentioned Ovid's views on same-sex female relationships it is worth examining the general Roman attitude to lesbians. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those (male) views that have come down to us seem somewhat 'confused' to a modern understanding. Ideas current to the Romans included the belief that there had to be a dominant partner who, perhaps, had an over-sized clitoris, or used dildos to penetrate a passive partner who was assumed to take little pleasure in the proceedings. Lesbians were also thought to have uncontrolled sexual appetites, and interestingly, to have masculine characteristics when it came to eating and drinking.

In the end Ovid was exiled to the Black Sea coast, perhaps as a result of his liberal attitudes, though he might have been involved in a plot against the emperor or in a sexual manner with Julia, the emperor's daughter. If he did sleep with Julia, or become part of a plot against Augustus, it must have been in a minor way, as otherwise he would surely have been executed or dealt with by way of an extra-judicial murder. He lamented his banishment, and never ceased to plead to be allowed to return. This mercy was denied to him.

Time passed, as it does, and attitudes changed. Firstly, Roman attitudes towards slaves changed somewhat. This was driven by three factors: firstly, a drop in the population caused by a devastating plague in the mid-Second Century CE which affected free and unfree alike, secondly, a reduction in the number of slaves the legions were sending back from the frontiers due to the simple fact that the Empire stopped expanding, and thus the numbers of prisoners of war, be they men, women or children was in decline, and thirdly the number of slaves being given their freedom in their master's wills (a hard limit of 20% freed per will had to be set, so many slaves were being given their freedom). The overall result of this was a sharp reduction in the number of slaves, and for a society built on slave labour in both town and field, this was a serious matter.

The effect of this was to force the Romans to re-evaluate their attitudes towards their slaves to some extent. This should not be seen as the Romans becoming namby-pamby hippies learning to sit around singing Kumbaya as they revelled in the brotherhood of man. The real reason was that they wanted to increase the numbers of children born to slaves (who thus inherited their parents' status). Understandably, poorly treated slaves had a habit of limiting the possibilities of having children who would also be poorly treated, thus some slaves began to be treated a little more like humans and encouraged to form monogamous relationships with other slaves. Sexual violence at the hands of a master still existed, no doubt, but it was at least in decline.

More importantly, monotheism overtook traditional Roman pantheism, and with this change different moral values came to the fore. Here, however, it must be noted that the changes in social attitudes affected sex for men far more than women who, by and large, occupied the same position as they had under the old Roman traditions (though women were able, increasingly, to sidestep sex altogether by taking religious vows). Men, on the other hand, who had previously been free to indulge in same sex relationships provided they were the dominant partner, increasingly found such sexual outlets denied to them. In the mid-Third Century the emperor Philip the Arab (244-249 CE) outlawed male sex work, and with the adoption of Christianity as the state religion eighty years later, same sex relationships became a matter of mortal sin. Of course, the desire for same sex relationships didn't disappear; it went, instead, underground.

Which is a somewhat downbeat manner of finishing this brief survey. To conclude, we can see that Roman society ideally expected men to dominate sexual partners who were at best disinterested in sexual activity and participated out of necessity or from a desire to provide the patriarch with children (the primary female virtue). This view is most probably a minority view, given the length of time that Rome existed as a culture and the limitations of finding any authentic viewpoint 'of the people', as it were. However, it is clear that the Romans could be harsh when it came to overt breaking of the rules: slaves who refused to accede to the sexual interest of their masters, or those their masters determined could 'enjoy' them, could be harshly punished, stopping short only of death. Anyone who had a sexual relationship with a Vestal Virgin, however, was liable for capital punishment (as was the Vestal).

But though there seems to have been a dominant social attitude towards an extreme patriarchy pressing women into a submissive and subordinate sexual position, there are hints of other voices, those outside the palace and the townhouses of the richest, who accepted a more egalitarian view of sexual pleasure. And those voices hint, too, at a less censorious view of different sexual activities and desires and gendered expectations.

Anyone interested in further reading should consult the modern works of Tom Holland (Rubicon, concerning the end of the Republic, and Dynasty, concerning the Julio-Claudian dynasty that followed the death of Julius Caesar), or Mary Beard (her book SPQR, or her excellent documentaries, all of which are uploaded to YouTube). Readers can also easily source cheap editions of original writers -- Polybius, Livy, Cicero, Ovid, Sallust, Patronius, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Cassius Dio, though most of these writers don't overtly concern themselves with the socio-sexual attitudes of contemporary Romans, however there can be hints contained within their works for the observant reader.