ROMA EROTICA

[tlclark]

Yes to a point.

Despite everything you hear about Roman orgies the sexual morals of most Roman families were very conservative. They emphasized chastity, abstinence before marriage fidelity within. Monogamy was the norm. Divorce was discouraged but commonplace none-the-less, particularly among elites and the upper classes who married for poliical connections as much as love.

Of course all the usual problems persisted, prostitution, pornography, adultery, fornication, but the same could be said of 19th C. America. All of those were known then too but it would be a mistake to suggest that those behaviors were normative.

Just read any Golden or Silver age latin poet. Prostitution was legal, more or less. Harlots are everywhere but generally they are mentioned to condemn such behavior.

Incest, pedophila and rape were expressly forbidden (although first cousins often married) Child molestors were subject to special executions, being torn asunder or thrown to beasts in the arena. Rape was a capital offense, although often many families hushed it over to avoid shame and publicity.

All in all this is very similar to our times, with the exception that sex crimes were generally treated much more harshly.

Romans had no objection to masturbation as long as it was private. Public displays of sexuality (whether with a partner or not) were considered vulgar. Nudity in art was discouraged unless it had a moral or historical point. When the gods and goddesses are shown nude, it is to emphasize their perfection, not their sexual attributes (although often this was an excuse for elites to have naked statues! but that's no different than the 19th C. either!) Phalluses are nearly always symbols of fertility and not sex. Satyr plays and sexual farces were common, and popular, but thought vulgar by many Romans and even then a lot of the time they existed to satirize such behavior and condemn it, not endorse it.

About the only two things that I can think of that were genuinely different than most modern or early Christian morals.

The first is body shame. Romans as a group were modest and much more so than some Mediterranean cultures. However that sense of modesty was always linked to context. Nudity in the marketplace or home was outrageous, nudity at the bathhouse, palaestra or latrina, perfectly fine. The Largo Argentina has a massive colonade that housed a huge open latrine meant for both men and women. Such natural body functions were considered normal and there was nothing really to be ashamed about it. If you exposed yourself in public you would be shamed and shunned but if you hiked up your tunic to use a latrine, no one would have given you a second look. The same is true of bathing. Men and women did bath together, but generally in the imperial baths, women bathed in the morning while men bathed in the afternoon, but there was alway some overlap. A bathhouse was by no means a sexual environment. Even today there are Asian bathhouses were families bathe together. It's a cultural thing.

The other biggie is ephebophilia and pederasty.

I want to warn people off here, but there is just no other way to talk about this except frankly and it really was one of the things that really differentiated ancient cultures. Those not interested may skip this part.

This is one part that is definitely very different from the modern day. It is often said that the ancients were lax on homosexuality but that is misleading. Very rarely did males pair off into partnerships (Hadrian and Antinoos were shunned for this very reason). Homosexuality as we understand it would be unrecognizable in the ancient world and probably condemned. The ancient practice was more like mutal masterbation and always paired an older man with a younger male, with the elder man being the dominant player, penetrating the younger man who was compliant. There is a great deal of debate regarding the method. The literary sources suggest that the elder man masturbated between the younger man's thighs. People doubt this but the artistic evidence seems to back it up. Anal sex was seen as unsanitary. Scenes of anal sex in art nearly always show farcical scenes indicating that the behavior was low class and vulgar. In nearly all others the penis can be clearly seen to be between the thighs. The older man was not considered to be "homosexual" if he was the one penetrating. This was just a normal practice. Married and unmarried males participated, though not too far into marriage men were expected to give it up, or at least do it less, not because it was adulterous or immoral, but because it showed a certain lack of respectful restraint.

Boys could be quite young, as young as twelve and nearly every adult male of a certain class would do it, particularly the upper classes. It was seen as a healthy alternative to adultery or prostitution. Boys were to be treated well and not abused and given gifts or money/board for their service. One of the nicest things you could say about an emperor in his biography was that he never abused his "boys". Where the boys came from to do this is something of a mystery but we can guess they were slaves or lower classes and not the upper classes.

Crassus' famous come-on to tony curtis's character in "Spartacus" is kinda ridiculous in historical context. There wouldn't need to be any persuasion, it would simply be a matter of negotiating terms.

There were of course, huge objections to the practice by Christians. Paul mentioned "Catamites" specifically and forbade the practice. Some early church scholars feel that the injunctions against homosexuality in the NT are specifically aimed at this practice. It was a common Mediterranean practice. It endured well into the Christian period however and continued unabated throughout the Persian and Islamic courts as well. Many of those fabulous Medieval persian love poems are written to boys.

There is interestingly enough, no female counterpart and the practice seems largely absent amongst the lower classes, but probably due to economic and social reasons, not moral ones.

It's very odd but most people react with horror to the practice and equate it with pedophilia, but it was simply not a big deal to Romans. The Romans also make clear distinctions between this and child molestation. Any assault on a girl or a non-adolescent boy was molestation and punishable, as was any non-consensual or physically abusive relationship, though one suspects that any such system would be rife with abuse. The very fact that Trajan's biographies say he was so good to his boys suggests that there were many who were not.

Travis