Ancient Rome

The sexual activities of the Romans and their bawdy depictions in art and literature have for centuries embarrassed scholars who studied Roman society. In fact, the subject of sex was so little explored that it was only in the late 1970s that scholars attempted to define precisely the "naughty" words that had been so scrupulously avoided by the nineteenth-century compilers of the Greek and Latin lexicons. Before the 1970s, when scholars discussed sexual attitudes and practices at all, they did so by unproblematically equating modern conceptions of sexuality to ancient ones. Michel Foucault's 1979 claim that sexuality is constructed and therefore specific to a particular time and place caused scholars to question whether their basic assumptions concerning sexuality and, by extension, gender roles were accurate or useful in understanding the Romans. Since Foucault, a flood of scholarship has explored the constructed nature of Roman sexuality and gender through examinations of literary and material culture. At the same time, however, other scholars found sexual behaviors among the Romans that looked similar to modern ones, especially in reference to modern homosexuality, which led them to take an essentialist stance. John Boswell was chief among those who asserted that sexuality was a stable enough category to justify its study through the centuries (1980). Most scholars now walk a line between the two schools by rejecting the modern homosexuality/heterosexuality dichotomy in favor of an active/passive paradigm in which Roman male citizens exerted their political and social dominance over their partners by playing the active, penetrating role in sexual acts. These same scholars make a nod to the essentialists by acknowledging that while sexuality seems to be constructed, the biological desire for a particular sex is not.

LITERARY EVIDENCE FOR ROMAN SEXUAL PRACTICES AND ATTITUDES

The active/passive paradigm is most clearly seen in evidence from literary sources composed almost exclusively by and for elite Roman citizens. These legal and medical texts, and poetry and public political discourse, display attitudes toward sexual practices that varied considerably based upon the political and social status of the participants. In general, a Roman male citizen could penetrate anyone under his power of a lower social or political status without incurring societal disapproval. This category included slaves, freedmen, foreigners, and prostitutes of both sexes. In this context, the sex of the penetrated partner was not nearly as important as his or her social standing. Indeed, literary sources from as early as the third century bce attach no stigma to a male desiring to penetrate another male be he a boy or fully grown man. So long as the Roman male citizen was the penetrator, he need not worry about a perceived lost of masculinity regardless of the sex of his partner.

Sexual access to Roman citizens was more complicated. Citizens of both sexes were born with pudicitia, a state of inviolability which was destroyed if he or she were sexually penetrated in any orifice. A man was expected to maintain pudicitia throughout his life and indeed this seems to have been a necessary quality if the man wished to become prominent in politics; a woman could maintain her pudicitia so long as she was penetrated only by her husband and only vaginally. The pudicitia of an individual was considered a familial possession since stuprum, the term for the violation of pudicitia, endangered legitimate inheritance in the case of unmarried women and in the case of boys and men, the quality of masculinity so necessary for political life. Stuprum was punished by the paterfamilias, the guardian of the violated party, and punishments could entail the rape or even death of the offender. Roman male citizens who submitted to penetration in any orifice and at any age were mocked as effeminate and sometimes socially shunned as being polluted. The mere accusation of a young man submitting to or desiring stuprum could prevent him from a successful political or military career. Though boys were seen as sexual objects, they were off-limits unless they were of a lower social and political class than the penetrator, and in this the Romans differ from the Greeks and their institutionalized pedophilia.

According to literary sources, female Roman citizens were ideally to limit their sexual experiences to their husbands. Even within marriage, sexual practices were socially prescribed. Though sources suggest that it was unmanly for a male to concern himself with the pleasure of his partner, a woman's orgasm was thought by medical writers either to aid in or be essential for conception. It therefore seems likely that social prescriptions were sometimes disregarded for practical reasons. Yet even when a husband turned his attention to his wife's pleasure, certain practices were still frowned upon: because the mouth was a revered part of the body, fellatio and cunnilingus were thought to be unworthy of a citizen.

In reality, women may well have had sexual relations outside their marriages. Certain social conditions may have facilitated such relationships. In the first centuries bce and ce, women could achieve a degree of financial independence that was unheard of in the ancient world. The traditional form of marriage, which placed the bride financially and legally under the control of her husband and his family, was increasingly displaced by the sine manu form that allowed her to stay under the control of her own father or a guardian. The sine manu arrangement gave the bride financial leverage and helped to balance an essentially unbalanced power relationship (girls could be married as early as twelve while men often waited until their thirties to marry). Under the emperor Augustus, elite Roman women who produced three children, common Roman or Italian women who produced four, and provincial women who produced five were legally allowed to manage their own finances. Some scholars believe that this financial independence allowed for greater sexual freedom. It was also under Augustus that marriage legislation was enacted, forcing men to divorce adulterous wives and forbidding others from marrying these women.

There is little evidence either in literature or in art for sexual encounters between females and modern notions of lesbians; that is, women whose identities are shaped by their sexual preference for women seem to be without Roman parallel. The Greek poetess Sappho and her love of women was well known by Roman authors, though the practice named after her homeland, lesbianism, had little to do with sex between women. Instead, lesbianism was another term for fellatio. When literary sources do mention women having sex with other women, cunnilingus is less prominent than tribadism, in which dildos were employed to please their partners.

Finally, it was common for slaves and some freeborn women to work as prostitutes or pimps. Prostitution was a legalized and socially accepted institution and was even taxed under the emperor Vespasian. Sources attach no stigma to men visiting prostitutes of either sex unless they became emotionally attached to the prostitute or visited too often. On the other hand, prostitutes were marked out from other women by their costume: They were to wear togas, curiously, the garment usually worn only by Roman male citizens. Freeborn prostitutes were seen as social pariahs and under the Empire, elite classes were forbidden to marry them.

FAMILY PLANNING

The regulation of birth was a regular topic of discussion in medical treatises and poetry. Medical writers were more concerned with methods to aid in conception than prevent it, but the Romans practiced multiple forms of birth control including exposure, barrier methods and chemical treatments. Exposure occurred when, for whatever reason, the father refused to acknowledge a child as his own. Shortly after birth, the baby would then be placed in a trash heap outside the city where she or he would either die of exposure or be rescued and raised as a slave. Predictably, exposure earned the fiery censure of early Christians.

Women were the chief practitioners of other types of birth control. Barrier methods consisted of a wad of wool soaked in olive oil and placed at the mouth of the cervix. Some medical writers prescribed sponges soaked in vinegar or cedar resin used in the same fashion. Chemical treatments came from plants and were ingested or used as pessaries: Silphium, a stalky plant that grew only on the shores of Cyrene, was thought to be particularly effective and by the Imperial period was worth its weight in silver. Queen Anne's Lace seeds were ingested the day after sexual intercourse and seem to have served as an early abortificant.

MATERIAL EVIDENCE FOR ROMAN SEXUAL ATTITUDES AND PRACTICES

Evidence from art and material culture presents a far broader range of sexual attitudes and practices than those found in literature, perhaps because material culture addressed a more diverse audience. No more than ten percent of Roman society might be expected to read literature, but art touched society from the grandest to the humblest in both public and private spheres. The quality of Roman art reflects the social standing of its owners; pieces depicting sexual themes range from life-size marble statues to modest clay lamps. Placed in plain view and without embarrassment, wall paintings, statuary, tableware and lamps depict examples of the very acts that literature labeled unworthy of Roman citizens. For example, the famous silver Warren Cup and various high priced cameos present seemingly sympathetic depictions of male homoerotic acts, apparently between men of equal ages and political status, just the sort of arrangement so frowned upon in literature. Likewise, cunnilingus and fellatio are prominently displayed in public and private contexts. Depictions on clay lamps boast sexual orgies consisting of three or even four participants at a time. Images of erect phalluses and the god Priapus, a guardian god whose primary feature is a two-foot-long phallus, were ubiquitous, appearing in such diverse contexts as the entrances to wealthy homes, on street pavers, or shrines painted on the exteriors of house walls. Public bathhouses were often decorated with comic depictions, such as black men, apparently slaves, who sported enormous erect phalluses.

Who created these works, under whose commission and who were the intended audiences are questions currently occupying art historians. Since the 1990s scholars have taken some important steps in unraveling these issues, but there are considerable difficulties in studying sexual life through material culture. Because of the moral scruples of the excavators and collectors, a substantial amount of evidence was destroyed or removed from its context, an act that makes interpretation far more difficult. Early excavators of Pompeii, for example, tore "obscene" images from walls, wrenched statuary from gardens, and thrust moveable objects with sexual themes into secret collections. Until recently, these were kept under lock and key, safely away from the eyes of the impressionable.

Art historians are busily engaged in recontextualizing this art, and their findings have underlined conclusions of Foucault as well as those of Boswell. That is, some art celebrates love between men seemingly of equal ages and classes; the media of this art testifies to an upper class context in which homosexual men were mocked. In this, Boswell's thesis that homosexuality is a useful category of analysis, finds some merit. Yet one need not look far to find depictions that underline the specificity of Roman notions of sexuality. For instance, the Suburban baths at Pompeii feature wall paintings depicting a number of sexual encounters frowned upon in literature. But these seem to be mnemonic devices for remembering where one put one's toga, or by the interpretation of another scholar, in order to cause bathers to laugh and thus avert the evil eye. Likewise the bronze flying phalluses with dangling bells, mosaics of black men sporting enormous phalluses, and images of Priapus are thought to defuse the power of the evil eye by laughter.

GENDER IN LITERARY SOURCES

Though the demand that a Roman male citizen penetrate rather than be penetrated was clearly an important part in achieving masculinity, it seems to have been only one of several requirements. Early Roman literature points to a definition of virtus, rather weakly translated as "masculinity," which seems to mean aggressive courage in military engagements. The late third century bce and the infusion of Hellenistic culture and philosophy into Rome saw the broadening of this concept to include a number of other traits involving the physical and emotional control of oneself and others. By the second century bce, martial virtus took on a component of restraint, especially in reference to ruling others by keeping the peace in the provinces or at home, or by controlling others through the medium of rhetoric and oratory. Control of one's own body was also a high priority since it allowed others to judge visibly the virtus of a man. Thus literary sources dwell upon cultural codes such as the length of one's tunic and sleeves (the shorter, the manlier), the ability to withstand cold and hunger, and the careful balance struck between grooming the body and effeminately preening. Men who did not control themselves and others were often depicted as effeminate and occasionally accused of playing the passive role in sexual encounters with other men. Curiously, it was these same men, cneidi or pathici, who were accused of blatant and uncontrolled adultery, that is, of violating the pudicitia of married women. These adulterers were not seen as hypermasculine for their ability to seduce married women; rather they were considered effeminate because they were unable to control their passions.

The expanded meanings of virtus sometimes extended to descriptions of women as well as men. In the Republican period there are only a handful of instances when this quality is ascribed to women, and it most often means courage. Under the Empire, however, funerary inscriptions attribute virtus to non-noble women. In these cases, the word seems to indicate the later ethical qualities of the word, especially in terms of restraint. Literary references seem to indicate that women could share masculine qualities with men, but the line between a woman being admirable for such qualities and being presumptuous for stepping out of line was indeed a fine one that could be portrayed positively by friends or negatively by enemies.

In general, the Romans constructed their world in such a way that elite women were expected to stay at home and care for their homes and families. As funerary inscriptions attest, lower class women could and did practice professions, very often those of their husbands. Though the dominant rhetoric envisioned women's intellectual ability or moral fortitude as weaker than men's and thus not fit for political life, the Romans seemed also to recognize that individual women in extraordinary circumstances could carry themselves well in public life. Thus, a fitting closure to this entry seems a selection from the Laudatio Turiae, a funeral inscription for a first-century bce woman erected by her husband:

You became an orphan suddenly before the day of our wedding, when both your parents were murdered together in the solitude of the countryside. It was mainly due to your efforts that the death of your parents was not left unavenged … So strenuously did you perform your filial duty by your insistent demands and your pursuit of justice that I could not have done more if I had been present … How you reacted to this, with what presence of mind you offered resistance, I know full well, although I was absent…. You have innumerable other merits in common with all married women who care for their good name. It is your very own virtues that I am asserting, and very few women have encountered comparable circumstances to make them endure such sufferings and perform such deeds. Providentially Fate has made such hard tests rare for women.

Not only does this inscription underline that some Roman women could navigate through the dangers of dominant gender definitions which marginalized them, it also hints at very real dangers women faced in everyday life: seeing to family businesses, managing finances and raising children alone while men were at war, surviving the dangers of childbirth, and seeing to their own personal safety.

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                                   Julie Langford-Johnson