Sexuality in ancient Rome

Sexuality in ancient Rome generally lacked the modern categories of "heterosexual" or "homosexual." [1] Instead, the differentiating characteristic was activity versus passivity, or penetrating versus penetrated.

Male Sexuality Romans thought that men should be the active participant in all forms of love. Male passivity symbolized a loss of manliness, the most prized Roman virtue. This is in stark contrast to the Pederasty in ancient Greece, in which young boys became men through relations with adult males. It was socially and legally acceptable for Roman men to have sex with both female and male prostitutes as well as young slaves, as long as the Roman man was the active partner. Laws such as the Lex Scantina, Lex Iulia, and Lex Iulia de vi publica regulated against homosexual love between free men and boys, but these laws were frequently violated and rarely enforced, with men performing the passive role and vice versa. [2] If the laws were ever enforced, the partner punished would be the passive male, not the active male. A man who liked to be penetrated was called "pathic", roughly translated as "bottom" in modern sex terminology, and was considered to be weak and feminine.

Female Sexuality Women were not granted freedom of sexuality. Men considered female homosexuality disgusting and dangerous. A woman who wanted to be an active partner in intercourse was a "tribade" (the meaning of which has now changed).

Homosexuality in Literature Few accounts of love between women exist through the eyes of women, so we only know the viewpoint of Roman men. Multiple ancient Roman authors wrote about love affairs between men, including Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Catullus wrote of his love for the young man Juventius, while Tibullus dedicated two elegies to his lover Marathus and wrote particularly about how devastated he was that Marathus had left him for a woman.

Further reading

• Adams, J. N. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 1982, ISBN 0-8018-4106-2
• Cantarella, Eva. Bisexuality in the Ancient World. Yale University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-300-04844-0
• Halperin, David M. "homosexuality" (pp. 722-3) in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, third edition, 1996, ISBN 0-19-866172-X
• Hubbard, Thomas K. Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23430-8.
• Radford, R. La prostitution féminine dans la Rome antique, Morrisville, Lulu, 2007. 168 p. ISBN: 978-1-4303-1158-4.
• Skinner, Marilyn. Sexuality in Greek And Roman Culture. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-23234-6.

Thomas A.J. McGinn. The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004.

External links

• Sexuality and Gender in Greece and Rome Course offered at Oxford University
• CLA 331-001 GENDER and SEXUALITY in GREECE and ROME Course offered at University of Kentucky
• Standard Roman Sexuality Article on About.com
• Non-Standard Roman Male Sexuality Article on About.com

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