Gay Sex in Ancient Rome

At the time it was considered neither gay nor ancient nor Roman.

What did they use for lube?

Apparently they also had trannies back then.

Homosexuality as such didn't exist.

People had sex with male and female partners, and nobody saw anything wrong with that!

Having sex with male and female and no one gave it a second thought. Sounds like a good time to have been gay.

Bear grease is the best lube ever!

The revealed phallus was believed to have apotropaic magical powers, averting the evil eye or invidia and bestowing good luck.

Folklore from China and Ireland states women lifted shirts to scare evil spirits. LOL

I had no idea elders here are so old.

r2 Why EVOO, of course.

Julius Caesar was described as "Every woman's husband and every man's wife." The man was a slut.

r10 I thought that was Caligula? Did it run in the family?

They liked their aqueerducts.

Olive oil not bear grease.

Graffiti from Pompeii:

"Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men's behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!"

Grit in the lube.

[quote] Sounds like a good time to have been gay.

This isn't true, but I don't have the energy to explain why. Someone else should set the record straight. For starters, it wasn't considered at all acceptable for an adult male to consent to receptive anal sex. Any adult male bottom would have to work as a prostitute, that was the only place for them in Roman society. It was considered acceptable for men to fuck young boys, most of whom were non-consenting slaves. That's more pedophilia than homosexuality.

I never like seeing things stated with certainty regarding homosexuality in the past; while it's certainly true that most men who wanted sex with other men resorted to prostitutes, slaves and entertainers (thus beginning the long tradition of equating entertainers with prostitution/sexually 'liberated'), I suspect there were a few men -- soldiers, for example -- who paired up in loving relationships.

"Most of whom were non-consenting slaves." How do you know that?

R17 Agree, there always were, and always will be, pairs of men who bond in loving relationships.

But the question was how was that viewed in Ancient Rome, was it accepted, or was it subject to the usual homophobia? I was responding to someone saying it was a great time to be gay. And homosexuality wasn't accepted, but never mind it was a gay paradise, this is exactly why I hesitated responding. Fantasy is better than reality anyway, so fuck it.

link

What we could call cinaedophobia prevailed: prejudice against "cinaedi," men who wanted to get penetrated by a man. But as usual lots of stuff must have gone on behind the scenes that were disapproved of in public.

Supposedly men who had cum breath were looked down upon. This was at a time when no one brushed their teeth. Can you imagine blowing the Emperor for weeks on end and half his family?

In days of old, when knights were bold and rubbers weren't invented.

They tied a sock around their cock and fucked away contented.

[quote]Apparently they also had trannies back then.

I hope they were nicer than ours.

Not true R16 and R20. You are fallen victim to the homophobia of the history profession (also its squeamishness with sexuality in general, apparently because mostly it is taught in schools to the young).

Roman society DID not have the taboo Greeks did about adult males having consensual sex relations, particularly with slaves. They did not want bottoming among free born nobility because they thought it was unbecoming of station, but use of other men particularly of lower classes for sexual gratification was certainly not a big deal.

As I mentioned above, I'm reading Norman Cantor's "Antiquity"; I don't have it with me (I'm at work), but he mentions that in the first few centuries, Rome was pretty free-wheeling when it came to sexuality -- straight, gay, bestiality, anything goes. According to him, the reason for the change in attitude was the fact the Christianity happened to rise just at the same time that certain venereal diseases, previously unknown, began to become widespread.

" I suspect there were a few men -- soldiers, for example -- who paired up in loving relationships."

Loving relationships were frowned upon, the rule was... arranged marriages with women. Even if you loved another man, you married a woman and had children somehow, and so did he. But it was considered contemptible for two adult men to have a relationship, it was actually more acceptable for them to fuck teenaged slaves, if they could afford them.

gay sex in ancient Rome was a pain in the ass!

It was not considered contemptible R28. You must constantly be on guard against attributing a Victorian sensibility to antiquity. They didn't want weakness (and falling in love then and now was weakness) but they often celebrated passion too, as we do today. Human nature hasn't changed, and while society's understanding of sex and sexuality does change, the results in terms of actual social conduct are almost certainly far less variable than you might think.

Here's all you need to know.

There were examples of adult men in loving relationships such as Alexander and Hephaistion.

Also Hadrian and Antinous. Hadrian built the city of Antinoopolis as a memorial to his lover.

Ad castra proxima propero, Sexte, cum viris et pueris oppidi nostri. Cur in armis non es?

Even regular talk sounded dirty back then.

Antinous wasn't an adult, R33, he was a teenager. At the time they lived it was acceptable for a teenagers to have relationships with adult men, but those relationships were expected to stop when the boy started growing a beard. Antinous died young, an apparent suicide, and historians wonder if he killed himself because his relationship with the emperor was no longer tenable (or maybe he was murdered).

There was a best-selling book about those two some years ago, I've got a copy around somewhere.

Craig Williams, *Roman Homosexuality* (2nd edition 2010) will clear everything up.

Cicero said this dude (Junior) was Mark Antony's gay lover (see link)

Biguss Dickuss

I watched I, Claudius on youtube recently, and there were allusions from the wives about their husbands having sex with other men. It didn't seem to be a big deal, though the hetero culture itself was pretty hedonistic.

Jesus! Fucking Christ! (NSFW)

In related news, Frankie just auctioned off his Harley- this guy means business!

Crunchy

That pic is sick, r40. Some things are just wrong.

What is sick about this picture? A simple fantasy about fictional characters from fictional book.

God, I would have loved to have been a part of their orgies. Were they all bi?

Fry in Hell, R40 & R44. I hope those fictional flames melt your evil head for eternity.

Go get psychiatrist's help R46.If Christian hell really existed you would be there as well SODOMITE

I am an atheist, but I don't like pics like that. Why make an image that has deep meaning to many profane? And really, the figure of Jesus, whether actual or fictional, embodied tolerance and acceptance. Just not right.

God forgives the repentant sinner. His sworn enemies, however, will burn in Hell. And his sworn enemy is mine. I look forward to your eternal roasting, dude. Seriously.

And that is all I need to say.

Fun fact: after Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus was struck by lightning on the butt when he was a youth, he went through life with the nickname "Jupiter's chick" (pullus Iovis).

Dwell in your self-loathing pathetic person. HOW COMPASSIONATE you are such a model CHRISTIAN. GO AND PRAY TO BE HEALED FROM YOUR FAGGOTRY YOU SINNER, DO THAT AND ACT LIKE A REAL MAN NOT SOME MOLLY BUGGER. WHY DON'T YOU START A PETITION FOR HOMOSEXUALS TO BE BURNED ALIVE JUST LIKE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THEN THROW YOURSELF AT THE STAKE. BE A GOOD ROLE MODEL.

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT R49 YOU'LL ALWAYS WILL BE A HOMOSEXUAL AND YOU ALWAYS WILL BE MISERABLE HYPOCRITE AND LIFE OF SUCH PERSON IS REALLY WORTHLESS SO PUT AN END TO YOUR MISERY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND GET THE FUCK OFF THIS BOARD FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT IN FEAR OR SHAME CAUSE OF THEIR SEXUALITY.

R46, we all know Jesus was a bottom and liked to be fucked by his disciples. Lighten up.

R40, Bravo!

one thing to keep in mind about any wild sexual stuff you hear about ancient roman politicians--it was a popular sport to make up insane accusations about their sexual proclivities to damage their reputations and legacies. Plenty of crazy stuff went on but if you hear something too outrageous to be true, it probably is. Unless you're talking about Caligula, that guy was legitimately insane.

I only go back to the beginning of time when Jesus was born.

I wonder if Jesus yelled out "Oh Jesus!" when he was coming. Seems redundant, yes?

R54, you are picking and choosing what you want to believe. Cicero says Mark Antony is a fag! It's a political smear campaign! Caligula is nuts! Must be true!

Won't wash. Cicero was not Karl Rove and Caligula was high functioning his whole life.

Where did the Jesus freaks come from?!

Hey r44, it may be fiction to you, but it is a religion to others.

Respect. It's a good thing.

Turkish proverb: If you wish your merit to be known, acknowledge that in others.

I agree with R48, that picture is in poor taste. And R51 is an angry, toxic person.

As Aretha said: R E S P E C T

r59 = F&F. Your kind isn't welcome here.

r60 needs to die in a grease fire.

Of course attitudes towards homosexuality changed as the Roman Republic and Empire evolved. At first it was considered unseemly for an adult male of status to be penetrated, Julius Caesar was reportedly mocked by the senate for having an affair with another grown man (this was before he became emperor). But a few generations later anything went, at least for people with money. And then the damned Christians came along and spoiled everyone's fun.

R54, you can't mean that all the dirt in Suetonius was made up? Noooo!!!

H O T and although they didn't have to worry about hiv, there were other stds.

What the hell are religious zealots doing here reading our stuff? I mean, isn't this THE LAST place a Bible-thumping Christian should be? Unless, of course, they have more in common with us gay people than they want to admit...

Fucked an Italian guy in the Bronx once. He used olive oil. Must have been Roman.

R64, are you that retarded? There are [bold]gay[/bold] Christians, and they have every right to be here as you do. Expand your narrow world a bit and deal with it, you idiot.

R40 is HOT

Cite your sources, R23.

Scholarly text? or did you just hear it from someone?

[quote] I look forward to your eternal roasting, dude. Seriously.

LOL! And people complain that Muslims overreact to the publication of a few Mohamed cartoons!

Thanks for the reminder that [bold]NOBODY[/bold] does butthurt victimhood quite like Christians.

Maaaaah!

[quote]His sworn enemies, however, will burn in Hell. And his sworn enemy is mine.

MARY!!

In general, the pagan Romans had a blasé attitude toward homosexuality -- live and let live.

Many Romans saw homosexuality as a valid variety of sexual pleasure that anyone could indulge in -- especially the upper classes.

This is a culture that allowed primarily homosexual men to rise to the rank of emperor or anything else, from mighty generals like Hadrian to teenage trannies like Elagabulus. The Romans even deified Hadrian's gay loverboy Antinous after his tragic death, celebrating many funerary games and festivals in his honor and worshipping him for hundreds of years later as a love and vegetation god. Hadrian's rule was an era of prosperity, happiness and much peace that was very popular with the Roman people.

Prostitution was legal in Rome, including brothels with males. Bathhouses and other informally designated "cruising areas" were places where gay men could always find sex in public. Aristocrats had their pass-around whores and concubines -- Nero even married a high class transexual named Sporus.

Remember, the religion they shared with the Greeks was full of myths and legends of the gods they worshipped fucking male lovers, from Jupiter to Apollo to Hercules.

The religious cult of the Anatolian goddess Cybele required a transexual priesthood. It got so popular in Rome that the Romans had to pass a law forbidding proper Romans from chopping their dicks off, dressing like women and joining the cult!

But queer life in ancient Rome wasn't all rainbow flags. Bottoming was seen as effeminate, weak, submissive and degrading -- only tops got all the glory. As mentioned earlier, Roman men were expected to marry females and produce Roman offspring, but the men had the sexual freedom to indulge in sexual relations outside their marriages (only wives' infidelity or taking another citizen's wife was considered adultery, as in most ancient cultures).

The only instances I know of male couples getting married in ancient Rome involved one of the duo transgendering into a female identity first.

The Romans used derogatory slurs against men who preferred men and played the passive role. "Cinaedus," like the Greek "kinaidos," basically means "faggot." But it was only directed at bottoms.

Some historians argue that a Roman law called the "Lex Scantinia" banned Roman citizens from bottoming altogether. But the complete law does not survive in text; many think it was just a ban against the statutory rape of males AND females.

Also remember that gay identity did not exist in ancient Rome. Sexual orientation was not scientifically discovered or studied. You didn't have Christianity slandering, condemning and polarizing people's opinions about homosexuality. Sexual minorities were not pressured into factions. Like all the other ancients except the Jews, the Romans thought all people were potentially bisexual -- there was no "straight vs. gay."

A good book with lots of documents pertaining to homosexuality back then is Thomas Hubbard's HOMOSEXUALITY IN GREECE AND ROME.

RE: "Julius Caesar was every man's wife" and "Caligula forced all the senators' wives to prostitute themselves for a night."

Remember that political slander and rumormongering were just as popular as they are today. People write all sorts of lies about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney -- the Romans were prone to just as much bullshit . Not every claim made by even prominent writers should be automatically accepted as fact -- wait until lots of corroborating evidence backs it up.

Some Romans wrote that Elagabulus prostituted himself from the royal palace just for fun. But Elagabulus had many enemies.

RE: r16's claim that all bottoms had to be prostitutes: Bullshit. Not possible.

And the Greeks and Romans were not pedophiles -- they both had laws against screwing children. They were ephebophiles, or, like every other culture back then, they saw adulthood and the age of consent as happening at puberty. "If there's grass on the field, then play ball."

For now, let's examine homoerotic art from ancient Rome:

The problem with the Jesus Fucking Christ picture is that everyone knows Jesus was a top.

r17 is correct. Even if there was social stigma against bottoming or two men shacking up, Roman men were still free to engage in it and take all the flack. Case in point, Elagabulus again -- a teenage tranny emperor who took two wives and one husband!

SATYRICON is a famous, Roman novel about two, homosexual young men who go on a sexual odyssey across the Roman empire together -- in love with each other but quarreling over a sexual slave boy as well. Surprisingly, this book was a smash hit across Europe in the high middle ages when it was reprinted and distributed en masse!

RE: r27: Christianity did not overtake Roman law and morality until the fourth century, A.D. Rome as we know it was an autonomous city-state from about the 8th century B.C. So pagan Rome and its sexual mores lasted for about 1,000 years, not "a few centuries." Historians mostly think of Rome in its pagan heyday -- they see Christian Rome as a late adoption just before it fell and basically the start of Medieval times.

r32, the OP asked about Romans -- Alexander and Hephaistion were Greek and never ruled Italy. P.S. their alleged sexual relationship is dubious. Alexander's thing for Bagoas, however, is regarded as fact by most historians.

FALSE, r35. Antinous was 18 when he met Hadrian and 28 when he died. They carried on a homosexual relationship mostly in Antinous's 20s. But it was a coupling more akin to what Roman and Greek nobility approved of: the top was a powerful, elder and bearded nobleman whereas the bottom was a younger, clean-shaven pretty boy. Hadrian appeared more manly in distinct contrast to Antinous. Had Hadrian taken a peer or an elder, or bottomed, he would have raised eyebrows and be seen as a bitch.

On that note, let's have a bisexual, Roman butt-fuck fresco:

Correction to r75:

Elagabalus had 5 wives and two husbands.

Not very many history majors in this thread.

in ancient Rome, gay sex was OK but it was mainly between adult men and teen boys, adult men and slaves, or adult men and prostitutes/actors. I assume gay sex took place in the Roman army too. It was less common for 2 free adult men to have sex, though I'm sure it happened in a hush hush manner.

Of course, fucking Christianity ruined things.

"Also remember that gay identity did not exist in ancient Rome."

Well, there was barely such a thing as individual identity back then; a person's identity was as a member of a family, a clan, a tribe, a social class, etc. Those were the things that determined who you married or whether you married, what a person actually liked didn't figure into that. Some men had sexual freedom once they'd made a proper marriage, and incidentally can I ask if anyone's ever read about lesbians in the ancient world? Could two women get it on, did anyone care if they did? Even Suetonius, who had all the dirt, never mentioned anything about women than I recall.

Anyway, regarding the identity of an individual, it's been said that the first true "individual" of the ancient world was St. Augustine of Hippo. His memoirs were the first book ever written in the first person, as far as we know, and are the first entirely personal (known) work of letters.

The Christers on here getting offended by R40 can go take a hike. Religion is NOT deserving of respect. Fuck your idiotic mythology.

It's DL.

Of course there will be queens claiming to know EXACTLY what the ancient Romans did.

Pederasty. This was a publicly accepted relationship between an adult male and an adolescent male.

Father's gave consent to have their son's courted by adult men. The young men are given a choice on who they wished to have relations with, unlike the young women.

Elagabalus was not the only emperor who had a husband. Even that psychopath Nero had two husbands.

He married a boy who he had castrated and dressed as a woman. And he married a slave who he simulated a bridal night with with. And he was the bride.

please no one on this thread speak of zeus fucking ganymede! like r46, i get super offended when you speak of my imaginary gods having imaginary sex acts.

From the art that survived we can see it was a part if their society

Roman soldiers used lard to sodomize effeminate young boys in the baths. And I fucken wish I could have been there to receive their huge warrior cocks. Every time I see an image of a Roman soldier I want to get on my knees before him, raise his armor and suck his cock like a slut.

Wipe, rinse.

Satyricon by Petrone adapted for film by Fellini in 1969

It was also common for the male adult losers of an opposing city/country to be raped by the Roman soldiers before being killed, since that was considered to be a huge humiliation.

which god was associated with gayness in Rome?

Who did it better-Greeks or Romans?

Look at these jesus freaks getting riled up over a fictional character :)

Honestly, it didn't interest me much at the time, so I stayed in Vienna.

There was no gay sex in ancient Rome. Those stories are all taken from blind items posted by the Entertainment Lawyer.

[quote]And then the damned Christians came along and spoiled everyone's fun.

And the nutso Fundies are still at it.

R93 gurl bye with your xtian shit defending

Pre Christian Rome was pretty much Hollywood, not many rules everyone could fuck their brains out with anyone else.

bump

Any stories about lesbianism in Ancient Rome?

Because as far as I know from what I've read, women's lives consisted of arranged marriages intended to benefit their parents' financially or politically, or if they were particularly rich and desirable, a series of arranged marriages, and probably losing their children in each divorce.

^Who's that?

My parents have R40 hanging in the dining room.

I keep telling mother it is very wrong.

It belongs in the billiard room.

Bump bitch thread, in this case, R96.

[quote]What is sick about this picture? A simple fantasy about fictional characters from fictional book.

I dare R39 to post a pic of Mohammed fucking 9yo Aisha. I'd respect your offensiveness more.

I meant R40. Sorry R39.

r99 George Payne in the gay porn epic "Centurions of Rome."

Moistly straight porn actor George Payne, R99.

Here he is in another one of his not so straight appearances.

There shouldn't be anything wrong with imagining Jesus to have sex and enjoying sex.

Jesus was a great guy no? Plenty of gay men should feel attracted to his kindness... which means that plenty of gay men would also have wanted to either fuck or get fucked by this gentle soul.

The more important question is.. what did the ancients use for lube. Really olive oil?

Since Alexander was known for being a bottom for many men, I don't totally buy that bottoming was not acceptable unless you were a male prostitute. There was probably slut shame , but it is ridiculous to think regular men didn't bottom.

Then as now, R108, the rules were different for those at the top of the heap.

bump

At what point did people begin growing pupils in their eyes?

The statues (and columns!) were painted and the paint has since faded away, r10 . So, originally, that statue had pupils.

Just like Spring Break 400 BC on the Beach of Crete, OP. Fabulous! Plus 2 goblets of wine for the price of one on wet toga contest nights.