Swallowing Didn’t Mean You Were Gay In The Roman Army

Orally servicing well-built, muscular guys with thick bananas was considered a sign of bravery if you were a solider in ancient Rome.

And the bigger the man’s sausage, the manlier you were viewed.

That’s because, during the time of the ancient Roman Army, which historians say started around 753 BC, homosexuality did not carry the same stigmas it does today.

Instead, sexual relations between males was considered a bonding experience. The greater the bond, the stronger the cohesion was in the unit.

This was particularly the case for the Hastatus; the youngest of infantrymen in the pre-Marian armies before 107 BC. If you were one of these soldiers, you saw real action on the front line and were (likely) the first to die in battle.

At that time, giving your life up for the Empire was considered an honor with only the bravest of men serving in the legion. And while it is true that some were forced to commit sexual acts as part of slavery, not everyone engaging in gay sex did so by force. The Swallower

If you happened to be a Hastatus, you were expected to demonstrate your abilities through certain activities. Examples included sword fighting and hand to hand combat. Others included heavy lifting and games involving strategy.

But to be considered an elite soldier, you had to prove your manliness by swallowing seed. As revealed in books written about the topic, this rite of passage was simple.

At the crack of dawn, the volunteer would find a minimum of four fighters lined up along the outer curvature of the Colosseum. As the soldiers stood resting against the limestone, the Hastatus was required to drain each one out.

While this may sound highly erotic, the hard truth is only men who were extremely large could feed the volunteer. Changes would later come after the Marion Reforms of 107 BC but at the time, 8 inches or more was the minimum requirement.

Only the legion commander was empowered to pick the feeders. To make the cut, the commander measured length using the digit system; the ancient Roman way of measuring inches. Back then, one index finger equated to four inches. When you do the math, you can see two were required to reach the “8” threshold.

Must Be Eight

While not always the case, it was usually the men from present- day Sardinia who were chosen. We’re not sure why but it is believed men from this Mediterranean region were massively hung.

Again, all of this may sound amazing and even hot but there was one important catch.

You had to milk the group before the sun fully rose over the Colosseum. If you couldn’t get each man to nut and then swallow their seed, you were executed on the spot with a sword.

And to be clear, swallowing meant drinking all of their milk. That may not sound difficult but consider the fact that the fighters were forced to abstain from releasing for a 10-day period prior to the event.

That’s a lot to ingest from a clad of testosterone filled soldiers.

(more at the link!)

Here's more historical information about homosexuality in the Roman Empire:

Love the articles photo from the sexy UK reality TV show Bromans. That show definitely deserved a second series.

Please ITV reconsider!

Looks like an Abercrombie and Fitch store opening.

Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that sucking a guy’s dick and swallowing was ever considered manly. Urban myth.

R5 I agree. I think the linked article is a parody piece. Very good, though.

It's not a parody, this is the level of writing in Men's Variety. It's like if BuzzFeed, Penthouse Forum, and a truck stop bathroom stall got together to put out a magazine.

It's stupid Buzzfeed-esque writing, but they have links to actual sources and things!

Sounds like something from The Onion. I can only imagine the writers were laughing their asses off.

Getting 4 massively hung muscle warriors off in 20 minutes and swallowing every drop of their loads before the sunrise doesn't sound like a challenge at all... Especially if they've been holding 10-day loads and forbidden from any prior release. Total cakewalk.

The dude with the jutting pecs at OP for all those who just clicked for that

Hot, r10!

Thanks r11. I love his muscle man scowl/tough guy face.

R11 another hunk who ruined his perfect body with a plethora of awful tattoos... Such a pity.

r20 Is it a cakewalk you'd relish and enjoy?!😘

No groups rates.

r15 I think there's a lot of us here who would be down for the challenge!

R17 Remember the part about being under time constraints. And failure resulted in death!

Was just scanning it R7 and that is a perfect description.

This is from their Penthouse Letters DNA, though actual Penthouse Letters would have described the sex act in far more detail and ended with "neither Dillon nor I consider ourselves gay and we still get with the ladies as often as possible, but when that doesn't work out, we don't let the night become a total waste."

Sex between men was fine as long as you were not the bottom. If you were the bottom you were regarded as lowly like a slave. For a well-born man being a bottom meant a loss of caste and was best avoided or at least kept quiet. Sucking cock was like being a bottom but getting your cock sucked by another man was fine.

I had this same fantasy about my soccer team mates throughout high school. Only the hottest alphas with the biggest dongs.

Can please someone make this into a porno? It sounds totally hawt!

Did the author provide any scholarly citations? No. Then bogus, made up shit.

r23 There's a link to JSTOR!

That's how things still are, R20.

R25 Where do you live? Sex between men is now generally frowned upon.

I boned up thinking about this

Well done gramps.

R26 is calling in from the early 1900's. Lol!!

R28 It's time for your meds and a series of shock treatments again. You've been on the loose too long.

Ego te ad currum mel.

R5 Well, regardless of what you believe personally, it is an undisputed historical fact. Swallowing semen was a common practice performed by both men and women in ancient Rome. Swallowing cum was believed to contain health benefits. It was thought that the ingestion of semen would increase stamina in men and fertility in women. It is well documented from texts of the time, and this information is widely taught in college-level courses on Roman history.

In parts of Ancient Greece, having a younger man perform oral sex on, and swallowing the load of, an older man (often an extended family member like an uncle or cousin) was considered a normal part of sexual maturity and viewed as the young man's transition into full adulthood. This 'ritual' is also practiced among many nomadic tribes across the world and still is performed by a tribe in Papa New Guinea. Another shocking practice is that fathers of more 'lower class families' would often 'loan' sons to male members of more wealthy or noble families to be sodomized in exchanged for things like land, better standing in society, etc.

Another historical fact, sexual acts between men didn't really become stigmatized and looked down upon until about the 14th Century AD in Europe as Christianity became increasingly conservative towards pagan sexual practices. Anal and oral sex between men wasn't a big deal. Sex in ancient times had a more transnational and hierarchical element and not the romantic connotations we now link sex with.

[quote] this information is widely taught in college-level courses on Roman history.

[quote]Another shocking practice is that fathers of more 'lower class families' would often 'loan' sons to male members of more wealthy or noble families to be sodomized in exchanged for things like land, better standing in society, etc.

R32 This is still done with girls.

If I never have sex again, I'll always be a, "dairy queen", at heart.

I would be clearly up for the challenge!!!

Me too, R36.

I've had a few married men tell me that it takes them a while to cum, and that they never get any good head. But within 5-10 minutes I had them curling their toes and cumming hard.

So I volunteer as tribute!

R37, Yes, I've had my share too. They are hooked the first time you go down on them. My secret which I will pass on. Take a swig of hot tea or coffee and then go down - it they aren't hard already, within seconds their head is going to hit the back of your mouth, gorging for release.

R38 Yes, that's one of my tricks too!

It also worked for some guys if I'd just had a mint before that.....the wintergreen/mint tingling on their dick added to the stimulation.

My other hint is that too many guys think it's "headsucking" and pay attention only to the head....the most underappreciated part of a cock is the underside of the shaft. Learn to pay it some attention, swirl your tongue around it and include the underside in everything you're doing and it will make the guy cum SO much and so hard.

R39, we must of had the same training. I use Altoids - works great. Another thing is to also pay attention to the entire area - head , underneath the head, pee slit, shaft, balls and taint area -they love when you lick underneath the balls (and rimming if I know the guy - I have 2 straight regulars who get that treatment).

I've had guys have trouble standing when I a done...

15-20 minute period to get 5 guys off? Not happening, and that’s a lot of pressure for both parties. What if the guy got soft?

Blame Sir Thomas Aquinas and Augistine for the "Christian" attitudes towards gays that we still deal with today. America also has the Second Great Awakening to blame.

Sir Thomas Aquinas

Oh dear indeed, that should have been Saint Thomas Aquinas.

R39 R40 Oh yes. Licking under the balls, licking the taint, stimulates the prostate. I learned this from an anatomy class! It never fails especially on straight guys who have never had a prostate orgasm.

Also, a light massage of the prostate (taint area) while giving head. You are going to milk them very well (down to the last drop)!

R45 R46 This is especially useful if with an Elder Gay. They take awhile to cum and if you massage or lick the taint, they cum much easier.

R47, good to know. And, I think all enjoy that regardless of age.

There are some guys I've been with where I knew if my fingers even brushed anywhere NEAR their hole, they were gonna immediately cum.

I loved that sense of power! Bwahahah.

R49 and to that, for guys I didn't feel okay rimming but wanted to give them a great experience, I would massage their asshole area with lube (feels like rimming but not the risk). Drives them wild but you need to make sure to wash your hands as there is the cross contamination thing going on too - can't rub their hole and then use your had on their cock unless you stop giving head.

I also edge the hell out of them. Go hot and heavy and then back out. I also use my thumb and forefinger like a cock ring to cool them down. They are not coming until I am ready to receive!!!

I’m confused. The Colosseum didn’t even exist in 107 BC

Gross, this whole thread.

**takes notes**

r53 = Obvious Lesbian

The Great Courses should do a lecture series on Roman blowjobs.

There are some nasty, amoral people on This thread. Gross dudes

Yes r57 it's much worse than your thread "Dat Ass Bro: Beautiful Black Booty Part Two / Only Top Shelf Cakes". You should go back there.

[quote]Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that sucking a guy’s dick and swallowing was ever considered manly. Urban myth.

R5, that sounds more like a reflection of your own internalized homophobia.

[quote]Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that sucking a guy’s dick and swallowing was ever considered manly. Urban myth.

It’s true, has happened in several cultures, and still happens in tribes of Papua New Guinea. I take that you are not an anthropologist.

I call bullshit. Just wishful thinking.

This thread is hot! 🔥

Interesting hot thread

Thanks, OP. Mother will be very pleased when I tell her.

I'm glad OP chose such a respected site for his information on ancient Roman history as "mensvariety.com"

Part II (which unfortunately no longer exists) describes what was done to soldiers who deserted the Roman army but were captured:

[quote]One deserter was brought to the commander’s chamber, stripped, tied to a pole and forced to watch a pair of nubile handmaidens disrobe and pleasure each other, which of course gave him an enormous erection. His senior officer then knelt before him and began to give the confused young man what can only be described as the most explosive pleasure he had ever known, and made him his personal vassal for a year, with daily and multi-daily virility sessions.

After his release, the soldier completely swore off women and only kept the company of other tan, muscular soldiers, many of whom were put through the same masculinity ritual by THEIR lean, muscular silver-haired senior officers as he himself had experienced.

I’m very impressed with the painstaking historical research they put into these Mens Variety articles!

R66, these Romans sound like very forgiving and kind people.

Has this research been peer-reviewed?

Two things:

1 - It is known that there was stigma among Romans, and other Mediterranean peoples, against oral sex. It was considered pleasant, but disgusting. Oral sex should only be done with whores. Or by a lover as a last resort, when her boyfriend has arousal problems. The ideal, however, is for a man to have an erection just by feeling his lover's proximity; at most, his kisses should be enough. Oral sex and handjobs are weapons of last resort, with the former being shameful. (According to Marcial, handjobs, however, could also be given by a loving slavemaster to a dear slaveboy when they're fucking. And although this practice was not seen with disgust, like oral sex was, Marcial recommends against it, under the belief that masturbating a slaveboy would speed up his puberty and turn him into a hairy, unsexy adult sooner.)

2 - The Romans would not tolerate the idea of a soldier being penetrated, orally or anally, by another.

For the Romans, being masculine means, among other things, never being penetrated, and masculinity was guarded with even more zeal among soldiers, since it was on their masculine virtues that victory in war depended.

David Leitao says:

[quote]Because the Romans did not tolerate the use of free-born youths as sexual objects, the Roman soldier had no permissible sexual outlets within the army’s own ranks.

Giving one's butt was frowned upon among civilians, but among the military it was a crime, at least when they were on-duty. It is difficult to imagine that sucking dick would be more tolerated, since oral sex was more frowned upon than anal sex among the Romans.

It doesn't need to be when it's so sexy, r68!

I'm guessing that the people who are shocked by this information must be Americans because I learned that sex between Roman and Greek soldiers was common when I took history in secondary school. Sex was not a taboo subject in ancient Greece or Roman, and sex between men was seen as a natural part of male bonding. As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, it was European Christians at the dawn of the Renaissance who began that began to stigmatize sex acts between same-sex partners and outside of the institution of marriage (although, these rules generally applied to the poor and not the wealthy elite of the Church and society). There is a great book (it's old and may be out of print) called Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality by John Boswell published in the early 1980s that not only discusses Roman attitudes towards 'gay sex,' but the early Catholic Church actually issued bonds (what we would now consider civil marriage) between same-sex partners.

R69 You're not entirely correct. Sexual attitudes in ancient Rome varied depending on the period and geographic location. Still, sex between soldiers in the military was only technically outlawed during part of the Republic (though rarely enforced). Soldiers were expected to exercise 'self-disciple,' and sex between soldiers was viewed more as bad decorum than an offense. There was something of a double standard about sex acts between soldiers. Soldiers on the receiving end of pleasure (basically getting their dick sucked or being the perpetrator during anal) would not threaten having their masculinity challenged. Being penetrated anally was deemed to be emasculating, and one of the reasons rape was rarely reported. Because of the submissive view of anal sex, in warfare, it was common for victorious soldiers to sodomize members of the defeated army. For certain periods, being a 'willing bottom' was punishable by death.

Oral sex wasn't any more or less taboo than today, but the actual issue with oral sex was not because it was seen as dirty. There was a belief in ancient Rome that ejaculation drained men of their strength. So frequent ejaculation (outside of the vagina) was discouraged. Frequent ejaculation was discouraged in general as it was though to drain your masculinity and power. Ironically on the reverse side, this semen viewed as powerful, and its ingestion was far from an uncommon practice. And yes, in some parts of Rome, and Greece as well, it was not unusual for boys around the age of 12 or 13 to perform fellatio on older men (I hate to say this, but generally it was a family member such as an uncle, or cousin, but in some rare instance it was a father or older brother) and ingest their semen as it was believed this would induce puberty.

Rome is exhausting.

Don't listen to r71.

The sexual virtue of soldiers was something that worried Roman commanders. The historian Valerius Maximus described a story of a centurion, Gaius Laetorius Mergus, who made a pass at a subordinate and was indicted as a result; in the end he killed himself.

Oral sex was, indeed, considered something dirty among the Romans and among various peoples of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. A gay American, Jerry Zarrit, who lived in Iran found evidence of this belief among his Iranian lovers in the 1970s!

Now, there are Roman graffiti calling certain men "fellator", but there is nothing about it in Roman literature, and from these graffiti nothing can be concluded about the homosexual practice of oral sex - not even the identity of the accused men in graffiti, if they were prostitutes, slaves, merchants, soldiers, or anything. Or even if the men named actually fellated other men, and were not just being accused in jest or as slander.

In the more serious Roman literature, all the incidences of this act are, as far as I know, between man and woman. I may bite my tongue later, but I'm pretty sure this story that what r71 is telling us - that "it was not unusual for boys around the age of 12 or 13 to perform fellatio on older men ... and ingest their semen as it was believed this would induce puberty" - is pure invention on his part, based on the customs of other peoples, like the Melanesians, who did in fact ejaculated in boys' mouths to induce puberty.

But neither the Greeks nor the Romans ever embraced this belief; I would say, in fact, that they were too sophisticated to believe this nonsense. They lusted after boys because they thought they were hot, not as part of any ritual to induce puberty.

I'm 99.9999% positive that r71 is making stuff up. He should, in any case, present his references here, and quote them to support his argument.

R73 Sure, BA with Honours in Ancient and Medieval History from Brimingham University 2004. MA Visual and Material Culture of Ancient Rome from Warwick 2018. Currently in my second year of doctoral studies in Classics and Ancient History from Warwick.

And yours R73?

I am 99.999% You're gathering bits and pieces form Wikipedia and pretending to be an expert.

As soon as it’s safe...I’m booking a flight to Sardinia

OMFG only on DL could we get a bitch fest about Romans swallowing. I don't really care but one reason why R71 is probably correct is if you look at a lot of the art from Rome, a huge fucking chunk of it is images of men blowing each other. I mean ancient art is full of oral sex imagery. So I'm sure there partial truths in what everyone is saying. Also R71 did say that attitudes and customs were different depending on the era and location within the Empire. I mean R73 Rome was more than just Rome..................but who cares.

Any Roman slave owner could be the aggressor or “top” in penetrative (oral or anal) sex with their male slaves, or with male prostitutes who were also slaves to the brothel owner. These could be grown men but mostly pretty youths would be the expected passive participant. That behavior would not bat an eye. But a patrician Or respected Roman citizens to suck dick or Get fucked, by slave or citizen, would be shameful behavior they would Definitey want to keep hidden. Surely happened plenty enough though.

r74 I recently read modern authors who wrote about Roman (homo)sexuality, such as Craig Williams, Amy Richlin and John Clarke; I also read some authors from Rome itself, such as Martial, Catullus and Suetonius.

I am willing to give a reference - with page and quote - for each argument I made here. In fact, I already did this for an argument made above, that Roman soldiers were not allowed to have sex with each other.

I asked you more than once to do the same, and you did not submit anything to that effect. It's because you are lying outrageously, as you are either fishing for WWs, or you like to fantasize about the idea of ​​Romans inseminating young boys by the mouth.

The Romans never believed that puberty should be induced by oral sex with boys. They were too sophisticated to do so. Anyone who uses Google will never find a reference to the argument you're making, because you're lying.

R76 is also lying. Catherine Johns, in "Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome", had already observed that representations of homosexuality in Rome's pictorial art are rare. "a lot of the art from Rome, a huge fucking chunk of it is images of men blowing each other" - I myself can only think of a couple of examples. How come people here can't see that this person is out of his depth?

Dataloungers love to imagine themselves as sophisticated people, but the fact that they fail to see that people like r76 and r74/r71 (showering the latter with WWs for a laughable lie, that Romans had the same sexual beliefs as Melanesians) -- the fact you all fail to see that these people are blatant liars, proves how middlebrow Dataloungers ultimately are. All of their literary references are from this century and the last; Datalounge doesn't know anything about classical cultures.

I think R78 was that annoying kid in the classroom who always raised their hand because he had to give his two cents. And when they're called out, the other person must be lying. Seriously dude, this is DL! Most people here lack a proper education and the other half are Russian trolls. Go and have your academic debate somewhere else.

[quote]WWs for a laughable lie, that Romans had the same sexual beliefs as Melanesians) -- ...the fact you all fail to see that these people are blatant liars, proves how middlebrow Dataloungers ultimately are.

Thank you, Mens Variety, for your epic troll and you horrible bastards who are stoking the flames.

Shorter R78 = everyone is lying and a fool but me!

Men's Variety has more history for you plebs:

If you wanted to have gay sex with muscular, defined men in Ancient Rome, your best bet was to become a gladiator.

Bear in mind that during the Roman Empire, which began around 753 B.C. – homosexuality was not viewed in the same manner that it is today.

Instead, same-sex relations were viewed through the lens of passive and submissive, where a premium was placed on men who were dominant.

Most all gladiators were slaves or former condemned prisoners. While the current data is somewhat scattered, published research suggests the average age was around 27.

Because so many of these men were imprisoned by their masters, their ability to engage in sexual relations with women was limited (at best).

In order to have their carnal needs met, gladiators often formed sexual bonds with one another – sometimes even romantic. This was done openly and without shame.

In fact – sexual acts between two men were often seen as signs of masculinity. According to the website, Ancient Origins, men were inculcated to take the “top” position to prove their manhood.

Failure to do so could result in a loss of family stature (see link).

It is worth noting that it wasn’t until 390 AD that homosexuality became outlawed, thanks to Christian emperors. But prior to this time period, the term “homosexual” didn’t exist.

So, how did gay sex happen with the gladiators? Well, according to books written by scholars about this topic, it usually occurred in group form.

Specifically, a clad of fighters (let’s say 4-6) would take a recruit into their clutches and group penetrate him. History does not tell us if this was done by force or if it was consensual.

We simply don’t know.

What we do know is that the purpose of sexus coetus [also known as a group bang] the goal was to help the trainee learn how to cope with pain.

In many ways, this behavior mirrored that of the Tirones, the Latin name given to new recruits of the ancient Roman Army. Here, the person would volunteer to be pounded out by as many as 15 men in rapid succession.

For these ancient male fighters, oral and anal interaction was considered the ultimate bonding experience. In fact, taking in the seed of another gladiator was the equivalent of drinking Jupiter’s ambrosia.

Romantic relationships were also part of the mix. In these situations, they were almost always consensual. You have to remember that these men were kept in close quarters, unable to leave the crude, dark cells they were kept in.

Because their lives could end at any moment, it is believed that many took on male lovers to give their realities meaning. This is not to say these men were “gay”.

Instead, it is simply to suggest the labels we use today simply didn’t apply.

Were some of these men bisexual? Possibly. Were they gay? Perhaps. But in the final analysis, it really doesn’t matter. What is important is that 2000 years ago, same-sex relations were normal.

The difference lies in how they were viewed by society.

If you want to learn more about these kinds of topics, be sure to pick up a copy of the book: Ancient Rome and the Construction of Modern Homosexual Identities.

These articles were excerpted from the historian Chi Chi Larue in her book “the men who swallow”

Have YOU read Ancient Rome and the Construction of Modern Homosexual Identities, r84??

R83 Reading this makes me hard.

Forgive me, everyone! I didn't know that inseminating an 11-year-old boy by the mouth was such a popular fantasy here, and that refuting the obvious lie that this practice existed among the Romans would incite so much opposition against me.

Silly me. I didn't know that history threads were a bad place to demonstrate historical knowledge. Or that showing knowledge of the sources, including mentioning the name of modern scholars and ancient historians, and quoting their words here, was frowned upon, a sin against local etiquette.

If I had known that these threads only exist to give an air of respectability to the perversions of each poster, I would have tried to post something like r74.

Let's see ...

Roman soldiers use their tongue to rinse the cocks of the elephants they brought from Africa, and gave their own horses their asses, in order to win the memory of the elephants and the speed of the horses on the battlefield!

Shower me with WWs, Datalounge!

I'm going to say this both R71 and R78 are telling the truth and reflecting the reality that 1) historical accounts vary, 2) the Roman Empire was massive and had a wide range of attitudes and customs, and 3) like any socity, social attitudes changed and evolved over time. Nothing remains stagnant. I am no expert btw my extent of knowledge on Rome and Greece comes from those Michael Scott documentaries on the BBC.

And R87 are you seriously suggesting that we're all getting off on the idea of an 11 year old swallowing a load? Projection, maybe? It's gross, but it doesn't change the reality that it has happened and still happens in Papa New Guinea. It's gross, but just because something doesn't sit well with you doesn't mean it's not a historical fact! I mean human history is FULL of disgusting shit.

[quote]I'm going to say this both [R71] and [R78] are telling the truth

You [italic]are[/italic] r71 and r78. You think we can't see that, idiot?

I'm still awaiting those references about boys swallowing cum. Now after I temporarily placed you on Ignore, I can see you've been lying non-stop on this thread from the very beginning.

Okay we need to make this a reality show exclusively for the DL streaming channel.

Wow, so this thread has devolved into a did boys swallow jizz? New low DL!

r91 most of us are focused on the rest of the thread, not a few stray comments.

r89 why are you arguing with yourself? Are you insane?

R93 B.A. in Ancient Roman Load-Bearing Pillars? LMFAOOOOOOO

As soon as a new emperor was elected by the senate, all centurions were summoned to a bukkake party, where everyone came all over the face of the new emperor. This ritual was believed to make the emperor a god, since the gods also had cum.

The emperor had to eat all the sperm that the centurions spilled, which could be combined with typical dishes from the Italian peninsula to facilitate digestion. That was how the sauce blance was invented, which, despite the French name, is of Roman and Italic origin.

Seriously this dude is arguing with himself.

Psycho or some sort of performance art.

r96 No, I'm not, silly. I mistakenly tagged r71 and r78 in r89, when I meant r71 and r74 (which are both you).

It's you who tried to talk to yourself in the third person in r88, since you are also r71.

And by the way, it's funny how your academic credentials have changed from one post to another.

First you were "BA with Honors in Ancient and Medieval History from Brimingham University 2004. MA Visual and Material Culture of Ancient Rome from Warwick 2018". Now you are "no expert btw my extent of knowledge on Rome and Greece comes from those Michael Scott documentaries on the BBC."

r5 is ignorant of the homosexual rituals of both the ancient Greeks and the Papua tribes of Papua New Guinea.

It's true, the Greeks, Romans and Papua peoples believed the bottom was less manly and "the bitch." The bottoms were younger and took on an apprentice role when learning the martial arts and were made to bottom.

But the Sambia of Papua New Guinea actually believed the bottoms should ingest semen from the elder warriors because the cum would CONFER MASCULINITY upon the bottoms.

Like Popeye's spinach or proverbial broccollli, the semen would supposedly make the adolescents big, strong and manly.

r32 is wrong, persecutions against homosexuality and all pagan rituals began fast and furious in the 5th century A.D.

I think for historical accuracy we need some photos of ancient Roman and Greek artwork that showed these sex acts as well as photos of such acts happening in modern times.

I remember a lot of homophobes use to use the argument that homosexuality was the cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire, this article makes it sound like homosexuality was the erection of the Roman Empire, pun intended.

r99 Neither the Greeks nor the Romans believed any such thing, liar.

Both considered oral sex to be dirty. The Greeks, in fact, seem to have been somewhat reticent even about anal sex with free boys, and seem to have invented a new modality of sex, intercrural sex, in order not to violate the masculinity of the youngest partner in pederastic relationships. The idea that the Greeks would have been comfortable with the idea of boys swallowing semen is a laugh.

The Romans, on the other hand, saw the sexual passivity of a free Roman man with a bad eye. The idea that they made freeborn boys swallow cum is, again, hilarious to anyone who knows his way on the subject of Roman sexuality. I would say that even the idea of making slaveboys swallow cum was something the Romans would never agree with, since they imagined affairs with slaveboys as something highly romantic.

You keep saying that the Greeks and Romans practiced the same inseminatory rituals as the Melanesians, but why do you never post any references?

r71, quit telling people that Jews and Christians only started persecuting homosexuals in the Renaissance.

Legal and religious persecution started almost 2,000 years before that.

R75 just go to France or Hungary.

[quote]I think for historical accuracy we need some photos of ancient Roman and Greek artwork that showed these sex acts as well as photos of such acts happening in modern times.

I agree, but the troll who keeps talking how the Romans drank sperm as if it were water, will never post these links because art depicting oral sex between men is extremely rare among both Greeks and Romans. Among Greeks, I can only remember a vase containing an orgy scene between satyrs. Among the Romans, I only know one example, seen below; and, if I'm not mistaken, Catherine Johns also described the lamp containing such a gay oral sex scene in the book already quoted above. But Johns herself claims that homosexuality does not often appear in Rome's pictorial art; homosexuality is much more common in literary forms: novels, poetry, and historiography.

r73 is describing a rape and sexual harassment, not just homosexuality.

That's why Gaius Laetorius Mergus was prosecuted.

You're right, r102.

Rome fell just 100 years or so after embracing Christianity.

The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon, though a Christian, blamed Christianity for the fall of the Roman empire, and Nietzsche did the same, though giving reasons different from Gibbon's.

The idea that homosexuality caused the fall of Rome is complete bullshit. The Romans had a much stronger penchant for homosexuality between the first centuries BC and the second century AD - that is, at the end of the republic and the beginning of the empire - than in the fourth century AD, when Christianity had been turned into the state religion and the empire fell. The greatest works of art and homoerotic literature - the poems of Catullus and Virgil, the epigrams of Martial, the Warren Cup, etc. - all date from the end of the republic or the beginning of the empire.

And this, to say nothing of the role of homosexual emperors, such as Trajan (the greatest of the Caesars, according to the Roman Senate) and Hadrian, in the expansion and maintenance of the empire. As Edward Gibbon said, the period from Nerva to Hadrian, and includes Trajan, marks the period of greatest happiness and prosperity in the ancient world.

It was not the homosexual emperors who gave the empire to lose - it was the Christian emperors.

And that homosexual culture had, for the most part, disappeared in the final period of the empire. The Romans, including the pagans, were, in fact, relatively homophobic in the fourth century.

Why the impulse to blame homosexuality for the fall of the empire, then?

It is religious superstition disguised as historiography.

Christians traditionally interpret history under the light of biblical myths; in particular, they tried to fit what they knew of ancient homosexual civilizations into the myth of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Stephen O. Murray, in an article discussing homoeroticism in the Ottoman empire, proposed the reverse argument: that empires in expansion are given to homosexuality, while declining empires are more given to heterosexuality, because then, young men, instead of fighting abroad as soldiers, are instead settling down at home and beginning a family life.

[quote]Only the legion commander was empowered to pick the feeders. To make the cut, the commander measured length using the digit system; the ancient Roman way of measuring inches. Back then, one index finger equated to four inches. When you do the math, you can see two were required to reach the “8” threshold.

[quote]Must Be Eight

This happened in Greece as well. Here is detail from an ancient vase depicting a rejected feeder who did not meet the length requirement:

r110 is a troll. That vase portrays a classic gesture in pederastic courtship: holding a boy's chin while caressing him in the dick.

Do you take pleasure in lying to people, r110?

I've posted plenty of references, r103.

You're an idiot to believe all Romans had the same attitude toward oral sex, or that one writer represents what all Romans thought — much less what they did.

There are tons of writings, graffiti, frescoes, paintings, drawings and carvings that extol the virtues of every sexual act. And plenty of men nowadays consider GIVING oral to be "dirty," because they would never want to do that, but receiving is wonderful.

You're welcome to read Bernard Sergeant's "Homosexuality in Greek Myth," or Kenneth Dover's "Greek Homosexuality" or Thomas Hubbard's "Homosexuality in Greece and Rome."

Until you do, STFU.

I'll leave you with one of the MANY depictions of Roman citizens legally and joyously giving and receiving blowjobs:

[quote]You're welcome to read Bernard Sergeant's "Homosexuality in Greek Myth," or Kenneth Dover's "Greek Homosexuality" or Thomas Hubbard's "Homosexuality in Greece and Rome."

I'm familiar with the last two references. The last one is just a sourcebook, by the way. And neither says anything about oral sex, liar.

How about you give us a direct quotation from these books, with the page number?

And it's funny that your only pictorial evidence for the practice of oral sex among Romans, I already posted above, at r106.

You said that Greek and Roman art is full of representations of oral sex between men. Why is it, then, that only one photo, already posted by me and repeated by you, has been shown so far?

If you happened to be gay and free Roman citizen, especially from wealthy family you were able to use and abuse large number of men you found hot and attractive. Servants slaves etc. Surely there were rich men who enjoyed bottoming but behind closed doors. For regular free Roman male citizens there were spas etc. to find male company.

Rich men had to marry from other wealthy important family and had children but they were able to have male relationships (or abuse relations) with men.

If you happened to be gay or straight slave in Rome you might have had miserable life as a slave and bottom for your owner or you ended up as a prostitute. Some owners treated their servants and slaves okay, some just as a property.

Gay relations rather open and well known but there was element of abuse, which makes it a different story. Many men were trapped and couldn’t get away.

And I never said Greeks, Romans and Papuans practiced "the same rituals."

They had SIMILAR rituals, but it was a class-wide institution in Greece and New Guinea. As well as a tribe just outside Rome called the Taifali.

r106 is really ignorant. You really need to read Kenneth Dover's book. It has pictures of hundreds of vase paintings.

Here are several dozen Greek vases showing LOTS of oral sex, etc.

r106 is probably just a lazy perv who wants us to provide his Antique Porn.

R111 Brag all you want about your advanced degree in Classical Antiquity, but I happen to own a very well researched pamphlet on the subject that came with my “Treasures of Greece” Franklin Mint collection.

[quote]If you happened to be gay and free Roman citizen, especially from wealthy family you were able to use and abuse large number of men you found hot and attractive. Servants slaves etc. Surely there were rich men who enjoyed bottoming but behind closed doors. For regular free Roman male citizens there were spas etc. to find male company.

Precisely.

However, it is implicit in this rule - that non-citizens were available to men's sexual advances - that the sexual use of freeborn males was frowned upon (the same is true about freeborn females, prior to marriage). Though it was not quite a crime in the civilian sphere for two freeborn men to bugger each other , but it certainly was in the military, because their masculinity was guarded and watched, as victory in war was thought to depend on it.

That’s why, as Leitao says, in an excerpt I already quoted above, "Because the Romans did not tolerate the use of free-born youths as sexual objects, the Roman soldier had no permissible sexual outlets within the army’s own ranks."

Soldiers were freeborn men, and therefore they should not make themselves available to the desires of other men, who wished to penetrate them. This story that Roman soldiers swallowed each other's cum is false, and the story that boys did the same to kickstart their puberty is another, even bigger lie.

r109 is very stupid to make broad generalizations based on artwork, or just a couple of writers or laws.

Homosexuality has never "disappeared," anywhere.

Not under the Taliban, not under Puritan England, not under Christian America, not under the Nazis, not under the Spanish Inquisition. Nature is going to dictate what people do and no amount of legal, mob or religious persecution has ever stopped it, anywhere, at any time.

So, JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T HEAR ABOUT IT DOESN'T MEAN IT WASN'T HAPPENING, and that's especially true about straight people.

I bet you think the British under Victorian rule never had oral or anal sex, either.

Different cultures throughout different eras of history may produce more writings, laws and artwork when they flourish, but human nature doesn't change during the dark ages.

And there were NEVER any laws in pagan Rome against motherfucking oral sex, or any other kind of sex, for that matter, except for rape, adultery and pedophilia and for a while enlisted soldiers doing it with each other.

Pagan Greece and Rome were oral bonanzas!

Actually, r110, SMALL penises were written about as beautiful in Ancient Greece and usually depicted as such in artwork.

Large penises were often seen as boorish and vulgar; something usually seen on satyrs — the clowns of Greek legend and theater.

Read Kenneth Dover's book and then realize there was no uniform opinion or restriction against big dicks.

What's better than authentic sources, r113?

LOL STFU

I'm not going to do your homework and thinking for you, r113.

I've already studied this and you've managed to repeat some of the facts I introduced to DL years ago. Too bad you were too lazy to read a whole book or go to college.

r114 would only qualify for slaves and vanquished, foreign enemies of Rome.

Free-born Roman citizens of any class had legal protections against rape and adultery which most upper classmen wouldn't violate most of the time.

Roman men were supposed to treat each other as equals; slaves and foreigners could be "abused."

I'm tired. I don't know why this fucking troll keeps lying about this subject. He has nothing to gain. Kenneth Dover never said that oral sex was something that happened in Greek pederastic relations.

In fact, Dover himself noted that homosexual oral sex only appears in Greek vessels when partners are satyrs - which is something I had already said in post r106.

He says in page 99 of his "Greek Homosexuality":

"Homosexual fellation seems, so far as vase-painting is concerned, peculiar to satyrs (B271 *, R1127*)..."

In page 101, he reiterates that there's an "the absence of scenes of human homosexual fellation", while we do see "scenes in which a youth is cramming his penis into a woman's mouth (R156, R223*) or a man threatening a woman with a stick and forcing her to 'go down on' him (R518)."

Put the excerpts above on google, and you all will see that the quotes are real - I'm not making anything up. It is this troll who is inventing things, dropping names of real scholars, but never quoting directly from their words, because nothing they say supports the argument he is making. This guy is a fucking weirdo.

Note that none of the oral sex scenes that liar r116/r117 talks about happen between men. It is always between man and woman. Why? Because pederastic scenes are in general romantic and idealized, therefore, acts that are considered decadent or of dubious hygiene, such as oral sex, are not portrayed. Heterosexual scenes depict broader situations in meaning - some are romantic, but others are decadent, even violent. It is thought among scholars today that the women portrayed in the sexual scenes of these vessels are mere slaves or prostitutes (while boys are from free families), and that is why artists gave themselves the freedom to portray negative situations in heterosexual scenes, such as rape, humiliation of partners, sadomasochism and, finally, oral sex.

The Greeks and Romans, moreover, did not see their erotic art as mere pornography. Their art served several purposes - one of which was to provide lessons and serve as a wake-up calls. The decadent scenes described above, of orgy and brutal sex, are believed to have been produced to alert men to the risk of drinking in excess in their symposia, and the subsequent failure in self-control.

The photo below, which is already known to me, and is on the troll's link, makes clear the lack of eroticism in oral sex scenes on Greek vases. Notice how ugly the woman is - how fat and old, and that her breasts are sagging.

It is only in this type of context that oral sex is portrayed.

I'm going to agree with r96.

r98, r71 and r78 are probably all the same troll complimenting itself.

They have the same Aspie, O.C.D. syntax and their accounts are each only a couple of weeks old.

As soon as somebody disagrees with him or proves him wrong, he attacks with an army of sock puppets agreeing with himself and W&W'ing. This is all over the CALL ME BY YOUR NAME threads.

[quote]And there were NEVER any laws in pagan Rome against motherfucking oral sex, or any other kind of sex, for that matter, except for rape, adultery and pedophilia and for a while enlisted soldiers doing it with each other.

Did I say there was? No. I said there oral sex was frowned upon, and seen as dirty. It's very easy to refute people if you're just going to lie about what they said.

[quote][R98], [R71] and [R78] are probably all the same troll complimenting itself.

I only have one account here. And anyone can see that most of my posts are not getting any upvotes here, let alone getting praise from anyone, despite the fact that I am the only one here who seems to know what he is talking about and quoting actual scholarly books on the subject matter. Although Datalounge allows its users to upvote their own posts, I never do that, because I like to know the actual number of WWs I have earned.

It's strange that you make all these accusations, despite all the evidence - the lack of support towards me and the small number of WWs I have won so far - suggesting otherwise.

Are you sure you're not the one doing this - using multiple accounts to upvote yourself and agree with yourself about the attacks you're doing against me?

Wau to tell on yourself, idiot.

I don't know about swalloing in the Roman Army, but that blowjob scene in Caligula was pretty damn hot!

I’m sure oral really WAS viewed as ‘dirty’ by the Romans because let’s face it, I mean, uncut Europeans. Need I say more? Pyoooooo.

As soon as I showed Kenneth Dover's quotes, in which he says there are no scenes of homosexual oral sex in Greek vessels, the troll's been gone; he must have been intimidated when he saw that other people have access to the books he likes name-dropping (but never quoting). It seems he's still busy upvoting himself, though.

I'm not the troll, but this looks like gay oral (and anal) sex to me:

r130 That's two women who are performing oral.

Marilyn Skinner discussed this scene in her "Sexuality in Greek and Roman culture", 2nd edition, page 125:

[quote]Side A of the Pedieus Painter’s cup (Louvre G13, ARV 2 86; fig. 3.17) pictures two sexual triads, the woman in each case compelled to perform fellatio on one youth while another enters her from behind. Side B is dominated by a fellation scene in which the youth being serviced seems almost more intent on keeping his drinking horn from spilling. Unlike the slim youthful hetairai in other paintings, the women involved are middle-aged and fat, and the wrinkles around their mouths graphically indicate the difficulty they have in accommodating the men’s oversized penises (Peschel 1987: 62).

Skinner's comment on the difficulty of the two women in accommodating their partner's penis in the mouth is interesting. It indicates the men have too large penises. Large penises are generally attributed among Greeks to barbarians and satyrs, beings for whom the Greeks had contempt. When large penises appear in Greek vessels and are attributed to Greek men, the function is to indicate their lack of self-control and wanton conduct.

This is clearly the function of the painting that you presented: to expose the lack of self-control by the men in the vase. The practice of group sex, the dearth of romanticism in the scene, the complete dominance over the women in the vase who can barely move (and who, by the way, have slaves' hairstyles) and their ugliness - these are all indications that this is a "negative" scene, as is also the practice of oral sex.

R141 I wouldn't say it's "clearly" anything, but it's an interpretation. The reviews on the book are interesting:

The book must have been written from a feminist perspective, and therefore the author's emphasis is on discussions of heterosexuality. Male homosexuality is given a secondary role in the course of the text. Thus, Skinner eloquently discusses writers who speak more of the love of women, such as Archilocus, Aristophanes, Menander or Ovid, and relatively little (or, sometimes, very little) of those who have more to say about love between males, such as Theognis, Plato, Xenophon, Callimachus, or Martial.

Even when male homosexuality is discussed, however, the author tends to pay more attention to negative portrayals of this kind of love. As such, when she does discuss Plato, she gives more emphasis to the "Laws", written by him when he was in his 80s and where he finds himself in his most ascetic, hostile to any sexual practice that is not confined to marriage and oriented towards reproduction. Very little is said of the erotics of "Symposium" and of "Phaedrus". This is a strange omission, since it is in these books where there are found Plato's more extensive debates about love, especially about male homosexuality, which he regards as superior to heterosexuality here. It is fair to say that both these works are still the most influential of all Western philosophy on the subject of love. They were certainly much more important than the "Laws", a late and unfinished work. Yet, there are more references in Skinner's book to Sophocles' "Phaedra" than to Plato's "Phaedrus".

In the little that Skinner says about the "platonic love", she emphasizes its supposed chastity and relegates the homoeroticism to the background. But in the "Phaedrus", Plato is clear that even carnal pederasty can be reconciled with philosophical pursuit. And in these two books, when Plato speaks of how love can lead the couple to an honest search for metaphysical truth, it is always a male couple that he speaks of. He equates heterosexuality with the earthly and carnal Aphrodite, whose nature is antithetical to that of the transcendental Ideas, and, therefore, to philosophical knowledge. For that matter, the dichotomy, presented in the "Symposium", between the carnal and heterosexual Aphrodite, and the celestial and homosexual Aphrodite - one of the most interesting in Platonic ethics - is not even touched upon in Skinner's text.

Review (cont'd):

In an attempt to find among the ancients something that resembles modern homophobia, she provides a very forced reading of the sources, especially of Aristophanes. Among other things, she follows Thomas Hubbard in reading a dialogue between two characters unsubtly called Stronger Argument and Weaker Argument, featured in the "Clouds", as displaying hostility to the educational pederasty idealized in the poetry of the late archaic and early classical periods. Such a reading, however, completely escapes the spirit of the works of Aristophanes, who, as Andrew Lear observes, romanticizes the past and despairs of the present. It also escapes the spirit of the scene, in which the advocate of the pederastic ethos of yore is named Stronger Argument, while his opponent, who represents the democratic habits of the debauched present, is called Weaker Argument.

The same tendency exists in the treatment she gives to Roman sources. Barely a mention is made of Martial, whose voluminous work is the most extensive single source of Roman sexuality, its practices, values and prejudices. But Martial's preference for sex with boys over girls is contrary to the focus of the author.

Skinner also discusses female homosexuality, but her attempts to find non-judgmental references to this kind of love after Sappho are unconvincing. For her, vase paintings showing a woman resting a hand on a girl friend's back might be proof of a female homoerotic culture that must have been practiced openly and without stigma in the pre-Hellenistic period. A stretch, to say the least.

This book should be good for readers who are more heavily interested in the lives of women during classical antiquity, and in how female sexuality was seen by the men of those times. But for those who want a more comprehensive treatment of the erotics of Greco-Roman culture, or one more centered on homoeroticism, there are far better sources.

There were both positive and negative attitudes toward homosexuality in ancient Greece and Rome.

The point is, government didn't declare it illegal and religion didn't declare it a sin. To the contrary — Greco-Roman religions and governments celebrated and promoted homosexuality at times — such as pederastic initiation in Greece and deifying Antinous in Rome, making him into a love god after his death and celebrating many games in his honor followed by a couple hundred years of worship.

Hubbard and this Skinner author are right to point out that many male writers denigrated homosexuality, especially bottoming — the homosexual rituals were meant to humble young apprentices. I've read that Aristophanes play where he derides politicians who bottom. I think it was "The Birds." Greeks and Romans had many slurs for homosexuals: kinaidos, cinaedus, etc.

R134 your mistake is assuming that "homosexuals" meant the same to Greek or Roman audiences as it does today. It did not and does not. Specific sex acts were thought lesser than others, not "homosexuality". You're lumping all of these sex acts to create a view on homosexuality that reflects the modern viewpoint.

I chalk this up to swishful thinking. Wah wah wah waaaaaah.

Not enough Lesbians.

How unexpected. r132, who passed the entire time he spent on this thread attacking me, is now posting book reviews written by me, which he calls "interesting", in order to respond to me.

r138 You have r132 confused with someone else. Check your ignores again!

[quote] There were both positive and negative attitudes toward homosexuality in ancient Greece and Rome.

Overwhelmingly positive. Homosexuality (or, at least, pederasty) was seen by the Greeks of the classical period as something much more elegant and with a much greater romantic potential than any type of heterosexuality. Heterosexuality had two main targets: women of low rank or low morality (that is, slaves or prostitutes) and wives, who, in the view of the Greeks, served only for the production of heirs, and not the pursuit of a romantic ideal.

My beef with Skinner is that, in her book, when she discusses homosexuality, she emphasized that minority material, which is ascetic and sometimes anti-gay. It was surprising that a book on sexuality in Greco-Roman culture had so little to say about the Phaedrus and The Symposium, which are Plato's most influential works on the subject of sexuality. Both books elevate male homosexuality above heterosexuality, and boys above women. And a part of me believes that, for that very reason, Skinner, whose ideological orientation is feminist, and whose agenda in the book is to give women the central locus in sexuality Greco-Roman, is cold towards these writings; she discusses the Laws much more, although, as I said in the review I wrote, this is an unfinished writing, composed when Plato was almost dead and whose influence on Greek culture and, even among modern Plato scholars, is much smaller than that of the two books mentioned above.

Despite what he said in the Laws, Plato's erotics is completely homosexual. And erotics enters, as a subtext, in many of his dialogues, including those that are not explicitly about sex or love. Anyone who reads, for example, "Meno", which is a dialogue on ethics and metaphysics, can see that Socrates is in love with Meno and tries to flirt with him at every turn. And, in fact, when Plato discusses his theory of visual arousal in "Cratylus", he does not speak of the love of men for boobs, he speaks of the effect that the body of a beautiful boy has on men. It is clear that homosexuality was closer to Plato's heart than heterosexuality; and the Greeks themselves could see that. Despite the Laws, Plato was not seen among the Greeks as an enemy of homosexuality, but as one of its partisans. So much so, that homoerotic epigrams (probably apocryphal) were attributed to him by later writers, and when the biographer Diogenes Laertius lists the lovers that Plato had, there are more male names than female ones. The Laws are unrepresentative of both Plato's philosophy and Greek thought in general.

But the centrality of homosexuality in Platonic aesthetics is never clear in Skinner's book, which more-or-less follows Hubbard's craze for trying to find evidence that the Greeks "problematized" pederasty.

Hubbard has been criticized by many other Greek sexuality scholars (for example, Nick Fisher, Andrew Lear and Konstantinos Kapparis) for making forced and exaggerated interpretations of excerpts from Greek literature (sometimes mere fragments from works that have been mostly lost to us), in order to support some of his theses, for example, that pederasty was restricted to the upper classes and that the democratic movement in Athens was hostile to homosexuality. Even Skinner adopts a more moderate position than Hubbard's. And the strangest thing of all is that, for all his fixation on finding proof of Greek hostility to pederasty, Hubbard seems to be a member of the "boy-love" movement.

I recommend to people following this debate an article, called “Ancient Homophobia: Prejudices against homosexuality in classical Athens”, which can be read below, and which shows that much of the evidence adduced by Hubbard for the existence of homophobia among the Greeks, disappears when simpler and more intuitive interpretations are made of the literature that he quotes.

While I can't pretend to be an expert on these matters I know enough to state that the OP is the biggest load of wank, pun intended, that I have seen in some while.

From what I recall of art history classes, the smaller penis was favored by the Ancient Greeks and the Romans inherited this through the link in their public art; a surfeit of ejaculation was frowned upon as it was thought to drain virility; and while anal and oral sex certainly occurred between men to the extent that there are jokes about it scribbled at ancient sites, it was seen as vulgar. The pederastic relationship was highly idealized; the military romance was probably based on a more practical need to build strong male relationships. That said, the Roman Empire was not some one unified thing; standards of beauty, ethics, manners, morals, familial codes, social status and bodily and sexual modesty undoubtedly fluctuated over the centuries.

To be honest, it seems that the Romans did not have the same preference as the Greeks regarding penis size. I think Craig Williams addressed this issue in Roman Homosexuality or elsewhere. It was certainly thought that women and pathic men (cinaidos) liked big penises; the attitudes of normal men are difficult to describe, because the penis rarely appears as an object of erotic appreciation, even in pederastic literature. I know only one excerpt that possibly makes such a reference, from Novius: "everyone knows that a boy is superior to a woman, and how much better is one whose voice is breaking, whose branch is just growing.” Now, just because the character in the story prefers penises that are hard, it does not mean that he prefers large penises to small ones.

And, as I said before, it seems that some slavemasters masturbated their slaveboys while having anal sex, but it is not clear, from the little evidence of this practice, that these men had a preference regarding the size of their slaves' penis.

Anyway, there is no evidence, as far as I know, that the Romans would have loathed big penises like the Greeks did.

R87 there’s a grammar troll that owes you a debt of gratitude.

I was going to use my last FF on a grammar troll but your post to begs for an FF.

I defer to your knowledge R142 as I have not read that text - I believe it was implied by the holdover of the smaller penis in much of Roman figurative art.

r32 I take it in your last paragraph you meant sex was transactional? Why did society swing against being fine about giving your cousins and Uncles blowjobs?! I wonder if it will ever make a comeback....

The taint?? r47 🤔

Emperor Hadrian and his boy toy Antinous must have had amazing sex.

Is the OP's picture from a porn?

I agree R10. I could do it with one hand behind my back!

[quote] [R83] Reading this makes me hard.

I’m starting to pre

Fake, but very hot.

I heard they did this in the army during WWI too, and in the 1940s college football teammates swallowed each other's loads to bond. Lol.

Was this a spectator sport?

What did it mean if you were tatted like a French whore and showed all the signs of long-term steroid abuse?

In case you haven't realized it yet the entire field of the history of sexuality is fraught with both methodological problems, especially the farther back you go where primary source materials are rare and reliance on medieval secondary sources is problematic to say the least. It is also a political minefield of competing biases - both personal and historiographic - that have led to wild swings in interpratation from one extreme to the other that makes it possible to cite well respected scholars writing arguing the exact opposite from each other (and often the disagreements are quite personal and critiques go well beyond your standard academic feuds). The field itself is quite new as the topic was so taboo reflecting societal homophobia of the modern era and even when the subject was studied it was through a default heteronormative lens until gay academics began to come out in the 80s and 90s. This shift began a few years before that trend by Kenneth Dover's groundbreaking work in the late 70s/early 80s was the first to offer a seemingly non-judgmental revisionism take on the matter and made some quite bold assertions about the prevalence of homosexuality in ancient greece (although later scholars have pointed out some of Dovers own blindspots and interpretative leaps - he relied heavily on some outdated freudian theories and was obsessed with pederasty). The debatge rapidly shifted from being a taboo to a boom in new scholarship in the 80s and 90s when the field really came into existence with a growing split among gay historians (I mean that literally as most of the newly tenured academics were gay men) between the social constructionists and the so called essentialists and then to the more radical queer theorists influenced by Foucaultt. David Halperin carried on Foucaults work after his death in the 80s from AIDS (in case you wonder about his objectivity he titled his biography "Saint Foucault") and he was a bitter partisan in the intramural fights that took place in the otherwise staid academic journals (bitchy gay men with PHds can be vicious).

Unfortunately, Foucault never intended to write traditional history (his work was more philosphical reflections using his own creative intepretations of the past often based on little or selective evidence) and his bold attempts to historicize homosexual desire itself (and not just how various cultures viewed it but sexual desire itself) yet his view influenced an entire generation of academics and seaped out into the wider culture itself so that you get stupid articles like this magazine which is basically reads like a bad soft core porno.

Long story short, it is difficult (if not impossible) to study a historical topic such as sexuality due to lack of or corruption of primary evidence, the biases that warp almost all the secondary sources through the centuries, and the sensitive moral and political issues that still plague society to this day. Not to mention the ongoing culture war that still animates so much of the debates within the humanities to this day.

Disclosure - I am no expert having dropped out of a PhD program in the 90s where my thesis subject was the historiographical debates specifically over Dover's work (my thesis advisor warned me that I was entering a political minefield that would potentially limit my chances of ever getting hired and she was right - I eventually shifted to law school because it became so depressing). The field was dominated by the social constructionsists and queer theorists at the time but there has been some pushback against some of the frankly nonsense that was published at the time (Foucault's historical claims have been seriously challenged but his theoretical paradigm is like a zombie that never seems to die). So take of that what you will but be skeptical of anyone making strong assertions about the past, especially on this topic.

Its hard to resist an Adonis no matter what time period you are born in.

I don't know who that is at the far left on OP's photo, but he sure has nice tits in a nice kilt!

It didn't mean you were not gay either.

The bath culture in Rome must have been weird because there are loads of thermal baths out here in this region of Romania where I am that have been functioning since Roman times and are now resorts. Pre-COVID, my jaw dropped when my roommate said she was going to the baths with a twink from work. Turns out there are therapeutic ones, fun ones, co-ed ones and same-sex ones. I finally went but it was like tunnels where you go from salted, to heated, to cool waters. The twink says sure you can hook up, but you exchange info and take it elsewhere. Said he gave up on hooking up because all he met were closeted US Airforce men or Spanish guys who were repressed and bad fucks. I STILL think it's weird how it's inter-sex and have yet to go though they do have some where social distancing is possible and are reported to be safe.

🤔🤔🤔🤔