Ancient Gay Sex and Kinky Emperors
The ancient Romans were one bunch of horny motherfuckers. From infamous art to brash brothels, they really had it all.
Illustrated by Sara Moana
We can start with the Romans' views on homosexuality. You’d think seeing as people from the past tend to have more conservative views that the Romans would be homophobic, but honestly the Romans didn’t give gay sex a big no. The pressure wasn’t to do with being straight, but more to do with being the top. Sex roles were described as ‘active’ or ‘passive’. As you can imagine, traditionally masculine roles were seen as the active ones. It was pretty chill for freeborn (non-slave) men to have gay sex, as long as they were taking on the active roles, if not, shame would be brought onto a family's name.
Essentially, gay sex = okay. But not if you’re taking it up the butt.
How is this phenomenon possible when someone inevitably needs to take on the ‘passive’ role? Slaves of course. It was gruesomely common for slaves to be used for sex: these were the “bottoms” in this whole set up.
In the most extreme cases, a slave would be castrated and dressed in feminine clothes, and almost solely used for sex, making them a “puer delicatus”.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a place for the queer women of the ancient world. Due to these “passive” or “active” roles through which sex was seen, lesbian sex wasn’t really considered or believed to happen. Is this just because men wrote our history books? It was vaguely covered by artists (like, very vaguely), but art depicting lesbian sex mostly just meant a woman with a penis or big ol’ clit.
Butttttt, that’s not how the clitoris works. I mean seeing as we only fully mapped a vagina this century, it’s no doubt the Romans also neglected that puss.
Anyway, yeah, gay marriage was eventually outlawed in the fourth century AD in Rome when Christians got a hold of the steering wheel: no surprise.
The Romans didn’t make homophobia a trend: but they did make kissing a trend. The Romans loved kissing so much they were what made this lip smacking fun global. This is where “you may kiss the bride” came from. It was tradition to have a big ol’ passionate make out session following ceremonies of love (marriage).
This relationship to sex makes a lot of sense when considering how God damn freaky ancient roman emperors were.
Nero castrated a man he believed to look like his dead wife and would dress him in her clothes. Then of course, Nero would sleep with this man. How did Nero’s beloved wife pass away you may ask? He killed her while she was pregnant. Slayyyy (literally 🙁).
Illustrated by Sara Moana
Emperor Caligulua would keep it classic, stealing men's wives, throwing “adult” parties, and of course fucking his sister.
Tiberius is infamous for being the horniest of the emperors. His room was absolutely littered with ancient porn, from paintings, to sculptures, to books, Tiberius had it all. He’d even use it in case whoever he was sleeping with needed more specific “instruction”. Freakiest of all was of course his gross thing for babies.
There are also countless erotic writings which really go to cement the horny Roman lifestyle. Kamna Kirti, in her Medium article describes some of my favorite pieces of graffiti from Pompeii:
“Thrust slowly!” (Found above a doodle of doggy style sex) CIL IV 794 House of the King of Prussia vii.9.33
“Here I’ve finally screwed a beautiful girl, praised by many, but inside there was a mudhole.” CIL IV 1516 House of the Scientist vi.14.43
Illustrated by Sara Moana
“Dionysios is allowed to fuck whenever he wants.” CIL IV 8897 Shop iii.5.
“If anyone sits on this bench, let him read this first of all: if anyone wants a screw, he should look for Attice; she costs 4 sestertii.” CIL IV 1751 Porta Marina”
Stoic and Philosopher, Seneca the Younger, also writes of Hostius Quadra, a man who’s mirror kink absolutely offended the hell out of Seneca:
“He told them to hang them so that when he was with a man, he could see all the movements of the stallion at his back and could enjoy the false size of his partner’s birth as if it were really so great. He recruited the favourites in public thermal baths and chose well-equipped men, but his disgusting liking was additionally filled with an exaggerated view.
What embarrassing behaviour! Perhaps he was murdered so quickly that he did not notice it at all; it would be better if he had to see in his own mirror how he was murdered.”
All in all, the Romans were a bunch of horny bastards. Luckily, we have let go of a lot of the not-so-cool features of Roman sexuality (that is slaves and children), but there’s a lot that’s carried through our history, such as kissing, or the shame that society puts on bottoms. Either way it’s something that’s not only interesting to learn about but also reflects what effect our history has on us.