Las actitudes y comportamientos sexuales en la antigua Roma están indicados por el arte , la literatura y las inscripciones , y en menor medida por restos arqueológicos como artefactos eróticos y arquitectura . A veces se ha asumido que la "licencia sexual ilimitada" era característica de la antigua Roma , [1] [2] pero la sexualidad no estaba excluida como una preocupación del mos maiorum , las normas sociales tradicionales que afectaban la vida pública, privada y militar. [3] Pudor , "vergüenza, modestia", era un factor regulador en el comportamiento, [4] como lo eran las restricciones legales sobre ciertas transgresiones sexuales tanto en los períodos republicano como imperial . [5] Los censores , funcionarios públicos que determinaban el rango social de los individuos, tenían el poder de eliminar a los ciudadanos del orden senatorial o ecuestre por mala conducta sexual, y en ocasiones lo hicieron. [6] [7] El teórico de la sexualidad de mediados del siglo XX Michel Foucault consideraba que el sexo en todo el mundo grecorromano estaba regido por la moderación y el arte de gestionar el placer sexual. [8]
La sociedad romana era patriarcal (véase paterfamilias ) y la masculinidad se basaba en la capacidad de gobernarse a uno mismo y a otros de estatus inferior, no solo en la guerra y la política, sino también en las relaciones sexuales. [9] Virtus , "virtud", era un ideal masculino activo de autodisciplina, relacionado con la palabra latina para "hombre", vir . El ideal correspondiente para una mujer era pudicitia , a menudo traducida como castidad o modestia, pero era una cualidad personal más positiva e incluso competitiva que mostraba tanto su atractivo como su autocontrol. [10] Se esperaba que las mujeres romanas de las clases altas tuvieran una buena educación, un carácter fuerte y fueran activas en el mantenimiento de la posición de su familia en la sociedad. [11] Con muy pocas excepciones, la literatura latina sobreviviente preserva las voces de los romanos varones educados sobre la sexualidad. El arte visual fue creado por personas de un estatus social más bajo y de una mayor variedad de etnias, pero estaba adaptado al gusto y las inclinaciones de aquellos lo suficientemente ricos como para permitírselo, incluidos, en la era imperial , los antiguos esclavos. [12]
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Algunas actitudes y comportamientos sexuales en la cultura romana antigua difieren notablemente de aquellos en sociedades occidentales posteriores . [13] [14] La religión romana promovía la sexualidad como un aspecto de la prosperidad para el estado, y las personas podían recurrir a la práctica religiosa privada o la " magia " para mejorar sus vidas eróticas o su salud reproductiva. La prostitución era legal, pública y generalizada. [15] Las pinturas "pornográficas" se destacaban entre las colecciones de arte en los hogares respetables de la clase alta. [16] Se consideraba natural y normal que los hombres se sintieran atraídos sexualmente por jóvenes adolescentes de ambos sexos, e incluso la pederastia estaba tolerada siempre que el compañero masculino más joven no fuera un romano nacido libre. " Homosexual " y " heterosexual " no formaban la dicotomía primaria del pensamiento romano sobre la sexualidad, y no existen palabras latinas para estos conceptos. [17] No se dirigía ninguna censura moral al hombre que disfrutaba de actos sexuales con mujeres u hombres de estatus inferior, siempre que sus comportamientos no revelaran debilidades o excesos, ni infringieran los derechos y prerrogativas de sus pares masculinos. Si bien se denunciaba la afeminación percibida, especialmente en la retórica política, el sexo con moderación con prostitutos masculinos o esclavos no se consideraba impropio o viciado para la masculinidad, si el ciudadano masculino asumía el papel activo y no el receptivo. Sin embargo, la hipersexualidad era condenada moral y médicamente tanto en hombres como en mujeres. Las mujeres estaban sujetas a un código moral más estricto, [18] y las relaciones entre mujeres del mismo sexo están poco documentadas, pero la sexualidad de las mujeres es celebrada o vilipendiada de diversas formas en toda la literatura latina. En general, los romanos tenían límites de género más fluidos que los antiguos griegos . [19]
Un paradigma de finales del siglo XX analizaba la sexualidad romana en relación con un modelo binario de "penetrador-penetrado" . Este modelo, sin embargo, tiene limitaciones, especialmente en lo que respecta a las expresiones de sexualidad entre los romanos individuales. [20] Incluso se ha cuestionado la relevancia de la palabra " sexualidad " para la cultura romana antigua; [21] [22] [23] pero a falta de cualquier otra etiqueta para "la interpretación cultural de la experiencia erótica", el término sigue utilizándose. [24]
La literatura antigua relacionada con la sexualidad romana se divide principalmente en cuatro categorías: textos legales; textos médicos; poesía; y discurso político. [25] Las formas de expresión con menor prestigio cultural en la antigüedad (como la comedia , la sátira , la invectiva , la poesía amorosa, los grafitis, los hechizos mágicos , las inscripciones y la decoración de interiores) tienen más que decir sobre el sexo que géneros elevados como la épica y la tragedia . La información sobre la vida sexual de los romanos está dispersa en la historiografía , la oratoria, la filosofía y los escritos sobre medicina , agricultura y otros temas técnicos. [26] Los textos legales apuntan a comportamientos que los romanos querían regular o prohibir, sin reflejar necesariamente lo que la gente realmente hacía o dejaba de hacer. [27]
Entre los principales autores latinos cuyas obras contribuyen significativamente a la comprensión de la sexualidad romana se incluyen:
Ovidio enumera una serie de escritores conocidos por su material lascivo cuyas obras se han perdido en la actualidad. [28] Los manuales de sexo griegos y la "pornografía directa" [29] se publicaron bajo el nombre de famosas heterai (cortesanas) y circularon en Roma. La Milesiaca de Arístides, de fuerte contenido sexual , fue traducida por Sisenna , uno de los pretores del 78 a. C. Ovidio llama al libro una colección de fechorías (crimina) y dice que la narración estaba plagada de chistes sucios. [30] Después de la batalla de Carras , los partos se sorprendieron al encontrar la Milesiaca en el equipaje de los oficiales de Marco Craso . [31]
El arte erótico, especialmente el conservado en Pompeya y Herculano , es una fuente rica, aunque no inequívoca; algunas imágenes contradicen las preferencias sexuales subrayadas en las fuentes literarias y pueden estar destinadas a provocar risas o desafiar las actitudes convencionales. [32] Los objetos cotidianos, como los espejos y los recipientes para servir, pueden estar decorados con escenas eróticas; en la cerámica arretina , estas van desde "elegantes coqueteos amorosos" hasta vistas explícitas del pene entrando en la vagina. [33] Se encontraron pinturas eróticas en las casas más respetables de la nobleza romana , como señala Ovidio:
Así como venerables figuras de hombres, pintadas por la mano de un artista, resplandecen en nuestras casas, también hay una pequeña pintura (tabella) [n 1] en algún lugar que representa varios acoplamientos y posiciones sexuales: así como Áyax Telamonio se sienta con una expresión que declara su ira, y la madre bárbara ( Medea ) tiene el crimen en sus ojos, así también una Venus mojada seca su cabello chorreante con sus dedos y se la ve apenas cubierta por las aguas maternas. [34]
La tabella pornográfica y la Venus cargada de erotismo aparecen entre varias imágenes que un conocedor del arte podría disfrutar. [35] Una serie de pinturas de los Baños Suburbanos de Pompeya , descubierta en 1986 y publicada en 1995, presenta escenarios eróticos que parecen destinados a "divertir al espectador con un espectáculo sexual escandaloso", incluyendo una variedad de posiciones, sexo oral y sexo grupal con relaciones hombre-mujer, hombre-hombre y mujer-mujer. [36]
La decoración de un dormitorio romano podía reflejar literalmente su uso sexual: el poeta augusto Horacio supuestamente tenía una habitación con espejos para el sexo, de modo que cuando contrataba a una prostituta podía observarla desde todos los ángulos. [37] El emperador Tiberio tenía sus dormitorios decorados con pinturas y esculturas "de lo más lascivas", y repletos de manuales sexuales griegos de Elefantita en caso de que quienes se dedicaban al sexo necesitaran orientación. [38]
En el siglo II d. C., "hay un auge de textos sobre sexo en griego y latín", junto con novelas románticas . [39] Pero la sexualidad franca prácticamente desaparece de la literatura a partir de entonces, y los temas sexuales se reservan para los escritos médicos o la teología cristiana. En el siglo III, el celibato se había convertido en un ideal entre el creciente número de cristianos, y los Padres de la Iglesia como Tertuliano y Clemente de Alejandría debatieron si incluso el sexo marital debería permitirse para la procreación. La sexualidad del martirologio se centra en pruebas contra la castidad cristiana [39] y la tortura sexual; las mujeres cristianas son sometidas con más frecuencia que los hombres a la mutilación sexual, en particular de los senos. [n 2] El humor obsceno de Marcial fue revivido brevemente en Burdeos del siglo IV por el erudito y poeta galorromano Ausonio , aunque rechazó la predilección de Marcial por la pederastia y era al menos nominalmente cristiano. [40]
Al igual que otros aspectos de la vida romana, la sexualidad estaba apoyada y regulada por las tradiciones religiosas , tanto el culto público del estado como las prácticas religiosas privadas y la magia. La sexualidad era una categoría importante del pensamiento religioso romano. [42] El complemento de masculino y femenino era vital para el concepto romano de deidad . Los Dii Consentes eran un consejo de deidades en parejas de hombre y mujer, hasta cierto punto el equivalente romano a los Doce Olímpicos de los griegos. [43] Al menos dos sacerdocios estatales eran mantenidos conjuntamente por una pareja casada. [n 3] Las vírgenes vestales , el único sacerdocio estatal reservado para las mujeres, hacían un voto de castidad que les otorgaba relativa independencia del control masculino; entre los objetos religiosos que guardaban había un falo sagrado : [44] " El fuego de Vesta ... evocaba la idea de pureza sexual en la mujer" y "representaba el poder procreativo del hombre". [45] Se esperaba que los hombres que servían en los diversos colegios de sacerdotes se casaran y tuvieran familias. Cicerón sostenía que el deseo ( libido ) de procrear era «el semillero de la república», ya que fue la causa de la primera forma de institución social, el matrimonio . El matrimonio producía hijos y, a su vez, una «casa» ( domus ) para la unidad familiar que era el elemento fundamental de la vida urbana. [46]
Muchas fiestas religiosas romanas tenían un elemento de sexualidad. Las Lupercalia de febrero , celebradas hasta el siglo V de la era cristiana , incluían un rito de fertilidad arcaico. Las Floralia presentaban danzas desnudas. En ciertas fiestas religiosas a lo largo de abril, las prostitutas participaban o eran reconocidas oficialmente. Cupido inspiraba el deseo; el dios importado Príapo representaba la lujuria burda o humorística; Mutunus Tutunus promovía el sexo marital. El dios Liber (entendido como el "Libre") supervisaba las respuestas fisiológicas durante las relaciones sexuales. Cuando un hombre asumía la toga virilis , "toga de la virilidad", Liber se convertía en su patrón ; según los poetas del amor, dejaba atrás la modestia inocente (pudor) de la infancia y adquiría la libertad sexual (libertas) para comenzar su camino amoroso. [47] Una multitud de deidades supervisaba cada aspecto de las relaciones sexuales, la concepción y el parto. [48]
Las conexiones entre la reproducción humana, la prosperidad general y el bienestar del estado están plasmadas en el culto romano a Venus , que se diferencia de su contraparte griega Afrodita en su papel de madre del pueblo romano a través de su hijo medio mortal Eneas . [49] Durante las guerras civiles de los años 80 a. C. , Sila , a punto de invadir su propio país con las legiones bajo su mando, emitió una moneda que representaba a Venus coronada como su deidad patrona personal , con Cupido sosteniendo una rama de palma de la victoria; en el reverso, trofeos militares flanquean símbolos de los augures , los sacerdotes estatales que leen la voluntad de los dioses. La iconografía vincula a las deidades del amor y el deseo con el éxito militar y la autoridad religiosa; Sila adoptó el título de Epafrodito , "el propio de Afrodita", antes de convertirse en dictador . [50] El fascinum , un amuleto fálico, era omnipresente en la cultura romana y aparecía en todo, desde joyas hasta campanas y carillones de viento y lámparas, [51] incluso como amuleto para proteger a los niños [52] y a los generales triunfantes . [53]
Los mitos clásicos suelen tratar temas sexuales como la identidad de género , el adulterio , el incesto y la violación . El arte y la literatura romanos continuaron el tratamiento helenístico de las figuras mitológicas que practicaban sexo como algo humanamente erótico y, a veces, humorístico, a menudo alejado de la dimensión religiosa. [54]
La palabra latina castitas , de la que deriva la palabra inglesa " chastity ", es un sustantivo abstracto que denota "una pureza moral y física generalmente en un contexto específicamente religioso", a veces, pero no siempre, refiriéndose a la castidad sexual. [55] El adjetivo relacionado castus ( femenino casta , neutro castum ), "puro", puede usarse para lugares y objetos, así como para personas; el adjetivo pudicus ("casto, modesto") describe más específicamente a una persona que es sexualmente moral. [55] La diosa Ceres estaba preocupada tanto por la castitas ritual como por la sexual , y la antorcha que se llevaba en su honor como parte de la procesión nupcial romana estaba asociada con la pureza de la novia; Ceres también encarnaba la maternidad. [56] La diosa Vesta era la deidad principal del panteón romano asociada con la castitas , y una diosa virgen; sus sacerdotisas, las vestales, eran vírgenes que hacían voto de permanecer célibes.
El incesto (lo que no es castum ) es un acto que viola la pureza religiosa, [55] quizás sinónimo de lo que es nefas , religiosamente inadmisible. [57] La violación del voto de castidad de una vestal era incesto , una acusación legal presentada contra ella y el hombre que la volvía impura a través de relaciones sexuales, ya sea consensualmente o por la fuerza. La pérdida de la castitas de una vestal rompía el tratado de Roma con los dioses ( pax deorum ) , [58] y típicamente estaba acompañada por la observación de malos augurios ( prodigia ) . Los procesos por incesto que involucran a una vestal a menudo coinciden con disturbios políticos, y algunos cargos de incesto parecen motivados políticamente; [59] por ejemplo, Marco Craso fue absuelto de incesto con una vestal que compartía su apellido. [n 4] En el año 114 a. C., tres vestales fueron condenadas por mantener relaciones sexuales con varios hombres de la clase gobernante, a raíz de lo cual se fundó un templo a Venus Verticordia .
Aunque la palabra inglesa « incesto » deriva del latín, las relaciones incestuosas son sólo una forma del incesto romano , [55] a veces traducido como « sacrilegio ». Cuando Clodio Pulcro se vistió de mujer e irrumpió en los ritos exclusivamente femeninos de la Bona Dea , fue acusado de incesto . [60]
En el discurso legal y moral latino , stuprum es una relación sexual ilícita, traducible como "libertinaje criminal" [61] o " delito sexual ". [62] Stuprum abarca diversos delitos sexuales, incluido el incesto , la violación ("sexo ilegal por la fuerza"), [63] y el adulterio . En la Roma primitiva, stuprum era un acto vergonzoso en general, o cualquier desgracia pública, incluido, entre otros, el sexo ilícito. [n 5] En la época del dramaturgo cómico Plauto ( ca. 254-184 a. C.) había adquirido su significado sexual más restringido. [64] Stuprum solo puede ocurrir entre ciudadanos; la protección contra la mala conducta sexual estaba entre los derechos legales que distinguían al ciudadano del no ciudadano. [64] Aunque el sustantivo stuprum puede traducirse al español como fornicación , el verbo intransitivo "fornicar" es una traducción inadecuada del latín stuprare , que es un verbo transitivo que requiere un objeto directo (la persona que es el objetivo de la mala conducta) y un agente masculino (el stuprator ). [64]
La palabra inglesa " violación " deriva en última instancia del verbo latino rapio, rapere, raptus , "arrebatar, llevarse, raptar" (cf. en inglés rapt , rapture y raptor ). En el derecho romano, raptus o raptio significaban principalmente rapto o secuestro; [65] la violación mitológica de las sabinas es una forma de rapto de la novia en la que la violación sexual es un asunto secundario. El "rapto" de una joven soltera de la casa de su padre a veces podía ser un asunto de la pareja que se fugaba sin el permiso de su padre para casarse. La violación en el sentido inglés se expresaba más a menudo como stuprum cometido mediante violencia o coerción ( cum vi o per vim ). A medida que las leyes relativas a la violencia se codificaron hacia el final de la República, raptus ad stuprum , "rapto con el propósito de cometer un delito sexual", surgió como una distinción legal. [66] (Véase más debate sobre la violación en “La violación de hombres” y “La violación y la ley” más adelante.)
Se podía buscar ayuda divina en rituales religiosos privados junto con tratamientos médicos para mejorar o bloquear la fertilidad, o para curar enfermedades de los órganos reproductivos. Se han encontrado ofrendas votivas ( vota ; compárese con exvoto ) en forma de pechos y penes en santuarios de curación.
Un ritual privado bajo ciertas circunstancias podría ser considerado "mágico", una categoría indistinta en la antigüedad. [67] Un amatorium (griego philtron ) era un amuleto o poción de amor; [68] se suponía que los hechizos vinculantes (defixiones) "arreglaban" el afecto sexual de una persona. [69] Los papiros mágicos griegos , una colección de textos mágicos sincréticos , contienen muchos hechizos de amor que indican que "había un mercado muy activo en la magia erótica en el período romano", atendido por sacerdotes independientes que a veces afirmaban derivar su autoridad de la tradición religiosa egipcia . [70] Canidia, una bruja descrita por Horacio, realiza un hechizo usando una efigie femenina para dominar a un muñeco masculino más pequeño. [71]
Afrodisíacos , anafrodisíacos , anticonceptivos y abortivos se conservan tanto en manuales médicos como en textos mágicos; las pociones pueden ser difíciles de distinguir de la farmacología. En su Libro 33 De medicamentis , Marcelo de Burdeos , contemporáneo de Ausonio, [72] recopiló más de 70 tratamientos relacionados con la sexualidad (para tumores y lesiones en los testículos y el pene, testículos no descendidos , disfunción eréctil , hidrocele , "crear un eunuco sin cirugía", [73] asegurar la fidelidad de una mujer y obligar o disminuir el deseo de un hombre), algunos de los cuales implican procedimientos rituales:
Si has tenido una mujer y no quieres que otro hombre se meta nunca en ella, haz esto: corta la cola de un lagarto verde vivo con tu mano izquierda y suéltalo mientras aún esté vivo. Mantén la cola cerrada en la palma de la misma mano hasta que muera y toca a la mujer y sus partes privadas cuando tengas relaciones sexuales con ella. [74]
Existe una hierba llamada ninfa en griego, «garrote de Hércules» en latín y baditis en galo . Su raíz, machacada hasta formar una pasta y bebida en vinagre durante diez días consecutivos, convierte a un niño en eunuco. [75]
Si las venas espermáticas de un niño inmaduro se agrandan ( varicocele ) , hay que partir un cerezo joven por la mitad hasta las raíces, dejándolo en pie, de modo que el niño pueda pasar por la hendidura. Luego hay que volver a unir los retoños y sellarlos con estiércol de vaca y otros apósitos, de modo que las partes que se separaron se puedan entremezclar más fácilmente. La velocidad con la que el retoño crezca y se forme su cicatriz determinará la rapidez con la que las venas hinchadas del niño recuperarán la salud. [76]
Marcelo también registra qué hierbas [77] podrían usarse para inducir la menstruación o para purgar el útero después del parto o el aborto; estas hierbas incluyen abortivos potenciales y pueden haber sido utilizadas como tales. [78] Otras fuentes recomiendan remedios como cubrir el pene con una mezcla de miel y pimienta para lograr una erección, [79] o hervir los genitales de un asno en aceite como ungüento. [80]
Las antiguas teorías sobre la sexualidad fueron elaboradas por y para una élite culta. Es discutible hasta qué punto la teoría sobre el sexo afectó realmente el comportamiento, incluso entre quienes estaban atentos a los escritos filosóficos y médicos que presentaban tales puntos de vista. Este discurso de la élite, aunque a menudo critica deliberadamente los comportamientos comunes o típicos, al mismo tiempo no puede asumirse que excluya valores ampliamente aceptados en la sociedad.
"Y quien evita el amor no carece del fruto de Venus, sino que más bien elige bienes que no tienen pena, pues ciertamente el placer que de ello se deriva es más puro para los sanos que para los desdichados. En efecto, en el mismo momento de la posesión, la pasión ardiente de los amantes fluctúa con vagabundeos inciertos y no saben qué disfrutar primero con los ojos y las manos. Aprietan con fuerza lo que han buscado y provocan dolor corporal, y a menudo clavan los dientes en los labios pequeños y dan besos aplastantes, porque el placer no es puro y hay aguijones debajo que los incitan a dañar precisamente aquello, sea lo que sea, de donde surgen esos [tormentos] del frenesí". [81]
Lucrecio , De rerum natura 4.1073–1085
El cuarto libro de De rerum natura de Lucrecio proporciona uno de los pasajes más extensos sobre la sexualidad humana en la literatura latina. Yeats , al describir la traducción de Dryden , lo llamó "la mejor descripción de las relaciones sexuales jamás escrita". [82] Lucrecio fue contemporáneo de Catulo y Cicerón a mediados del siglo I a. C. Su poema didáctico De rerum natura es una presentación de la filosofía epicúrea dentro de la tradición épica enniana de la poesía latina. El epicureísmo es a la vez materialista y hedónico . El bien supremo es el placer, definido como la ausencia de dolor físico y angustia emocional. [83] El epicúreo busca gratificar sus deseos con el menor gasto de pasión y esfuerzo. Los deseos se clasifican como aquellos que son naturales y necesarios, como el hambre y la sed; aquellos que son naturales pero innecesarios, como el sexo; y aquellos que no son ni naturales ni necesarios, incluido el deseo de gobernar a los demás y glorificarse a sí mismo. [84] Es en este contexto que Lucrecio presenta su análisis del amor y del deseo sexual, que contrarresta el ethos erótico de Catulo e influyó en los poetas del amor del período augusto . [85]
Lucrecio trata el deseo masculino, el placer sexual femenino, la herencia y la infertilidad como aspectos de la fisiología sexual. En la visión epicúrea, la sexualidad surge de causas físicas impersonales sin influencia divina o sobrenatural. El inicio de la madurez física genera semen, y los sueños húmedos ocurren a medida que se desarrolla el instinto sexual. [86] [87] La percepción sensorial, específicamente la visión de un cuerpo hermoso, provoca el movimiento del semen hacia los genitales y hacia el objeto de deseo. La congestión de los genitales crea un impulso de eyacular, junto con la anticipación del placer. La respuesta del cuerpo al atractivo físico es automática, y ni el carácter de la persona deseada ni la propia elección son un factor. Con una combinación de desapego científico y humor irónico, Lucrecio trata el impulso sexual humano como muta cupido , "deseo mudo", comparando la respuesta fisiológica de la eyaculación con la sangre que brota de una herida. [88] El amor no es más que una elaborada postura cultural que oculta una condición glandular; [89] el amor contamina el placer sexual de la misma manera que la vida está contaminada por el miedo a la muerte. [90] Lucrecio escribe principalmente para un público masculino y supone que el amor es una pasión masculina, dirigida tanto a los niños como a las mujeres. [91] [92] El deseo masculino es visto como patológico, frustrante y violento. [93]
Lucrecio expresa así una ambivalencia epicúrea hacia la sexualidad, que amenaza la paz mental con agitación si el deseo se convierte en una forma de esclavitud y tormento, [94] pero su visión de la sexualidad femenina es menos negativa. [93] Mientras que los hombres se ven impulsados por expectativas antinaturales a participar en sexo unilateral y desesperado, las mujeres actúan por un instinto puramente animal hacia el afecto, que conduce a la satisfacción mutua. [95] La comparación con animales hembras en celo no pretende ser un insulto, aunque hay algunos rastros de misoginia convencional en la obra, sino indicar que el deseo es natural y no debe experimentarse como una tortura. [95]
Después de analizar el acto sexual, Lucrecio pasa a considerar la concepción y lo que en términos modernos se llamaría genética. Tanto el hombre como la mujer, dice, producen fluidos genitales que se mezclan en un acto procreativo exitoso. Las características del niño están formadas por las proporciones relativas de la "semilla" de la madre con respecto a la del padre. Un niño que se parece más a su madre nace cuando la semilla femenina domina a la del hombre, y viceversa; cuando ni la semilla masculina ni la femenina dominan, el niño tendrá rasgos de la madre y del padre por igual. El sexo del niño, sin embargo, no está determinado por el género del padre cuyos rasgos dominan. La infertilidad se produce cuando los dos miembros de la pareja no logran una compatibilidad satisfactoria de su semilla después de varios intentos; la explicación de la infertilidad es fisiológica y racional, y no tiene nada que ver con los dioses. [94] [96] La transferencia de la "semilla" genital (semina) es consonante con la física epicúrea y el tema de la obra en su conjunto: los semina rerum invisibles , "semillas de las cosas", se disuelven y recombinan continuamente en un flujo universal. [97] El vocabulario de la procreación biológica subyace así a la presentación de Lucrecio de cómo se forma la materia a partir de los átomos. [98]
El propósito de Lucrecio es corregir la ignorancia y dar el conocimiento necesario para manejar la vida sexual de uno racionalmente. [99] Él distingue entre placer y concepción como objetivos de la cópula; ambos son legítimos, pero requieren enfoques diferentes. [99] Él recomienda el sexo casual como una forma de liberar la tensión sexual sin obsesionarse con un solo objeto de deseo; [100] [101] una "Venus callejera" -una prostituta común- debería ser utilizada como sustituta. [102] El sexo sin apego apasionado produce una forma superior de placer libre de incertidumbre, frenesí y perturbación mental. [103] [104] Lucrecio llama a esta forma de placer sexual venus , en contraste con amor , amor apasionado. [105] [106] El mejor sexo es el de los animales felices, o de los dioses. [107] Lucrecio combina una cautela epicúrea hacia el sexo como amenaza a la paz mental con el valor cultural romano dado a la sexualidad como un aspecto del matrimonio y la vida familiar, [108] retratado como un hombre epicúreo en un matrimonio tranquilo y amistoso con una mujer buena pero fea, siendo la belleza un inquietante estímulo para el deseo excesivo. [109] Lucrecio reacciona contra la tendencia romana a exhibir el sexo ostentosamente, como en el arte erótico, y rechaza el modelo agresivo, " priápico ", de sexualidad estimulada por el estímulo visual. [110]
En el estoicismo temprano entre los griegos , el sexo era considerado un bien , si se disfrutaba entre personas que mantenían los principios del respeto y la amistad; en la sociedad ideal, el sexo debería disfrutarse libremente, sin vínculos matrimoniales que trataran a la pareja como una propiedad. Algunos estoicos griegos privilegiaban las relaciones del mismo sexo entre un hombre y una pareja masculina más joven [111] [112] (véase " La pederastia en la antigua Grecia "). Sin embargo, los estoicos de la era imperial romana se apartaron de la visión de los seres humanos como "animales sexualmente comunitarios" [113] y enfatizaron el sexo dentro del matrimonio, [111] que como institución ayudaba a mantener el orden social. [114] Aunque desconfiaban de las pasiones fuertes, incluido el deseo sexual, [115] la vitalidad sexual era necesaria para la procreación.
Los estoicos de la era romana, como Séneca y Musonio Rufo , ambos activos unos 100 años después de Lucrecio, enfatizaron la "unidad sexual" por sobre la polaridad de los sexos. [116] Aunque Musonio es predominantemente un estoico, su filosofía también participa del platonismo y el pitagorismo . [117] Rechazó la tradición aristotélica , que retrataba el dimorfismo sexual como la expresión de una relación adecuada entre los gobernantes (hombres) y los gobernados (mujeres), y distinguía a los hombres de las mujeres como biológicamente carentes . El dimorfismo existe, según Musonio, simplemente para crear diferencia, y la diferencia a su vez crea el deseo de una relación complementaria, es decir, una pareja que se unirá de por vida por el bien del otro y de sus hijos. [18] El ideal romano del matrimonio era una asociación de compañeros que trabajan juntos para producir y criar hijos, administrar los asuntos cotidianos, llevar vidas ejemplares y disfrutar del afecto; Musonio se basó en este ideal para promover la visión estoica de que la capacidad para la virtud y el autodominio no era específica de género. [118]
Tanto Musonio como Séneca criticaron el doble rasero , cultural y legal, que otorgaba a los hombres romanos mayor libertad sexual que a las mujeres. [18] [119] Musonio sostiene que la sociedad excusa a los hombres por recurrir a prostitutas y esclavas para satisfacer sus apetitos sexuales, mientras que tal comportamiento de una mujer no sería tolerado; por lo tanto, si los hombres presumen de ejercer autoridad sobre las mujeres porque creen que tienen un mayor autocontrol, deberían ser capaces de manejar su impulso sexual. El argumento, entonces, no es que la libertad sexual sea un bien humano, sino que tanto los hombres como las mujeres deberían ejercer moderación sexual. [18] [120] Un hombre que visita a una prostituta se hace daño a sí mismo al carecer de autodisciplina; la falta de respeto por su esposa y sus expectativas de fidelidad no sería un problema. [121] De manera similar, un hombre no debería ser tan indulgente consigo mismo como para explotar sexualmente a una esclava; sin embargo, su derecho a no ser utilizada no es un motivo para su moderación. [122] Musonio sostuvo que incluso dentro del matrimonio, el sexo debe realizarse como una expresión de afecto y para la procreación, y no por "mero placer". [123]
Musonio desaprobaba las relaciones entre personas del mismo sexo porque carecían de un propósito procreativo. [18] [124] Séneca y Epicteto también pensaban que la procreación privilegiaba la pareja sexual hombre-mujer dentro del matrimonio. [125]
Aunque Séneca es conocido principalmente como un filósofo estoico, se basa en el neopitagorismo para sus opiniones sobre la austeridad sexual. [126] Los neopitagóricos caracterizaron la sexualidad fuera del matrimonio como desordenada e indeseable; el celibato no era un ideal, pero la castidad dentro del matrimonio sí lo era. [127] Para Séneca, el deseo sexual por el placer (libido) es una "fuerza destructiva (exitium) insidiosamente fijada en las entrañas"; sin regulación, se convierte en cupiditas , lujuria. La única justificación para el sexo es la reproducción dentro del matrimonio. [128] Aunque otros estoicos ven potencial en la belleza como un estímulo ético, una forma de atraer y desarrollar afecto y amistad dentro de las relaciones sexuales, Séneca desconfía del amor a la belleza física como algo que destruye la razón hasta el punto de la locura. [129] Un hombre no debe tener otra pareja sexual que su esposa; [126] Séneca se oponía firmemente al adulterio, considerándolo particularmente ofensivo por parte de las mujeres. [130] El hombre sabio ( sapiens , griego sophos ) hará el amor con su esposa ejerciendo buen juicio (iudicium) , no emoción (affectus) . [131] Esta es una visión mucho más estricta que la de otros estoicos que abogan por el sexo como un medio para promover el afecto mutuo dentro del matrimonio. [131]
La visión filosófica del cuerpo como un cadáver que lleva consigo el alma [132] podría resultar en un desprecio absoluto por la sexualidad: el emperador y filósofo estoico Marco Aurelio escribe: "en cuanto a las relaciones sexuales, es la fricción de un trozo de tripa y, tras una especie de convulsión, la expulsión de un poco de moco". [133] Séneca despotrica "extensamente" contra la perversidad de un tal Hostius Quadra , que se rodeaba de espejos equivalentes a casas de la risa para poder ver las fiestas sexuales desde ángulos distorsionados y los penes se vieran más grandes. [134]
La severidad sexual expuso a los estoicos romanos a acusaciones de hipocresía: Juvenal satiriza a aquellos que afectan una fachada estoica ruda y varonil pero que en privado se entregan a ella. [135] Se bromeaba rutinariamente con que los estoicos no solo eran propensos a la pederastia, sino que les gustaban los hombres jóvenes que se estaban dejando barba, en contra de la costumbre sexual romana . [111] Marcial hace insinuaciones repetidamente sobre aquellos que eran estoicos en apariencia pero disfrutaban en privado del papel homosexual pasivo. [136]
La ética sexual estoica se basa en su física y cosmología . [137] El escritor del siglo V Macrobio conserva una interpretación estoica del mito del nacimiento de Venus como resultado de la castración primordial de la deidad Cielo (del latín Caelus ). [n 6] El mito, indica Macrobio, podría entenderse como una alegoría de la doctrina de la razón seminal . Los elementos derivan de los semina , "semillas", que son generadas por el cielo; el "amor" reúne los elementos en el acto de la creación, como la unión sexual de hombre y mujer. [138] Cicerón sugiere que en la alegoría estoica la separación de los órganos reproductivos significa "que el éter celestial más alto, ese fuego-semilla que genera todas las cosas, no requirió el equivalente de los genitales humanos para proceder en su trabajo generativo". [139]
Durante la República, la libertad política de un ciudadano romano (libertas) se definía en parte por el derecho a preservar su cuerpo de la compulsión física, incluyendo tanto el castigo corporal como el abuso sexual. [140] Virtus , "valor" como aquello que hacía a un hombre más plenamente un hombre (vir) , estaba entre las virtudes activas. [141] [142] [143] Los ideales romanos de masculinidad se basaban así en asumir un papel activo que era también, como ha señalado Williams, "la principal directriz del comportamiento sexual masculino para los romanos". El ímpetu hacia la acción podía expresarse más intensamente en un ideal de dominio que reflejaba la jerarquía de la sociedad patriarcal romana. [144] La "mentalidad de conquista" era parte de un "culto a la virilidad" que moldeaba particularmente las prácticas homosexuales romanas. [145] [19] A finales del siglo XX y principios del XXI, el énfasis en la dominación ha llevado a los académicos a considerar las expresiones de la sexualidad masculina romana en términos de un modelo binario "penetrador-penetrado" ; es decir, la forma adecuada para que un hombre romano buscara gratificación sexual era insertar su pene en su pareja. [20] Permitirse ser penetrado amenazaba su libertad como ciudadano libre, así como su integridad sexual. [n 7]
Se esperaba y era socialmente aceptable que un hombre romano nacido libre quisiera tener relaciones sexuales tanto con parejas femeninas como masculinas, siempre que asumiera el papel dominante. [146] Los objetos aceptables de deseo eran las mujeres de cualquier estatus social o legal, los prostitutos masculinos o los esclavos masculinos, pero las conductas sexuales fuera del matrimonio debían limitarse a los esclavos y las prostitutas, o con menos frecuencia a una concubina o "mujer mantenida". La falta de autocontrol, incluso en el manejo de la propia vida sexual , indicaba que un hombre era incapaz de gobernar a otros; [147] el disfrute del "bajo placer sensual" amenazaba con erosionar la identidad del hombre de élite como persona culta. [148] Para Cayo Graco era un motivo de orgullo afirmar que durante su mandato como gobernador provincial no mantuvo a ningún niño esclavo elegido por su buena apariencia, ninguna prostituta visitó su casa y nunca abordó a los niños esclavos de otros hombres. [149] [150]
En la era imperial, las ansiedades sobre la pérdida de la libertad política y la subordinación del ciudadano al emperador se expresaron mediante un aumento percibido en el comportamiento homosexual pasivo entre los hombres libres, acompañado por un aumento documentado en la ejecución y el castigo corporal de los ciudadanos. [151] La disolución de los ideales republicanos de integridad física en relación con la libertas contribuye a y se refleja en la licencia sexual y la decadencia asociadas con el Imperio. [152]
El poeta Ennio ( ca. 239–169 a. C.) declaró que «exponer cuerpos desnudos entre los ciudadanos es el comienzo de la desgracia pública (flagitium) », un sentimiento del que se hizo eco Cicerón que vincula nuevamente la autocontención del cuerpo con la ciudadanía. [153] [154] [155] [156] Las actitudes romanas hacia la desnudez diferían de las de los griegos, cuyo ideal de excelencia masculina se expresaba mediante el cuerpo masculino desnudo en el arte y en lugares de la vida real como las competiciones atléticas. La toga , por el contrario, distinguía el cuerpo del varón romano adulto sexualmente privilegiado. [157] Incluso cuando se desnudaban para hacer ejercicio, los hombres romanos mantenían sus genitales y nalgas cubiertos, una costumbre itálica compartida también con los etruscos , cuyo arte los muestra principalmente usando un taparrabos , una prenda similar a una falda o la forma más temprana de "pantalones cortos" para atletismo. Los romanos que competían en los Juegos Olímpicos presumiblemente seguían la costumbre griega de la desnudez, pero la desnudez atlética en Roma ha sido datada de diversas formas, posiblemente tan temprano como la introducción de los juegos de estilo griego en el siglo II a. C., pero tal vez no regularmente hasta la época de Nerón alrededor del 60 d. C. [158]
La desnudez pública puede ser ofensiva o desagradable incluso en entornos tradicionales; Cicerón ridiculiza a Marco Antonio como indigno por aparecer casi desnudo como participante en la Lupercalia , a pesar de que era un ritual requerido. [159] [160] La desnudez es uno de los temas de este festival religioso que más consume la atención de Ovidio en los Fasti , su extenso poema sobre el calendario romano . [161] Augusto , durante su programa de resurgimiento religioso, intentó reformar la Lupercalia, en parte suprimiendo el uso de la desnudez a pesar de su aspecto de fertilidad. [162]
Entre las connotaciones negativas de la desnudez se encuentran la derrota en la guerra, ya que se desnudaba a los cautivos, y la esclavitud, ya que los esclavos que se vendían a menudo se exhibían desnudos. La desaprobación de la desnudez no era, por tanto, una cuestión de intentar reprimir el deseo sexual inapropiado, sino de dignificar y marcar el cuerpo del ciudadano como libre. [163]
Sin embargo, la influencia del arte griego dio lugar a representaciones "heroicas" de desnudos de hombres y dioses romanos, una práctica que comenzó en el siglo II a. C. Cuando comenzaron a exhibirse las primeras estatuas de generales romanos desnudos a la manera de los reyes helenísticos , resultaron chocantes no sólo porque exponían la figura masculina, sino porque evocaban conceptos de realeza y divinidad que eran contrarios a los ideales republicanos de ciudadanía encarnados por la toga. [164]
El dios Marte se presenta como un hombre maduro y barbudo con el atuendo de un general romano cuando se lo concibe como el digno padre del pueblo romano, mientras que las representaciones de Marte como joven, imberbe y desnudo muestran la influencia del Ares griego . En el arte producido bajo Augusto, la adopción programática del estilo helenístico y neoático condujo a una significación más compleja del cuerpo masculino mostrado desnudo, parcialmente desnudo o vestido con una coraza musculosa . [165]
Una excepción a la desnudez pública eran los baños , aunque las actitudes hacia el baño desnudo también cambiaron con el tiempo. En el siglo II a. C., Catón prefería no bañarse en presencia de su hijo, y Plutarco da a entender que para los romanos de estos tiempos anteriores se consideraba vergonzoso que los hombres maduros expusieran sus cuerpos a hombres más jóvenes. [166] [163] [167] Más tarde, sin embargo, los hombres y las mujeres incluso podían bañarse juntos. [n 8]
La sexualidad romana tal como se enmarca en la literatura latina ha sido descrita como falocéntrica . [168] [169] Se suponía que el falo tenía poderes para protegerse del mal de ojo y otras fuerzas sobrenaturales malévolas. Se usaba como amuleto (fascinum) , del que sobreviven muchos ejemplos, particularmente en forma de campanillas de viento ( tintinnabula ) . [170] Algunos eruditos incluso han interpretado el plano del Foro Augusto como arquitectura fálica , "con sus dos galerías semicirculares o exedras como los testículos y su largo patio delantero saliente como el eje". [171] [172]
El falo descomunal del arte romano se asociaba con el dios Príapo , entre otros. Provocaba risas, era grotesco o se usaba con fines mágicos. [173] Originario de la ciudad griega de Lampsaco , Príapo era una deidad de la fertilidad cuya estatua se colocaba en los jardines para alejar a los ladrones. La colección de poesía llamada Priapea trata sobre la sexualidad fálica, incluyendo poemas hablados en la persona de Príapo. En uno, por ejemplo, Príapo amenaza con violación anal a cualquier ladrón potencial. La ira de Príapo podía causar impotencia, o un estado de excitación perpetua sin medios de liberación: una maldición de Príapo sobre un ladrón era que podría carecer de mujeres o niños para aliviarlo de su erección, y estallar. [144]
,_I_sec,_da_pompei,_27868-27869-116661.JPG/1280px-Lucerne_a_forma_di_satiro_con_fallo_smisurato_(forse_dildo),_I_sec,_da_pompei,_27868-27869-116661.JPG)
Hay aproximadamente 120 términos y metáforas latinas registradas para el pene, y la categoría más grande trata al miembro masculino como un instrumento de agresión, un arma. [174] Esta tendencia metafórica se ejemplifica con balas de honda de plomo reales , que a veces están inscritas con la imagen de un falo, o mensajes que comparan el objetivo con una conquista sexual, por ejemplo, "Busco el ano de Octavio ". [175] La obscenidad más común para el pene es mentula , que Marcial defiende en lugar de términos educados: su privilegio de la palabra como latín consagrado por el tiempo de la era de Numa puede compararse con la integridad sin adornos de las " palabras anglosajonas de cuatro letras ". [176] [177] Cicerón no usa la palabra ni siquiera cuando discute la naturaleza del lenguaje obsceno en una carta a su amigo Atticus ; [178] [177] Catulo lo usa como seudónimo para el desprestigiado Mamurra , amigo de Julio César ("Dick" o "Peter" podrían ser equivalentes en inglés). [179] Mentula aparece con frecuencia en grafitis y en la Príapea , [180] pero, aunque obscena, la palabra no era inherentemente abusiva o vituperante. Verpa , por el contrario, era "una palabra emotiva y altamente ofensiva" para el pene con el prepucio retraído, como resultado de una erección, una actividad sexual excesiva o la circuncisión. [181] [182] Virga , así como otras palabras para "rama, vara, estaca, viga", es una metáfora común, [183] como lo es vomer , "arado". [184]
El pene también puede denominarse "vena" , "cola" ( pene o cauda ) o "tendón" (nervus) . [185] La palabra inglesa "penis" deriva de penis , que originalmente significaba "cola", pero en el latín clásico se usaba regularmente como un coloquialismo atrevido para el órgano masculino. Más tarde, pene se convierte en la palabra estándar en el latín educado, como lo usa, por ejemplo, el escoliasta Juvenal y Arnobio , pero no pasó a usarse entre las lenguas romances . [186] No fue un término usado por los escritores médicos, a excepción de Marcelo de Burdeos . [187] [188] En el latín medieval , la moda de la obscenidad académica llevó a una percepción del dáctilo , una unidad métrica del verso representada — ‿ ‿ , como una imagen del pene, con la sílaba larga (longum) el tallo y las dos sílabas cortas (breves) los testículos. [189]
La aparente conexión entre el latín testes , "testículos", y testis , plural testes , "testigo" (el origen de las palabras inglesas "testificar" y "testimonio") [190] puede residir en un ritual arcaico. Algunas culturas mediterráneas antiguas hacían juramentos vinculantes sobre los genitales masculinos, simbolizando que "dar falso testimonio trae una maldición no solo sobre uno mismo, sino también sobre la propia casa y la futura línea". [191] Los escritores latinos hacen juegos de palabras y chistes frecuentes basados en los dos significados de testis : [192] se necesitaban cojones para convertirse en un ciudadano varón legalmente funcional. [193] La palabra inglesa "testicle" deriva del diminutivo testiculum . [192] La palabra obscena para "testículo" era coleus , [194] de la que desciende el francés couille .
Para los romanos y los griegos, la castración y la circuncisión estaban vinculadas a mutilaciones bárbaras de los genitales masculinos. [182] [195] [196] [197] [198] [199] [200] Cuando el culto de Cibeles fue importado a Roma a fines del siglo III a. C., su eunuquismo tradicional se confinó a sacerdotes extranjeros (los Galli ) , mientras que los ciudadanos romanos formaron cofradías para realizar honores de acuerdo con sus propias costumbres. [201] Se ha argumentado que la exhortación del apóstol Pablo a los gálatas de no someterse a la circuncisión [202] [203] [204] debe entenderse no solo en el contexto de la circuncisión judía , sino también de la castración ritual asociada con Cibeles, cuyo culto estaba centrado en Galacia . [205] [206] [207] Entre los judíos, la circuncisión era un marcador del pacto abrahámico ; Los judíos de la diáspora circuncidaban a sus esclavos varones y a los varones adultos conversos , además de a los infantes judíos varones. [208] Aunque los escritores grecorromanos consideran la circuncisión como una característica identificativa de los judíos, creían que la práctica se originó en Egipto , [182] [209] y la registraron entre pueblos que identificaron como árabes , sirios , fenicios , colquídeos y etíopes . [210] [211] El filósofo neoplatónico Salustio asocia la circuncisión con las extrañas costumbres familiares y sexuales de los masagetas que "se comen a sus padres" y de los persas que "preservan su nobleza engendrando hijos con sus madres". [212]
Durante el período republicano , una Lex Cornelia prohibía varios tipos de mutilación, incluida la castración. (Dos milenios después, en 1640, el poeta Salvatore Rosa escribiría en La Musica : «Hermosa ley Cornelia, ¿adónde has ido / ahora que toda Nursia parece no ser suficiente / para la castración de los niños?») [215] A pesar de estas prohibiciones, algunos romanos tenían hermosos esclavos varones como deliciae o delicati ("juguetes, delicias") que a veces eran castrados en un esfuerzo por preservar el aspecto andrógino de su juventud. El emperador Nerón hizo castrar a su liberto Sporus y se casó con él en una ceremonia pública. [216]
A finales del siglo I d. C., los emperadores Domiciano y Nerva habían promulgado prohibiciones contra la castración ante el floreciente comercio de esclavos eunucos. En algún momento entre 128 y 132 d. C., Adriano parece haber prohibido temporalmente la circuncisión, bajo pena de muerte. [217] Antonino Pío eximió a los judíos de la prohibición, [218] [219] así como a los sacerdotes egipcios, [220] y Orígenes dice que en su época solo a los judíos se les permitía practicar la circuncisión. [221] [222] La legislación bajo Constantino , el primer emperador cristiano, liberó a cualquier esclavo que fuera sometido a la circuncisión; en 339 d. C., circuncidar a un esclavo pasó a ser castigado con la muerte. [223]
Un procedimiento médico conocido como epispasmo , que consistía en métodos tanto quirúrgicos como no quirúrgicos, [182] [195] [224] existía en la antigua Roma y Grecia para restaurar el prepucio y cubrir el glande "por decoro". [158] [182] [ 195] [196] [225] Ambos fueron descritos en detalle por el médico griego Aulo Cornelio Celso en su obra enciclopédica integral De Medicina , escrita durante el reinado de Tiberio (14-37 d. C.). [195] [224] El método quirúrgico implicaba liberar la piel que cubría el pene mediante disección y luego tirar de ella hacia adelante sobre el glande; también describió una técnica quirúrgica más simple utilizada en hombres cuyo prepucio es naturalmente insuficiente para cubrir su glande. [195] [196] [224] El segundo método no era quirúrgico: se fijaba al pene un dispositivo de restauración que consistía en un peso especial hecho de bronce, cobre o cuero, tirando de su piel hacia abajo. [195] [224] Con el tiempo se generaba un nuevo prepucio, o se alargaba un prepucio corto, mediante la expansión del tejido ; [195] [224] Marcial también mencionó el dispositivo de restauración en sus epigramas (7:35). [224] Los judíos helenizados o romanizados recurrían al epispasmo para integrarse mejor en la sociedad grecorromana, y también para hacerse menos visibles en los baños o durante los deportes. [182] [195] [197] De estos, algunos se habían circuncidado de nuevo más tarde. [226]
Se pensaba que la eyaculación demasiado frecuente debilitaba a los hombres. Las teorías médicas griegas basadas en los elementos y humores clásicos recomendaban limitar la producción de semen mediante terapias de enfriamiento, secado y astringentes, incluidos baños fríos y evitar alimentos que provoquen flatulencia. [227] En el siglo II d. C., el escritor médico Galeno explica el semen como una mezcla de sangre (concebida como un humor) y pneuma (el " aire vital " requerido por los órganos para funcionar) formado dentro de los vasos espermáticos en espiral del hombre , y el humor se vuelve blanco por el calor al entrar en los testículos. [228] En su tratado Sobre el semen , Galeno advierte que la actividad sexual inmoderada resulta en una pérdida de pneuma y, por lo tanto, de vitalidad:
No es de extrañar que los menos moderados sexualmente resulten más débiles, pues todo el cuerpo pierde la parte más pura de ambas sustancias, y hay además un aumento de placer, que por sí solo es suficiente para disolver el tono vital, de modo que hasta ahora algunas personas han muerto por exceso de placer. [229]
La dispersión incontrolada de pneuma en el semen podía llevar a la pérdida de vigor físico, agudeza mental, masculinidad y una voz fuerte y masculina, [230] una queja registrada también en la Príapea . [231] Se pensaba que la actividad sexual afectaba particularmente a la voz: los cantantes y actores podían ser infibulados para preservar sus voces. [232] [233] [234] Quintiliano aconseja que el orador que deseara cultivar una voz masculina profunda para la corte debería abstenerse de las relaciones sexuales. [235] Esta preocupación la sentía intensamente el amigo de Catulo , Calvo , el poeta y orador de vanguardia del siglo I a. C. , que dormía con placas de plomo sobre sus riñones para controlar los sueños húmedos . Plinio informa que:
Cuando se colocan placas de plomo en la zona de los riñones y de la espalda, se las utiliza, por su efecto refrescante, para frenar los ataques de deseo sexual y los sueños sexuales durante el sueño, que provocan erupciones espontáneas hasta el punto de convertirse en una especie de enfermedad. Se dice que el orador Calvus se contuvo con estas placas y conservó las fuerzas de su cuerpo para el trabajo de sus estudios. [236]
Se prescribían placas de plomo, ventosas y depilación para tres trastornos sexuales que se pensaba que estaban relacionados con las emisiones nocturnas: satiriasis o hipersexualidad ; priapismo , una erección crónica sin un deseo sexual acompañante; y la descarga involuntaria de semen ( seminis lapsus o seminis effusio ). [237]
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El afeminamiento era una acusación favorita en la invectiva política romana, y estaba dirigida particularmente a los populares , los políticos de la facción que se presentaban como campeones del pueblo, a veces llamados el partido "democrático" de Roma en contraste con los optimates , una élite conservadora de nobles . [238] En los últimos años de la República, los popularistas Julio César , Marco Antonio y Clodio Pulcro , así como los conspiradores catilinarianos , fueron ridiculizados como hombres afeminados, demasiado arreglados y demasiado guapos que podrían estar en el lado receptor del sexo de otros hombres; al mismo tiempo, se suponía que eran mujeriegos o poseían un atractivo sexual devastador. [239]
Tal vez el incidente más notorio de travestismo en la antigua Roma ocurrió en el año 62 a. C., cuando Clodio Pulcro se entrometió en los ritos anuales de la Bona Dea que estaban restringidos sólo a las mujeres. Los ritos se celebraban en la casa de un magistrado de alto rango , en este año el de Julio César, que se acercaba al final de su mandato como pretor y recientemente había sido investido como Pontífice Máximo . Clodio se disfrazó de música para poder entrar, como describe en un "striptease verbal" Cicerón, quien lo procesó por sacrilegio ( incesto ) : [240]
Quítenle su vestido azafrán, su tiara, sus zapatos de niña y sus cordones morados, su sujetador, su arpa griega , quítenle su comportamiento desvergonzado y su crimen sexual, y Clodio se revela de repente como un demócrata. [241]
Las acciones de Clodio, que acababa de ser elegido cuestor y probablemente estaba a punto de cumplir treinta años, se consideran a menudo como una última travesura juvenil. La naturaleza exclusivamente femenina de estos ritos nocturnos atrajo mucha especulación lasciva por parte de los hombres; se fantaseaba con ellos como orgías lésbicas en las que había borracheras que podrían ser divertidas de ver. [242] Se supone que Clodio tenía la intención de seducir a la esposa de César, pero su voz masculina lo delató antes de tener la oportunidad. El escándalo impulsó a César a solicitar el divorcio inmediato para controlar el daño a su propia reputación, lo que dio lugar a la famosa frase "La esposa de César debe estar por encima de toda sospecha". El incidente "resumió el desorden de los últimos años de la república". [243] [244]
Además de la invectiva política, el travestismo aparece en la literatura y el arte romanos como un tropo mitológico (como en la historia de Hércules y Ónfale intercambiando roles y atuendos), [245] investidura religiosa y, rara vez o de manera ambigua, como fetichismo travesti . Una sección del Digesto de Ulpiano [246] clasifica la vestimenta romana en función de quién puede usarla apropiadamente; un hombre que usara ropa de mujer, señala Ulpiano, correría el riesgo de convertirse en objeto de desprecio. Un fragmento del dramaturgo Accio (170-86 a. C.) parece referirse a un padre que vestía en secreto "vestimenta de virgen". [247] Se señala un ejemplo de travestismo en un caso legal, en el que "cierto senador acostumbrado a usar ropa de noche de mujer" estaba disponiendo de las prendas en su testamento. [248] En un ejercicio de " juicio simulado " presentado por el anciano Séneca , un joven (adulescens) es violado en grupo mientras viste ropa de mujer en público, pero su atuendo se explica como un acto que responde a un desafío de sus amigos, no como una elección basada en la identidad de género o la búsqueda del placer erótico. [249] [250]
La ambigüedad de género era una característica de los sacerdotes de la diosa Cibeles , conocidos como Galli , cuyo atuendo ritual incluía prendas de vestir de mujer. A veces se los considera un sacerdocio transgénero , ya que se les exigía que fueran castrados a imitación de Atis . Las complejidades de la identidad de género en la religión de Cibeles y el mito de Atis son exploradas por Catulo en uno de sus poemas más largos, Carmen 63. [251 ]
Los hombres romanos tenían libertad para tener relaciones sexuales con hombres de un estatus inferior sin que ello supusiera una pérdida de prestigio masculino y, de hecho, el dominio y el dominio sexual de otros, independientemente de su sexo, podían incluso mejorar su masculinidad. Sin embargo, quienes asumían el papel de receptores en los actos sexuales, a veces denominados el papel "pasivo" o "sumiso", eran menospreciados por ser débiles y afeminados (véase la sección siguiente sobre el cunnilungus y la felación), [252] mientras que tener relaciones sexuales con hombres en la posición activa era una prueba de la masculinidad de uno. [252] El dominio físico sobre otras personas era un aspecto de la libertas del ciudadano , la libertad política, [253] y eso ciertamente incluía el propósito de la gratificación sexual, ya fuera con una mujer o con un hombre. Por otro lado, permitir que el propio cuerpo fuera subyugado para el placer de otros, en particular con fines sexuales, se consideraba degradante y una marca de debilidad y servilismo. Leyes como la poco entendida Lex Scantinia y varias piezas de la legislación moral de Augusto tenían como objetivo restringir la actividad homosexual entre varones nacidos libres, considerada como una amenaza al estatus del hombre y a su independencia como ciudadano.
El latín tenía tal riqueza de palabras para los hombres fuera de la norma masculina que algunos eruditos [254] argumentan a favor de la existencia de una subcultura homosexual en Roma; es decir, aunque el sustantivo "homosexual" no tiene un equivalente directo en latín y es un anacronismo cuando se aplica a la cultura romana, las fuentes literarias sí revelan un patrón de comportamientos entre una minoría de hombres libres que indican preferencia u orientación hacia el mismo sexo. Algunos términos, como exoletus , se refieren específicamente a un adulto; los romanos que eran marcados socialmente como "masculinos" no limitaban su penetración del mismo sexo a prostitutas o esclavos masculinos a aquellos que eran "chicos" menores de 20 años. [255] El Satiricón , por ejemplo, incluye muchas descripciones de hombres adultos libres que muestran interés sexual entre sí. Algunos hombres mayores pueden haber preferido en ocasiones el papel pasivo con una pareja de la misma edad o más joven, pero esto estaba mal visto socialmente.
La literatura latina homoerótica incluye los poemas "Juventius" de Catulo , [256] las elegías de Tibulo [257] y Propercio , [258] la segunda Égloga de Virgilio y varios poemas de Horacio . Lucrecio aborda el amor de los muchachos en De rerum natura (4.1052-1056). El poeta Marcial , a pesar de estar casado con una mujer, a menudo se burla de las mujeres como compañeras sexuales y celebra los encantos de los pueri (muchachos). [259] El Satiricón de Petronio está tan impregnado de la cultura de la sexualidad entre hombres que en los círculos literarios europeos del siglo XVIII, su nombre se convirtió en "un sinónimo de homosexualidad". [260] Aunque Ovidio incluye tratamientos mitológicos del homoerotismo en las Metamorfosis , [261] es inusual entre los poetas de amor latinos, y de hecho entre los romanos en general, por su postura agresivamente heterosexual, aunque ni siquiera él reivindicó su heterosexualidad exclusiva. [252]
Aunque la ley romana no reconocía el matrimonio entre hombres, en el período imperial temprano algunas parejas de hombres celebraban ritos matrimoniales tradicionales . Las bodas entre personas del mismo sexo aparecen en fuentes que se burlan de ellas; no se registran los sentimientos de los participantes. [262] [263]
Aparte de las medidas para proteger la libertad de los ciudadanos, la persecución de la homosexualidad como delito general comenzó en el siglo III cuando la prostitución masculina fue prohibida por Filipo el Árabe , un simpatizante de la fe cristiana . A finales del siglo IV, la homosexualidad pasiva bajo el Imperio cristiano se castigaba con la hoguera . [264] "La muerte por espada" era el castigo para un "hombre que se acoplara como una mujer" según el Código de Teodosio . [265] Bajo Justiniano , todos los actos del mismo sexo, pasivos o activos, sin importar quiénes fueran los socios, fueron declarados contrarios a la naturaleza y castigados con la muerte. [266] Las conductas homosexuales fueron señaladas como causas de la ira de Dios después de una serie de desastres alrededor de 542 y 559. [267] Justiniano también exigió la pena de muerte para cualquiera que esclavizara a un romano castrado, aunque permitió la compra y venta de eunucos nacidos en el extranjero siempre que fueran castrados fuera de los límites del Imperio Romano ( Códice Justiniano, 4.42.2). [268]
Los hombres que habían sido violados estaban exentos de la pérdida de estatus legal o social ( infamia ) que sufrían los hombres que se prostituían o asumían voluntariamente el papel de receptores en el sexo. [269] Según el jurista Pomponius , "cualquier hombre que haya sido violado por la fuerza de los ladrones o del enemigo en tiempos de guerra (vi praedonum vel hostium) " no debería llevar ningún estigma. [270] Los temores de violación masiva después de una derrota militar se extendían por igual a las víctimas potenciales masculinas y femeninas. [271]
El derecho romano abordaba la violación de un ciudadano varón ya en el siglo II a. C., cuando se emitió una sentencia en un caso que pudo haber involucrado a un hombre de orientación homosexual. Aunque un hombre que había trabajado como prostituta no podía ser violado por ley, se dictaminó que incluso un hombre que fuera "deshonroso (famosus) y cuestionable (suspiciosus) " tenía el mismo derecho que otros hombres libres a no tener su cuerpo sometido a sexo forzado. [272] En un libro sobre retórica de principios del siglo I a. C., la violación de un varón nacido libre ( ingenuus ) se equipara a la de un materfamilias como un crimen capital. [273] [274] La Lex Julia de vi publica , [275] registrada a principios del siglo III d. C. pero "probablemente data de la dictadura de Julio César", definía la violación como sexo forzado contra "un niño, una mujer o cualquier persona"; el violador estaba sujeto a la ejecución, una pena poco común en el derecho romano. [276] Era un delito capital que un hombre secuestrara a un niño nacido libre con fines sexuales o sobornara al acompañante del niño (comes) para tener la oportunidad. [277] Los acompañantes negligentes podían ser procesados bajo varias leyes, colocando la culpa en aquellos que fallaron en sus responsabilidades como tutores en lugar de en la víctima. [278] Aunque la ley reconocía la inocencia de la víctima, la retórica utilizada por la defensa indica que las actitudes de culpa entre los jurados podían ser explotadas. [250]
En su colección de doce anécdotas que tratan sobre ataques a la castidad, el historiador Valerio Máximo presenta víctimas masculinas en igual número que femeninas. [279] [250] En el caso de " juicio simulado " descrito por el anciano Séneca , un adulescens (un hombre lo suficientemente joven como para no haber comenzado su carrera formal) fue violado en grupo por diez de sus pares; aunque el caso es imaginario, Séneca asume que la ley permitió el procesamiento exitoso de los violadores. [249] Otro caso hipotético imagina el extremo al que podría ser llevada una víctima de violación: el hombre nacido libre que fue violado se suicida. [280] [281] La violación de una ingenua es uno de los peores crímenes que podrían cometerse en Roma, junto con el parricidio , la violación de una mujer virgen y el robo de un templo. [282] La violación era, sin embargo, uno de los castigos tradicionales infligidos a un adúltero masculino por el marido agraviado, [283] aunque quizás más en una fantasía de venganza que en la práctica. [284] La amenaza de un hombre de someter a otro a una violación anal u oral ( irrumatio ) es un tema de poesía invectiva, más notablemente en la famosa Carmen 16 de Catulo , [285] y era una forma de fanfarronería masculina. [286] [287] [288]
Del soldado romano, como de cualquier varón romano libre y respetable, se esperaba que mostrara autodisciplina en cuestiones sexuales. Los soldados condenados por adulterio recibían una baja deshonrosa ; a los adúlteros convictos se les prohibía alistarse. Los comandantes estrictos podían prohibir la entrada de prostitutas y proxenetas en el campamento, [289] aunque en general el ejército romano , ya fuera en marcha o en un fuerte permanente ( castrum ) , estaba acompañado por un número de seguidores del campamento que podían incluir prostitutas. Su presencia parece haberse dado por sentada y se mencionaba principalmente cuando se convertía en un problema; [289] por ejemplo, cuando Escipión Emiliano partía hacia Numancia en 133 a. C., despidió a los seguidores del campamento como una de sus medidas para restablecer la disciplina. [290]
Quizás lo más peculiar es la prohibición del matrimonio en el ejército imperial. En el período temprano, Roma tenía un ejército de ciudadanos que abandonaban a sus familias y tomaban las armas cuando surgía la necesidad. Durante el expansionismo de la República Media , Roma comenzó a adquirir vastos territorios para ser defendidos como provincias, y durante la época de Cayo Mario (fallecido en el 86 a. C.), el ejército se había profesionalizado. La prohibición del matrimonio comenzó bajo Augusto (gobernó entre el 27 a. C. y el 14 d. C.), tal vez para disuadir a las familias de seguir al ejército y perjudicar su movilidad. La prohibición del matrimonio se aplicó a todos los rangos hasta el centurión ; los hombres de las clases gobernantes estaban exentos. En el siglo II d. C., la estabilidad del Imperio mantuvo a la mayoría de las unidades en fuertes permanentes, donde a menudo se desarrollaban vínculos con las mujeres locales. Aunque legalmente estas uniones no podían formalizarse como matrimonios, se reconoció su valor para brindar apoyo emocional a los soldados. Después de que un soldado fuera licenciado, a la pareja se le otorgaba el derecho de matrimonio legal como ciudadanos ( conubium ) , y cualquier hijo que ya tuviera se consideraba nacido de ciudadanos. [291] Septimio Severo anuló la prohibición en el año 197 d. C. [292]
Otras formas de gratificación sexual disponibles para los soldados eran el uso de esclavos varones, la violación de guerra y las relaciones entre personas del mismo sexo. [293] La conducta homosexual entre soldados estaba sujeta a duras penas, incluida la muerte, [289] como una violación de la disciplina militar . Polibio (siglo II a. C.) informa que la actividad homosexual en el ejército se castigaba con el fustuarium , apaleado hasta la muerte. [294] El sexo entre compañeros soldados violaba el decoro romano contra las relaciones sexuales con otro varón nacido libre. Un soldado mantenía su masculinidad al no permitir que su cuerpo fuera utilizado con fines sexuales. Esta integridad física contrastaba con los límites impuestos a sus acciones como hombre libre dentro de la jerarquía militar; lo más sorprendente era que los soldados romanos eran los únicos ciudadanos sometidos regularmente a castigos corporales, reservados en el mundo civil principalmente para los esclavos. La integridad sexual ayudaba a distinguir el estatus del soldado, que de otro modo sacrificaba gran parte de su autonomía civil, del del esclavo. [295] En la guerra, la violación significaba derrota, otro motivo para que el soldado no comprometiera su cuerpo sexualmente. [296]
An incident related by Plutarch in his biography of Marius illustrates the soldier's right to maintain his sexual integrity. A good-looking young recruit named Trebonius[297] had been sexually harassed over a period of time by his superior officer, who happened to be Marius' nephew, Gaius Luscius. One night, having fended off unwanted advances on numerous occasions, Trebonius was summoned to Luscius' tent. Unable to disobey the command of his superior, he found himself the object of a sexual assault and drew his sword, killing Luscius. A conviction for killing an officer typically resulted in execution. When brought to trial, he was able to produce witnesses to show that he had repeatedly had to fend off Luscius, and "had never prostituted his body to anyone, despite offers of expensive gifts". Marius not only acquitted Trebonius in the killing of his kinsman, but gave him a crown for bravery.[298][299][300][301] Roman historians record other cautionary tales of officers who abuse their authority to coerce sex from their soldiers, and then suffer dire consequences.[302] The youngest officers, who still might retain some of the adolescent attraction that Romans favored in male–male relations, were advised to beef up their masculine qualities, such as not wearing perfume, nor trimming nostril and underarm hair.[303]
During wartime, the violent use of war captives for sex was not considered criminal rape.[304] Mass rape was one of the acts of punitive violence during the sack of a city,[305] but if the siege had ended through diplomatic negotiations rather than storming the walls, by custom the inhabitants were neither enslaved nor subjected to personal violence. Mass rape occurred in some circumstances, and is likely to be underreported in the surviving sources, but was not a deliberate or pervasive strategy for controlling a population.[306] An ethical ideal of sexual self-control among enlisted men was vital to preserving peace once hostilities ceased. In territories and provinces brought under treaty with Rome, soldiers who committed rape against the local people might be subjected to harsher punishments than civilians.[307] Sertorius, the long-time governor of Roman Spain whose policies emphasized respect and cooperation with provincials, executed an entire cohort when a single soldier had attempted to rape a local woman.[308][309] Mass rape seems to have been more common as a punitive measure during Roman civil wars than abroad.[310]
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Because of the Roman emphasis on family, female sexuality was regarded as one of the bases for social order and prosperity. Female citizens were expected to exercise their sexuality within marriage, and were honored for their sexual integrity (pudicitia) and fecundity: Augustus granted special honors and privileges to women who had given birth to three children (see "Ius trium liberorum"). Control of female sexuality was regarded as necessary for the stability of the state, as embodied most conspicuously in the absolute virginity of the Vestals.[311] A Vestal who violated her vow was entombed alive in a ritual that mimicked some aspects of a Roman funeral; her lover was executed.[312] Female sexuality, either disorderly or exemplary, often impacts state religion in times of crisis for the Republic.[313]
As was the case for men, free women who displayed themselves sexually, such as prostitutes and performers, or who made themselves available indiscriminately were excluded from legal protections and social respectability.[314]
Many Roman literary sources approve of respectable women exercising sexual passion within marriage.[315] While ancient literature overwhelmingly takes a male-centered view of sexuality, the Augustan poet Ovid expresses an explicit and virtually unique interest in how women experience intercourse.[316]
Roman attitudes toward female nudity differed from but were influenced by those of the Greeks, who idealized the male body in the nude while portraying respectable women clothed. Partial nudity of goddesses in Roman Imperial art, however, can highlight the breasts as dignified but pleasurable images of nurturing, abundance, and peacefulness.[160][317] Erotic art indicates that women with small breasts and wide hips had the ideal body type.[318][319] By the 1st century AD, Roman art shows a broad interest in the female nude engaged in varied activities, including sex.[320] Pornographic art that depicts women presumed to be prostitutes performing sex acts may show the breasts covered by a strophium even when the rest of the body is naked.
In the real world, as described in literature, prostitutes sometimes displayed themselves naked at the entrance to their brothel cubicles, or wore see-through silk garments; slaves for sale were often displayed naked to allow buyers to inspect them for defects, and to symbolize that they lacked the right to control their own body.[321][322] As Seneca the Elder described a woman for sale:
Naked she stood on the shore, at the pleasure of the purchaser; every part of her body was examined and felt. Would you hear the result of the sale? The pirate sold; the pimp bought, that he might employ her as a prostitute.[323]
The display of the female body made it vulnerable. Varro said sight was the greatest of the senses, because while the others were limited by proximity, sight could penetrate even to the stars; he thought the Latin word for "sight, gaze", visus, was etymologically related to vis, "force, power". But the connection between visus and vis, he said, also implied the potential for violation, just as Actaeon gazing on the naked Diana violated the goddess.[324][325]
The completely nude female body as portrayed in sculpture was thought to embody a universal concept of Venus, whose counterpart Aphrodite is the goddess most often depicted nude in Greek art.[326][327]
The "basic obscenity" for the female genitalia is cunnus, "cunt", though perhaps not as strongly offensive as the English.[328] Martial uses the word more than thirty times, Catullus once, and Horace thrice only in his early work; it also appears in the Priapea and graffiti.[329] One of the slang words women used for their genitals was porcus, "pig", particularly when mature women spoke of girls. Varro connects this usage of the word to the sacrifice of a pig to the goddess Ceres in preliminary wedding rites.[330] Metaphors of fields, gardens, and meadows are common, as is the image of the masculine "plough" in the feminine "furrow".[331] Other metaphors include cave, ditch, pit, bag, vessel, door, hearth, oven, and altar.[332]
Although women's genitals appear often in invective and satiric verse as objects of disgust, they are rarely referred to in Latin love elegy.[333] Ovid, the most heterosexual of the classic love poets, is the only one to refer to giving a woman pleasure through genital stimulation.[334] Martial writes of female genitalia only insultingly, describing one woman's vagina as "loose ... as the foul gullet of a pelican".[335][336] The vagina is often compared to a boy's anus as a receptacle for the phallus.[337][338]
The function of the clitoris (landica) was "well understood".[339] In classical Latin, landica was a highly indecorous obscenity found in graffiti and the Priapea; the clitoris was usually referred to with a metaphor, such as Juvenal's crista ("crest").[340][341] Cicero records that a hapless speaker of consular rank broke up the senate just by saying something that sounded like landica: hanc culpam maiorem an il-lam dicam? ("Shall I call this fault greater or that one?" heard as "this greater fault or a clitoris?"). "Could he have been more obscene?" Cicero exclaims, observing at the same time that cum nos, "when we", sounds like cunnus.[342][339][343] A lead sling-bullet uncovered through archaeology was inscribed "I aim for Fulvia's clit" (Fulviae landicam peto), Fulvia being the wife of Mark Antony who commanded troops during the civil wars of the 40s and 30s.[344]
Latin lacked a standard word for labia;[345] two terms found in medical writers are orae, "edges" or "shores",[346] and pinnacula, "little wings".[345] The first recorded instance of the word vulva occurs in Varro's work on agriculture (1st century BC), where it refers to the membrane that surrounds a fetus.[347][348] In the early Empire, vulva came into usage for "womb", the usual word for which had been uterus in the Republic, or sometimes more vaguely venter or alvus, both words for "belly". Vulva seems originally to have referred to the womb of animals, but is "extremely common" in Pliny's Natural History for a human uterus.[349] In the Imperial era, vulva can mean "female reproductive organs" collectively or vaguely, or sometimes refers to the vagina alone.[350] Early Latin Bible translators used vulva as the correct and proper word for the womb.[351] At some point during the Imperial era, matrix became the common word for "uterus", particularly in the gynecological writers of late antiquity, who also employ a specialized vocabulary for parts of the reproductive organs.[352]
Both women and men often removed their pubic hair,[353] but grooming may have varied over time and by individual preference. A fragment from the early satirist Lucilius refers to penetrating a "hairy bag",[354] and a graffito from Pompeii declares that "a hairy cunt is fucked much better than one which is smooth; it's steamy and wants cock".[355]
At the entrance to a caldarium in the bath complex of the House of Menander at Pompeii, an unusual graphic device appears on a mosaic: a phallic oil can is surrounded by strigils in the shape of female genitalia, juxtaposed with an "Ethiopian" water-bearer who has an "unusually large and comically detailed" penis.[356]
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Latin words for "breasts" include mammae (cf. English "mammary"), papillae (more specifically for "nipples"), and ubera, breasts in their capacity to provide nourishment, including the teats or udder of an animal.[n 10] Papillae is the preferred word when Catullus and the Augustan poets take note of breasts in an erotic context.[357]
The breasts of a beautiful woman were supposed to be "unobtrusive." Idealized breasts in the tradition of Hellenistic poetry were compared to apples;[358][359] Martial makes fun of large breasts.[360][361][362] Old women who were stereotypically ugly and undesirable in every way had "pendulous" breasts.[363] On the Roman stage, exaggerated breasts were part of the costuming for comically unattractive female characters, since in classic Roman comedy women's roles were played by male actors in drag.[364]
While Greek epigrams describe ideal breasts,[365] Latin poets take limited interest in them, at least as compared to the modern focus on admiring and fondling a woman's breasts.[366] They are observed mainly as aspects of a woman's beauty or perfection of form, though Ovid finds them inviting to touch.[367] In one poem celebrating a wedding, Catullus remarks on the bride's "tender nipples" (teneris ... papillis), which would keep a good husband sleeping with her; erotic appeal supports fidelity within marriage and leads to children and a long life together.[368]
Because all infants were breastfed in antiquity, the breast was viewed primarily as an emblem of nurturing and of motherhood.[369] Mastoi, breast-shaped drinking cups, and representations of breasts are among the votive offerings (vota) found at sanctuaries of deities such as Diana and Hercules, sometimes having been dedicated by wet nurses.[370][371] The breast-shaped cup may have a religious significance; the drinking of breast milk by an adult who is elderly or about to die symbolized potential rebirth in the afterlife.[372][373][374] In the Etruscan tradition, the goddess Juno (Uni) offers her breast to Hercules as a sign that he may enter the ranks of the immortals.[375][376] The religious meaning may underlie the story of how Pero offered breast milk to her elderly father when he was imprisoned and sentenced to death by starvation (see Roman Charity).[377] The scene is among the moral paintings in a Pompeiian bedroom that belonged to a child, along with the legend "in sadness is the meeting of modesty and piety".[378] Pliny records medicinal uses of breast milk, and ranks it as one of the most useful remedies, especially for ailments of the eyes and ears. Wrapping one's head in a bra was said to cure a headache.[379][380]
Baring the breasts is one of the gestures made by women, particularly mothers or nurses, to express mourning or as an appeal for mercy.[381] The baring and beating of breasts ritually in grief was interpreted by Servius as producing milk to feed the dead.[382] In Greek and Latin literature, mythological mothers sometimes expose their breasts in moments of extreme emotional duress to demand that their nurturing role be respected.[383] Breasts exposed with such intensity held apotropaic power.[384][160] Julius Caesar indicates that the gesture had a similar significance in Celtic culture: during the siege of Avaricum, the female heads of household (matres familiae) expose their breasts and extend their hands to ask that the women and children be spared.[385] Tacitus notes Germanic women who exhorted their reluctant men to valorous battle by aggressively baring their breasts.[386] Although in general "the gesture is meant to arouse pity rather than sexual desire", the beauty of the breasts so exposed is sometimes in evidence and remarked upon.[387]
Because women were normally portrayed clothed in art, bared breasts can signify vulnerability or erotic availability by choice, accident, or force. Baring a single breast was a visual motif of Classical Greek sculpture, where among other situations, including seductions,[388] it often represented impending physical violence or rape.[389] Some scholars have attempted to find a "code" in which exposing the right breast had an erotic significance, while the left breast signified nurturing.[390] Although art produced by the Romans may imitate or directly draw on Greek conventions, during the Classical period of Greek art images of women nursing were treated as animalistic or barbaric; by contrast, the coexisting Italic tradition emphasized the breast as a focus of the mother–child relationship and as a source of female power.[391]
The erogenous power of the breast was not utterly neglected: in comparing sex with a woman to sex with a boy, a Greek novel of the Roman Imperial era notes that "her breast when it is caressed provides its own particular pleasure".[392] Propertius connects breast development with girls reaching an age to "play".[393][394] Tibullus observes that a woman just might wear loose clothing so that her breasts "flash" when she reclines at dinner.[395] An astrological tradition held that mammary intercourse was enjoyed by men born under the conjunction of Venus, Mercury, and Saturn.[396] Even in the most sexually explicit Roman paintings, the breasts are sometimes covered by the strophium (breast band).[397][375] The women so depicted may be prostitutes, but it can be difficult to discern why an artist decides in a given scenario to portray the breasts covered or exposed.[398]
Greek words for a woman who prefers sex with another woman include hetairistria (compare hetaira, "courtesan" or "companion"), tribas (plural tribades), and Lesbia; Latin words include the loanword tribas, fricatrix ("she who rubs"), and virago.[399] References to sex between women are infrequent in the Roman literature of the Republic and early Principate. Ovid, who advocates generally for a heterosexual lifestyle, finds it "a desire known to no one, freakish, novel ... among all animals no female is seized by desire for female"[400]—and yet Ovid's story of Iphis and Ianthe in the Metamorphoses (9.666–797) is "the most extended surviving account in ancient literature of female-female desire."[401] Ovid's narrative of Callisto, a follower of Diana, the goddess who actively shunned the company of men, is rich with homoerotic implications, as Callisto is seduced by Jove only because he disguises himself as Diana.[402]
During the Roman Imperial era, sources for same-sex relations among women are more abundant, including in the form of love spells, medical writing, and texts on astrology and the interpretation of dreams.[403] A graffito from Pompeii (CIL 4.5296) expresses the desire of one woman for another:
I wish I could hold to my neck and embrace the little arms, and bear kisses on the tender lips. Go on, doll, and trust your joys to the winds; believe me, light is the nature of men.[404]
An early reference to same-sex relations among women as "lesbianism", owing to Sappho of Lesbos, is found in Lucian (2nd century AD): "They say there are women like that in Lesbos, masculine-looking, but they don't want to give it up for men. Instead, they consort with women, just like men."[407]
Since Romans thought a sex act required an active or dominant partner who was "phallic", male writers imagined that in lesbian sex one of the women would use a dildo or have an exceptionally large clitoris for penetration, and that she would be the one experiencing pleasure.[408] The dildo is rarely mentioned in Roman sources, but was a popular comic item in Classical Greek literature and art.[409] Martial describes lesbians as having outsized sexual appetites and performing penetrative sex on both women and boys.[410] Imperial portrayals of women who sodomize boys, drink and eat like men, and engage in vigorous physical regimens, may reflect cultural anxieties about the growing independence of Roman women.[411]
The rape of women is a pervasive theme in the myths and legends of early Rome. The legendary founders Romulus and Remus were born from the rape of the Vestal Rhea Silvia by the god Mars.[412] Romulus and his "band of freebooters" can transform their all-male settlement into a city only by the "rape" of the Sabine women, that is, by forcibly abducting the daughters of their Sabine neighbors to take as wives. The overthrow of the Roman monarchy and the establishment of the Republic was precipitated by the rape of the much-admired Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, the king's son. The legend crystallizes the Roman view of unchecked libido as a form of tyranny.[413]
The Augustan historian Livy seems "embarrassed" by the rape motif of early Roman history, and emphasizes the redeeming political dimension of these events.[414] Lucretius condemns rape as a primitive behavior outside the bounds of an advanced civilization,[415] describing it as "a man's use of violent force and imposition of sexual impulse".[416]
Roman law recognized rape as a crime: the rape victim was not guilty of anything.[417] Intercourse by force or compulsion (vis), even if it took place under circumstances that were otherwise unlawful for a woman (see "Moral and legal concepts" above), left the woman legally without blame.[418][419] The official position under Diocletian (reigned 284–305 AD) held that:[420]
The laws punish the foul wickedness of those who prostitute their modesty to the lusts of others, but they do not attach blame to those who are compelled to stuprum by force, since it has, moreover, been quite properly decided that their reputations are unharmed and that they are not prohibited from marriage to others.[421]
Although literary sources from the Republican era make it clear that rape was wrong and severely penalized, the statutes under which it might be charged as a crime are unknown until passage of the Lex Iulia de vi publica, dating probably to the dictatorship of Julius Caesar in the 40s BC.[422] Rome had no state prosecutors; cases could be prosecuted by any citizen with the legal expertise and speaking ability to do so. Since emancipated women were allowed to bring criminal prosecutions in the Republic,[423] it is conceivable that a rape victim could have brought charges against her rapist herself. Otherwise, the case could be prosecuted by her father or husband, or by anyone who saw fit to do so. There was no statute of limitations for rape; by contrast adultery, which was criminalized under Augustus, had to be prosecuted within five years.[422] Rape was a capital crime.[422]
As a matter of law, rape could be committed only against a citizen in good standing. A woman who worked as a prostitute or entertainer lost her social standing and became infamis; by making her body publicly available, she had in effect surrendered her right to be protected from sexual abuse or physical violence.[424][425] Cicero defended a client whose misdeeds included the gang rape of an actress on the grounds that young men took customary license with entertainers.[426][425][427] The rape of a slave could be prosecuted only as damage to her owner's property, under the Lex Aquilia.[428][424] Consent would have been an issue in rape cases only rarely; if the accused argued that the woman had consented, he could still be charged with committing the more general sex crime of stuprum against a citizen, since male sexual freedom was limited to prostitutes or slaves. If rape against a married woman could not be proven, the Augustan legislation criminalizing adultery would make the man liable to a charge of adulterium, criminal adultery, though a charge of either adultery or stuprum without force would implicate the woman as well.[429] An acquittal for rape, as with any other crime, would open the prosecutor to a retaliatory charge of calumnia, malicious prosecution.[430] The prosecution of rape might also be hindered by psychological and social pressures, such as embarrassment or a reluctance to expose one's private life.[429]
Attitudes toward rape changed when the Empire became Christianized. St. Augustine interpreted Lucretia's suicide as a possible admission that she had secretly encouraged the rapist,[n 11] and Christian apologists regarded her as having committed the sin of involuntary sexual pleasure.[431] The first Christian emperor Constantine redefined rape as a public offense rather than as a private wrong.[432] Earlier Roman law had blurred the line between abduction and elopement, since in either case it was the right of the paterfamilias to give or withhold his consent to his daughter's marriage that had been violated. The word raptus thus could refer to a successful seduction as well as abduction or rape. If the girl consented, Constantine ordered that she be punished along with the male "abductor" by being burnt alive. If she had not consented, she was still considered an accomplice, "on the grounds that she could have saved herself by screaming for help".[420] As a participant to the rape, she was punished under law by being disinherited, regardless of the wishes of her family.[433] Even if she and her family consented to a marriage as the result of an elopement, the marriage was legally void. In the Republic and the pre-Christian Empire, the consequences of an abduction or an elopement had been up to the couple and their families.[434]
Both male and female freeborn children wore the toga praetexta, a purple-bordered garment that marked its wearer as having "inviolable" status.[435] An oath could be sworn upon the "sacred praetexta", a marker of how "we make sacred and venerable the weakness of childhood".[436] It was religiously impermissible (nefas) to use obscene language in front of those wearing the praetexta,[437] and Cato claimed that in front of his son he tried to speak as though Vestal Virgins were present.[166][438]
Freeborn Roman boys also wore an apotropaic amulet called the bulla which incorporated a phallic talisman (fascinum) inside a locket of gold, silver, or bronze, or in a leather pouch.[439][440][441] In addition to its magical function, the bulla would have been a visible warning that the boy was sexually off-limits.[442][157][443] The equivalent for the girl was the lunula, a crescent moon amulet.[444]
There were laws protecting freeborn children from sexual predators,[278][445] and the rape of a freeborn boy was a capital crime; this severity was directed at protecting the integrity of the young citizen.[446] Fictional license was not a defense; Valerius Maximus reports that a poetic boast of seducing a puer praetextatus ("praetextate boy") and a freeborn virgin (ingenua virgo) was used in court to impugn a prosecutor's moral authority.[447] In denouncing the debaucheries of Quintus Apronius, Cicero builds to the worst offence: Apronius danced naked at a banquet in front of a boy still of an age to wear the praetexta.[448] Although children were taken to dinner parties (convivia) to accustom them to proper adult social behavior, Quintilian scolds parents of his day for being poor role models: they parade their mistresses and male concubines and behave indiscreetly even when their children are present, and think it is cute when their children say things that are age-inappropriate. Quintilian regards this misbehavior as a sign of general moral decline.[449] At weddings, however, boys were by ancient custom given license to speak obscenely, peppering the new couple with dirty jokes, as humor and laughter were thought to promote fertility.[450]
Protections applied only to freeborn children, not those born to slaves, sold into slavery, or taken captive in war. The social acceptance of pederasty among the Romans was focused on the exploitation of young male slaves or prostitutes by men of the upper classes.[242][451]
Adolescents in ritual preparation to transition to adult status wore the tunica recta, the "upright tunic", so called because it was woven ritually on the type of upright loom that was the earliest used by Romans.[452] The tunic, worn by both youths and maidens, may have had the purple band of inviolability, though this is unclear from the evidence.[452] Girls wove their own tunica recta.[453]
The puberty ritual for the young male involved shaving his first beard and taking off his bulla, which he dedicated to the household gods, the Lares.[454] He assumed the toga virilis ("toga of manhood"), was enrolled as a citizen on the census, and soon began his military service.[455] Traditionally, the ceremony was held on the Liberalia, the festival in honor of the god Liber, who embodied both political and sexual liberty.[456] Following his rite of passage, the young male citizen was permitted the avenues of sexual activity that were generally acceptable for Roman men of his social rank.[453] Often a young man would be introduced to heterosexual intercourse by an experienced female prostitute.[457]
Roman women were expected to remain virgins until marriage; the higher a girl's social rank, the earlier she was likely to become betrothed and married.[459] The usual age of betrothal for upper classes girls was 14, but for patricians as early as 12. Weddings were often postponed until the girl was considered mature enough. The wedding ceremony was in part a rite of passage for the bride, as Rome lacked the elaborate female puberty rituals of ancient Greece.[460] On the night before the wedding, the bride bound up her hair with a yellow hairnet she had woven. The confining of her hair signified the harnessing of her sexuality within marriage. Her weaving of the tunica recta and the hairnet demonstrated her skill and her capacity for acting in the traditional matron's role as custos domi, "guardian of the house".[461] On her wedding day, she belted her tunic with the cingulum, made of ewe wool to symbolize fertility, and tied with the "knot of Hercules", which was supposed to be difficult to untie.[462] The knot symbolized wifely chastity, in that it was to be untied only by her husband, but the cingulum also symbolized that the groom was bound to his wife.[463] The bride's hair was ritually styled in "six tresses" (seni crines), and she was veiled until uncovered by her husband at the end of the ceremony, a ritual of surrendering her virginity to him.[464]
Because men could enjoy sexual relations outside marriage with relative impunity, it has sometimes been assumed that satisfying sex was not an expectation of Roman marriage.[466] The jurist Ulpian noted that "it is not sexual intercourse that makes a marriage but rather marital affection",[467] but the warnings by moralists and philosophers against a preoccupation with sex within marriage recognize the potential for marital passion.[468]
Sexual intimacy between a married couple was a private matter, and not usually the subject of literature.[469][470] An exception was the epithalamium, a genre of poetry that celebrated a wedding. A wedding hymn by Catullus, for instance, praises the love goddess Venus because "nothing is possible without you".[471] Ovid, whose love poetry early in his career was directed at fictional mistresses, wrote elegies during his exile in which he longed for his wife.[472] Among the collected letters of Pliny Minor is one he writes about his feelings for his wife:
I am seized by an unbelievable longing for you. The reason is above all my love, but secondarily the fact that we are not used to being apart. This is why I spend the greater part of the night haunted by your image; this is why from time to time my feet lead me (the right expression!) of their own accord to your room at the times I was accustomed to frequent you; this is why, in short, I retreat, morbid and disconsolate, like an excluded lover from an unwelcoming doorway.
Pliny adopts the rhetoric of love poetry, conventionally directed at an illicit or hard-to-attain lover, as appropriate for expressing his wedded desire.[472]
Although it was a point of pride for a woman to be univira, married only once,[473] there was no stigma attached to divorce. Speedy remarriage after divorce or the death of a spouse was common and even expected among the Roman elite, since marriage was considered right and natural for adults.[474] Although widows were usually expected to wait ten months before remarrying, even a pregnant woman was not barred from taking a new husband, as long as the paternity of her child was not in doubt for legal purposes.[475] If a first marriage ended, women seem to have had more say in arranging subsequent marriages. While having children was a primary goal of marriage, other social and familial bonds were enhanced, not excluding personal companionship and sexual pleasure between husband and wife, as indicated by marriages involving women past their childbearing years.[476]
The Trojan royal couple Hector and Andromache became a mythological trope of wedded sex. Latin love elegy focuses on their sex life rather than the tragic end of their marriage with Hector's death at the hands of Achilles.[477] They were known for the "woman on top" position, with a verb suggesting that the woman "rides" the man like a horse.[478] In general, Hector was portrayed as markedly heterosexual[479] and an exemplary husband.[480]
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An epithalamium by Catullus[481] paints the wedding night as a time of ripe eroticism, spiced with humorous and bawdy songs from the guests. "Look inside," the poet advises the bride, who burns with an "intimate flame", "where your man lies on the richly arrayed bed, completely available to you". The husband is reminded that "good Venus" has blessed him, since he can now desire openly what he desires, and need not conceal a "good love". The couple is encouraged to enjoy themselves as they please (ludite ut lubet); the goal is to produce children soon.
A pair of paintings in a bedroom of the Casa della Farnesina has been interpreted as "a narrative of the modest bride becoming the immodest lover—perhaps fulfilling a ribald male fantasy".[482]
Some literary passages suggest that a newlywed might break off his outside sexual relations for a time and focus on bonding with his wife in the hope of starting a family.[483] Some Stoics maintained that marital fidelity was as much a virtue for men as for women (see "Stoic sexual morality" above). Legally, however, a Roman husband did not commit adultery when he had sex outside marriage as long as his partner was considered sexually available; sexual misconduct (stuprum) was adultery depending on the status of a female partner. A character in a play by Plautus expresses a man's sexual freedom in comic terms:
No one prohibits anyone from going down the public way (publica via); as long as you do not make a path through posted land, as long as you hold off from brides, single women, maidens, the youth and free boys, love whatever you want.[484]
A married or marriageable woman and young male citizens are off-limits, just as if they were the property of someone else,[274] and in fact adultery as a crime was committed contrary to the rights of the paterfamilias to control his household.[485] For a man, adultery was a sexual offense committed with a woman who was neither his wife nor a permissible partner such as a prostitute or slave,[486] in effect when his female partner was another man's wife or his unmarried daughter.[487] The later jurists emphasize that adulterium in the strict sense was committed with a married woman.[488]
For a married woman, no infidelity was acceptable, and first-time brides were expected to be virgins.[489] According to Cato (2nd century BC), a husband had an ancient right (ius) to kill his wife if he caught her in the act of adultery, but if this "right" existed, it was a matter of custom and not statute law.[490] In the Republic, adultery was normally considered a private matter for families to deal with, not a serious criminal offense requiring the attention of the courts.[491][492][493] No source records the justified killing of a woman for adultery by either a father or husband during the Republican era, though adultery was grounds for divorce.[494]
Following the collapse of the Republic, moral legislation became part of the new political order under Rome's first emperor, Augustus. Laws pertaining to adultery passed in 18 BC were part of his program to restore the mos maiorum, traditional social norms, while consolidating his political authority and codifying a more rigid social hierarchy in the wake of the recent civil wars. The appeal to old-fashioned values cloaked the radical overthrow of the Republic's participatory political institutions by top-down, one-man rule.[495] The Lex Iulia de adulteriis ("Julian Law concerning acts of adultery") was directed at punishing married women who engaged in extra-marital affairs. Scholars have often assumed that the Lex Iulia was meant to address a virulent outbreak of adultery in the Late Republic. An androcentric perspective in the early 20th century held that the Lex Iulia had been "a very necessary check upon the growing independence and recklessness of women".[496] A more sympathetic view in the late 20th to early 21st century saw love affairs as a way for the intelligent, independent women of the elite to form emotionally meaningful relationships outside marriages arranged for political purposes.[497] It is possible, however, that no such epidemic of adultery even existed; the law should perhaps be understood not as addressing a real problem that threatened society, but as one of the instruments of social control exercised by Augustus that cast the state, and by extension himself, in the role of paterfamilias to all Rome.[498]
Personal anxieties about infidelity, within marriage or not, are reflected in magic spells intended to "fix" (defixiones) or bind the other person's erotic attachment.[499] Spells were also available for interrogating the beloved about fidelity. One magical papyrus from Roman Egypt recommends placing the heart of a hoopoe on a sleeping woman's genitals to induce truthful answers; another says that the tongue of a hen placed on her lips or breast will cause her to reveal the name of the man she loves.[500]
Literature of the Late Republic and Principate, particularly the satires of Horace and Juvenal, offer various depictions, or perhaps fantasies, of how a wronged husband might subject his wife's lover to humiliation and punishment. In these literary treatments, the adulterer is castrated, beaten, raped by the husband himself or his slaves, or penetrated anally with a mullet, a type of prized fish cultivated by elite Romans as a leisure activity (otium). References to such acts do not appear in the letters of Cicero nor the histories of Tacitus, and may be fictional exaggerations.[501] Ovid makes fun of the jealous husband as lacking in sophistication: "The man who's excessively wounded by his wife's adulterous affairs is a hick."[502] Ovid's predecessor Catullus wrote poetry celebrating his adulterous affair with "Lesbia", his social superior, traditionally identified as Clodia. The cultivation of a laissez-faire attitude as a sign of urbanity may have prompted the provision of Augustus' adultery law that required a husband to divorce his wife and bring formal legal charges against her, or face charges himself for pimping (lenocinium).[503]
Sexuality was a "core feature" of ancient Roman slavery.[504] Because slaves were regarded as property under Roman law, an owner could use them for sex or hire them out to service other people.[505] Some scholars interpret "intimate and affectionate" references Cicero's letters[506] as indicating that he had a long-term homosexual relationship with his slave Tiro.[507] As Eva Cantarella stated bluntly, "the Roman paterfamilias was an absolute master, ... he exercised a power outside any control of society and the state. In this situation why on earth should he refrain from sodomising his houseboys?"[508][n 12] In describing the ideal partner in pederasty, Martial prefers a slave boy who "acts more like a free man than his master", that is, one who can frame the affair as a stimulating game of courtship.[509][510] But this form of sexual release thus held little erotic cachet: to use one's own slaves was "one step up from masturbation".[511] When figures identifiable as slaves appear in erotic art, they are performing routine tasks in the background, not taking part in sex acts.[512] In his work on the interpretation of dreams (c. 170 AD), Artemidorus takes a symbolic view of the sexual value of slaves: to dream of having sex with one's own female slave was a good thing, "for slaves are the dreamer's possession; therefore taking pleasure in them signifies the dreamer's being pleased with his own possessions".[513][514]
A Roman could exploit his own slaves for sex, but was not entitled to compel any enslaved person he chose to have sex, since the owner had the right to control his own property.[507] In the pursuit of sex with a slave who belonged to someone else, persuasion or threats might be employed.[510] A charge of rape could not be brought against a free man who forced a slave to have sex, since a slave lacked the legal standing that protected a citizen's body, but the owner could prosecute the rapist under the Lex Aquilia, a law pertaining to property damage.[428]
A slave's sexuality was closely controlled. Slaves had no right to legal marriage (conubium), though they could live together as husband and wife (contubernales). An owner usually restricted the heterosexual activities of his male slaves to females he also owned; any children born from these unions added to his wealth.[507] Cato, at a time when Rome's large-scale slave economy was still in early development, thought it good practice to monitor his slaves' sex lives, and required male slaves to pay a fee for access to their female fellow slaves.[515]
If an owner found that his male slave was having a sexual relationship with a free woman, the law required that he warn the couple three times to break it off. If the affair continued, he had the right to take ownership of the woman.[507] References to women from respectable families having sex with a male slave are infrequent, indicating that male writers were not preoccupied with the risk of it.[516] Cicero offers no examples in either the gossipy parts of his letters or in court cases where he attacks the reputation of a woman: he accuses Clodia of incest and of running her house like a brothel, but not of sleeping with slaves. Not even Messalina or Sallust's Sempronia is accused in the hostile sources of having sex with a slave.[517] Sex with a slave was among the trumped-up charges against Claudia Octavia, the wife of Nero, when Poppaea Sabina campaigned to take her place,[518] but mostly it was a matter for innuendo or insult against a husband who failed to prevent it.[519]
Despite the external controls and restrictions placed on a slave's sexuality, Roman art and literature perversely often portray slaves as lascivious, voyeuristic, and even sexually knowing.[520] One of the themes of Roman comedy that distinguishes it from its Greek models is the depiction of master-slave relations.[521]
Freeborn Romans who fell into slavery were supposed to be protected from sexual exploitation, as indicated by two different stories recorded by ancient historians.[522] Before the abolition of debt bondage in the 4th century BC,[523] free Romans were sometimes driven to sell themselves or their children into slavery when they were overwhelmed by debt. According to Livy, debt slavery (nexum) was abolished as a direct result of the attempted sexual abuse of a freeborn youth who served as surety for his father's debt[524] with the usurer Lucius Papirius. The boy, Gaius Publilius, was notably beautiful, and Papirius insisted that as a bond slave he was required to provide sexual services. When Publilius refused, Papirius had him stripped and whipped. The youth then took to the streets to display his injuries, and an outcry among the people led the consuls to convene the senate. The political process eventually led to the Lex Poetelia Papiria, which prohibited holding debtors in bondage for their debt and required instead that the debtor's property be used as collateral. The law thus established that the integrity of a Roman citizen's body was fundamental to the concept of libertas, political liberty, in contrast to the uses to which a slave's body was subject.[n 13] In this and a similar incident reported by Valerius Maximus, corporal punishment and sexual abuse are seen as similar violations of the citizen's freedom from physical compulsion, in contrast to the slave's physical vulnerability.[n 14][525]
Some sexual protections could be extended to slaves. The conduct of slaves reflected generally on the respectability of the household, and the materfamilias in particular was judged by her female slaves' sexual behavior, which was expected to be moral or at least discreet. This decorum may have limited the exploitation of female slaves that were part of the familia.[526] Seneca expressed Stoic indignation that a male slave should be groomed effeminately and used sexually, because a slave's human dignity should not be debased.[527] The burgeoning trade in eunuch slaves during the early Empire prompted legislation under the emperor Hadrian that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will "for lust or gain".[528] Legal agreements on the sale of a slave might include a ne serva prostituatur covenant that prohibited the employment of the slave as a prostitute. Although concern for the slave's welfare may have been a factor in individual cases, this legal restriction seems also to have been intended to shield the male citizen owner from the shame or infamia associated with pimping and prostitution. The ne serva covenant remained in force for subsequent sales, even if the buyer was initially unaware of it, and if it was violated, the illegally prostituted slave was granted freedom.[529]
Prostitution was legal throughout the Roman Empire in all periods.[470] Most prostitutes were slaves or freedwomen.[15] Prostitutes in Rome had to register with the aediles. Despite what might seem to be a clear distinction as a matter of law, the jurist Ulpian opined that an openly promiscuous woman brought the status of prostitute upon herself, even if she accepted no money.[530] The Augustan moral legislation that criminalized adultery exempted prostitutes, who could legally have sex with a married man. Encouraged to think of adultery as a matter of law rather than morality, a few socially prominent women even chose to avoid prosecution for adultery by registering themselves as prostitutes.[531]
Confused status frequently results in plot complications in the comedies of Plautus and Terence. Obstacles to love arise when a young man falls in love with, and wishes to marry, a non-citizen prostitute, and are overcome when the young woman's true status as a freeborn virgin is revealed. The well-brought-up freeborn virgin is marriageable, and the non-citizen prostitute is not.[532] The relation of these comic situations to real life is problematic: Plautus and Terence drew on Greek models which are often little known, and so the extent to which they incorporated Roman social behaviors and attitudes is hard to determine. Elaine Fantham has observed that prolonged military campaigning in Greece and Asia Minor had introduced Roman men to a more sophisticated standard of luxury and pleasure, perhaps reflected by comedy: the young man acts out his infatuation with an expensive courtesan instead of a family slave or common prostitute.[533]
Prostitutes appear in erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum, including wall paintings from buildings identified as brothels, in which they are often nude except for a strapless bra (strophium). The paintings illustrate various sexual positions that contradict some scholarly claims about the preferences of Roman men in heterosexual acts.[534] Literary sources record that prostitutes wore distinctive clothing, often gaudy dresses of see-through silk. They were the only Roman women who wore the toga, the distinctive dress of a free Roman male. This crossing of gender boundaries has been interpreted variously.[535]
Prostitutes and pimps were among those professions in Rome categorized as infames, enjoying few legal protections even if they were technically not slaves.[536] Infamia as a legal status once entered into could not be escaped: a prostitute was "not only a woman who practices prostitution, but also one who has formerly done so, even though she has ceased to act in this manner; for the disgrace is not removed even if the practice is subsequently discontinued".[537]
In the Roman moral tradition, pleasure (voluptas) was a dubious pursuit. The Stoic moralist Seneca contrasts pleasure with virtue (virtus):
Virtue you will find in the temple, in the forum, in the senate house, standing before the city walls, dusty and sunburnt, her hands rough; pleasure you will most often find lurking around the baths and sweating rooms, and places that fear the police, in search of darkness, soft, effete, reeking of wine and perfume, pallid or else painted and made up with cosmetics like a corpse.[538][539]
Roman ambivalence toward physical pleasure is expressed by the infamia of those whose bodies provided it publicly.[541] In a technical sense, infamia was an official loss of legal standing for a freeborn person as a result of misconduct, including sexual misconduct, but the word could be used for ill repute in general.[542] Infamia was an "inescapable consequence" of certain professions, including not only prostitutes and pimps but performers such as actors, dancers, and gladiators:[543] "These figures were the objects of other people's desires. They served the pleasure of others. They were tarnished by exposure to the public gaze."[148]
Those labeled infames (singular infamis) were liable to corporal punishment, usually reserved for slaves.[544] Under the Republic and early Empire, one of the ways in which the citizen's liberty was defined was through the freedom of his body from physical coercion or punishment such as flogging by authorities.[545] However, citizens who chose to become public performers and use their bodies to offer public pleasure[546] were excluded from these physical protections, and could be beaten or otherwise subjected to violence.[547] Any free man who became a gladiator took an oath to suffer branding, bondage, beating, and potential death by the sword.[548] Both glamorized and despised, the gladiator was supposed to exert a compelling sexual allure over women.[549][550]
Actors were sexually ambiguous, in part because they could imitate women,[551][552] and were attractive to both men and women. The dictator Sulla had a long-term affair with an actor;[553] Maecenas, the arts patron and advisor to Augustus, was in love with the actor Bathyllus;[554] and women of the Imperial family are alleged to have had affairs with actors.[555] Actresses were assumed to be prostitutes.[535]
A man who enjoyed receiving anal sex or providing oral sex, often characterized as a cinaedus, might also be stigmatized as infamis, though if he was a citizen he could retain his legal standing.[148][556]
Archaeological evidence, primarily from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and literary sources seem to indicate the existence of private "sex clubs" in some Roman homes (domūs).[557] Most Romans lived in apartments (insulae); the domus was a large, independent dwelling owned by a family of considerable means, and in Rome was central to the family's social identity. A few of these residences have rooms decorated with pornographic art not differing from that found in identified brothels; in some cases, an erotically decorated room has its own exterior door to admit visitors[558] who would normally enter the home through the main doors leading to the atrium, where the family displayed ancestral images and other trophies of respectability.
It has been suggested[559] that these rooms were meant to evoke the ambiance of a brothel for the hosting of exclusive sex parties, such as the one described by the historian Valerius Maximus as occurring in 52 BC with a consul and the tribunes of the plebs in attendance:
Just as notorious was that party arranged for Metellus Scipio when he was consul and for the people's tribunes—by Gemellus, their tribunicial errand boy. He was a free man by birth, but twisted by his business to play the servant's role. Society gave a collective blush: he established a whorehouse in his own house, and pimped out Mucia and Flavia, each of them notable for her father and husband, along with the aristocratic boy Saturninus.[560] Bodies in shameless submission, ready to come for a game of drunken sex! A banquet not for honoring consul and tribunes, but indicting them![561]
The existence of sex clubs may provide background for Late Republican political smears about public figures whose party guests included prostitutes,[562] and for the notorious Imperial whorehouse Caligula established on the Palatine, where he prostituted married women and freeborn youths.[563]
Around 90 positions for intercourse are recorded in the ancient world.[564] Both Roman erotic art and Latin literature, most famously a passage from Ovid's Art of Love,[565] depict various forms of copulation (concubitus varii) and sexual positions (figurae veneris). The Latin terms are Ovid's, from his description of how the most aristocratic households displayed erotic paintings among their art collections.[566][567] Sexual variety fascinated Romans. Astrology was thought to influence one's preferences and pursuits: people born when the sun, moon, and planets were in certain astrological signs[n 15] were supposed to be inclined toward secret vice or "unnatural" forms of intercourse, or to becoming pathici.[568]
According to Suetonius, Tiberius had a vast collection of sex manuals and erotic art, including a painting of the mythological huntress Atalanta performing oral sex on Meleager, a work that the emperor regarded as worth more than a million sesterces.[38]
Lucretius observes that sex acts may have different purposes. Prostitutes employ certain movements to give their customers pleasure and avoid pregnancy. Wives wishing to conceive are advised against moving vigorously during intercourse, since such movements "knock the ploughshare from the furrow and misdirect the sowing of the seed".[569][99] Lucretius recommends "doggy style" (a tergo) for couples trying to conceive, because it mimics the natural procreative sex of animals.[570][571]
The basic obscene verb for a man having sex with a woman is futuo, "I fuck." Although not found in polite literature,[572] futuo was not necessarily insulting or aggressive; it was used transactionally for sex between a prostitute and her client. In a passionate or loving setting, it may have been spoken as an arousing intimacy.[573] A fragment from a play by Plautus suggests that acquiring an erotic vocabulary was part of a woman's introduction to sexuality within marriage: a virgin explains that she has not yet learned the words suitable for the wedding night (nupta verba).[574][575] A woman's easy use of the word in other settings indicates her independence of social norms. "Either fuck me or let's fight it out," the formidable Fulvia is quoted as challenging the future Augustus.[576] In graffiti at Pompeii written by both men and women, forms of futuo are used to announce prowess, satisfaction, or availability.
Thomas Habinek has claimed that "Ovid invents the category of the heterosexual male", since, he says, it was considered normal for a Roman man to have same-sex relations.[577] Ovid radically rejects the Roman tradition of pederasty, and says he takes more pleasure (voluptas) in making love with a woman as his equal. Sexual pleasure between man and woman, he emphasizes, should be mutual;[578][579][580] Ovid instructs his male pupils to make love to a woman slowly,[579] as he advises men not to conclude the sex act without enabling their female partners to achieve orgasm.[579] In one passage, he seems to be recommending simultaneous orgasm:[579]
But don't you fail your lady, hoisting bigger sails, and don't let her get ahead of you on the track either; race to the finish together: that's when pleasure is full, when man and woman lie there, equally vanquished.[581]
"Riding" is a common metaphor for the sex act, particularly used of the woman-on-top position.[583] The mulier equitans ("woman riding") does not appear in Greek vase painting[584] but is popular in Roman art. Ovid recommends it for the petite woman, as a tall woman may not wish to seem too towering in relation to the man.[585] Supposedly favored by the mythological couple Hector and Andromache, even though she was of legendary height, it was jokingly called "the Hector horse".[586] One relief from Roman Gaul showing the mulier equitans plays on the metaphor by picturing a galloping horse within a frame in the background.[587]
In art, the mulier equitans convention has the woman posed frontally to expose her body in full to the viewer, often emphasizing her depilated pubic area. The significance of this position in Roman culture has been interpreted variously. Kenneth Dover thought it might represent the relative sexual emancipation of Roman women.[588] From a woman's perspective, the position would grant independence of movement for her own pleasure.[589] Paul Veyne, however, thought it emphasized that the woman had to do the work of servicing the man, who lies there and receives pleasure without effort.[590] The position may have been favored for art because it pleased both male and female viewers: for men, it offered an unobstructed view of the woman's body, as recommended by Ovid, and of the penis entering the vagina; women saw the visually dominant female figure playing the active role.[591]
The position is also called Venus pendula conversa, "perpendicular Venus with the woman facing toward (the man)"; for its reverse (Venus pendula aversa, "perpendicular Venus with the woman facing away"), the man lies down with the woman on top, but she turns her back and faces his feet. This version is rarely mentioned or depicted, but is found in Roman art set in Nilotic Egypt.[592]
An equestrian metaphor is also found for the cinaedus "riding" on top in anal sex,[593][594] and at least once of lesbians who "take turns riding and move with the Moon as witness".[595][596]
The Latin verb for "to penetrate anally, bugger" is pedicare. The object was usually but not always male. Pedicare was a blunt and non-euphemistic word, and can be used in a threatening manner, as notoriously by Catullus in Carmen 16, or in general to mean "fuck you".[597][288] The etymology of pedicare is unclear, but some have thought it derived from Greek paidika, having to do with pederasty.[598] The basic word for "anus" was culus. Common metaphors are ficus, "fig", and anus, "ring," which was considered a decorous term and was standard in medical texts.[599]
Men were said to "take it like a woman" (muliebria pati, "to undergo womanly things") when they were anally penetrated, but when a man performed anal sex on a woman, she was thought of as playing the boy's role.[600] Martial, for instance, is emphatic that anal sex is better with boys than with women; when his wife objects that she provides him with anal sex in an effort to preserve his fidelity, he taunts her with the inferiority of her anus compared with a boy's.[601][602]
The figura veneris in which the woman crouches to lift her buttocks, called "the lioness", may be intended for anal penetration, since boys in Greek art can be portrayed in the same position; with a female partner, it may be difficult to distinguish in art from a tergo (rear entry).[603] Culibonia ("good anal") was a humorous term for a prostitute with this speciality.[604] Avoiding pregnancy may have been one motive for female prostitutes to offer anal intercourse.[605]
Os impurum, "filthy mouth" or "impure mouth", was a term of abuse especially for those who provided oral sex.[606] "Oral turpitude"[607] was a favorite form of invective for Catullus,[608] Horace, and Martial.[607] An accusation of having an os impurum is an "extreme obscenity",[609] so vile that Cicero reserved it for men of lower standing than himself,[610] only implying that their debasement tainted their more powerful patrons who were his real targets.[611]
It was a convention of obscenely comic verse that oral sex caused bad breath that was nearly toxic.[612][613] "Whores of the alleyways" are contaminated from giving oral sex; Catullus refers to "the foul saliva of a pissed-over whore".[614][612] The urinary function of the penis makes oral sex particularly repulsive to Catullus, who elsewhere reviles a Celtiberian for brushing his teeth in urine.[615] Martial jokes that a fine perfume turned to garum, fish sauce, when it was sniffed by a man whose breath was putrid from oral sex.[616] In another of Martial's epigrams, a fellator breathes on a hot cake to cool it down and turns it to excrement.[617] The bad breath and rotten teeth that are attributed to performing oral sex represent moral decay and a general corruption of the mouth's positive functions as the organ of a citizen's persuasive speech.[618][619][620]
Because of the stigma attached to providing physical pleasure, a man who performed oral sex on a woman was subject to mockery. Cunnilingus typically appears in Roman art only as part of a reciprocal act, with the woman fellating her male partner in some variation of the "69" position.[621] However, a wall painting from Pompeii (shown here) represents a virtually unique role reversal in giving oral sex. The woman who receives cunnilingus is tall and shapely, well-groomed, and brazenly nude except for jewelry. The male figure is relatively small, crouching subserviently, and fully clothed; he looks anxious or furtive.[622] The situation is so extreme that it was probably meant to be humorous as well as titillating; other paintings in this group show a series of sex acts, at least some of which could be seen as transgressive or parodic.[623]
There is some evidence that women could hire male prostitutes to provide cunnilingus. Graffiti at Pompeii advertise the prices male prostitutes charged for cunnilingus, in the same price range as females performing fellatio; however, the graffiti could be intended as insults to the men named, and not as actual advertisements.[624] One graffito is perhaps intended as political invective: "Vote Isidore for aedile; he's the best at licking cunt!"[625]
The Latin verb fellare is usually used for a woman performing oral sex on a man.[288] Accusing a man of fellating another man was possibly the worst insult in all Roman invective.[626] It was an act that might be requested from women who were infames,[288][627] and not something a husband in a respectable household would have expected from his wife.[628] Fellatio was seen as a "somewhat laughable" preference for older men who have trouble maintaining an erection,[288] but graffiti show that the skills of a good fellatrix were enthusiastically utilized.[629] Fellatio was a fairly uncommon subject in Roman art.[628]
Irrumatio is a forced form of fellatio, almost always against another man. Forcing someone to be a receptacle for oral sex was proof of virility, something to boast about, as indicated by the Priapeia and the poems of Catullus and Martial. It was also threatened as a punishment,[630] particularly for adulterers.[288] Martial urges a wronged husband who has already cut off the adulterous man's ears and nose to complete the humiliation by befouling his mouth with oral rape.[631][288]
Group sex appears in literary sources, graffiti, and art.[632] Suetonius says that the emperor Tiberius enjoyed watching group sex, and described "chains" arranged of girls and boys:
In his retreat at Capri, he put together a bedroom that was the theater of his secret debauches. There he assembled from all over companies of male and female prostitutes, and inventors of monstrous couplings (which he called spintriae), so that, intertwining themselves and forming a triple chain (triplici serie connexi), they mutually prostituted themselves in front of him to fire up his flagging desires.[633]
Most threesomes depict two men penetrating a woman. A medallion from Roman Gaul shows two men reclining on a bed, one on the right and one on the left, with their legs extended under a woman between them. Another shows a woman "riding" a man who reclines, while a man standing behind her parts her legs to enter. A far less common variation has one man entering a woman from the rear while he in turn receives anal sex from a man standing behind him, a scenario found in Catullus, Carmen 56 as well as art. Catullus makes it clear that this concatenation was considered humorous,[634] possibly because the man in the center could be a cinaedus, a male who liked to receive anal sex but who was also considered seductive to women.[635]
Foursomes also appear in Roman art, typically with two women and two men, sometimes in same-sex pairings. One example of a foursome from the Suburban Baths at Pompeii demonstrates what Romans saw as the superior role. A woman on the far right kneels beside a bed to perform cunnilingus on a woman lying on it; this woman in turn fellates a man who kneels above her. The man is himself receiving anal sex from a fourth figure, who is represented as the "victor": he acts only to fulfill his own sexual gratification without providing it to others, and looks directly at the viewer with a triumphant wave of the hand.[636]
A Latin epigram by the Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius (4th century AD) is a riddle that depends on familiarity with the configurations of group sex:
"Three men in bed together: two are committing debauchery (stuprum), two are being debauched."
"Doesn't that make four men?"
"You're mistaken: the man on either end each counts as a single offense, but the one in the middle both acts and is acted on."[637]
Masturbation is little noted in the sources for Roman sexuality.[638] The Romans evidently preferred the left hand for masturbation.[639] Martial has a few mentions in his poems, but considers it an inferior form of sexual release resorted to by slaves, though he admits to masturbating when a beautiful slave-boy is too expensive to obtain: "my hand relieved me as a substitute for Ganymede".[640][641][642] It was a longstanding if infrequent theme in Latin satire; one of the few surviving fragments of Lucilius, Rome's earliest satirist, jokes about a personified penis (Mutto) whose girlfriend Laeva ("Lefty") wipes away his "tears".[643] A graffito from Pompeii reads "when my worries oppress my body, with my left hand I release my pent-up fluids".[644]
The etymology of the Latin verb masturbari is unclear. It has been argued that it is a compound of turbare 'agitate' and mas 'male', in an otherwise unattested usage for 'penis'.[645] One traditional view sees man(u)- 'hand' with an altered form of stuprare 'to defile, commit a sexual wrong against'.[646] Calvert Watkins proposed that it derives from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'marrow, brain', since ancient medical writers believed that semen descended from the brain through the bones;[647] if this is correct, the word turbare may still have influenced the formation in Latin.[648]
The mythological tradition is full of sexual encounters between humans and other animals, especially mortal women and gods in the guise of animals. Bestiality is a particular characteristic of intercourse with Jupiter (Greek Zeus), who visits Leda as a swan and Europa as a bull. The Minotaur is born when Pasiphaë feels such sexual attraction for a bull that she has herself disguised as a cow to mate with him. Satyrs, known for their sexual voracity, are often pictured with bestial features.[649]
Mock bestiality is recorded as a form of sexual roleplay in Imperial Rome. The actor Bathyllus was known for an erotic dance in which he dressed as Leda having sex with the swan; the women watching were variously aroused.[650] Bestiality is also a theme of Apuleius' novel Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass), in which the protagonist, transformed into a donkey, is desired by a wealthy noble matron, just as Pasiphaë desired the bull.[651]
Nero is supposed to have enjoyed a form of bondage with either male or female partners in which he dressed in animal skins to attack their genitals, just as condemned prisoners were bound and attacked by wild animals in the arena.[652] The historian Dio tells of how a prostitute pretended to be a leopard for the gratification of a senator.[653]
There is some indication that violent sexual encounters, like other mythological scenarios, were acted out as punitive entertainment in the arena. The poet Martial praises a scenario for its fidelity to the Pasiphaë myth.[654][655][656] The logistics of staging a sex act between a woman and a bull is a matter of speculation; if "Pasiphaë" were a condemned criminal to be tortured and killed, the animal may have been induced by the application of "vaginal secretion from a cow in season".[657] In Apuleius' novel, a female poisoner condemned ad bestias is scheduled to appear in the arena for intercourse with the protagonist in his bestial form.[658]
In the mythological tradition, Hermaphroditus was a beautiful youth who was the son of Hermes (Roman Mercury) and Aphrodite (Venus).[659] Like many other divinities and heroes, he had been nursed by nymphs,[660] but the evidence that he himself received cult devotion among the Greeks is sparse.[661] Ovid wrote the most influential narrative[662][663] of how Hermaphroditus became androgynous, emphasizing that although the handsome youth was on the cusp of sexual adulthood, he rejected love as Narcissus had and likewise at the site of a reflective pool. There the water nymph Salmacis saw and desired him. He spurned her, and she pretended to withdraw until, thinking himself alone, he undressed to bathe in her waters. She then flung herself upon him, and prayed that they might never be parted. The gods granted this request, and thereafter the body of Hermaphroditus contained both male and female.[664] As a result, men who drank from the waters of the spring Salmacis supposedly "grew soft with the vice of impudicitia", according to the lexicographer Festus.[665][666] The myth of Hylas, the young companion of Hercules who was abducted by water nymphs, shares with Hermaphroditus and Narcissus the theme of the dangers that face the beautiful adolescent male as he transitions to adult masculinity, with varying outcomes for each.[667]
In contemporary English, "hermaphrodite" has acquired pejorative connotations in referring to people born with physical characteristics of both sexes (see intersex); in antiquity, however, the figure of the so-called hermaphrodite was a primary focus of questions pertaining to gender identity.[663][661] The hermaphrodite represented a "violation of social boundaries, especially those as fundamental to daily life as male and female".[668]
Depictions of Hermaphroditus were very popular among the Romans. The dramatic situation in paintings often elicits a "double take" on the part of the viewer, or expresses the theme of sexual frustration.[669] Hermaphroditus is often in the company of a satyr, a figure of bestial sexuality known for subjecting an unsuspecting or often sleeping victim to non-consensual sex; the satyr in scenes with Hermaphroditus is usually shown to be surprised or repulsed, to humorous effect. In a few works, Hermaphroditus is strong enough to ward off his would-be attacker, but in others he shows his willingness to engage in sex, even if the satyr seems no longer inclined:[670]
Artistic representations of Hermaphroditus bring to the fore the ambiguities in sexual differences between women and men as well as the ambiguities in all sexual acts. ... Hermaphroditus gives an eternally ambiguous answer to a man's curiosity about a woman's sexual experience—and vice versa. ... (A)rtists always treat Hermaphroditus in terms of the viewer finding out his/her actual sexual identity. ... Hermaphroditus stands for both the physical and, more important, the psychological impossibility of ever understanding the feelings of the beloved. Hermaphroditus is a highly sophisticated representation, invading the boundaries between the sexes that seem so clear in classical thought and representation.[671]
Macrobius describes a masculine form of "Venus" (Aphrodite) who received cult on Cyprus; she had a beard and male genitals, but wore women's clothing. The deity's worshippers cross-dressed, men wearing women's clothes, and women men's.[672] The Latin poet Laevius wrote of worshipping "nurturing Venus" whether female or male (sive femina sive mas).[673] The figure was sometimes called Aphroditos. In several surviving examples of Greek and Roman sculpture, she is found in the attitude anasyrmene, from the Greek verb anasyromai, "to pull up one's clothes".[674] The love goddess lifts her garments to reveal her masculine attribute, male genitalia, a gesture that traditionally held apotropaic or magical power.[675]
In his chapter on anthropology and human physiology in the encyclopedic Natural History, Pliny notes that "there are even those who are born of both sexes, whom we call hermaphrodites, at one time androgyni" (andr-, "man", and gyn-, "woman", from the Greek).[676][677] The Sicilian historian Diodorus (1st century BC) wrote that "there are some who declare that the coming into being of creatures of a kind such as these are marvels (terata), and being born rarely, they announce the future, sometimes for evil and sometimes for good".[678] Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) described a hermaphrodite fancifully as those who "have the right breast of a man and the left of a woman, and after coitus in turn can both sire and bear children".[679]
In traditional Roman religion, a hermaphroditic birth was a kind of prodigium, an occurrence that signalled a disturbance of the pax deorum, Rome's treaty with the gods, as Diodorus indicated.[680] Livy records an incident during the Second Punic War when the discovery of a four-year-old hermaphrodite prompted an elaborate series of expiations: on the advice of the haruspices, the child was enclosed in a chest, carried out to sea, and allowed to drown.[681] Other rituals followed. A hermaphrodite found in 133 BC was drowned in the local river; executing the hermaphroditic person by drowning seems to have been the prescribed way to repair the perceived violation of the natural order.[682]
Pliny observed that while hermaphrodites were once considered portents (prodigia), in his day they had become objects of delight (deliciae); they were among the human curiosities of the sort that the wealthy might acquire at the "monsters' market" at Rome described by Plutarch.[683] Under Roman law, a hermaphrodite had to be classed as either male or female; no third gender existed as a legal category.[684]
In 55 BC, Pompeius Magnus ("Pompey the Great") opened his theater complex dedicated to Venus Victrix, "Venus the Conqueror", which continued into late antiquity as a venue for performing arts, literature, landscape design, visual art, and architecture.[685] The Theater of Pompey was in many ways the permanent monument of his military triumph six years earlier. Among the displays were portrait galleries of female writers and of courtesans; a series of images illustrated freakish births that had served as war omens. In general, intellectuality and culture are represented as feminine and Hellenized, while war and politics are Roman and masculine.[686] Statues personified fourteen conquered nationes ("nations, peoples") as women in ethnic or "barbarian" dress.[687][688]
Other monuments throughout the Empire, including the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias and the altar of the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls at Lugdunum (modern Lyon, France), as well as various coins, embody conquered territories and peoples as women: Roman military power defeats a "feminized" nation.[689][690][691] Although the figures from Pompey's theater have not survived, relief panels from Aphrodisias include scenes such as a heroically nude Claudius forcing the submission of Britannia, whose right breast is bare, and Nero dragging away a dead Armenia, a composition that recalls the defeat of the Amazon Penthesilea by Achilles.[692] A particularly well-documented series of coins depicts Iudaea Capta, a female personification of the Jewish nation as captive, issued after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD.[693]
Sexual conquest is a metaphor widely used by the Romans for imperialism,[692] but not always straightforwardly for Roman domination. Horace famously described the Romans as taken captive by captive Greece: the image of Roman culture colonized from within by a civilization they had defeated but perceived as intellectually and aesthetically superior might be expressed by myths in which a man raped, abducted, or enslaved a woman but fell in love with her, as embodied for instance by Achilles and Briseis.[694]
Circumcised barbarians, along with any others who revealed the glans penis, were the butt of ribald humor. For Greek art portrays the foreskin, often drawn in meticulous detail, as an emblem of male beauty; and children with congenitally short foreskins were sometimes subjected to a treatment, known as epispasm, that was aimed at elongation.
— Jacob Neusner, Approaches to Ancient Judaism, New Series: Religious and Theological Studies (1993), p. 149, Scholars Press.
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