One’s class, social status, and civic responsibility were adhered to more strictly by the Romans than by the Greeks. Roman society tended to be more misogynistic than its Greek predecessor and therefore developed a sexual system by which both women and slaves were viewed as male property and denied any bit of freedom. While most acts of homosexuality by the Romans were confined to encounters between masters and their slaves, and while many philosophers cautioned against pederasty, same-sex love was common enough during the periods of the Roman Republic and Empire to be documented by several Roman historians and biographers. Fuelling homosexuality’s increased practice in imperial Rome was the fact that the majority of the Roman emperors were sexually ambivalent and practised bisexuality. Based on ancient writings and art, homosexuality was not as important a philosophical issue for Romans as it had been for the Greeks. However, many Roman writers did write disapprovingly of it and yet they themselves sometimes engaged in the very act of ‘Greek love’ that they publicly condemned.
Most mentions of homosexuality in the Roman world uphold a firm belief in the value of maintaining social decorum. When homosexuality is discussed, it is used to confirm social stigmas against male passivity and the corrupting influences of sodomy. As in Greece, to be anally penetrated or to perform oral sex were unbecoming of a potential or confirmed Roman citizen and were acts reserved for women (who were technically not considered citizens), male and female slaves and prostitutes. The taboo against anal sex was so strong that, contrary to its practice in ancient Greece, pederasty was strictly forbidden in ancient Rome. Visual imagery of intergenerational courtship and consummation associated with the Greek notion of idealised male love was banned in Roman art. According to John Clarke, however, it is debatable as to what extent the Romans of the late Republic and early Empire actually followed the Greek practice of homosexuality (Clarke, p.291). Although there is far less visual information for male-to-male sexual and erotic activity in Roman art than in Greek art, images of sexual activity – both heterosexual and homosexual – do form a large part of the visual record of Rome.
30. Achilles Binding the Wounds of Patroclus, 6th century BC.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.
Roman artists did not create homoerotic genre scenes or scenes of frank eroticism so popular on Greek vases. A sober morality characterised the Republican period. With the advent of the Roman Empire and influence and wealth from other cultures, Roman Republican morality soon gave way to a kind of sexual permissiveness. By the beginning of the first century AD, the strong taboo against passive men had eroded, and laws against sex with citizen boys were virtually ignored (Saslow, p.44). Many of the emperors of the empire openly indulged these and other sexual urges. Augustus and Nero are just two who readily come to mind – the latter being the most notorious. We are told that Emperor Tiberius, who reigned from 14–37 AD, installed a collection of erotic paintings, sculptures, and sexual manuals in a special suite at his pleasure retreat on the island of Capri. These were used as ‘training tools’ for his entourage of female prostitutes and harem of boys.
Hadrian became legendary as a married Roman emperor who fell passionately in love with an extraordinarily handsome young Bithynian man named Antinous. On a journey to Egypt in 130 AD, Antinous drowned under mysterious circumstances in the Nile. Distraught over his death and having been chastised by several Roman writers for “weeping like a woman”, Hadrian deified him, founded an Egyptian city in his honour (Antinopolis), and immortalised his sensual beauty in many commissioned statues, coins, and medallions that were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. Hadrian’s deeds took place during a time when mutual love within a heterosexual marriage was growing in importance and homosexual relationships seemed to be confined to sexual passions for slave boys. In this sense, Hadrian’s relationship with Antinous harks back to an earlier period of classical Athens in that the story is basically a real-life counterpart to the myth of Zeus and Ganymede – a myth (Jupiter and Ganymede or Catamitus) that was adopted and appreciated by the Romans.
Most of the statues created to immortalise Antinous are beardless ephebes heavily influenced by classical Greek art. Hadrian himself admired Greek culture so much that he grew a beard in emulation of Greek philosophers. Towards the end of the Roman Empire, engagement in sexual practices of all kinds became outlets for an increasingly debauched and materialistic society that would gradually decline and eventually come to an end. There were Roman writers such as Juvenal, Horace, and Martial who railed against the abuses of sexuality, but they were largely ignored. Increased tolerance of homosexuality and other forms of sexual practice was one of several effects, not the cause, of the decline of Roman influence and power.
31. Pan Teaching the Flute to Olympos, 4th century BC.
Marble. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.
32. Barberini Faun, c. 200 BC. Marble, h: 125 cm.
Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich.
33. Banquet Scene from North Wall of the Tomb of the Diver, c. 480 BC.
Museum of Paestum, Italy.
Our knowledge of Roman provincial and domestic art, architecture, and aspects of daily life, comes primarily from the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum – both of which were preserved under volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Although Pompeii was not a Roman city, per se, it fell under the jurisdiction of Roman control. Pompeian civilisation and approaches to sex and love were an offshoot of Hellenistic Greece – a focus on sensuality and hedonism devoid of the earlier Greek notions of virtue, beauty, and form. The pottery, graffiti, and mural art discovered at Pompeii provide some evidence that there was indeed a visible homosexual subculture. Pompeians were notorious for celebrating sexuality as a source of strength and fertility. In Pompeii, the cult of Dionysos and the cult of the phallus were widespread and there are many walls carved with or otherwise decorated with disembodied erect phalluses (as signposts of brothels) and scenes of group sex. The phallus was taken as a divine symbol, associated with Hermes, the god of fertility and good fortune. It appeared often in sculptures, as fountain ornaments, or as decorative architectural detailing. Phalluses were most frequently found on herms or rectangular pillars surmounted by a human head and intended to ward off evil and bring prosperity.
It is on the frescoed and graffiti-filled walls of public buildings and in the private homes of Pompeii where we get a glimpse into the sexual preferences and activities of common culture. It was during the Augustan period that a “domestication of desire” had occurred both in Rome and in its provinces. That is, both upper class (including the emperor himself) and lower class people possessed and displayed little paintings, wall frescos, and decorative objects in their homes that showed mythological characters (e.g. satyrs, nymphs, Pan, hermaphrodites) and human couples engaged in a variety of sexual acts and positions (Clarke, pp.286–87). The representation of sex in its multiple aspects had become fashionable in Pompeii. In the first century AD, scenes of lovemaking of varying quality could be found in Pompeian bedrooms, dining rooms, or in public baths, hotels, and brothels.
The erotic functions and décor of Pompeian buildings, from private homes to bordellos, were complemented by the decorative arts used inside them. Wealthy patrons commissioned silver or gold drinking vessels and serving pieces, illustrating many kinds of scenes, sometimes erotic, to amuse banquet guests. The most striking example of this kind of homoerotic decorative art is the Warren Cup.
The Warren Cup is a luxury drinking vessel made of silver and created for