Uncovering Sex Lives of the Romans | With Honor Cargill-Martin

sex we wouldn't be here without it and you know who loved sex the Romans di from popular TV series to kinky paintings there is a recurring image today of Romans as sex mad degenerates and although there are crazy sex stories in the dozens from the Roman period when it comes to their sex lives well there's a lot to unpack in this video we're going to take a deep dive into it so get ready lots of boners stuff coming your way sexual references are plenty we're going to be talking about some of the maddest sex stories written by Roman authors we'll explore the iconic erotic imagery that has been found in Roman sites all across the Mediterranean and Beyond Rob why is there a huge penis on the wall well there a symbol of of protection we look at who it was and who it wasn't acceptable for Romans to marry and just why Gladiators became such sex symbols joining me is historian huk Caro Martin here to explain many of these stories much better than I ever could oh and don't forget to like And subscribe so first off who were the Romans only one of the most extreme ordinary civilizations of ancient history from the city of Rome in central Italy the Romans expanded to control an Empire that stretched from the Euphrates river in the Middle East to Northern Britain they also endured for a massive period of time more than a thousand years of history and of course over those hundreds of years great changes and developments occurred within this civilization one of Rome's kind of real strengths as a civilization is its ability to constantly adapt and kind of recreate itself that's what takes it from this kind of Tiny Village in the middle of Italy to this Empire that spans the entire Mediterranean world it's its economic systems its legal systems it's kind of social systems change drastically and of course we would expect kind of sexual norms and sexual practice to change alongside that frustratingly it's incredibly difficult to kind of chart precisely what changes actually occuring of course our our source material is very patchy across the period of Roman history and also because people I think are not always particularly willing to be completely open and honest particularly in kind of written sources about their S size so what types of sources do we have for learning about sex in Roman times well there's a big mix first off we've got surviving literature we've got the writings of historians and biographers that are an absolute treasure trop for some crazy sex stories often Associated either with Emperors empresses Statesmen or statesman's wives then there's the poetry and it's not all high-end stuff I think poetry is both extraordinary and an extraordinarily difficult Source when we're trying to reconstruct kind of Roman sex lives we have this incredible Source material of Roman love poetry poets like catalus and and O and even the female poets or pikia um but when we're working with that poetry very often it feels like we're getting these kind of very direct insights into Roman relationships and love affairs that these poets are kind of bearing their hearts to us across Millennia of of history but is this the real feelings of the writer or are they kind of presenting themselves as this ideal of like a Latin kind of lover poet this was a society where Elite men wrote the history and made the rules when it came to what sex was acceptable in their eyes alongside the surviving literature we also have a great range of archaeology epitomized by a huge wealth of erotic imagery discovered all across the Roman Empire from the streets of Rome and Pompei to distant military Frontiers images of sex were everywhere now one image is more repeated than any other yep that's right it's the penis depictions of fallacies can be found all across the Roman Empire from Syria to Hadrian's Wall big question is why well the Romans had a very patriarchal society its generals Governors Emperors Chief priests poets historians and so on were almost always men the phus was a symbol of vity of masculinity that fit into Roman culture but the phace was also seen as lucky a symbol used to ward off against bad luck and something called The Evil Eye the evil eye is a type of folk belief um that's very kind of common across the ancient world and it is this fear that the the malignant and particularly the envious gazes of others might Place curses on you particularly also your your property and your family your children especially the the fallace is thought to be a symbol that is very protective against that partly because it's this symbol of masculinity and thus kind of control dominance um physical threat even and thus physical protection but also partly because it seemed to be potentially a slightly ridiculous image and that's why sometimes um these kind of phallic uh symbols and phallic amulets that we find in Pompei are really really kind of wild and over the top they've got Wings they've got literally kind of bells and whistles coming off them the intention there is to make them as kind of ridiculous as laughable and thus as distracting to the evil eye as as is possible this is why you find depictions of penises on Street walls outside shops on pendants and so on there are even a few examples visible on Hadrian's Wall they're everywhere in both everyday and Military settings at Pompei there's a popular myth that the fallaces on the street walls pointed your way to the brothel but that's not right if you follow the IC carvings around Pompei today you just get very lost this myth emerged as early as the 19th century and is still told to this day but it's not true but let's move on from FIS depictions and talk about Fresco Fresco were ancient Roman paintings which adorned the walls of many a well-to-do Romans house the iconic Villas as well as Grand public buildings they could display a wide variety of topics from Gladiator fights to bread sellers to mythology to absolutely outrageous sex scenes sometimes these sexual Fresco were in very private places like an elite couple's bedroom other times well they were much more public and I think that's really interesting in terms of how we read it because we perceive this to be distinctly erotic imagry but we certainly don't only find it in the sort of places you would want to be turned on I suppose it's not kept to the bedroom or to the brothel and so I think that really makes us reassess how we how we read this imagery perhaps it's not always intended to be erotic perhaps it's also to the Roman eye just kind of part of a wider visual idiom I suppose that's meant to evoke Beauty and sensuality and pleasure and luxury these images weren't there to promote mad sex lives if you told a Roman that they'd be horrified the Romans actually prided themselves on sexual moderation they had an abiding set of moral guidelines called the MOs mayorum the customs of the elders a largely accepted and Unwritten code of conduct now these Customs expected the ideal Roman man to demonstrate reasonable moderation and self-control in his sexual behavior ideal Roman women were expected to demonstrate total Chastity and yet in an attempt to live up to these idolized standards well the Romans always seemed In Perpetual affar that everything was getting worse and that sexual excess was becoming more and more widespread and in Greco Roman culture I think that there is this additional lay of sort of anxiety and and justification of that I suppose in that they have this mythological uh story that the world begins in this sort of ideal age of gold and then it degenerates into the age of silver and the age of bronze and so on and that that degeneration is the result of um the moral weakness of man let's be honest sex was everywhere the Romans loved it we wouldn't be here without it but how much sex you could have and with who well officially that depended very much on your status in Roman society and your gender sex to some extent is always going to be entwined with a status and gender on some level is to do with power and so it's going to be to do with status um and I think that those truths are redoubled in Roman society it defines like who you are allowed to have sex with and what sort of sexual acts you're allowed to engage in so your choice of sexual partner if you are a male senitor you might have very different options than if you are a a kind of lower class woman I think also there's this element in Roman thought about sexuality that places a huge degree of emphasis on penetration and this question of there being an active and a passive partner in the sexual act and I think once you're thinking about sexuality primarily through that framework it becomes very natural to then use sex as a place to start to think about gender roles um and kind of proper gender roles and also as a place to think about status in terms of kind of dominance control Power um agency things like that let's start by talking about marriage if you were a Roman man or woman then you were almost certainly going to get married at some point marriage was something that was expected of a Roman to continue the bloodline and do your duty to Rome women would marry very young in their teens usually to a man who was much older than themselves now these marriages were rarely for love they were primarily for uniting certain families and having children divorce was not uncommon either the man or the woman could initiate it remarriages also happened sometimes more than once now if you were a man marriage did not stop you from having Affairs in fact for elite men this was normal dare I say expected Behavior I think aairs that certain he seen as pretty acceptable for um Roman man that's partly reflective of uh kind of social norms and also the legal context of Roman society adarian as as a crime in Roman law is defined as sex with a married woman and the marital status of the man is irrelevant a married Roman man can have sex say with a prostitute or with an enslaved woman with no consequences at all that simply not defined as adultery under Roman law fears about sex and morality I think in Rome are much much much more connected to anxieties about sexual behavior that will undermine the proper working of the kind of patriarchal functions of society a Roman man could have affairs with women from lower classes in the Roman social hierarchy this included freed women I.E slaves who had been freed slaves sex workers and non-roman citizens remember the famous Cleopatra well in Roman eyes it was possible for Julius Caesar to have his long and public affair with her because she wasn't Roman she was the Queen of Egypt all the while Caesar's wife cernia was forced to turn a blind eye to a husband's activity but there were some women with which it was absolutely not okay for a Roman married man to have an affair with this included Roman Freeborn women who were members of a social class born free from slavery Roman kind of female Chastity is seen to be a a really significant kind of value in Roman society in kind of Ideal Roman society um and primarily the real concern is that in sleeping with a a Freeborn woman either kind of before her marriage or during her marriage to another Roman citizen man that is a real insult to either her father or to her husband that it undermines his position as head of the household and that it is an affront to his to his dignity as a Roman citizen some priestesses were also out of bounds for married Roman men particularly a group called The Vestal virgins a powerful and influential priesthood if it was discovered that any man had sex with a Vestal Virgin he would be publicly beaten to death and the Vestal involved would be buried alive for a Roman man there was a clear list of what woman he could and couldn't have an affair with although that didn't stop some very powerful men from bending the rules and taking to bed the wives of whichever Roman Elites they wished Julia Caesar has a sort of unparalleled reputation as a woman womanizer when he returns from his his Wars in goul during his triumphs his troops are recorded as kind of having these satirical chants about him where they say essentially lock up your wives the Bold adulterer is returned um Julia Caesar is rumored to sleep with at least two foreign queens and a foreign King he's also rumored to have this long running uh and pretty kind of well known affair with sevilia who is the mother of Brutus one of his future assassins almost all Roman emperors have accusations made against them about either their womanizing or absolutely the horrifying sexual kind of deviancy there are very often rumors that Emperors will invite centers to dinner then kind of take their wives away to a bedroom sleep with them and bring them back it's a story that's told about Caligula uh but it's also told about Augustus powerful men were allowed to bend the sexual rules in each Rome because ultimately who was going to stop them and I mean I don't think we could kind of live in society today and be particularly surprised that you know men with a huge amount of power were able to undertake kind of sexual actions and fulfill sexual desires that we wouldn't generally deem to be appropriate as a Roman woman the list of people you could have sex with was much more strict officially it was only your husband in Roman Society having a chased wife was super significant a man's reputation could be seriously damaged if rumors started spreading that his wife was being unfaithful and sleeping with other men relatively early in his career Julius Caesar becomes uh Ponto Maximus which is the highest priesthood in Rome that also involves a number of duties for his wife pompea foremost among those is kind of running the Festival of bonadea bonad is this this old Italian fertility goddess and her Festival involves a secret allnight womenonly ritual party one year uh Claudius who is this notorious Roman politician and Playboy decides that he is going to break into to this Festival he's going to do this by dressing as a woman and he's going to find out what really goes on and he's also going to try and seduce Caesar's wife he does this but unfortunately he's caught uh which creates a scandal of really EP proportion he's put on trial for sacrilege and although there's no real indication that that Caesar's wife has done anything wrong at all Caesar divorces her anyway he says it doesn't matter whether she did anything or not because Caesar's wife must be above suspicion women were expected to turn a blind eye to their husband's Affairs and remain completely tied to him submissive and if it was discovered that she had been sleeping around with other men well the potential punishments could be very very harsh indeed if a woman was found guilty of adultery under the Augustine law she would lose a third of her property a half of her diary and she would also be sent into exile for um some period of time upon her return to Rome she would be subject to infamia so she would lose a number of Rights of her kind of citizenship she would be seen as lesser in society for for the rest of her life right at the bottom of Roman society were those considered un suitable for a Roman to marry in any circumstances this included slaves it is estimated that at the height of the Roman Empire between 10 and 20% of its population was comprised of slaves as history was often written by the elites the stories of these mistreated people are often lost but when it comes to sex it was the slaves who were all too often objectified and taken advantage of most well-off Roman men would have had a slave or two in their household being their property the Romans saw it as absolutely okay for a master to have sex with their slave whether the slave wanted it or not yes that's right A Slave could be raped by their Master without consequence it's horrible and although there was contraception back in Roman times many slave women fell pregnant to their masters and gave birth to illegitimate children if someone had sex with someone else's slave then the owner could charge him with property damage and demands payment really Grim so although a Roman man could have sex with their slave marrying them was a complete no no if the slave was freed and you were a lower ranking Roman then marriage was less taboo but for higher standing Romans it remained absolutely off the table Gladiators were also viewed as unsuitable Marriage Partners the Romans designated these professional fighters often slaves and themselves in pharmas literally those without reputation but this is an interesting and contradictory one because at the same time Gladiators also developed a reputation in Roman society for being incredibly sexy I hate to be simplistic about it but Gladiators are you know um incredibly well-trained athletes very skilled well built icons not only of born but also of Bravery they're into the arena and kind of fighting for their lives lots of people would argue that those traits are very attractive on top of that Gladiators who are successful can acrw a huge amount of kind of Fame they get these Legions of fans and so there's also I think the star quality to it there is a story about a very wealthy senatorial woman called epia who runs away with the Gladiator I think it's historical veracity is a little dodgy because it comes from the sauris juvenal but it's a fantastic and I think qu instructor story nonetheless so this this uh senatorial wife apia runs away with this Senator and juvenile says that he is hideously ugly he's kind of been absolutely bashed about in the arena for years and they they alope together to Egypt and the Sea Crossing is incredibly uncomfortable incredibly sort of painful um and juvenal says the EP she's been brought up in luxury she's used to kind of feather beds and now she's sleeping on the board of their ship and she doesn't care about any of it purely because her lover is a gladiator Gladiators were sexy and no doubt many of Roman had flings with them men and women but to marry one was seen as super shameful and forbidden it was a similar story with actors the Romans also designated these public performers as infames they were also often slaves or ex-slaves and had great sex appeal notable Romans were known to have had flings with actors but to marry one was forbidden it's the fact that they occupy this quite like unstable position in Roman society because they're generally slaves or ex-slaves but they can also if they're successful kind of acrew a huge amount of Fame and Fortune take themselves into the sort of social Mila of the upper echelons of Roman society and so I think there is this anxiety that these might be figures who are potentially dest izing and so there's this desire to sort of brand them with this this legal status of infamia actors and Gladiators were both considered part of the Anam class as two were sex workers sex work and Romans goes as far back as their mythical Foundation story in the 8th Century BC Now The Story Goes that the twins Romulus and Remis were suckled by a loopa a shewolf in their infancy but Lupa was also the Latin word for a female sex worker so there is an alternate story where Romulus and Remis were in fact raised by a sex worker some sexual activities were often seen as more taboo than others oral sex was seen as unacceptable especially if it was the man who was giving pleasure Not only was the mouth seen as sacred but the idea of Roman men being submissive to a woman in the bedroom was frowned upon threesoms and forom were also seen as unacceptable which leads us on nice ly to one of the biggest myths of all the Roman ory now today there is this popular image of decadent Roman Elites gouging themselves in Endless amounts of food and wine at Banquets before the night descended into a scene of great sexual depravity everyone going at it it's something we hear about but the evidence for this is actually really slight public sex was not something that the Romans were big fans of it's true that there are stories of leading Roman figures such as Emperors attending dinner parties and banging a senator's wife but he wouldn't go and have sex with her there and then they go somewhere more private likewise the myth that ancient Roman religion was filled with sexfest ceremonies is also fake news purification was a massive part of Roman ritual and it was necessary for anyone taking part to wash before attending especially if you Just Had Sex the origins of the Roman ory myth May well be the writings of early Christians now these figures were Keen to distinguish themselves from their Pagan predecessors and what better way to do that than by painting certain parts of Roman religion as including taboo scandalous activities like orgies later on in roughly the 18th century this myth also became attached to non-religious events such as the elite Roman banquet so what about homosexuality in Roman society well before the rise of Christianity same-sex relations were acceptable for Roman Elite men but there were conditions firstly the Roman Elite man had to be the penetrator penetration was seen as the man's work secondly your partner had to be someone of lower class for instance a slave or Freedman horrifically these same seex Partners were often much younger to the Grim extent of adolescent slave boys perhaps the most famous case of a same-sex relationship in ancient history is that of the emperor hadrien and his younger lover antinous hran becomes emperor of Rome in 117 ad and he spends a lot of his Reign on these sort of vast tours around his Empire and on one of these tours um he seems to meet this very young man called antonus who comes from bethenia which is in m tury and at some point they become lovers and anon's become comes his his favorite and accompanies him on this tour of the eastern part of his Empire they visit Athens they go kind of see the grave of Alexander the Great they're really doing kind of La sightseeing sort of things they go hunting lions in Libya and then they embark on this this boat trip up the Nile in 130 ad at one point on this trip Anon uh drowns in somewhat mysterious circumstances and hadrien is utterly utterly devastating by this his uh contemporaries and kind of commentators really like go in for him on the extent to which he displays his grief they think it's very unmasculine how kind of open he is about how heartbroken he is hadrien founds the city called Antonopoulos next to where uh antonus drowned um he claims that he's seen this new star in the sky and that that that star is antinous's soul kind of enthroned in the heavens he deifies antonus and demands that he be worshiped as a God throughout the Empire and this is really kind of criticized and sort of laughed at slightly by writers but it's actually very successful uh Anton's cult seems to be very popular it spreads throughout the Empire and actually after hin himself and after the Emperor Augustus antonus is the person in the Roman Empire for whom we have the most surviving images we find coins showing him as a God as far north as as Britain and his cult survives in some places right into the 4th Century ad now in public circles similar to how a man's reputation could be tarnished if reputable stories of his wife's unfaithfulness spread around an elite figur reputation could also be massively damaged if rumors emerged that he had submitted to another man in a homosexual relationship Julius Caesar was the subject of one such smear when he was a young man at the court of the aian King nicomedes IV enemies attacked him for supposedly submitting to nicomedes and was called the queen of bnia prior to uh the the Advent of Christianity Rome doesn't think in terms of hetrosexuality and homosexuality it's not really that concerned with desire so it doesn't really concern itself with whether you want to sleep with men or women it concerns itself with how you do it as I've mentioned for Roman writers and orators a great way to smear an opponent and their legacy was to record outrageous stories about their sexual escapades and these were regularly aimed at the figures right at the top Statesmen like Julius Caesar but also Roman emperors and empresses it's these figures who have perhaps unintentionally left us some of the juiciest and most Vivid Roman sex stories firstly people absolutely love a celebrity set Scandal and Emperors and empresses are some of the most recognizable people in the Roman world I don't think it's surprising or unnatural that people living in the Roman Empire were kind of gossiping about rumors about about the sex lives of of their rulers um but I think more significantly than that sex is so bound up particularly in Roman thought with questions of kind of power particularly abuses of power and so I don't think it's at all surpris that we very often see bad Emperors but people who are thought of to be kind of bad rulers being sort of branded with these stories about sexual deviancy because I think it's a very useful way for thinking about um kind of what is what is a good and what is a bad ruler many empresses were the victims of these stories perhaps most interesting of all is the tale of mesalina so Melina was uh a Roman Empress um in the' 40s ad she was one of the wives of the emperor Claudius and she is one of the most sexually notorious figures of the Roman Empire there are some of the stories that are told about her are absolutely wild it's claimed that she leaves the palace every night to go and work in a low class brothel and that she still returns unsatisfied that she has a 24-hour setx competition with the most notorious prostitute in Rome and that she wins with the total 25 Partners um and I think what's really interesting is that here we're seeing stories about kind of inappropriate sexual behavior being used against a woman in order to denigrate her political agency and position many Roman emperors were also targeted in hostile biographies designed to damage their reputations often filled with details about their absolutely scandalous love lives none more so than the emperor near Nero what we hear and what we know about Nero's love life I would say are two very different things so we know that Nero was married three times um and that he also had quite a long-standing affair with a freed woman named ate and was very kind of open about that she was his almost like his acknowledged mistress what we hear about n's sex life that is an entirely different matter we basically hear that he breaks absolutely every taboo that that Roman thought about sex has to offer so we hear that he um sleeps with the wives of senators that he debores Freeborn Roman men that he tries to sleep with or perhaps is successful in sleeping with his own mother that he debores a Vestal Virgin um so that's essentially pretty much every taboo ticked off and then there are also some more kind of creative stories after he murders one of his wives he then finds a young boy who looks very like her castrates him dresses him up in the kind of um Bridal like dress of of a Roman woman marries him and U calls him his wife we also hear that in another mock wedding Nero himself takes on the role of the Bride we also hear that he enjoys dressing up as an animal tying people to stakes and uh forcibly performing oral sex on them well there you have it an introduction to Roman sex lives from RI Emperors to running away with Gladiators it's a topic that continues to bring in huge audiences across the the media world today whether that be movies TV shows podcasts articles or even YouTube videos like this one there's just something about Roman sex and sexuality that can't help but Fascinate so many of us today I think what I find so interesting about the subject of Roman sex and sexuality is the fact that it I think at one and the same time reminds us of our connection to and our distance from the ancient world because these are people who want love feel emotion experience sexual desire just as we do and that's clear to see but they also think about and speak about those emotions and those desires using a framework that is just entirely different from our own and I think it really encapsulates sort of the joy of studying ancient history in general in that it's this consistency of human nature to some degree but also this sort of total inconsistency and and change of human civilization thanks for watching if you want to learn more about the Romans then do check out history hit TV where we have a huge Archive of documentaries about Roman history available please like subscribe and let us know your thoughts in the comments

Channel: History Hit

Views: 271,123

Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, roman sex lives, roman sexuality, what was sex like in ancient rome, sex history, history of sex, roman sex, sex in roman times, honor cargill martin, honor cargill historian, messalina death, messalina i claudius, ancient sex lives, history of sex romans, did romans, were romans, roman adultery, roman empire women, women in roman empire, tristan hughes

Id: GZ7sNDOvrnc

Length: 32min 50sec (1970 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 22 2024