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In bed with the
Romans
Severus, and the wife of a Caledonian chieftain. Julia Domna
primly remarks on how the tribal women are somewhat free with
their sexual favours; the ‘barbarian’ lady replies tartly:
We satisfy our desires in a better way than you Roman women
do. We have sex openly with the best men while you are seduced
in secret by the worst.
Sham weddings were not unknown during the early Empire:
Nero ‘married’ a male lover, Pythagoras, in AD64 and (according to
Suetonius) in between raping a Vestal Virgin and committing incest
Paul Chrystal peers under the sheets with his mother, had a young boy, Sporus, castrated before marrying
him. Messalina, wife of the emperor Claudius, bigamously married her
ome Romans spent a lot of time in bed. Illness or hangover- lover while the emperor was away for the weekend.
A fascinating marriage contract from 13BC survives from Roman
recovery apart, they were often busy procreating or, in
the case of women, procreating and giving birth. Serial Egypt and, although it probably owes as much to Egyptian practice
child-birthing was an expected duty of Roman women, and legislation as it does to Roman, it is nevertheless interesting.
Thermion and Apollonius, and Thermion’s guardian, agree to share
particularly of the matrona, just as virility was required of men.
Men also spent time in bed fornicating with mistresses, whores their lives together (affectio maritalis) and confirm that Thermion has
delivered a dowry, including
or catamites, and wifely matronae
a pair of gold earrings. He
were expected to connive at
will now feed and clothe her;
these infelicities—where else was
he will not abuse her verbally
a Roman to go when his wife
or physically, kick her out or
was indisposed, home-spinning,
marry another woman—if
running the house or giving birth
he does any of these things,
to yet another son or daughter?
the dowry goes back. For her
What else do you do when your
part, she will fulfil her wifely
posting takes you to the edge of
obligations, she will not sleep
empire for years on end? The
away from the home without
production of children, especially
his permission, she will not
male children, was the whole
wreck the house or have an
point of marriage—unless, of Figs. Marriage ceremony and extra-marital ceremony...
affair—if she does, she loses
course, you were part of the
political elite, in which case you could use your wife and your the dowry. Cato the Elder was probably not altogether typical when
daughters as pawns in your efforts to better yourself, or to side he famously expelled Manilius from the Senate for kissing his wife in
front of their daughter, and admitted that he only ever kissed his wife
with the right sort of people.
Tertia Aemilia, the wife of Scipio Africanus, illustrated the during thunderstorms.
Aulus Gellius who lived between about AD125-180 probably
tolerance and resignation expected of Roman wives by accepting
his infidelity with a maid-servant, and thus highlighting the summed up the public, or rather male public, mood when he quotes
double standards prevalent in Roman marriage. A woman was Augustus’ speech in support of his moralistic legislation in the Senate:
adulterous if she had a liaison with any man, while a man was
If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us
only an adulterer if his mistress was married, thus leaving the
would do without that nuisance, but since nature has decreed
door wide open to him for legitimate extra-marital affairs with
that we neither manage comfortably without them, nor live in
prostitutes, concubines, slave girls, catamites, men and widows.
any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation
Plautus says it all when it comes to free love for men:
rather than for our temporary pleasure.
No one stops anyone from going down the public way; so
You can almost hear Varro (116-27BC) sigh when he assumes the same
long as you do not trespass, as long as you keep off brides, single
women, maidens, the youth and free boys, love whatever you begrudging air of resignation:
want.
A husband must either put a stop to his wife’s faults or else he
must put up with them. In the first case he makes his wife a more
Augustine, who converted to Christianity in AD387, explains
attractive woman, in the second he makes himself a better man.
how his mother never fell out with his father over his sexual
indiscretions.
All manner of advice on sexual medicine was freely available. If you
British women must have seemed very odd to the Roman
invader. In 44BC Caesar observed that up to ten or twelve men, want to produce a boy, rapid thrusting during sex at the end of the
including brothers, shared one wife; for good practical reasons, woman’s period is recommended; for a girl, things should be slightly less
any offspring were said to have been fathered by the man who vigorous—and somewhat less spontaneous: the Roman should tie up his
took the woman’s virginity. Dio adds to this when he describes right testicle and have sex in the middle of his wife’s period. Blood clogging
an encounter between Julia Domna, empress of Septimius the venous system in the breasts signifies that the woman is going mad—a
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physiological explanation for the age-old stereotype that women are
naturally neurotic, erratic and unpredictable. Menstruation as a purging
agent was a good thing, as indeed was epistaxis (ἐπίσταξις) (nose-bleed)
which performed a similar role. Amenorrhœa caused many physical and
psychological problems; virgins were particularly susceptible which, it was
believed, explains their tendency to hang themselves or jump down wells
to their deaths. In essence, the physiological differences between men and
women supported the unarguable contemporary belief that women were
physically and mentally inferior to men.
Soranus reminds us that it was a Roman wife’s first duty to produce
children, ideally boys, to repopulate the ranks of the Roman military and
administration, ‘since women get married to bear children and heirs, and
not for fun or pleasure’. To this end, Soranus teaches that
successful conception is all down to timing:
women ‘touch themselves’ naturally increases their sexual urge and causes
‘mental derangement’ and an immodest desire for a man. His treatment
involved bleeding, a liquid diet, refreshing poultices applied to the genitals
and avoiding anything which caused flatulence or, sensibly, sexual desire.
Theodorus Priscianus termed it metromania (‘womb-madness’). The
therapy recommended by Rufus of Ephesus included blood-letting,
taking honeysuckle seed and the root of the water lily, hot baths and the
avoidance of all things erotic. Rufus compares the treatment of female
satyriasis with the therapy for spermatorrhea, an involuntary ejaculation of
sperm which was thought to occur in both men and women.
Hermaphrodites (androgyni) used to be thought of as prodigies,
but Pompey changed all that when he made them figures of
entertainment, putting them on the stage in his
theatre. Diodorus, in the late 1st century BC, described
hermaphrodites as ‘marvellous creatures’ (terata,
The end of menstruation, when the urge and desire
τέρατα), who announce the future, be it good or bad.
for sex is present, when the stomach is not full nor
Around AD500 Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae) described
the partners drunk, after light exercise and a light
hermaphrodites as having ‘the right breast of a man and
snack, when the mood is right.
the left of a woman, and after sex can both sire and bear
children’. After Pompey made celebrities out of them
As today, these are largely the most promising conditions
they had, by Pliny’s time, become objects of delight and
for making babies. Before him, Lucretius had taught that
fascination (deliciae), much in demand in what has been
the best position for conception was for the woman to have
called by Plutarch the ‘monster markets’ in his Moralia.
Generally speaking, though, the birth of a hermaphrodite
coitus more ferarum—‘to have sexual intercourse like wild
was not good news. The prodigium it heralded meant a
beasts do it’, or a tergo, ‘from behind’ Pregnancy could have
rupture in the pax deorum. Livy tells us how, in the dark days
definite advantages: Julia, Augustus’ daughter, is alleged
of the Second Punic War, a four-year-old hermaphrodite
to have said, in a wonderful analogy, that being pregnant
caused the haruspices to be summoned: they decreed that
allowed her to pursue her extramarital affairs without
the child be enclosed in a chest and floated out to sea where
fear of getting pregnant: ‘I never take on a passenger
it drowned. Another hermaphrodite found in 133BC was
unless the ship is full’. Unfortunately for Julia, another,
less accommodating, ship was to take her into insular
drowned in the local river in another attempt to restore
exile on Pandateria for her adulterous behaviour. Juvenal,
relations with the gods. In Roman law, a hermaphrodite was
in his sixth-satire rant against women, tells us that some
classified either as male or female; there was no third sex.
women prefer having potent eunuchs or cinaedi—to avoid
We have Macrobius in his Saturnalia to thank for a
pregnancy and any need for abortion.
description of a masculine form of Venus found in a Cypriot
Causes of miscarriage can be found in the Hippocratic
cult; here, the god(dess) sported a beard and male genitals,
Corpus: carrying too heavy a weight, being beaten up, Fig. 2 Venus anasyramenê and wore women’s clothing. The local worshippers, men and
jumping up into the air (an occupational hazard for those
women, complemented the deity by cross-dressing. Laevius
Spanish dancers), lack of food and fainting, being frightened, loud adds to the enigma when he writes of worshipping ‘nurturing Venus,
shouting, flatulence and too much drink. Pliny the Elder disparages whether female or male (sive femina sive mas)’. Sometimes, in sculpture, we
the claims of the magi when they, somewhat impractically, assert that find Venus anasyramenê (άνασυρομένη fig. 2) that is, with her clothes pulled
miscarriage can be avoided if a woman wears the white flesh of a hyena’s up to reveal her penis and scrotum, a gesture that had apotropaic powers.
breast in gazelle leather, along with seven hyena hairs and the genitals of
Pliny the Elder is equally insistent on the phenomenon of
a stag.
instantaneous transgender transgression or gender reassignment
In the International Classification of Diseases (tenth revision), published by (non est speculum ‘it is no dream’): in 171BC a girl from Casinum
the World Health Organisation, hypersexuality appears today as satyriasis instantaneously changed into a boy before her parents’ eyes: the
in men and nymphomania in women, but it also appears in the classical augurs banished her to an island. Licinius Mucianus, who was an
medical authors. Aretaeus (c. AD150-200 denies its existence in women, adviser to Vespasian, records the case of Arescon, a ‘man’ from Argos
saying that others believe that it is manifested, as in men, as a desire who married a man as Arescusa; ‘she’ then developed a beard and
for sex; Soranus adds that the ‘itching’ felt in the genitals which makes other male features and got married to a woman; there was a similar
sighting in Smyrna. Pliny himself saw a bride turn into a man on
his-her wedding day.
*PAUL CHRYSTAL’s In Bed with the Romans: Sexuality and Sex
in Ancient Rome, is due for publication by Amberley Publishing in
October 2015.
Fig. 1 A Hermaphrodite
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