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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 S Vo l u m e X X X X V I I I XV 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 Vo l u m e X X X X V I I I XVI