codzienność: Homosexuality in ancient Rome

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Homosexuality in ancient Rome is a subject of research and scholarly debate. Conceptions of homosexuality in ancient Rome differed from the contemporary West. Latin lacks words that would precisely translate "homosexual" and "heterosexual". The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality was active / dominant / masculine and passive / submissive / feminine. Roman society was patriarchal, and the freeborn male citizen possessed political liberty (libertas) and the right to rule both himself and his household (familia). "Virtue" (virtus) was seen as an active quality through which a man (vir) defined himself. In a lot of accounts from the Roman era, the conquest mentality and "cult of virili…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

Prostitution in ancient Rome was legal and licensed. The moral stance of Roman society towards it is a complex topic and there are indications that it evolved through time. Prostitution took many forms. It ranged from the sexual services that were routinely offered in many establishments - such as Roman baths (thermae) or inns (tabernae and stabula) - to the dedicated brothels (lupanar). Most prostitutes were female slaves or freedwomen. The balance of voluntary to forced prostitution can only be guessed at. Privately held slaves were considered property under Roman law, so it was legal for an owner to employ them as prostitutes. Pimping and prostitution were, however, considered disgracefu…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 72

In ancient Rome, freeborn women were citizens (cives), but could not vote or hold political office. Because of their limited public role, women are named less frequently than men by Roman historians. But while Roman women held no direct political power, those from wealthy or powerful families could and did exert influence through private negotiations. Exceptional women who left an undeniable mark on history include Lucretia and Quinta Claudia, whose stories took on mythic significance; fierce Republican-era women such as Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, and Fulvia, who commanded an army and issued coins bearing her image; women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, most prominently Livia (58 BC –…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 72

Sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome are indicated by art, literature, and inscriptions, and to a lesser extent by archaeological remains such as erotic artifacts and architecture. It has sometimes been assumed that "unlimited sexual license" was characteristic of ancient Rome, but sexuality was not excluded as a concern of the mos maiorum, the traditional social norms that affected public, private, and military life. Pudor, "shame, modesty", was a regulating factor in behavior, as were legal strictures on certain sexual transgressions in both the Republican and Imperial periods. The censors—public officials who determined the social rank of individuals—had the power to remove cit…

Evidence: 34 • authority: 80

Inversion, Metamorphosis, and Sexual Difference: Female Same-Sex Desire in Ovid and Lyly

Evidence: 34 • authority: 72

Publius Ovidius Naso (Latin: [ˈpuːbliʊs ɔˈwɪdiʊs ˈnaːsoː]; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( OV-id), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him to be the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly organized province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or 10 years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a carmen et…

Evidence: 34 • authority: 72

Marriage (conubium) was a fundamental institution of society in ancient Rome and was used by Romans primarily as a tool for interfamilial alliances. The institution of Roman marriage was a practice of marital monogamy: Roman citizens could have only one spouse at a time in marriage but were allowed to divorce and remarry. This form of prescriptively monogamous marriage that co-existed with male resource polygyny (powerful men can have one wife and many other sexual partners) in Greco-Roman civilization may have arisen from the relative egalitarianism of democratic and republican city-states. Early Christianity embraced this ideal of monogamous marriage by adding its own teaching of sexual m…