Sex in Ancient Rome, woo hoo!

Sex lives of the Ancient Romans

**For elite men, the basic message was that sexual penetration correlated with pleasure and power. Sexual partners might be of either sex. There was plenty of male-with-male sexual activity in the Roman world, but only the very faintest hints that “homosexuality” was seen as an exclusive sexual preference, let alone lifestyle choice. Sexual fidelity to a wife was not prized or even particularly admired. In the search for pleasure, the wives, daughters and sons of other elite men were off-limits (and crossing that boundary might be heavily punished by law). The bodies of slaves and, up to a point, of social inferiors, were there for the taking. Poorer citizens, with a less-ready supply of servile sexual labour, would no doubt use prostitutes instead. But individual relations between Roman men and women were not as unnuanced and mechanical as my stark summary might suggest.

All kinds of relationships of care and tenderness flourished, whether between husband and wife, master and slave, lover and beloved. An expensive gold bracelet, for example, found on the body of a woman at a settlement just outside Pompeii is inscribed with the words, “From the master to his slave girl”. It reminds us that affection can exist even within these structures of exploitation (though how far that affection was reciprocated by the slave girl concerned, we of course do not know). And the walls of Pompeii, both inside and out, carry plenty of vivid testimony to passion, jealousy and heartbreak with which it is hard for us not to identify, even if anachronistically, “Marcellus loves Praestina and she doesn't give a damn”, “Restitutus has cheated on lots of girls”. All the same, the basic structure of Roman sexual relations was a fairly brutal one, and not one that was female friendly. **

Ya know? I'm not sure I would have been cut out to live in ancient Rome, mostly because I would only have enjoyed it if I was part of the rich class. I watched a series a while back that showed an interesting viewpoint, and I remember thinking even then that life if you weren't rich wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. Kind of tedious.

I enjoy reading about and studying the various points of historical Rome, and the things that are gleaned from the time period, the rich history of the religion from back then in particular.

But I enjoy indoor plumbing, and modern convenience too much to want to go back and live during those times :P

My .02 cents.