Sexuality In Ancient Rome Article Index for
Sexuality In
Website Links For
Sexuality
 

Information About

Sexuality In Ancient Rome




Male Sexuality Romans thought that men should be the active participant in all forms of love. Male passivity symbolized a loss of manliness, the most prized Roman virtue. This is in stark contrast to the in modern sex terminology, and was considered to be weak and feminine.

Female Sexuality Women were not granted freedom of sexuality. Men considered female homosexuality disgusting and dangerous. A woman who wanted to be an active partner in intercourse was a " Tribade " (the meaning of which has now changed).

Homosexuality in Literature Few accounts of love between women exist through the eyes of women, so we only know the viewpoint of Roman men. Multiple ancient Roman authors wrote about love affairs between men, including Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Catullus wrote of his love for the young man Juventius, while Tibullus dedicated two elegies to his lover Marathus and wrote particularly about how devastated he was that Marathus had left him for a woman.


FURTHER READING

  • Adams, J. N. ''The Latin Sexual Vocabulary'', 1982, ISBN 0-8018-4106-2

  • Cantarella, Eva. ''Bisexuality in the Ancient World''. Yale University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-300-04844-0

  • Halperin, David M. "homosexuality" (pp. 722-3) in ''The Oxford Classical Dictionary'', third edition, 1996, ISBN 0-19-866172-X

  • Hubbard, Thomas K. ''Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents''. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23430-8.

  • Radford, Robert. '' La prostitution fĂ©minine dans la Rome antique ''. Lulu, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4303-1158-4.

  • Skinner, Marilyn. ''Sexuality in Greek And Roman Culture''. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-23234-6.



Thomas A.J. McGinn. ''The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World''. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004.


EXTERNAL LINKS