Sex in Ancient Rome
Sex in ancient Rome was everywhere. In public houses, in thermas, in households
When the German political class debated the late Roman decadence a few years ago, two things were clear: firstly, the leading politicians of all parties were not resistant to losing their historical education; secondly, the distance between them and the rest of society since the times of the Caesars has only diminished slightly. Even the senators and knights, the two highest social groups in Roman society, did not know very well what was going on in the minds of ordinary citizens, subjects, and slaves. It had fatal consequences. While today, literally every opinion or desire is deciphered by surveyors, the Roman elite kept a distance. But because it was their relatives who wrote books that became for their offspring the testimonies of their time, they were endowed with a striking defect: most “ordinary” Romans did not appear in them and did not have a voice.
“They lived in the shadow,” states the American historian of antiquity Robert Knapp. A retired professor at the University of Berkeley spent much of his life trying to get a picture of how ordinary men and women lived in the empire, gladiators, prostitutes and soldiers, from the descriptions left by the great historians of his day, the prophecies of proverbs, loose papyrus, inscriptions, theatrical arts, poems, and novels.
5000 per 60 million inhabitants
He summarized this in his book “The Romans in the Shadow of History”, which is not only an excellent example of bypassing classical studies. The Knappa book is also a combination of the wonderful pleasure of reading with a high level of knowledge.
To begin with, a few figures illustrate the time and place of the matter: Rome dominated the Mediterranean world for more than 800 years, from the victories over the Hellenistic kings in 197/190 BC to the Arab invasion from 634 BC.
Sex was everywhere
So, a middle-class prostitute could make 20 aces a day without any trouble. So it is no wonder that sex for money was offered almost everywhere, both in classical public houses, as well as in pubs or therms.
The high demand and constant availability of sex for sale is not only explained by the lack of electronic entertainment formats of our time.
While most families were willing to marry their daughters at the age of fifteen, thus deleting them from the list of those to beined, men often found marriage only after twenty. According to many sources, the “woman of the worst class” had to run a household, raise children, and serve a man, which also meant satisfying his high conceptions of honour. Sex served to reproduce and create a new workforce, not to satisfy passions.
Life in Ancient Rome
The Romans are set as a model for future generations. Meanwhile, according to historians, in their world, there was no shortage of murders, perversions and sloppiness, which were even on the agenda. Unlike the advanced civilizations of the ancient Middle East, Rome closely separated public life in the forum and in the representative halls of a villa or palace from the private sphere.
The Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea was very busy at the time. In the 6th century, as the personal secretary of Belizarius, he described his victorious campaigns against the Persians, the Wandals and the Goths. Per Emperor Justinian also commissioned him to write a hymn about his buildings, the most famous of which is the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. It made him famous. However, at the same time, Prokopius wrote something so controversial that he waited for publication until the death of the rulers.
In “The Secret History”, the historian recorded countless scandals at the imperial court, including the rumour that Theodora (Justinian’s wife) had sex with 30 men in one night. Prokop’s work thus reflects dualism, which to this day is a rare topic in history lessons: antiquity not only laid the foundations under the contemporary with its political theories and philosophical debates but also, in many areas of life, was completely different from what was presented so far.
The ancient Greeks and Romans were “the inventors of the public sphere, which treated everything that happened in secret with a healthy dose of scepticism,” writes ancient historian Michael Sommer in his new book “The Dark Rome”.
Unlike the advanced civilizations of the ancient Middle East, Rome closely separated public life in the forum and in the representative halls of a villa or palace from the private sphere. It is not for no reason that the Romans were the masters in creating well-functioning castles.
It had surprising consequences. In the public latrines with rinsed water, men and women, senators, and peasants sat unconstrainedly next to each other and talked. But the Senate, a gathering of active and former officials, was sitting behind closed doors. Members who violated the principle of confidentiality were exposed to anger. In the days of the Republic, it could have ended in death.
This was justified by the principle of “mos maiorum”, the custom of the ancestors, which could be used as the norm for everything and everyone. As an example, Sommer cites an episode from the biography of Katon the Elder. Referring to the tradition, as a censor, he expelled a colleague from the Senate. Plutarch quoted Katon as saying that whoever beats his wife or child puts his hand on holiness. Sommer thus concludes that good treatment of the family was not obvious, even among the high-ranking Romans. “That’s why Plutarch found this saying worth quoting.”
If you go to the sources, marriage had little to do with romantic love and even less with good sex. His main goal was to give birth to a legitimate offspring. Therefore, especially among the higher classes, marriages were arranged quite often to cement alliances. Thus, the two clans concluded a pact at the same time, to which they contributed not only interests and wealth but also political ties. This also applied to people from the community who joined influential aristocrats, even to protect themselves from the arbitrariness of the authorities or neighbouring envy.
The Romans were not afraid to demonstrate their wealth with images and statues, which today would be considered pornography, but there were no windows in the bedrooms. The sexual act was a secret affair. Sommer thus considers that many wives, who were usually much younger than their husbands, must have suffered trauma after the wedding night.
The sanctity of marriage did not mean, however, that Roman society was proletarian. Sex was not only visible in art but was almost a commodity. Whether it was under the arches of the theatre, on the back of the tavern, or in one of the countless public houses (in Pompeii alone, there were dozens of them), you could always find people of both sexes offering this type of service.
In a world without fatal, sexually transmitted diseases, where only one-third of the population had regular incomes, the question of survival was often sufficient. Ancient graffiti in the style: “Here I flew many girls” testifies to the fact that the prices were affordable.
The average price was two aces. The best, however, could charge a fee of 16 pieces of bronze or roughly as much as an agricultural worker earned a day. Doctors and medical practitioners also made money from the sex industry. They offered measures to prevent pregnancy or to have an abortion.
Orgies that took place behind the walls of palaces, especially those belonging to the emperor, had a completely different scale.
As senators or knights, the ancient authors who belonged to the elite and thus felt socially connected with the princeps, the “first man”, were in perfect shape. It was said that Nero had sex not only with slave women, married women and a vestal, a priestess committed to purity but even with his mother, Agrippina (who was previously the wife of Nero’s predecessor, Claudius). The Empress is said to have contributed to the end of their marriage by giving her husband… food with poisoned mushrooms.