Ancient Homosexuality

[Germanicus]

We know he wasn't incapable of fathering children - he had I daughter who he married off to Pompey.

 

As to his bisexuality - we'll never know, but I prefer to take Colleens view - that he raised a fleet in Nicomedia by befriending the aging king and showing his future political brilliance.......not by selling his ass.

[Primus Pilus]

We know he wasn't incapable of fathering children - he had I daughter who he married off to Pompey.

 

And Caesarion with Cleopatra... assuming that it truly was his son.

[LEG X EQ]

This text is from wikipedia and extracted from these sources.

1 Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, "Caesar", ii., 45-53

2 Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, p. 1197

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclop

[LEG X EQ]

since there werent just greeks and romans around in ancient times, here is an article about

CELTIC Homosexuality.

 

http://ipc.paganearth.com/diaryarticles/bo...eer/queer3.html

[Pertinax]

This thread seems to be a bit like the Rome/USA comparison thread-the debate is more "contemporary attitudes to ancient sexual mores" . We know the Romans had very different social mores in many areas: eg: the word spinster did not exist as it was conceptually ( no pun intended) ludicrous, a Roman female would be a child, marriageable adult, widowed/divorced, re-marriageable.; a Roman woman would be the Progenitor of Citizens imbuing a new Citizen with her bodies milk and directly passing her "virtue" ( her Republican uprightness).

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

Sorry, but how does the role of women in society connect with homosexuality.

[Pertinax]

my point is thatt sexuality and sexual roles were of a totally different nature -I merely illustrate this by citing modern presumptions about "femaleness" and suggest that we cannot presume to know about sexual orientation in a modern sense

 

The idea that say , someone could be a "career girl " would be incomprehensible. Children were admonished to be solemn and adult like ( in the Patrician classes), and were adults at 14. My point is our ideas of sex,sexuality and gender are off the map and we have to suspend our disbelief or misinterpretation of sexual behaviour in the past.

[Ursus]

For my own part I'm not terribly concerned with what Caesar or Augustus did or did not do with their sexual organs. They were great men, great Romans, and that is what matters to me.

[Eumachia]

what we do know is, and what is 100% facts. Is that Julius Caesar was married twice. First to pompeia and than to calpurnia. he had one daughter, and had one of the most famous affairs with Cleopatra.

 

Don't want to be petty but Julius Caesar was actually married 3 times. His first wife was Cornelia, the mother of his daughter Julia.

[Tiberius Sylvestius]

Homosexuality wasnt tolerated in any field by the roman society, Theodosius I. abandoned the Olympic Games in greece because greek athletes participated nude, and that was considered wrong by the romans.

The romans are famous for their whore houses and orgies (with women that is).

 

 

Ah but Theodosius was from much later on in the Empire than i was thinking, when i think Roman Empire i think first Century CE.

 

 

Theodosius is not my favourite emperor, and that's putting it mildly.

[Germanicus]

Sorry, but how does the role of women in society connect with homosexuality.

 

Petty too I know, but FYI term homosexuality is not gender specific.

[Lost_Warrior]

Sorry, but how does the role of women in society connect with homosexuality

 

Being the "woman" in a partnership was the "inferior" position (in a homosexual male relationship that was being on the bottom).

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

So if homosexuals in the ancient world had a marriage-like binding relationship, who gets the dowry and what about the family aspect?

[Lost_Warrior]

I really don't think it did. In Rome, at least, it was one of those things that happened, but wich wasn't terribly well...accepted in society. I think it's pretty safe to assume that a situation such as homosexual "marriage" or "domestic partners" was pretty much out of the question.

[Andrew Dalby]

I don't think it was a "big deal", and would have only been detrimental to your reputation if you'd been on the receiving end, so to speak.

Rumours of Caesars daliances in Nicomedia didn't stop him becoming Consul, then Dictator and founding the Empire. Tiberius' actions on Capri with little boys didn't get him overthrown, niether did Trajans appetites for young boys. And as for Hadrian - being the "Greekling" he positively revelled in his own homeosexual realionship with Antoninius, and had hin deified after his drowning in the Nile.

 

Late in the day, I just want to agree with Germanicus here. Here's a different kind of evidence. Trimalchio, the slave-who-became-rich-Roman character invented in Petronius's Satyricon, is proud of his slave history, has a painting in his house depicting the slave market in which he was sold, etc. But just one thing. When conversation is about his having been his master's cinaedus, i.e. 'boyfriend' and assumed to have been sexually penetrated, Trimalchio says as a kind of excuse 'There's nothing wrong if your master tells you to do it'. It seems to me a realisitc detail. Now he's a rich Roman, he has to explain that part of his history away somehow.