Roman Male: Politics and Sexuality – was it that of an aggressive dominator?
‘The sexuality of the Roman male (in perfect agreement with his political ethics) was that of an aggressive dominator’ (Cantarella).
Cantarella claimed that ‘the sexuality of the Roman male (in perfect agreement with his political ethics) was that of an aggressive dominator’[1]. It is true that appearing as an aggressive dominator, in politics and sexuality, was crucial to the Roman male’s social status. This paper will argue, however, that Roman sources that deal with Roman attitudes, rather than support Canterella’s stance of aggressive dominator, in the matter of the Roman male’s sexuality, are, instead, ambiguous.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of Roman ideology that portrayed Roman men’s masculinity as domination. This principle was the root of the Roman’s structuring of male sexual relations. The Roman males masculinity and power were also equated with his sexual potency and his fertility[2].
Such ideology explains why the concept of the worship of the father’s generative power, the genius of the paterfamilias, was deeply rooted in Rome’s religious beliefs. The fertility principle, that male semen was held to have primary generative importance, was the concept behind the whole Roman household. Indeed, the theory of ‘father’ and the paterfamilias took precedence for Rome’s very survival[3].
This ideology meant that all outward behavioural signs of the Roman male’s ‘masculinity’ and sexual potency were to remain undiminished[4]. It explains why, in the extant texts, the motive behind much of the lampooning and invective literature surrounding his masculinity in attempts to humiliate him[5]. For example, to accuse a Roman male of being susceptible to sexual penetration, pathic, was to identify him as effeminate (mollis). However, Catharine Edwards argues that accusations of mollitia was more a vivid metonymy for a generalised and pejorative claim, of likening him to women, (effeminate), rather than related directly to his sexual preference[6].
Where Roman ‘masculinity’ was at its most vulnerable, laws were written to protect its status. Such was the case with male castration. The state made castration of Roman males a crime (204 BCE)[7]. Another instance is in the case of homosexual[8] relations where two Roman males were involved[9]. Latin only describes particular sexual acts as either polite, or insulting. ‘In unions of the sexes, it should always be considered not only what is legal, but also what is decent’[10].
Therefore, it was ‘improper’, rather than ‘immoral’ behaviour, for a freeborn Roman man to take the passive role in a homosexual relationship. Penetration was linked with sexual passivity and effeminacy: womanish behaviour. Such a relationship between free men was a crime (2nd or 3rd cent BCE)[11]. Roman men, who, taking a ‘feminine’, submissive, sexual stance, thus allowing sexual penetration to take place, were despised. Free men who penetrated adult males were either punishing them or engaging in a rare form of homosexuality[12]. Nevertheless, ‘dominant’ Roman free men enjoyed asserting their sexual ‘masculinity’ with male slaves[13]. In this situation, male slaves were required to take the ‘feminine’, passive, sexual role.
The general assumption was that ‘masculine’ bisexual men penetrated other males (usually boys)[14]. A power relationship in this instance would involve the lover, an older man – a citizen, in pursuit of a boy. Young boys (puer) were considered powerless: effeminate. The boy, usually a slave, took a subordinate, passive, ‘female’ sexual role. A certain doctrinal disqualification seems to bear on the love of boys[15].
Roman men in their youth were also often involved in this way; love of boys is generally portrayed in Roman literature as a legitimate avenue of masculine sexual expression. Nevertheless, the figure of the moralist who appears to be ‘masculine’, yet enjoys playing a ‘passive’ sexual role is considered despicable and immature. ‘Will he put maturity off for ever so that he may give other men pleasure?’[16].
Femininity was assimilated to passivity as understood in the roles of women, slaves and children. ‘Our ancestors did not want women to conduct any – not even private – business without a guardian; they wanted them to be under the authority of parents, brothers, or husbands (1st Cent A.D.)[17]. Regrettably, Roman women’s history echoes Claudia’s epitaph, ‘Friends, I have not much to say’[18]. The literature dealing with the marriage relationship has been written by Roman men. Finding out about women’s sexual relationship in marriage is, therefore, limited.
Nevertheless, Roman discourses about sexual behaviour do reveal that Roman women did not necessarily act according to either Roman gender ideology or the law, publicly or privately. The alarm expressed by male writers of Roman women’s sexual and public behaviour does not match the prescriptive. Such women threatened to undermine the Roman male’s social status, masculine ideology, and the Roman state. Such a woman was Cleopatra.
Cleopatra, although a Macedonian, was the most famous woman in Roman history (1st Cent BC). She was mistress to both Caesar and Mark Antony. Cleopatra represented to Rome the dangerous appeal of decadence and corruption and the ‘intangible force of feminine sexual power’[19]. Feminine sexual power was considered irresistible and had to be kept in check. Cleopatra, according to Plutarch, was ‘bewitching’. ‘The contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person, joining together with the charm of her conversation, and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching’[20]. Women of Rome also showed attributes other than passivity.
Lucius Valerius, quoting from the Roman Origines[21] says that, rather than passive, Roman women, on many occasions, had taken matters into their own hands, for ‘the public good’[22]. Emily A. Hemelrijk points out, however, that sexual asymmetry appears to be subordinate, in this and other occasions where Roman women protested, to upper class feelings rather than actual freedom for women[23].
Nevertheless, a fine example of Roman women advocates was Amasia Sentia. Amasia showed outstanding public initiative and a dominant spirit. Amasia ‘bore a man’s spirit under the appearance of a woman’, ‘whom neither the condition of their nature nor the cloak of modesty could keep silent in the forum or the courts’[24]. A woman advocate, Hortensia, (42 B.C.), dared to plead the women’s case before the trumvirs, and won[25]. Mark Antony’s wife, Fulvia, maintained force of arms in Rome against Caesar, while ‘passive’ Antony ‘squandered time with Cleopatra’[26]. According to the descriptive, not all Roman women were sexually passive.
Female sexuality was always a potent danger for Roman moralists for the very reason it might disrupt status distinctions[27]. Annaeus Seneca, Stoic philosopher, politician and tutor to the young Nero, expresses the general concern regarding unchastity as, ‘the greatest evil of our time’ (AD 41/9)[28]. Rome’s prescriptive ideology concerning women maintained that a Roman matron’s ‘womanly glory’ was linked to her ‘domestic virtue’ and her chastity[29]. Numerous anecdotes and epitaphs about Roman women, albeit written by men, confirm this to be the Roman women’s hallmark of exemplarily behaviour, befitting her official position as lawful, wife, mother and citizen. Not the least is Cornelia, mother of the Grachi[30].
Catharine Edwards claims that Roman women, along with wealth and pleasure, carried the brunt of the blame for the state’s general breakdown with the association of adultery and disorder[31]. In such a climate, considering their ideology on ‘masculinity’, the Roman male citizen’s wife as sexually subservient to him in the marriage bond was a given. Marriage was used amongst Rome’s citizens as a means of forming political and economical alliances, not an easily recognisable vehicle for the satisfaction of personal desires[32].
The imperialist Augustus period (27 B.C. – A.D. 14) was a time of luxury and moral reform. Augustus revived and imposed through law old Roman traditions of masculine privilege, authority and superiority. However, during this time, there are many ambiguities concerning the Roman man’s dominant sexual image as found in Latin love elegy. The elegist depicts a powerless, emotional, passive and feminised (objectified) Roman male lover[33].
Propertius, (70 – 19 B.C.), in the Monobiblos, writing to Tullus, depicts himself as helpless, the captive of the unconquerable Cynthia. ‘First Cynthia made me, to my unhappiness, (miserum me) her prisoner … Then Amor forced down my eyes, that had shown a firm pride, and pressed my head beneath his feet’[34]. Another elegist, Ovid, (43 B.C.- A.D. 17) in the Amores, admits he is suffering from delusions about his enslavement, at least nominally, and Corinna’s verbal deceptions, ‘Why shouldn’t I myself be deluded by my own desires?[35]. Ellen Greene, contrary to this feminised male image, asserts that Ovid suggests a close alliance between male sexual dominance and the assertion of political control and aggression[36].
Catullus, (84 – 54 B.C.), the only elegist who does not write under Augustus, also sees himself as enslaved to his emotions. He writes of his servitude to the Lady, the ‘mistress’, domina (a female owner of slaves). Powerless, due to the sexual wantonness of the imagined inexhaustible erotic impulses of the wonton dominant female, Lesbia, the elegist jealously pleads, ‘let her live and flourish with her adulterers, whom three hundred she holds in her embrace … breaking the strength of them all’[37].
In the light of the elegist’s writings, as a form of escapism, Rome’s male citizens seems to have enjoyed fantasizing about his being sexually powerless and dominated by a woman. During the time of Augustus’ moral reforms, the Roman male may have grown tired of the demands the patriarchal state made on him; his having to rigidly maintain his ‘masculine’ image for the sake of his social status may have had a destabilising effect on his ‘masculinity’.
In keeping with Canterella’s statement, it may be that the Roman male, (in perfect agreement with his political ethics) was that of an aggressive dominator’. However, there remains an ambiguity due to sexual relationships in Roman moral social discourse. Such discourse, constructed socially as relationships of domination and subordination, of superiority and inferiority, and domination with penetration being intrinsically bound up in the Roman male’s masculine image of potency, does not disclose what is taking place behind the rhetoric, the descriptive as opposed to the prescriptive.
[1] ANCH 314, Unit Booklet: Unit Information, Assignments & Notes, Citizen and Society in Ancient Rome, School of Classics, History & Religion, Topic 8, Sexuality, University of New England, Armidale, 2003, p. 91.
[2] ibid, p. 91.
[3] Walter Stevenson, The Rise of Eunuchs in Greco Roman Antiquity, in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol 5, 1994 – 95, Chicago, p. 498.
[4]Peter Garnsey, Social Status and legal Privilege in the Roman Empire, Oxford, 1970, p. 1.
[5]Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and aggression in Roman humour, New Haven, 1983, p. 1.
[6]Catherine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome, Cambridge, 1993, p. 130.
[6] ibid, 1993, p 68.
[7] ibid, pp 499, 504-6.
[8]‘although there are no words in Latin for ‘sexuality’, ‘homosexuality’, or ‘heterosexuality’, ANCH 314, op. cit., p. 92.
[9] Richlin, op. cit. 1983, p. ix.
[10] Justinian Institutes, 1, 6th Cent. AD, in Mary, R..Lefkowitz & Maureen.B. Fant, Women’s Life in Greece and Rome, A source book in translation, Marylands, 1982, p. 194.
[11] The Elder Seneca, Contraversae 4pr.10. in ANCH 314, op. cit. p 94.
[12] Richlin, loc. cit..
[13] Edwards, op. cit., p 72.
[14] Richlin, op. cit. p x.
[15] Michel Foucault in ANCH 314, op. cit. p. 91.
[16] Seneca, Epistulae 122.7-8 in Edwards, op. cit. p. 69.
[17] Livy, History of Rome, 34. 1-8 in Lefkowitz &. Fant, op. cit., p 177.
[18] M. I. Finley, Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World: Readings and sources, Laura K. McClure, (ed), Oxford, 2002, p. 148.
[19] Josine Blok,, Sexual Asymmetry: Studies in ancient society, Josine Blok & Peter Mason (eds), Amsterdam, 1987, p. 36.
[20] Plutarch on Cleopatra, Egypt, Ist. Cent. B.C. in Lefkowitz & Fant, op. cit.,1982, pp 150-151.
[21] ibid, p. 177.
[22] ibid, p. 178-180.
[23] Emily A. Hemelrijk, Sexual Asymmetry: Studies in ancient society, op. cit. p. 232.
[24] Hortensia’s speech. Rome, 42 B.C. in Lefkowitz & Fant, op. cit. p. 207.
[25] Hortensia, loc. cit.
[26] Plutarch, loc. cit.
[27] Edwards, op. cit. p. 53.
[28] Seneca, On Consolation, to his mother, Corsica, A.D. 41/9 in Lefkowitz & Fant, op. cit., p. 140.
[29] Cicero on Clodia. Rome, 56 B.C. (Pro Caelio 13-16. 22 Tr. R. Y. Hathorn, in Lefkowitz & Fant, op. cit. p. 147.
[30] Valarius Maximus, Memeorable Deeds and Sayings 4.4pr., 1st Cent A.D. Tr. M.B.F. in. Lefkowitz & Fant, op. cit., p. 138.
[31] Edwards, op. cit., pp 43 & 92.
[32] ANCH 314, op. cit., p. 92.
[33] Ellen Greene, The Erotics of Domination: Male desire and the mistress in Latin love poetry, 1998, p. xiii.
[34] Propertius, Monobiblos, Elegy 1.1, Greene, op. cit. pp 38-39.
[35] Ovid, lines 53-56, Greene, op. cit., p. 99.
[36] Greene, op. cit., p. xvi.
[37] Catullus, Poem 11, Greene op. cit., p. 26.
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