Just how Depraved was Ancient Rome? By L.J. Trafford

There’s plenty to be said on the state of the western world nations here in 2023 and there’s an abundance to be said on the reasons why the Roman empire fell. Enough in fact to fill an entire book bemoaning kids today and how they are dooming us all. But I don’t want to address any of those questions, because it’s a crowded space of the opinionated and I really don't care that much. No, what I want to address is a far less pertinent and important question, one that doesn’t involve contemplation of deep and important philosophical matters (because I’ve only had three hours sleep). If in the 21st century the western nations are following the path into the sexual degeneracy, perversion and immorality of ancient Rome – just how sexually degenerate, perverted and immoral was ancient Rome? 

The Image 

That Ancient Rome has a reputation for being morally degenerate and perverted is entirely their own fault. The evidence they have left behind for us to interpret their society includes wheelbarrow loads of terracotta penises, stupendously filthy frescoes of couples having a good naked time together, a statue of the god Pan having surprisingly tender sex with a goat that was on open display in someone’s garden, and a whole series of anecdotes about the sex lives of their rulers that will have your eyebrows raised and your eye balls popping out of their sockets. 

On top of all of this, ancient Romans spend a lot of their time telling us how depraved, perverted and immoral their society was. Such as Livy here in his introduction to his epically long history of Rome. 

Let him follow the decay of the national character, observing how at first it slowly sinks, then slips downward more and more rapidly, and finally begins to plunge into headlong ruin, until he reaches these days, in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.’ 

Is it any wonder that we think of ancient Rome as a corrupt decadent society brimming with perversion and depravity? 

The Pervert At the Head. 

‘A fish rots from the head down’ is how the saying goes, meaning that the culture of a society is determined by those who rule it. If we believe our sources, the fish head of Ancient Rome was very rotten indeed. There are very many stories about the sexual habits of Ancient Rome’s elite rulers, from the officials of the Roman Republic to the Emperors that followed them. 

These stories are collated together by historians of the period, to whom no detail is spared. This is best summed up by the following quote from Imperial biographer Suetonius on the Emperor Tiberius,

‘Almost’ being the key word here because Suetonius then goes onto to list every one of those vile criminal obscenities that Tiberius was getting up to on the island of Capri in a chapter that is possibly the most eye-popping account of any emperor – and that’s saying something given the competition even in Suetonius’s own book from the likes of Caligula. If you really want to know I wrote a previous History Girls article on the allegations tossed at Tiberius – be warned they are very graphic. 

From Rome’s first emperor Augustus deflowering the virgins that his wife had helpfully selected for him, to the eccentric 3rd century CE Emperor Elagabalus who set up a brothel in the palace, appointed positions based on penis size and was said to have asked doctors to create him a vagina, Roman histories abound with stories of Imperial sexual excesses. Really you do have to wonder how some emperors found the time to do any of the paperwork, not least Nero who came up with this interesting way to fill up a dull, wet Sunday afternoon.

 ‘He at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freedman Doryphorus.’ 

Suetonius, Life of Nero

Filling up on biscuits whilst watching the Antiques Roadshow it certainty isn’t. 

Mud may stick but entertaining and barely believable sexploits are like bloody superglue. If I asked you what you know about the Emperor Nero, I’m betting that the peace brokered with the Parthian Empire over the status of Armenia, the initiative to prevent forgery and the distribution of 400 sesterces to every citizen of the city won’t feature. Mother shagging and fiddling during an inferno likely will – neither of which have any basis in fact. 

In fact, many of those facts about the sexual excesses of Roman emperors you think you know are as shaky as a chihuahua on a winter morning walk. Something that those collating the stories are well aware of. Suetonius’ accounts contain phrasing like. ‘now the belief was’, and ‘for some writers say that’. Also, ‘others write that’ and ‘he is said to have had’. Hedging his bets on their truthfulness in other words. 

The authors of the Historia Augusta chapter on Commodus were faced with a difficult question - how to explain the absolute disaster of a ruler that was Commodus, an Emperor who would rather play at being a gladiator then do the noble Roman thing facing off enemy tribesmen in some godforsaken part of the empire, when his father had been the late and great at proper warmongering Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The story they come up with to explain this away involves Mrs Marcus Aurelius, Faustina, falling in lust with a, presumably hunky, gladiator. Her passion was such that she became gravely ill, her concerned husband sat by her bed, took her hand in his and begged her to tell him what was wrong with her. Faustina confessed all to her husband, because he had the sort of kind face that inspired confidences. 

(He really does, check out his busts he’s half Father Christmas and half dear old Dickie Attenborough.) She may well have regretted spilling all because the solution the doctors come up with to heal her of this debilitating lust disease is to bathe in the blood of the hunky gladiator and then immediately afterwards have sexual intercourse with her husband. 

So says the Historia Augusta adding. 'this story is considered plausible’, trying to convince themselves of its veracity more than the reader I suspect.

From all of which we might gather that ancient historians are somewhat of a different breed to modern ones. And indeed they are; they compose speeches to put in the mouths of famous Romans who never uttered the lines, present numbers that are absolutely impossible (try picturing the logistics of acquiring and transporting the 11,000 animals said to have been killed at Trajan’s games) and as noted, dish up extreme tales of emperors private lives which even they admit are sketchy on plausibility. The big question is why?

 Livy in the introduction to his history of Rome sums up this thinking neatly. 

In other words they serve as an example of how you should and should not behave yourself. Romans have a view that how you behave in your private life is indicative of your suitability for public office. Which is why you will find in standard political speeches all manner of accusations about fellow politician’s sex lives including incest and past careers as a rent boy (both slung by master orator Cicero, whose master oratating has no barrel it won’t scrape in order to promote himself). 

Tales of Roman emperors getting down and dirty are there as examples not to follow, as a warning of how a lack of character, or virtus, as the Romans termed it, can lead you into immorality. The worse an Emperor was at his public role (e.g. any that get assassinated) the more extreme the accusations about their private lives. The two were forever linked to Romans. 

The fact that we know so much about the supposed depravity of ancient Rome is down to those historians, biographers and poets who sought to record it and their concerns about the immorality of their days. For all we might say about the exaggerated and invented tales of Roman emperors sex lives, the concerns over immorality and people’s private lives are very real and are attested to more than just emperors. We know that the immorality and sexual behaviour of its people was of great concern to Romans, not only because they never stop bleating on about it but because it finds its way into the laws of the land. 

Augustus brings in legislation aimed at controlling private behaviour. The Lex Julia and Lex Poppaea are extremely illuminating on what was considered proper sexual behaviour in ancient Rome. Certainly not sleeping with hunky gladiators nor forcing your slaves into bizarre sex games. No, what they aimed to do was to promote marriage, having children and fidelity. The Augustan laws offered financial incentives for women to have children and if she popped out three darling little moppets she could also ditch the male guardian who was legally required to oversee her financial affairs. 

Accompanying the carrot was the stick, with fines being levied against those who did not marry. These applied to women between the ages of 20 and 50 and for men between the ages of 25 and 60. A years grace was given for widows and widowers before they would be expected to remarry. 

Those caught in adultery faced severe punishments. Although what counted as adultery for men was different for women. A man could be charged with adultery only if he had intercourse with a freeborn married woman, whereas sex with a married ex-slave, slave, prostitute and non-married freeborn girl did not count as adultery. By comparison, adultery for a woman counted as sex with anyone who was not her husband. Female adulterers, if convicted, could expect to lose half of their dowry and a third of their property. They could not inherit or receive legacies. They were no longer allowed to wear the stola, the attire of a Roman matron which signalled to all your married respectability. To lose this and your citizenship was to be reduced to the status of a prostitute. The cuckolded husband was compelled by law to divorce his cheating wife (the Emperor Domitian brings in a later law to stop them remarrying immediately afterwards). Women whose husbands had cheated on them had no such rules forced upon them.  On top of all this the convicted adulteress faced banishment to an island. 

Later amendments to the adultery laws make it illegal to loan out your home for adulterous liaisons and later still, moving into the Christian era we find adulterers facing not a loss of social status but rather a loss of life, it was now an executable offence.  Ancient Rome was a surprisingly conservative society.

But what about the penises? 

It’s a rare ancient Roman site that you will visit without stumbling across an ubiquitous phallus. There’s one in the corridors of the Colosseum, there’s several pitted along the Hadrian’s walls, they are all over the pavements of Pompeii and they fill up the shelving space in any decent museum. If Rome was such a conservative society what’s with all the penises (and other assorted in your face sexual imagery) I hear you cry? 

It’s a question that has bamboozled academics for centuries and they have come up with a number of theories to explain the abundance of ancient dick pics. Those phalluses on the paving slabs of Pompeii are simply helpful pointers to the nearest brothel, was one such attempt at explanation. It singularly fails due to the sheer number of them pointing all over the place which would have meant a brothel of their own for practically every civilian of Pompeii. Plus it didn’t explain the penises above shops, used as wind chimes or worn as pendants round the neck that couldn’t possibly be linked to the brothel locations. 

What offers a more plausible explanation is that the phallus was an image thought to bring luck. Which explains why they were above shops – to bring business through the doors. Round the neck – to keep the wearer safe. In the Colosseum - to bring luck to a favourite gladiator. On the pavements of Pompeii -  err to protect the citizen from tripping up on loose flagstones? This also applies to the Roman God Priapus who is depicted always with a massive erection and who pops up (quite literally) all over Pompeii. He is another protector, this time with jurisdiction over crossroads and private gardens in particular. 

As for the stupendous statue of Pan having it away with a goat that stood in the garden of a well to do man in Herculaneum, yes, bestiality is a surprising subject for a garden ornament (would not a gnome suffice?). But if you look closely at this work of art (and art it is, it's quite magnificent) you will notice the tender way that Pan is looking at the goat and the goat looking back at him. It’s a comic image, it’s meant to be funny. 

A similarly comic image is the lamp that presents a gladiator fighting off his own huge phallus – a joke probably on the potent sexuality of gladiators in Roman society. 

There are also the eight extremely explicit images found at a Pompeii bathhouse in a changing room that would have been frequented by both men and women. The first image show a woman lowering herself onto her partner’s penis, followed by another image of a couple in the readiness of sexual intercourse. So far so vanilla, but after this the images get ever more extreme. 

The next image is a woman fellating a man. In image four a man performs oral sex on a woman, Next up are two women having naked fun together. As an elite Roman male performing oral sex on either men or women is a big no, no and lesbian sex was certainly frowned upon as contrary to a Roman woman's role in society as a wife and mother.

But this is not the end of the obscenity as the depravity factor is lifted even higher by the next image depicting a threesome, with a kneeling woman being penetrated from behind by a man, who in turn is being penetrated from behind by a man. And then just when you think that a pinicale of perversion has been reached, next up is a foursome: a woman performs cunnilingus on another woman while a man fellates another man.

 This catalogue of depravity is finished off by the final image that is not of a sex act at all. It is of a single man, he is standing in front of a table naked, reading a scroll. The part(s) that draws the eye of the viewer are his grotesquely enlarged testicles. It’s likely a metaphor for sexual frustration or built-up sexual energy. Rather than partaking in the range of sex acts before him he instead prefers to read. It’s a joke: the whole set of sex pictures are meant to be looked at (by both sexes) and laughed at. 

It’s not something we would laugh at in our culture, we are from different times but to see these images as indicative of a depraved and perverted culture is to misunderstand how they were seen back then. It’s a subject that fascinates me – how two groups of people divided by millenia can look at the same image and see something completely different. To our 21st century eyes we see grotesque pornography, to the ancient Roman it’s something to have a giggle at not emulate. 

Rome was not a society that was destroyed by perversion and depravity, it was a society that liked to complain that it was being destroyed by perversion and depravity. It had done so as far back as 184 BCE when Cato the Elder ran for censor promising to purify the city of the stench of immorality and continued unabated right through the era when Rome could be rightly considered at its height. Remember Livy writing in his introduction about his disgust at how far the national character had declined? He’s writing that under the reign of Augustus, a time every history book will tell you was a golden era. 

That's not to say that there wasn't perhaps some truth lurking behind those stories of the Emperor's private lives, nor that ancient Rome was purer than the purest thing you can imagine (perhaps a fluffy white lamb or indeed the Antiques Roadshow). But it wasn't the perverted, depraved and immoral society that my 3 a.m. Twitterers like to believe.