The Sexual Life of Ancient Rome
Publisher
:
Tallandier
Parution date
:
2007
EAN
:
9782847342093
Number of pages
:
383
Description
The sex life of ancient Romans is examined by a specialist in ancient Latin literature who finds that it explains much about the structure of Roman society.
Sexual preferences are now generally thought to be primarily biological in origin, with community-wide constraints placed on some sexual practices. But ancient Romans would have been bemused by a view of people as primarily heterosexual or homosexual in desire or practice. To the Romans, sexual choice was about broader preferences and quite different societal constraints. All of Roman behavior, including sexuality, appears to have been organized by sex, social status, and age. A male citizen of Rome—the highest level within the population—could penetrate anyone, but depending on age could never be penetrated by another. Other members of the population—male and female—were subject to other rules about sexual penetration, rules that depended on status. One set of such rules applied to the respectable matriarch, another to a younger wife, and a quite different set of rules and conditions applied to free-spirited courtesans and certainly to slaves of either sex. The few known exceptions to these codes of behavior were emperors Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero.
The author explores ways in which the structure of sexual codes mimicked that of the general Roman society and makes clear a fascinating, complex, and interconnected set of social beliefs and behaviors that were quite different from our own.
Author
Géraldine Puccini-Delbey : Géraldine Puccini-Delbey is a professor of Latin language and literature at the Université de Bordeaux III. She is a noted authority on the author Apuleius, a novelist of the second century CE.
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