Gay Roman Emperors and soldiers docu (relevant to rdrama)

No Romans would have been caught dead in public snuggling up to their lovers. The video rather glides over the idea of "inferior social status", the Romans disapproved of the Greek tradition of paederasty so while they would indeed frick slave boys, that was definitely not an equal relationship of any kind, and didn't have to be voluntary on the slave's part. Your master could do what he liked. So it wasn't as rosy as they depict it.

And fricking boys was seen as something you indulged in before marriage, then gave up (unless you found a real cute twink you wanted to bang later on), see the poem by Catullus:

>Lest the ribald Fescennine jesting

>be silent for a long time, and the groom's catamite refuse

>nuts to boys as he hears about abandoned love.

>Give nuts to the boys, lazy catamite! You have played with nuts long

>enough: now it pleases Hymenaeus to be of service. Catamite,

>give nuts. You considered farm managers' wives unworthy of

>your attention, today and yesterday. Now your hairdresser

>shaves your beard. O wretched, wretched catamite, give nuts!

>Anointed groom, you will be criticized for keeping away from

>your bald, effeminate slaves, but keep away from them. Yo!

>Hymen Hymenaeus, yo! Yo! Hymen Hymenaeus! We know that these

>peccadilloes (which are permitted to you) are the only ones

>you have known, but they are not permitted to a married man.

If you've seen any of the statues of Antinous, Hadrian's favourite, he's very obviously a cute twink.

Heliogabalus is a tough case to figure out since the sources are all biased and heavily critical of him. The reason he became Emperor at 14 was down to his mother and grandmother's political scheming, and really he was only a puppet emperor from the start. I wouldn't say he was trans, but his association with the foreign sun god as chief priest, and trying to replace Jupiter, didn't help.

To sum up: Romans were not as gender diverse and tolerant as this video makes out. Men were expected to be sexually active, and while it's true that nobody much cared about who you were fricking as they did "are you a top or bottom?", being gay wasn't socially tolerated past a certain point. Getting fricked as a cute boy was okay, so long as you weren't socially important, but being gay as an adult, especially as a bottom, was heavily criticised.

we wuz emprahs

Invictus : Ancient sexuality rarely gets talked about and its yet another aspect of daily life in the past that I am excited to explore. What other "How They Did It" topics would you like to see us cover? Inflation, natural disasters, vacations...?

Anal s*x, please. Specifically, lubrication.

The historian must serve two masters: the past and the present.

-- Fritz Stern

Snapshots:

• ghostarchive.org

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)