Roman Empire Nude

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Roman Empire Nude


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To understand ancient Roman sexuality, we first need to understand how Roman society functioned. Roman society was first and foremost a patriarchal society where men dominated and set the rules be it in business, politics, legal matters or even religion. Women had fewer rights than men, they could not vote or hold public office, and they were under the control of their husbands or fathers ( patria potestas ). Men could have sexual relationships with partners deemed permissible including slaves or prostitutes and that was not considered adultery 2 , whereas women couldn't. Sexuality for men was related to ideas of masculinity and male domination.







Ancient Rome was also a slave society meaning that a large number of people were slaves. A Roman citizen 's political liberty ( libertas ) included the right to preserve the integrity of his or her own body, meaning that he or she could not be beaten, flogged or sexually abused 3 . Slaves in contrast were regarded as property and could be used by their masters for sex. Masters also controlled the sexuality of their slaves as more children from their slaves added to their wealth. However, slaves could not be used for sex by other Roman citizens unless their masters hired them out for sex 4 .
Prostitutes actually appear in the erotic art of the Suburban Baths of Pompeii suggesting that prostitution was commonplace and well accepted. Until the late Republic , Roman baths had a section for women or different schedule for men and women, while during the Roman Empire, baths, like the Suburban Baths of Pompeii, were mixed. However, women bathing naked with men were probably lower-class women or infames such as entertainers or prostitutes. Emperor Hadrian (reign: 117 – 138 AD) banned mixed bathing, but the ban seems not to have endured 7 .
Was homosexuality more prevalent in Ancient Rome than it is today? Even though no historian can really answer this question, the answer is probably not. There were probably a good number of men who abhorred homosexuality, but in the prevalent patriarchal and slave-oriented culture of Ancient Rome, where some human beings were considered as mere objects, it would have been seen as just another form of sexual activity and... a matter of taste. Even though it is hard to understand today, what was more important was the role (active or passive) and status of the Roman male.
Group sex, sex parties, orgies were probably something reserved to a very small section of the upper class though. Most Romans lived ordinary lives, had to work hard to make ends meet and would probably not want to tarnish their family's reputation by being involved in such activities. Roman orgies are also often confused with the religious festivals such as those in the honor of Bacchus or Lupercus , both fertility gods, which involved a lot of nudity. Sometimes these festivals went out of control and, as a result, were later reformed by the Roman pontifices . For example, the kind of worship of Bacchus which often involved debauchery was criminilized in 186 BC to be replaced by a reformed version.
As we previously pointed out, Roman law protected the Roman citizen from sexual misconduct ( stuprum ) whereas Roman slaves and non-citizens did not enjoy the benefits of libertas . This meant that Roman citizens, male or female, were off-limits while sex with slaves or prostitutes was easily available. According to Roman law, rape could only be committed against a citizen in good standing. A woman who worked as a prostitute, as an actress or as a dancer lost her social standing and became an infamis . By making her body publicly available, she had lost her right to be protected from sexual abuse or physical violence 3 .
As far as homosexuality is concerned, the Lex Scantinia of c. 149 BC prosecuted adult male citizens who took a passive role in sexual relations with other men or who had sex with freeborn male minors. The law did not prohibit homosexual behavior as such, but punished male citizens taking the passive role or committing sex crimes ( stuprum ) against freeborn male minors.
At the beginning of the Roman Empire, Rome's first emperor, Augustus (reign: 27 BC – 14 AD), passed laws (the Leges Juliae ) in 18-17 BC as part of his program to restore the mos maiorum or traditional social norms, following a period of instability, while consolidating his political authority. This goes to show that Rome was traditionally a conservative society and not the modern imagination of a sex-crazed society. The Leges Juliae main objectives were to increase the population by encouraging marriage and having children and to restore the morality of the upper classes. The laws had a section pertaining to adultery, the Lex Iulia de adulteriis (translation: "Julian Law concerning acts of adultery") which was primarily directed at married women who committed adultery. The law made adultery a public matter and punished adultery with banishment and with the confiscation of part of property. Husbands and fathers had the right to kill the partners in adultery under certain circumstances even though this was rarely carried out. Augustus actually applied this law to his very own daughter Julia who was banished and sent to the island of Pandateria.
For example, Lupercalia was a religious festival taking place on February 15 whose purpose was to expel the evil spirits and to purify the city ( februum means purification in Latin), thereby bringing health and fertility. This festival involved some people running half-naked with thongs of goat-skin in imitation of the god Lupercus .
Floralia was another religious festival in honor of the fertility goddess Flora, the goddess of flowers and of the season of spring held between April 28th and May 3rd. This religious festival involved prostitutes who danced naked and fought in mock gladiator combat. There were also a number of gods linked to sexuality such as Liber, the god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom, the god Cupid ( Cupido ), the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection, the imported Greek fertility god Priapus protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia, the phallic marriage god Mutunus Tutunus who promoted marital sex. A lot of the sexual art found by archeologists was related to Roman superstitions linked to the Roman religion. For example, the phallus, found in the form of an amulet or wind chimes, was supposed to have powers to ward off the evil eye and other malevolent supernatural forces 1 .
It can be said that all these gods promoted life and fertility as opposed to death. It does not mean that all Roman religion promoted sex. Vesta was the virgin goddess of the hearth, home and family, and the guardian of the Roman people and the religious festival Vestalia held between June 7th and 15th was one of the most important in Ancient Rome. Vesta was rarely shown in human form but was personified by the fire of her temple in the Forum Romanum . The Vestal Virgins were full-time priestesses of Vesta who tended the sacred fire at the hearth of the temple. They had to observe absolute chastity for 30 years. A Vestal Virgin who violated her vow of chastity was entombed alive in a ritual that resembled a Roman funeral. Her lover was executed. Therefore, one of the most important goddesses in the Roman religion was a virgin goddess.
The spread of Christianity throughout the Roman empire, its acceptance with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD under Constantine the Great (reign: 306–337 AD), and its adoption as the state religion with the Edict of Thessalonica of 380 AD, had a dramatic impact on Roman customs and sexuality and impacts our culture to this day. Many of the Roman religious traditions either faded away or were banned altogether. As we previously pointed out, Vesta was a very important goddess for the Romans. She was so important that her cult continued well into the fourth century AD until it was forcibly disbanded by emperor Theodosius I in 391 AD. Pope Gelasius I (494-496 AD) considered Lupercalia a vile festival and sought to abolish it. The senate protested and insisted that Lupercalia was essential to Rome's well-being and safety. Then Pope Gelasius suggested with disdain to senator Andromachus that they should celebrate it themselves and run around naked if they thought that this rite was salutary.
The gradual disappearance of all the pagan cults and the establishment of Christianity as the main religion, led to gradual changes in beliefs and attitudes towards sexuality. Some historians believe that the modern perception of Roman society as a decadent society comes in fact from early Christianity. Christians viewed celibacy as ideal and sex as inherently sinful, redeemed somewhat only if it took place within marriage 8 . Christianity put the emphasis on monogamy and expanded the definition of adultery to include married men having sexual relations with anyone other than their wives, including slaves or prostitutes. "But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband." (Corinthians 7:2). Under Emperor Justinian I (reign: 527 – 565 AD), laws against adultery, albeit less strict for men, could also be applied to husbands who cheated on their wives 9 .
Even though Christian Rome was more conservative than pagan Rome when it comes to sexuality, especially the sexuality of men, it also gave more rights to women. For example, under Justinian I, married women were no longer put to death for adultery and were rather sent to a convent. Wronged husbands were no longer required to divorce their wives as with the Lex Iulia de adulteriis and had the right to pardon them. With the previous Roman law, if the wronged husband did not divorce his wife he could be charged with pandering ( lenocinium in Latin from the word leno , "pimp").
With Christianity, the official attitude toward prostitution became chillier. Constantine I , the first Christian emperor, accepted it as a fact of life but taxed prostitutes. Theodosius II prohibited fathers from making a profit from their daughters, and slave owners from prostituting their slaves. Emperor Leo I banned prostitution outright and Theodora , a former prostitute herself, attempted to put an end to it as soon as she became empress 9 10 .
Even though the prosecution of homosexuality as a general crime began before the adoption of Christianity, laws against homosexuality became tougher under the Christian Empire. Men taking the passive role were punished by burning by the end of the 4th century AD. Under the Theodosian Code ( Codex Theodosianus ), the punishment for "a man coupling like a woman" was "death by sword". In the 6th century, under emperor Justinian I, all homosexual sex, passive or active, no matter who the partners were, was declared "contrary to nature" and punishable by death.
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Interesting facts about ancient Roman sexuality

Lesbianism was illegal in Ancient Rome.
It was during the brutal reign of Tiberius, the emperor who lived a life of debauchery, that Jesus was crucified, under the authority of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea at the time.
A lot of sexual words such as fellatio , cunnilingus , etc come from Latin.


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Musings on Daily Life in the Ancient and Early Medieval Mediterranean By Sarah E. Bond
This week, it seems that my classical friends wished me to learn a great deal about clothing–or lack thereof. I started off reading (and then quickly consumed) the splendid book by late antique historian Kristi Upson-Saia on Early Christian Dress (Plug: now out in paperback!), then had Roman bioanthropologist Kristina Killgrove ask about Greco-Roman diapers, and finally, had Roman historian Richard Flower reference a particularly amusing law regarding the legal prohibition of washing one’s horse in the nude. I’d like to talk about each of these topics briefly, but throughout this discussion, I will try and tie in considerations and constructions of the Roman gaze. Sight was a powerful sense in antiquity, one that imbued clothing with an additional dimension.
After Dr. Killgrove gained some insights into the use of swaddling clothing as diapers in antiquity, I began to wonder what, exactly, Romans had on under their togas or tunics, and why we know so little about them. There is an expert article on this by Kelly Olson , and thus many of the classical references I will now explore have been plucked from her publication on the matter. Martial (11.99) notes that women wore a tunica under their clothing which could be bothersome and ultimately give them a wedgie. Young women and brides-to-be could also wear an undertunic called a supparus or supparum. This was a long piece of linen around one’s thighs that, at least from descriptions, seems to have been a bit like a slip; however, Lucan (2.364) suggests it could also come up to and around the shoulders.
Women also wore a “breast band” or what we would call a bra. These were referred to as strophia. As Olson notes (204), you could increase your bust size (i.e. stuff your bra) by simply wrapping more fabric or leather around you.These strophia are likely depicted in the mosaics from Piazza Armerina often referred to as the “bikini girls”. In my day (I guess this was the 90s?), we just called this fabric bra a bandeau. The women in the Piazza Armerina mosaics wear a kind of workout bottom often worn by men called a subligar or a subligaculum , but there is no textual evidence that under their clothing on a day-to-day basis, Roman women wore underpants.
Men, on the other hand, did wear them. The aforementioned subligaculum probably strongly resembled a diaper, and was rather bulky. We get a good idea of what these likely looked like particularly from reliefs, figurines, and mosaics of gladiators, but these were perhaps modified from the day-to-day underwear worn by Roman men. Just like soccer players wear cups, I would imagine that gladiators would want to have a bit more (*cough*) protection than they would need for simply taking a stroll around the Forum Romanum. Some nice patterns for underwear can be found in The World of Roman Costume (2001: 234).
Here we should note that even partial nudity could visually communicate status–though I am not sure this should be surprising to us. It simply matters where and when the individual wore their underthings. If I wear my bikini to a crab shack at the beach? Just fine. I wear a bikini to lecture in? Not fine. In Roman antiquity, slaves often had bare chests. For example, mill slaves likely only wore the subligaculum . The example I usually refer to when I speak about bakeries is from the relief of Eurysaces the baker outside the Porta Maggiore in Rome. We can often discern slaves in certain contexts based on their complete lack of clothing or their wearing of nothing more than a bit of a loincloth. Notably, slaves stood naked on the platform to be sold, and thus in this spatial context, nudity was tied directly to servility. Others that appear partially nude or in underclothes were similarly degraded: prostitutes, actors, and gladiators all appeared in public in various states of undress.
Clearly clothing could communicate status to others, but there was an added component found in beliefs surrounding the Roman gaze. For this we turn to the Theodosian Code (7.1.13), and a law of 391 addressed to Richomer, a Count and Master among both military branches. In it, soldiers that stopped along rivers were not allowed to defile the water with dirt and sweat from washing their horses, or allowed to defile the public gaze (‘ deproperus publicos oculos nudatus incestet ‘) by washing said horses in the nude. At its heart, the passage is about pollution–both environmental and visual–and demonstrates the gravity with which emperors approached nudity at times. Soldiers were required to leave the public sight in order to wash their horses in the nude, and to do so downstream. It was not just that they were naked, but that they were Roman soldiers appearing in the public gaze!
The gaze was of particular concern in Late Antiquity, though restraint of the eyes had been remarked on earlier by men such as Cicero and Seneca. As Upson-Saia remarks in regard to the dress of female ascetics, because these women were so linked to Christian desire and were considered vulnerable amid the public gaze, many were kept out of sight (57). In many ways, Romans often conceptualized the gaze as a kind of hunger. The eyes consumed people; ate their image. It could arouse passion and desire that, if uncontrolled, could cause moral transgression. This fact was harped upon by early Christian moralists. It should be noted that at the same time, a certain type of gaze could indicate reverence and worship. It was all in how one looked, and a glance could either confer honor or shame.
Alright, I need to get back to the manuscript edits now, but these were just some rather random notes as I sit here thinking about the meaning of clothing and the power of sight. It is interesting to think about the undergarments that Romans wore or did not wear and their meaning, but for me, it is more interesting to note where they were worn, how others read them, and why we may not know that much about them. Clothing always has a spatial dimension to it, and thus all garments–even undergarments–cannot be divorced from context. That being said, we must also consider whether the media that survive from antiquity were meant to transmit such a subject.
Dorothy King, “ Venus in a Bikini,” Dorothy King’s PhDiva.
Barbara McManus, “Roman Clothing,” VRoma.

I am an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Iowa. I am interested in Roman, late antique, and early medieval history, archaeology, topography and GIS, Digital Humanities, and the role of Classics in pop culture. I obtained a BA in Classics and History with a minor in Classical Archaeology from the University of Virginia (2005). My PhD is in Ancient History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011). My book, Trad
Libra Man
Horny Girl Stripping
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