Why “Roman Orgies” Weren’t Really a Thing

For decades, ancient Rome has been associated in the popular imagination with orgies. Indeed, perhaps the very first thing most people think of when they hear the words “ancient Rome” are Roman orgies. The problem is that there is no good evidence that orgies were ever at all common in ancient Rome. In fact, we do not even have a single reliable, first-hand, nonfiction account of one; all we have are salacious rumors, propaganda, and works of erotic fiction. In other words, the idea of “Roman orgies” is a complete misconception. The story of how we all came to believe in Roman orgies, however, is truly bizarre and fascinating.

An almost complete lack of evidence

I am writing this article because the idea of Roman orgies is one of those misconceptions that really bother me sometimes and I figured that, since I recently debunked quite a few misconceptions about gladiators, it was only about time I took on Roman orgies as well. You see, for all the preeminence that the idea of Roman orgies has held in modern popular culture, the historical evidence for them is simply lacking. Either these orgies did not happen at all or they happened so infrequently and in such secrecy that we have no reliable record of them. There are almost certainly vastly more orgies happening today than ever happened in ancient Rome.

This is not in any way, however, to suggest that the ancient Romans were idealistic puritans or anything like that. Indeed, judging from archaeology and scattered references in classical sources, the Romans do indeed seem to have been generally more open about sex and sexuality than most people generally are today.

This openness certainly did not include everyone, but, on the whole, the Romans do seem to have been more open, at least to depictions of sexuality. For instance, paintings that we would now consider pornographic were commonly displayed openly in private homes, often prominently in areas where they would have been clearly visible to any and all visiting guests.

ABOVE: Fresco of a man and a woman having intimate relations from the bedroom of the House of the Centenary in Pompeii

In spite of this, however, the Romans were still not at all the orgy-loving decadents they are constantly portrayed as. So where does the whole misconception about the ancient Romans being rampant sexual perverts come from? Well, the origins of this myth are actually extremely complicated, but also quite fascinating. Here are some of the factors that I think had the most influence in shaping this misconception:

An etymological mess-up

Part of the confusion here may stem from the fact that our Modern English word orgy comes from the Ancient Greek word ὄργια (órgia), which passed into Latin as orgia. These two words, which are both plural forms of second declension neuter nouns, are used relatively frequently in Greek and Latin texts respectively, but neither of them originally referred to what we today would consider an “orgy.” Instead, both of these words originally referred to a kind of nocturnal religious ceremony held in secret.

These kinds of ceremonies were particularly associated with the gods Dionysos, Sabazios, and Attis and the goddesses Bendis, Kotys, and Kybele. Because they were secret, many people who were excluded from them but who knew of their existence were drawn to pruriently speculate about what the participants in the ceremonies were doing.

Whether warranted or not, people eventually came to associate the orgia with acts of unrestrained passion, particularly passion of a sexual nature. The word orgy was introduced into English in the 1660s, but it originally referred to any form of licentious revelry, including even things as innocent as immoderate frolicking, singing, and dancing. It did not take on its modern definition until around the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

So ancient Greek and Roman texts talk about “orgies” quite a bit, but they are not really talking about what we today consider “orgies.” This can sometimes be misleading for modern readers, particularly those reading outdated translations.

ABOVE: Third-century AD Roman marble sarcophagus depicting an orgia with the god Dionysos surrounded by satyrs and nymphs

Livy’s descriptions of the cult of Bacchus

The Roman historian Titus Livius (lived 64 or 59 BC – 12 or 17 AD), who is better known simply as “Livy,” gives lurid descriptions of the rituals that were allegedly associated with the cult of Bacchus during the early second century BC in Book Thirty-Nine of his monumental history of Rome titled Ab Urbe Condita Libri. In Book Thirty-Nine, Section Thirteen, for instance, Livy writes, as translated by Reverend Canon Roberts:

“At first they were confined to women; no male was admitted, and they had three stated days in the year on which persons were initiated during the daytime, and matrons were chosen to act as priestesses. Paculla Annia, a Campanian, when she was priestess, made a complete change, as though by divine monition, for she was the first to admit men, and she initiated her own sons, Minius Cerinnius and Herennius Cerinnius. At the same time she made the rite a nocturnal one, and instead of three days in the year celebrated it five times a month. When once the mysteries had assumed this promiscuous character, and men were mingled with women with all the licence of nocturnal orgies, there was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was wrought by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the very sum of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies; the matrons, dressed as Bacchae, their hair dishevelled, rushed down to the Tiber with burning torches, plunged them into the water, and drew them out again, the flame undiminished, as they were made of sulphur mixed with lime. Men were fastened to a machine and hurried off to hidden caves, and they were said to have been rapt away by the gods; these were the men who refused to join their conspiracy or take a part in their crimes or submit to pollution. They formed an immense multitude, almost equal to the population of Rome; amongst them were members of noble families both men and women. It had been made a rule for the last two years that no one more than twenty years old should be initiated; they captured those to be deceived and polluted.”

Judging from Livy’s descriptions of the cult’s alleged activities, it certainly sounds like members of the cult were engaging in orgies in the modern sense. There are, however, very serious problems with taking Livy’s account here at face value.

First of all, the cult of Bacchus was probably introduced to Rome near the beginning of the second century BC and its suppression by the Roman Senate occurred in 186 BC. Livy, on the other hand, was not even born until well over a century later and was probably writing nearly two hundred years after the events he describes allegedly took place. Thus, we can be sure Livy was not there when any of these events allegedly happened. His information about the cult of Bacchus is second-hand at the very best.

Livy was also a deeply conservative, deeply patriotic Roman man with moralistic tendencies and he was heavily biased against the cult of Bacchus. In Livy’s view, the cult of Bacchus represented a dangerous influence, a movement that threatened the very fabric of traditional Roman values. He therefore had strong motive to portray the cult as negatively as possible and to seek to justify the Roman Senate’s persecution of it.

Finally, Livy’s descriptions of the cult of Bacchus bear resemblances to Roman satyr plays, indicating Livy may have drawn inspiration for his descriptions from contemporary drama rather than from historical sources. Modern scholars generally regard Livy’s descriptions of the cult of Bacchus as highly unreliable to say the least.

ABOVE: Photograph of a printed edition of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita from 1714, bearing a fictional portrait intended to represent him

Imperial propaganda

During the imperial era, Roman emperors regularly employed propaganda writers to compile stories vilifying their predecessors in order to make the current emperor seem much better by comparison. This whole paradigm of casting blame on one’s predecessors has not really gone away; it is similar to how modern presidents usually blame their predecessors for mistakes they make while in office. The only difference is that Roman emperors were much more skilled at it than, say, our current president.

One such writer employed by the emperors to write about previous emperors was Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 AD), who was employed as secretary of studies and director of the imperial archives under Emperor Trajan (ruled 98 – 117 AD) and later the personal secretary to Emperor Hadrian (ruled 117 – 138 AD). While in these positions, Suetonius wrote a set of biographies about Julius Caesar and the first eleven emperors of the Roman Empire.

One popular technique of vilifying former emperors was making up all kinds of crazy stories about their sexual perversions. Consequently, Suetonius’s biographies of the Roman emperors read like modern celebrity tabloids, filled with all kinds of ridiculous gossip about the horrible atrocities and depraved sexual acts that previous emperors were alleged to have committed. These stories are rarely based on any kind of fact and many of them appear to have been completely fabricated.

Suetonius claims, for example, in his Life of Tiberius that Emperor Tiberius had a swimming pool filled with toddlers who had been trained to perform fellatio on him and that he called them his “fishes.” In his Life of Caligula, Suetonius claims that Caligula had incestuous affairs with all four of his sisters and even his brother-in-law Marcus Lepidus to boot. He also asserts that, after squandering the entire imperial treasury in less than a year, Caligula turned his own palace into a brothel hoping to bring in more money.

These stories probably have about as much historical credibility as the North Korean propaganda claiming that Kim Jong Un never uses the bathroom. The Emperor Tiberius lived for most of his reign in isolation on the island of Capri and—despite Roman historians’ love of speculation on the subject—no one really knows what his lifestyle was like. Caligula certainly had a reputation as a profligate womanizer, but Suetonius’s salacious stories about his alleged incest and turning the imperial palace into a brothel are undoubtedly exaggerations.

While Suetonius’s portrayal of Caligula comes across as insane, Caligula’s contemporary, the Jewish philosopher Philon of Alexandria (lived c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD), who had actually met him in person, portrays the emperor in his Embassy to Gaius as vain and self-centered, but very sane. No sane ruler, regardless how perverted he might be, would willfully turn his own palace into a brothel; he would know full well how horribly such a decision would reflect on his reputation.

Raunchy ancient Roman erotic literature

During the reign of the Emperor Nero (ruled 54 – 68 AD), a Roman writer named Gaius Petronius wrote a novel called The Satyrica, set in Rome and filled with wild sex scenes and orgies. Petronius was not trying to create an accurate portrayal of how real people actually lived; he was just trying to incorporate as much sex and gratuity into his novel as possible.

The novel is about as accurate a portrayal of Roman sexuality as The Romance of Lust (published 1873–1876) is of Victorian English sexuality. That is to say, it is not representative at all. Yet, it seems early modern readers naïvely assumed that Petronius’s wild fantasies were an accurate reflection of what Roman life during the period was really like. This helped fuel the modern image of the Romans as depraved orgy-loving perverts.

ABOVE: Illustration by the French historical painter Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse (lived 1859–1938) of the feast of Trimalchio from Petronius Arbiter’s Satyrica

Christian anti-pagan propaganda

After Christianity began to spread, the Romans began to circulate wild rumors about the rampant perversions that the Christians supposedly engaged in. The one of the popular rumors claimed that Christians would hold clandestine meetings in which they would engage in incestuous orgies for ritualistic purposes. Oh yes, you heard that right; according to the Romans, Christians were the depraved orgy-loving perverts!

Another common rumor, mentioned by the early Christian apologists Tertullian (lived c. 155 – c. 240 AD), Origen of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 AD), and Marcus Minucius Felix (died c. 250 AD), held that the initiation ritual to become a Christian required the initiate to take a knife and plunge it straight into the beating heart of a live human infant. Then, according to the rumor, the Christians would then drink the infant’s blood, cut up its tiny corpse, and devour it raw. Obviously, all of these rumors were completely made-up and ridiculous, but the Church Fathers’ constant attempts to refute these rumors clearly shows that many people earnestly believed them.

Then, after Christianity superseded paganism as the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, Christians decided to turn the tables. Late Christian apologists, namely Lactantius (lived c. 250 – c. 325 AD), claimed that it was really the pagans who were indulging in incestuous nighttime orgies, not the Christians. For some odd reason, these reports of pagan atrocities were taken seriously for over a thousand years, while reports of Christian orgies were ignored and dismissed.

ABOVE: Fourth-century AD Roman mural assumed to probably depict Lactantius, the Christian apologist most directly responsible for many of the stories of Roman orgies.

If we look at the evidence as objectively as possible, it seems clear that no one was really having these massive nocturnal orgies and they are really nothing more than a stock fabrication to make one’s enemies look bad. Indeed, you may notice similarities between the ritual murder allegations by Romans against Christians and the later ritual murder libels by Christians against Jews.

Pompeii

In the nineteenth century, when the city of Pompeii was unearthed in Italy, the Victorians were shocked and appalled to find the city filled with sexually explicit artwork. When King Francis I of Naples visited the Pompeii exhibition in 1811 with his wife and daughter, he was so embarrassing by the erotic artwork that he ordered for it to all be locked away in what he called a “secret cabinet,” which only “people of mature age and respected morals” would be permitted to access. The artwork was stored away – in what is now known as the “Secret Museum.”

After seeing the erotic art from Pompeii, which includes everything from bestiality to group sex, a Victorian gentleman could easily be forgiven for assuming that the ancient Romans were all monstrous perverts, but there are actually three big reasons why that assumption would not be valid. First of all, was that Pompeii was notorious as the “party city” of the western Mediterranean. Its convenient location as a port city made it easily accessible by sea and it became renowned for its expensive brothels and high-class courtesans.

The largest brothel in Pompeii was known as the Lupanar, which contained ten rooms. Archaeologists have identified nine other brothels in the city, but all these consist of only one-room buildings. It would be as though the city of Las Vegas were destroyed today and, some two thousand years in the future, archaeologists were to rediscover its ruins. Those archaeologists would assume that the city they were excavating was representative of how the rest of the United States lived, even though that assumption would not be correct in the slightest.

ABOVE: Exterior of the largest brothel in Pompeii, containing ten separate rooms. The interior is decorated with frescoes depicting explicit sex scenes.

Another factor that the Victorians failed to consider was that many emblems we associate today with sexuality, such as the erect phallus, were often used as apotropaic symbols, not as sex symbols. The ancient Romans would have seen a depiction of an erect penis as essentially the ancient equivalent of a lucky charm: a symbol for warding off evil. The symbol was so common and de-sexualized that many of them may not have even considered the symbol’s sexual implications.

Finally, while ancient Romans were certainly more relaxed about portrayals of sexuality in art than we are today, that does not necessarily indicate that they were more comfortable with or accustomed to performing the sex acts depicted themselves. After all, depictions of violence are pervasive in modern society; we have violent movies, violent television shows, violent novels, and violent video games, but yet we certainly do not approve of real-life murder.

Hollywood (Need I say more?)

The final step in the process of turning the Romans into orgy-loving perverts was initiated by Hollywood during the last quarter of a century. As we all (unfortunately) realize by this point, Hollywood never passes up an opportunity to add sex to their films. They, of course, seized upon the Roman reputation for sexual promiscuity and exaggerated it far beyond even what the Victorian-Era archaeologists who unearthed the city of Pompeii could have imagined.

The 1969 Italian film Fellinini Satyricon, a modern adaptation of Petronius’s novel written and directed by Federico Fellini, contained shocking depictions of Roman sexual decadence. That, however, was nothing compared to the sheer horrors that were yet to come.

The 1979 feature film Caligula, widely regarded as one of the worst movies of all time, was produced by Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse. Rather predictably, the film turned out to be nothing but a depraved shock-show filled with gruesome sex and violence. It took Suetonius’s unfounded gossip about Caligula’s sexual depravity and exaggerated it to previously unfathomed proportions. It was disowned by both the original screenwriter and the director.

ABOVE: Still from the 1979 movie Caligula, a horrifying mess of gratuitous sex, violence, and objectively terrible writing which probably single-handedly did more to shape the modern popular image of Roman orgies than nearly all other factors combined

The sad truth about films is that, despite their well-deserved reputation for being astoundingly poor sources of historical information, for the vast majority of the population, they are the main source of precisely this variety of information. Films and television can have a remarkably strong impact on how people view history for generations.

Once the idea of Roman orgies had been established in the public imagination, it only spread. Films, television, and books could make jokes and references to Roman orgies and everyone would know what they were referring to. The idea gradually became so thoroughly cemented that people no longer even thought to question how much historical basis there actually was behind it; they just assumed it was true.

Just how debauched were the ancient Romans really?

The popular stories about Roman orgies are just one part of a much larger modern stereotype of the ancient Romans as thoroughly decadent and debauched. This stereotype, however, is mostly inaccurate; there were probably a few people in ancient Rome who truly were debauched, but the ancient Romans on the whole were no more debauched than any other people.

Many other modern misconceptions about ancient Rome feed into this inaccurate stereotype as well. For instance, I have already debunked the popular misconception that the Romans had places called “vomitoria” where they would go to vomit so they could gorge themselves further in this article I originally published in January 2017. In reality, a vomitorium is just a passage in a theater through which the audience leaves after a performance. Ironically, the only ancient Roman text that even uses the word vomitorium to refer to a place is Macrobius’s Saturnalia, a very late text which only mentions the word in passing.

ABOVE: Photograph of a vomitorium from a Roman amphitheater in Trier, Germany

Another popular misconception that feeds into the inaccurate modern stereotype of the ancient Romans as a nation of avowed debauchees is the claim, popularized by clickbait-y articles on the internet, that the Romans overharvested silphium, a kind of giant fennel plant from North Africa, to extinction because it was a highly effective method of birth control. In reality, as I explain in this article I wrote, silphium’s alleged contraceptive properties have been greatly exaggerated.

Furthermore, although some Romans apparently thought that silphium worked as a contraceptive, this was never silphium’s primary use; in reality, the primary reason why the Romans wanted silphium was always because it was considered a culinary delicacy. In other words, they primarily wanted it because they had a taste for rare and exotic foods, not because they were abnormally horny all the time.

Finally, the sources normally cited to support the idea of silphium going extinct don’t actually say what people on the internet often claim they say. There are also references to silphium in texts written after its alleged extinction that make no mention of it being extinct. I therefore personally suspect that silphium probably never really went completely extinct; instead, I think people probably simply forgot which plant it was.

ABOVE: Photograph of a Kyrenaic gold coin dated to betwee. c. 308 and c. 277 BC depicting a stalk of silphium

Conclusion

Ultimately, the modern image of the Romans as a nation of debauched, orgy-loving perverts is, for the most part, not rooted in reality. It is a stereotype that has been constructed as a result of disparate influences, ranging from uncritical readings of works of ancient Roman erotic fiction, Christian moralizing, Victorian interpretations of archaeological discoveries, and twentieth-century Hollywood films.

To be very clear, I am not saying that there were definitely no orgies in ancient Rome at all. After all, we may not have reliable evidence of any orgies taking place in ancient Rome, but I reckon that someone probably tried having one at some point. I certainly will not try to insist, as some others have, that the idea of an orgy was totally foreign to the ancient Romans. My point here is merely that orgies as we think of them were never common in ancient Rome and that we have no reliable, first-hand, nonfiction documentation of such events actually happening.