Did the Ancient Greeks and Romans Practice BDSM?

For those who are not aware, BDSM is a combined acronym for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. The term refers to a variety of sexual practices that fall under these umbrella categories. There are already many articles on the internet that talk about the supposed ancient history of BDSM, but I think that all these articles are hopelessly inadequate for anyone looking for accurate information on the subject.

Nearly all of these articles are clearly written by people who know very little about ancient history and are just looking for anything mentioned in modern secondary sources that seems to vaguely resemble contemporary BDSM practices. Additionally, most online articles about BDSM-like practices in the ancient world don’t cite any ancient sources whatsoever and repeat demonstrably false factoids as though they were true. In this article, I hope to counter the dearth of trustworthy information on this subject by providing my own analysis of it, using real ancient primary sources as evidence.

Disclaimer

Before I say any more, I think I should clarify that, as of the time I am writing this article, I have personally never been involved in BDSM in any way, although I have some knowledge of it from reading about it and from conversations I’ve had with people who are involved in it. Nonetheless, the topic of BDSM in the ancient world is one that I’ve wondered about for a while.

The first time I remember being interested in this topic was around six or seven years ago when I first encountered an argument by the former Pentecostal preacher and current atheist activist Dan Barker criticizing the Golden Rule. Barker argues in his book Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, originally published in 2008 by Ulysses Press, on page 193, that the commandment “do to others as you would have them do to you” is an imperfect guide to morality, because one would not want a masochist who derives sexual enjoyment from experiencing pain to do to others as they would have others do to them, because, following the rule literally would require the masochist to torture everyone they meet, since they want to be tortured themself.

I first encountered Barker’s argument summarized in an article written by the Christian apologist Caleb Colley on the Christian apologetics website Apologetics Press. At the time, I was around fourteen or fifteen years old and I was going through a religious phase where I was intensely Christian and obsessed with the Bible. Naturally, I concluded that Barker’s argument against the Golden Rule on the basis of masochism was utterly ridiculous. I still think that Barker’s argument is not a very good one.

The statement “do to others as you would have them do to you” carries with it the implied protasis “if you were a person like them in their situation.” A masochist who derives sexual enjoyment from experiencing pain will almost certainly realize very quickly that other people do not enjoy pain. If they are genuinely trying to follow the Golden Rule, they will treat other people the way they would want to be treated if they were not a masochist. Thus, the existence of masochism is not a serious problem for the morality of the Golden Rule, if it is understood correctly.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the atheist activist Dan Barker, who is inadvertently partly responsible for provoking my curiosity in BDSM-like practices in the ancient world

Barker’s argument, however, left fourteen or fifteen-year-old me wondering whether sadism and masochism even existed in the ancient Mediterranean world in which Jesus lived. I didn’t go looking for information on the subject at the time, because I felt that it would be sinful to look for historical information about such an immoral and depraved subject.

Over time, however, my faith became more liberal. Then, I eventually lost faith entirely, so that I now consider myself an agnostic. I have since gone looking for information about BDSM-like practices in the ancient world. Although I have found lots of noteworthy information on this subject, I have been disappointed to find that there is almost no reliable information on the subject on the internet that is accessible for popular audiences.

The only decent discussion of BDSM-like practices in the ancient world I have been able to find online that actually cites ancient sources and is accessible for a popular audience is this YouTube video titled “Sadomasochism in Classical Antiquity,” which the classics graduate student Marc Graves posted on her YouTube channel “Classics in Color” on 8 August 2021. Graves’s video, however, only covers one part of the BDSM acronym: the “sadism” and “masochism” part. In this article, I hope to address to some degree all parts of the acronym.

ABOVE: Screenshot from Marc Graves’s YouTube video “Sadomasochism in Classical Antiquity,” which I do recommend watching if you have the chance

Why BDSM couldn’t exist in the ancient world in anything resembling its modern form

In some ways, you could argue that nearly every sexual relationship that existed in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds was a dominant/submissive relationship, since nearly every sexual relationship in these cultures was centered around some kind of power dynamic of dominance and submission. Indeed, these power dynamics were etched into the entire Greek and Roman concept of sexuality itself.

There is, however, one very big reason why I think it is inaccurate to speak of BDSM as existing in anything resembling its modern form before the twentieth century. As I understand it, the entire modern BDSM community is founded on the core idea that all parties involved must give informed consent. This idea, however, basically didn’t exist until the twentieth century. The ancient Greeks and Romans had, at best, a vague notion that consensual sex is generally better than rape; the idea that all parties must give informed consent in order for sexual activity to occur would be more-or-less alien to them.

The Greeks and Romans had virtually no concept of marital rape. Husbands were regarded as having absolute authority over their wives. If a husband demanded for his wife to have sex with him, she was expected to submit and allow him to do to her whatever he desired.

There are, of course, ancient sources that mention women refusing to have sexual relations—or, in some cases, certain kinds of sexual relations—with their husbands. For instance, the Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) wrote a comedy titled Lysistrata in which a group of women organize a sex strike in order to bring an end to the Peloponnesian War. Writing centuries later, the Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (lived 38 or 41 – c. 103 CE) complains in his Epigrams 11.104 that his wife will not let him anally penetrate her. Nonetheless, if a Greek or Roman man raped his wife, this was not punishable as a crime.

It was considered a crime for a man to rape an unmarried woman or a woman who was married to another man, but it was generally not primarily seen as a crime against the woman herself. If a man raped an unmarried woman, then it was generally regarded a crime against her family. If he raped a woman who was married to another man, then it was generally regarded as a crime against her husband.

The Roman historian Titius Livius (lived c. 59 BCE – c. 17 CE), for instance, describes the notorious mythological incident of Sextus Tarquinius’s rape of Lucretia, a married woman, in his Ab Urbe Condita 1.58, characterizing it as primarily a crime against her husband and her father, rather than a crime against her personally.

ABOVE: Tarquin and Lucretia, painted in 1571 by the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, depicting Sextus Tarquinius’s notorious rape of Lucretia, a married woman

Meanwhile, as I previously discussed in this article I wrote in August 2020 about slavery in ancient Greece, enslaved people were considered property of their masters. In some cases, there were laws restricting who was allowed to hurt an enslaved person. Notably, an anonymous Athenian author who lived in the fifth century BCE and is known today as the “Old Oligarch” angrily complains in his treatise On the Constitution of the Athenians 1.10 that it was apparently illegal in Athens for a free person to physically assault an enslaved person who was owned by another free person without the owner’s consent.

Aside from this, however, enslaved people had virtually no legal rights whatsoever. It was considered completely normal and acceptable for a man to do basically anything he desired to an enslaved person without their consent, as long as he owned the enslaved person in question.

In practice, a master was allowed to rape, starve, torture, and even kill the people he enslaved as often as he liked. Aristophanes’s comedies are full of jokes about enslaved people being beaten, whipped, and tortured. The opening scene of his comedy The Knights, which was first performed in 424 BCE, is a pair of slaves complaining about how brutally their new overseer beats them and tortures them. These jokes suggest that these things were so common that Athenian audiences were desensitized to them.

For people in ancient Greece and Rome, sexual power dynamics were not something that consenting adults could engage in for fun; they were a thoroughly ingrained aspect of all sexual interactions from which no one could escape. If you were a married woman or an enslaved person, then, by definition, you were required to submit to whatever the master of the house wanted, regardless of whether you wanted to or not. If you were a free adult man, then, by definition, you were socially expected to be sexually dominant at all times and, if you weren’t, you would be seen as unmanly.

ABOVE: Detail of an Attic vase painting showing a scene from a comedy of a master beating his slave

Ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of sexual power dynamics

In order to understand the sexual power dynamics that existed in the ancient world, we need to understand how the ancient Greeks and Romans thought about gender and sexuality more generally. As I discuss in both this article I wrote in August 2020 and this article I wrote in March 2021, ancient Greek and Roman authors frequently do not operate on a two-gender model like the one most westerners today are familiar with, but rather a one-gender model. According to this model, a masculine adult man with fully intact male sexual anatomy is the only correct and complete form for a human being and anyone who is not a masculine adult man with fully intact male sexual anatomy is automatically “inferior” and “deformed.”

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle of Stageira (lived 384 – 322 BCE) famously writes in his treatise On the Generation of Animals 2.3.737a25: “The female is indeed, as it were, a deformed male.” Throughout his works, he routinely lumps women, children, and eunuchs (i.e., castrated males) together as having a common nature that is lacking in masculinity. For instance, here is a description from his treatise On the Generation of Animals 5.3, as translated by Arthur Platt:

“Women do not go bald because their nature is like that of children, both alike being incapable of producing seminal secretion. Eunuchs do not become bald, because they change into the female condition. And as to the hair that comes later in life, eunuchs either do not grow it at all, or lose it if they happen to have it, with the exception of the pubic hair; for women also grow that though they have not the other, and this mutilation is a change from the male to the female condition.”

It is hard to convey just how obsessed the Greeks and Romans were with masculinity. Even men who had fully intact male anatomy who displayed tendencies that others regarded as effeminate were sometimes seen as not truly men in very a literal sense. Men were expected to constantly prove to others that they were masculine and dominant and therefore superior.

Generally speaking, the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that sex was an activity in which a freeborn adult man was supposed to display his dominance and superior masculinity over all other people—including free women, adolescent boys, and enslaved people—by sexually penetrating them and using their bodies for his own gratification.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix, dating to around 470 BCE or thereabouts, depicting a man having sexual intercourse with a woman in the missionary position

The Greeks and Romans classified various sex acts as “natural” or “unnatural” according to their cultural perceptions of the power dynamics involved. The standard work that is usually cited on this subject is the chapter “The Teratogenic Grid” by Holt N. Parker in the book Roman Sexualities, published by Princeton University Press in 1997, edited by Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner. You can read a PDF of the chapter here.

At this point, I feel I must note that the author of the article, Holt N. Parker, a former professor of classics at the University of Cincinnati, plead guilty in August 2016 to the crime of possession of child pornography and was sentenced to four years in prison in January 2017. The grid introduced in this particular article, however, does a really good job of explaining how the Romans thought about sexual acts, even if the man who created it is a thoroughly odious human being.

Sex acts that the ancient Greeks and Romans generally perceived as natural and normal include:

• A freeborn adult man vaginally penetrating a woman of any status

• A freeborn adult man anally penetrating a woman of any status, an adolescent boy, or an enslaved person of any gender

• A freeborn adult man thrusting his penis down the throat of a woman of any status, an adolescent boy, or an enslaved person of any gender (known as irrumatio in Latin and often translated as “face-fucking” in English)

By contrast, the Greeks and Romans generally perceived any sex act in which a freeborn adult man displayed any sign whatsoever of submissiveness—or a woman, adolescent boy, or enslaved person displayed any sign of sexual agency—as unnatural, immoral, and shameful. These sex acts include:

• A woman actively sucking a man’s penis (because the woman is the one in control of the act, rather than merely a passive recipient)

• A man performing cunnilingus on a woman (because the man is sexually submitting to the woman)

• A woman penetrating a man or boy with a dildo in any manner (because this represents an inversion of what they perceived as the natural order)

• An adult male citizen masturbating (because this shows that he is not dominant and masculine enough to find a woman, an adolescent boy, or an enslaved person to penetrate)

• A woman having any kind of sexual relations with another woman (because this represents a woman attempting to take on the role that they believed was supposed to be filled by a man)

Mind you, we know for a fact that all of these sex acts were extremely common because there are references to them all over the place in Greek and Roman literature. When they are mentioned, however, they are generally portrayed as shameful and immoral.

If a freeborn adult man anally or orally penetrated another freeborn adult man, then the man who did the penetrating was seen as ultra-masculine, dominant, and superior. The man who was penetrated, on the other hand, was seen as utterly weak, unmanly, feminine, and a disgrace. Such men are commonly mocked in ancient sources with demeaning names. In Greek, such men are referred to as κίναιδος (kínaidos), βάταλος (bátalos), εὐρύπρωκτος (eurýprōktos), and μαλακός (malakós). In Latin, they are referred to as cinaedus, pathicus, and mollis.

The famous Roman general and dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was haunted throughout his career by rumors which claimed that, when he visited the court of King Nikomedes of Bithynia as a young man, he had sexually submitted to the king by allowing him to anally or orally penetrate him (for reference, see Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus’s Life of Julius Caesar 2 and Kassios Dion’s Roman History 43.20).

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Tusculum portrait of Julius Caesar, which is probably the only portrait of him made during his own lifetime

The ancient Romans regarded it as a disgrace for a man to be penetrated by another man, but they regarded it as far more disgraceful for a man to orally stimulate a woman’s vulva. The Roman gender hierarchy placed men at the top and women beneath men. Thus, for a man to sexually submit to another man was a disgrace, but for a man to sexually submit to a woman and allow her to use him for her pleasure was regarded as far more disgraceful.

Normative Roman sexuality regarded performing cunnilingus on a woman as the absolute most degrading, disgraceful, and humiliating sexual act that a man could possibly perform. The Romans regarded it as even more degrading for the man if the women happened to be menstruating when the man performed cunnilingus on her—as Marc Graves discusses in this video she posted on her YouTube channel on 18 July 2021.

The Suburban Baths is a building in Pompeii that contains a famous series of frescoes depicting various deviant sexual acts. One of these frescoes depicts a man performing cunnilingus on a woman. The woman is portrayed as unusually large, sitting in an expansive position with her legs and arms splayed apart in a confident manner, and brazenly completely naked except for her jewelry. The man, by contrast, is portrayed as unusually small, crouching in a submissive position, and fully clothed, with what looks like a timid expression on his face.

Modern viewers might think that this is an ordinary sex scene, but, for the ancient Romans, this was the most extreme form of male submission that was even imaginable. The woman in this fresco is perhaps the clearest example in all of ancient history of a person we might think of as a dominatrix.

ABOVE: Wall painting from the Suburban Baths in Pompeii depicting a submissive man performing cunnilingus on a woman

The Spartan marriage ritual and eroticized abduction

Now that we’ve talked about some of the power dynamics of sex in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, we can finally talk about ancient sexual practices that bear at least superficial resemblances to modern BDSM, which I’m sure is what many of the people reading this article are really interested in.

If there was one place in the ancient world where practices that superficially resemble those found in modern BDSM subculture flourished, it was ancient Sparta. Closer examination reveals that most of these practices are, in fact, examples of the institutionalized abuse of women in Sparta. As I discuss in this article I wrote in July 2021, Sparta is often falsely made out to have been some kind of ancient Greek paradise for women when it was, in fact, anything but. Nonetheless, I do think that some people—including both men and women—probably found these practices arousing.

Ancient Greek writers record that the traditional ancient Spartan marriage ritual simulated the abduction and rape of the bride. The Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BCE) seems to allude to the Spartan abduction ritual in his Histories 6.65, but the much later Greek biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – after c. 119 CE) gives a much more detailed description of it in his Life of Lykourgos 15.3–5. He writes, as translated by Richard J. A. Talbert:

“The custom was to capture women for marriage—not when they were slight or immature, but when they were in their prime and ripe for it. The so-called ‘bridesmaid’ took charge of the captured girl. She first shaved her head to the scalp, then dressed her in a man’s cloak and sandals, and laid her down along on a mattress in the dark. The bridegroom—who was not drunk and thus not impotent, but was sober as always—first had dinner in the messes, then would slip in, undo her belt, lift her and carry her to the bed.”

“After spending only a short time with her, he would depart discreetly so as to sleep wherever he usually did along with the other young men. And this continued to be his practice thereafter: while spending the days with his contemporaries, and going to sleep with them, he would warily visit his bride in secret, ashamed and apprehensive in case someone in the house might notice him.”

Given that Spartan women, like other Greek women, probably had little say in whom they married and were most likely often forced into this ritual, the ritual may have been, in many cases, not merely simulated rape, but actual rape. I am certain that this marriage ritual was extremely traumatizing for many young Spartan women.

On the other hand, I do think it is possible that some Spartan women may have found this ritual of simulated abduction and rape arousing. “Consensual non-consent” or “pretend rape” is a popular activity in modern BDSM and an activity that many contemporary submissive women apparently enjoy.

Spartan wife-loaning

Another ancient Spartan practice that bears a superficial resemblance to a practice in modern BDSM is the practice of wife-loaning. Ancient writers tell us that Spartiate men had the legal right to loan their wives out to other men in order for those men to impregnate them, without any apparent need for the wife in question’s consent. The Athenian historian Xenophon (lived c. 430 – c. 354 BCE), who may have lived in Sparta for some time, describes this custom in his On Spartan Society 1.7–8. He writes, as translated by Talbert:

“[The Spartan lawgiver Lykourgos] observed, however, that where an old man happened to have a young wife, he tended to keep a very jealous watch on her. So he planned to prevent this too, by arranging that for the production of children the elderly husband should introduce to his wife any man whose physique and personality he admired. Further, should a man not wish to be married, but still be eager to have remarkable children, Lykourgos also made it lawful for him to have children by any fertile and well-bred woman who came to his attention, subject to her husband’s consent.”

Xenophon says that the husband’s consent mattered—but he says nothing about the wife’s consent, because, as far as he and the Spartans were concerned, the husband’s consent was all that was needed and the wife’s consent was irrelevant, since she was the property of her husband.

Xenophon goes on to claim that Spartiate men frequently loaned out their wives to other men and that this arrangement always worked out well for Spartiate men and women alike. He writes, in Talbert’s translation:

“And he [i.e., Lykourgos] would approve many such arrangements. For the women want to have two households, while the men want to acquire for their sons brothers who would form part of the family and its influence, but would have no claim on the estate. For the production of children, then, he made these arrangements so different from those of others. The question of whether he did thereby endow Sparta with men whose size and strength are in any way superior, is for anyone who wishes to investigate for himself.”

I personally suspect that, contrary to what Xenophon claims, most Spartiate women probably did not enjoy being loaned out by their husbands to be impregnated by strange men. Nonetheless, this does at least superficially resemble the modern BDSM practice of dominants consensually loaning out submissives to other dominants and, once again, I imagine that some women and men probably found arousal in it.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a bronze statuette of a woman wearing a Spartan-style dress running, perhaps in a footrace, dating to between c. 520 and c. 500 BCE, originally found in Prizren, currently held in the British Museum in London

The human table erotic fresco in the Tomb of the Bulls

The Etruscans were an ancient people who lived in northern Italy who were extremely influential on the early Romans. The Roman alphabet that we use to write the English language even today is based on the Etruscan alphabet. The Etruscans spoke a non-Indo-European language, which, unfortunately, is only partly understood. Very little is recorded about their history and, despite the fact that they are known to have had enormous importance in the ancient Mediterranean world, most people who are not scholars of ancient history have never heard of them.

One thing that the Etruscans are known for today is the fact that their wealthy elites liked to be buried in lavish underground tombs, which were frequently filled with valuable possessions. Many of the finest examples of Attic black-figure and red-figure pottery were originally found in Etruscan tombs. These tombs were also frequently decorated with splendid, colorful frescoes, which often depict scenes of people banqueting, celebrating, and enjoying life.

In the Etruscan Monterozzi necropolis, located east of the city of Tarquinia in the region of Latium in west-central Italy, there is a tomb known as the “Tomb of the Bulls,” which dates to sometime between c. 540 and c. 520 BCE or thereabouts. This tomb contains two very small erotic frescoes, but only one of these frescoes is relevant to the subject of this article. The fresco in question depicts a man crouching on his hands and knees in order to serve as a human table for a woman who is lying on his back with her legs spread while a second man who is standing upright is having sexual intercourse with her.

The man who is serving as a human table for the woman who lies on top of him is the one who makes this fresco worth mentioning here, since he is clearly in an extremely submissive position compared to the two other participants in the scene. Unfortunately, scholars possess absolutely no certain information about who the people in this fresco are supposed to be or why the man is apparently acting as a human table. It is possible that the man serving as the human table may be an enslaved person who is forced to serve in this role for his master and/or mistress.

ABOVE: Detail of a photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the fresco from the Tomb of the Bulls depicting a threesome with one man apparently serving as a human table for the woman who is lying on his back

The erotic flagellation scene in the Tomb of the Whipping

Discussions of practices resembling BDSM in the ancient world are often dominated (pun definitely intended) by erotic flagellation, which I’m sure is what at least half the people reading this article are probably really here for. Let’s start by talking about some of our earliest evidence for erotic flagellation in the ancient Mediterranean world.

In addition to the Tomb of the Bulls, the Etruscan Monterozzi necropolis also contains a tomb known as the “Tomb of the Whipping,” which dates to sometime around 490 BCE. The tomb takes its name from an erotic fresco that appears on the wall to the right side of the entrance.

This fresco depicts a naked woman, who is most likely supposed to be either an enslaved woman or a prostitute, bending over. A naked beardless man is standing behind her. The fresco is, unfortunately, badly damaged, so neither his penis nor her rear end is visible, but he is most likely penetrating her from behind. The beardless man appears to be holding his right hand on her buttocks. Meanwhile, he is raising a whip in his left hand, apparently intending to strike her with it.

At the other end of the fresco, a naked bearded man stands in front of the woman. Her head is located at his crotch with her arms on his hips. Unfortunately, the fresco is once again damaged, so neither her face nor his penis is visible, but he is most likely subjecting her to irrumatio (i.e., thrusting his penis down her throat). Meanwhile, the bearded man who is probably irrumating the woman is raising his right hand in apparent preparation to strike her on the back.

This fresco represents a very unambiguous example of erotic flagellation among the Etruscans in the early fifth century BCE. Unfortunately, as is often the case with ancient depictions of sex, it is unclear whether the woman in the scene has consented to what the men are doing to her. Especially if we consider the likelihood that she may be an enslaved women, we are forced to consider that this scene may be one of rape.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the fresco of erotic flagellation from the Tomb of the Whipping in the Monterozzi necropolis

Some bizarre misinformation about the Tomb of the Whipping

Unfortunately, if you try searching online for the Tomb of the Whipping, you will almost certainly come across all sorts of bizarre and flagrant misinformation. For instance, the website V for Vibes published an anonymous article on 30 March 2021 titled “The History of BDSM.” The entire article is a mess of abysmally poor research with factual inaccuracies and downright nonsense right and left. The article’s claims about the Tomb of the Whipping, however, are especially wildly out of touch with reality. First, the article claims:

“There was even a Tomb of Whipping in Greece, decorated with images of two males flogging a woman, where people would go to be punished for pleasure.”

Later, the same article claims:

“There existed a Tomb of Flogging, dedicated to Dionysus, a god associated with debauchery, the excessive indulgence in sexual pleasures; where those could go to find sexual pleasure in their pain by being whipped and dominated.”

The only part of any of this that is true is that there is a real place called the “Tomb of the Whipping”; everything else is 100% factually wrong.

First of all, contrary to what the article seems to suggest, the “Tomb of the Whipping” and the “Tomb of the Flogging” are not two different locations; they are, in fact, exactly the same place. These are both just two different translations of the name of the tomb in modern Italian, which is Tomba della Fustigazione.

Furthermore, the Tomb of the Whipping is not “in Greece,” nor is it a Greek tomb; it is an Etruscan tomb that is located in Italy. The tomb was also not “dedicated to Dionysus” (or, to use the Greek spelling, Dionysos); it is a literal tomb, in which a person’s corpse was actually buried—not a temple or shrine. The paintings in the tomb do contain Dionysian imagery, but this does not mean that the tomb was “dedicated” to Dionysos.

Finally, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to indicate that anyone ever went to the Tomb of the Whipping in order to be whipped, dominated, or “punished for pleasure” in any form. As I have already stated, it is a literal tomb where a person’s corpse was actually entombed, not a brothel. Just because the tomb contains a painting that shows erotic flagellation does not mean that erotic flagellation actually took place inside the tomb.

Honestly, the sheer laziness and ignorance of the vast majority of the people writing articles on the internet about this stuff is almost hilarious. Why did the author or authors of this article think it was called “Tomb of the Whipping” if it was actually some kind of shrine to Dionysos where people went to get whipped for erotic pleasure? Did they think the “tomb” part was just some kind of edgy nickname?

For Dionysos’s sake, people, do your research.

ABOVE: Roman fresco depicting the god Dionysos from the city of Boscoreale in southern Italy, dating to c. 30 BCE

The ancient Spartan flagellation ritual

There are many surviving ancient examples of flagellation in religious and ritual contexts that are often brought up in the context of discussion of sadism and masochism in the ancient world. I personally don’t think most of these examples are really relevant, because they are clearly religious in nature and are not explicitly sexual as far as we can tell from the surviving sources. Nonetheless, I will recount them here for the sake of thoroughness.

One example that is frequently cited is the example of the famous Spartan whipping ritual, which I previously discussed in this article I wrote in January 2021 titled “Fascinating Facts about Ancient Sparta.” The historian Xenophon writes in On Spartan Society 2.7–9 that Spartan boys were encouraged to steal food, but, if they were caught stealing, they would be brutally whipped as punishment. He writes, as translated by Talbert:

“Someone might ask then, if he [i.e., Lykourgos] considered theft a good thing, why on earth did he inflict many lashes on the boy who was caught? My answer is, because—as in every other branch of instruction—people chastise anyone who does not respond satisfactorily. So the Spartans, too, punish those who are caught as being incompetent thieves. And after making it a matter of honour for them to snatch just as many cheeses as possible from Orthia, he commanded others to whip them, wishing to demonstrate thereby the point that a short period of pain may be compensated by the enjoyment of long-lasting prestige. This proves that wherever speed is called for, the sluggard gains minimum advantage while also incurring maximum difficulty.”

From around the first century BCE onwards, however, the whipping of Spartan boys developed into a horrifying ritual display which attracted tourists from all over the Mediterranean world. In the version of the ritual that existed during the time when Greece was ruled by the Roman Empire, the Spartans would whip local teenaged boys (who were presumably volunteers) on the altar of the goddess Artemis Orthia. The boys, in turn, would try to show as little pain as possible to impress the onlookers with how tough and manly they were.

The famous Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (lived 106 – 43 BCE) visited Sparta and witnessed this horrifying flagellation ritual for himself. He describes it in his Tusculan Disputations 5.14, writing, as translated by C. D. Yonge:

“The boys at Sparta are scourged so at the altars that blood follows the lash in abundance; nay, sometimes, as I used to hear when I was there, they are whipped even to death; and yet not one of them was ever heard to cry out, or so much as groan.”

This ritual is widely cited online as evidence for BDSM-like practices in the ancient world, including in Marc Graves’s video that I referenced earlier, but I think that this is clearly a misinterpretation. The ancient sources give no indication that there was any erotic element to the flagellation and it seems to have been primarily a public display of the boys’ ability to tolerate pain, meant to prove their toughness and masculinity.

ABOVE: Illustration of the infamous Spartan whipping ritual from the 1911 novel The Coward of Thermopylae by Caroline Dale Snedeker

Depiction of ritual whipping in the Villa of the Mysteries

Further evidence for the existence of ritual flagellation in the ancient world comes from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. On the outskirts of the city, there is a suburban villa that modern scholars and archaeologists have dubbed the “Villa of the Mysteries.” Inside this villa, there is a room known as the “Hall of the Mysteries” because it contains a series of frescoes that modern scholars interpret as depicting scenes related to a Roman mystery cult.

Mystery cults were diverse religious schools that existed in the ancient Greek and Roman cultural spheres that all had one essential feature in common, which is that initiates into these schools were required to swear an oath not to divulge the secrets of the cult to outsiders. If you’re interested in mystery cults, Andrew Mark Henry has an excellent video on his YouTube channel Religion for Breakfast about one of the more prominent mystery cults, the cult of Mithras. I also wrote an article in January 2020 about whether Christianity can be considered a mystery cult.

In any case, the Hall of the Mysteries includes a scene of ritual flagellation. On the right end of the east wall, there is a topless, winged female figure wielding a whip. At the left end of the south wall, a woman is shown kneeling with her back bared and her face buried in her arms, resting on the lap of another woman. She is evidently receiving the lashes from the winged woman on the other wall across her back.

Modern scholars believe that this scene most likely represents some kind of religious initiation ritual connected to a mystery cult. The whipping may still be connected to sadomasochism, though, because some interpreters believe that the woman wielding the whip is supposed to represent the goddess Venus, who is associated with beauty, lust, and sexuality. Sadly, however, there are no surviving writings to explain what the whipping scene depicted in the Hall of the Mysteries represents, meaning that anything we say about it is by necessity merely speculation.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the frescoes from the Villa of the Mysteries, dating to c. 60 BCE, showing the woman undergoing ritual flagellation

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing detail of the winged woman wielding the whip

ABOVE: Detail of the scene of the woman kneeling with her back bared as the winged woman whips her

The Galli and self-flagellation

If the winged figure in the fresco is indeed Venus, then she was certainly not the only goddess in the Roman cultural sphere who was associated with flagellation. As I discuss in this article I wrote in August 2020 about people in the ancient world who might be considered transgender or gender-nonconforming, Kybele was an ancient mother goddess who originated in the region of Phrygia in Asia Minor. Her cult was introduced to the Greek world in the sixth century BCE.

From the third century BCE onwards, Kybele’s devotees included a group of people who were known as Galli. These people had been assigned male at birth, but they ritually castrated themselves as part of their initiation into Kybele’s cult. After their initiation, they wore traditionally female clothing, they wore their hair long in feminine hairstyles, and they wore perfume, makeup, and jewelry. Ancient Greek and Roman elite male authors generally regarded the Galli with disgust, believing that they were not men, but rather inherently inferior creatures more similar to women.

The Romans officially adopted Kybele into their pantheon in 205 BCE during the Second Punic War at the behest of an oracle who told them that Kybele would help them to defeat the Carthaginians. As a result of the Romans adopting Kybele into their pantheon, the Galli became a part of the Roman religious landscape. In Rome, the Galli are known to have practiced self-flagellation and other forms of self-torture and self-harm on various occasions, including at festivals in honor of Kybele.

The Roman author Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (lived c. 124 – c. 170 CE), who lived in what is now northern Algeria, wrote a novel in the Latin language titled The Golden Ass, in which the narrator and main character, a man named Lucius, is transformed into a donkey and endures all sorts of misadventures. In Book Eight of the novel, Lucius as a donkey is bought by a Gallus and he gets an inside look at how the Galli live. In The Golden Ass 8.27–28, he gives a very disapproving description of the Galli practicing self-harm and self-flagellation. Here is his description, as translated by Jack Lindsay:

“Bending their heads, they twisted, writhed, and rolled their necks to and fro, while their long hair swung round in circles. Every now and then they dug their teeth into their own flesh; and as a finishing effect each man slashed his arms with the two-edged sword that he flourished.”

“There was one of them pre-eminently ravished with religious ecstasy. Panting out deep sighs from his heaving breast as if filled to bursting with the divine breath, he acted the part of a raving lunatic—as though the presence of the gods did not raise man above himself but depressed him into disease and disorder. However, you will see that heavenly providence had the last word in sending these rascallions their deserts.”

“With a babbling parade of inspiration the fellow began testifying against himself, pouring out a deal of idiocies about the way in which he had sinned the Inexpiable Sin, and calling upon his own hands to take vengeance upon him. He thereupon snatched up one of the scourges which figure among the properties of these half-men, and which have several long lashes of twisted wool strung with sheeps-knucklebones; and with this knotty contraption he flogged himself cruelly, bearing the pain of the blows with astonishing fortitude.”

“You could see the ground thickly sprinkled with the epicene blood that gushed from the sword-cuts and the whip-weals. This spectacle of blood spouting from wounds on every side made me feel very queasy lest the Goddess’s belly might crave ass’s blood, as some men for ass’s milk.”

The Galli’s practices of self-torture and self-harm are clearly religious in nature; it was a way of atoning for sins and showing their absolute devotion to Kybele. Nonetheless, it is possible that these practices may have had a sexual component for some Galli. No sources written by Galli themselves have survived, meaning it is impossible for us to know their perspective.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a funerary relief of an Archigallus from Lavinium dated to the second century CE on display in the Capitoline Museums in Rome

A scene of sadomasochistic torture in Petronius’s Satyrica

It is very difficult to tell whether the people who actually practiced the religious rituals involving flagellation that I have just discussed saw them as sexual in any way. There is, however, one very clear instance of sexual sadomasochism in the Satyrica, a novel written in the Latin language by the Roman courtier Gaius Petronius Arbiter (lived c. 27 – c. 66 CE).

This novel was originally an extraordinarily long work that was divided into many biblia and probably would have spanned at least several thousand pages in a modern printed codex. Sadly, only a relatively tiny, badly fragmentary portion of the original novel, containing scenes that are usually thought to come from the fifteenth and sixteenth biblia, has survived to the present day. The surviving portion of the novel is divided into 141 chapters or sections.

The novel is written as a first-person narration by the main character, a man named Encolpius who suffers from impotence. Seeking a cure for his impotence, Encolpius goes to a priestess named Oenothea. While he is there, some of her sacred geese attack him and he kills one of them. Oenothea is outraged, but he offers her money to pay for the goose he killed and she accepts it. Then she predicts his future, becomes drunk, and apparently decides to use him as her sexual plaything. Section 138 of the extant text describes what she does to him. Here is the text in the original Latin:

“Profert Oenothea scorteum fascinum, quod ut oleo et minuto pipere atque urticae trito circumdedit semine, paulatim coepit inserere ano meo. Hoc crudelissima anus spargit subinde umore femina mea. Nasturcii sucum cum habrotono miscet, perfusisque inguinibus meis, viridis urticae fascem comprehendit, omniaque infra umbilicum coepit lenta manu caedere.”

[several lines of text missing]

“Aniculae quamvis solutae mero ac libidine essent, eandem viam tentant et per aliquot vicos secutae fugientem ‘Prende furem!’ clamant. Evasi tamen omnibus digitis inter praecipitem decursum cruentatis.”

This means, in my own translation:

“Oenothea brought out a leather dildo, which she covered with oil and ground pepper and crushed nettle seed, and began to gradually insert it into my anus. This most vicious old woman immediately afterward sprinkled my thighs with the liquid. She mixed the juice of nasturtium with southernwood and drenched my genitals with it. Then she took a bundle of green nettles and began to whip everything below my navel with a clinging hand.”

[several lines of text missing, in which Encolpius apparently escapes the temple and starts to run away]

“Although the little old ladies were besotted with wine and sexual desire, they tried the same route and they chased me through several alleys, with me fleeing. ‘Stop the thief!’ they shouted. I, however, escaped with all my toes bleeding from my headlong dash.”

This passage clearly describes a form of non-consensual sexualized sadomasochistic torture involving irritating chemicals.

ABOVE: Illustration by the Australian artist Norman Lindsay (lived 1879 – 1969) depicting the scene of Oenothea subjecting Encolpius to sadomasochistic torture

Conclusion

Bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism were clearly all elements of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality. There was, however, nothing in ancient Greece or Rome that even remotely resembled the modern BDSM community. Indeed, the vast majority of the recorded ancient cases of people engaging in practices that resemble those in modern BDSM are clearly cases of rape and/or abuse.