Shocking, Taboo Sex in Ancient Greece and Rome

Ancient Greek and Roman sexuality seems to be a huge topic of interest with the general public. I’ve found that my posts on the subject are regularly among my most popular. Readers seem to be especially fascinated by stories of lurid depravities. For a very long time, the post I wrote in February 2019 about Roman orgies was consistently one of my most frequently viewed articles.

Well, if that’s what you’re interested in, you’re in luck, because, in this post, I will be discussing some of the sexual acts that the ancient Greeks and Romans regarded as the most shocking, disgraceful, unnatural, and taboo. We’ll even discuss some of the most scandalous and lurid tales of Roman imperial debaucheries. Be forewarned that some readers may find some of the acts discussed in the ancient sources I am about to analyze disturbing.

The general Greek and Roman view of penetration

Before we talk about specific sexual acts that the ancient Greeks and Romans regarded as taboo, we need to lay some groundwork about how the Greeks and Romans thought about sex in general. As I’ve summarized in many previous articles, including this article from July 2021 about ancient Roman masturbation, this article from September 2021 about ancient Greek and Roman kink, and this article from December 2021 about how ancient peoples’ worldviews differ from those prevalent today, normative ancient Greek and Roman sexuality centered heavily around their conceptions of masculinity.

Normatively speaking, the ancient Greeks and Romans generally believed that the only proper, complete kind of human being is a free, adult, gender-conforming, fully reproductively intact man. They regarded women, children, castrated men, and even reproductively intact men who were gender-nonconforming as inferior, incomplete, and belonging to the same essential category, defined by their lack of masculinity.

The Greeks and Romans generally thought of sex as an activity in which an adult, gender-conforming, fully reproductively intact man was supposed to prove his masculine superiority over a woman, adolescent boy, or enslaved person of any gender by sexually penetrating them in any of their various orifices. They believed that to penetrate someone was manly, superior, and glorious and that be penetrated by someone else was feminine, inferior, and shameful.

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

Disgust and mockery for sexually passive men

Consequently, it was generally considered perfectly acceptable for a Greek or Roman man to have sexual relations with a person of any gender—as long as he was always the one penetrating his partner and never the one being penetrated.

The Greeks and Romans routinely mocked men who were thought to enjoy being sexually penetrated as feminine and inferior, calling them all kinds of demeaning insults. The main ones in Ancient Greek are κίναιδος (kínaidos), βάταλος (bátalos), εὐρύπρωκτος (eurýprōktos)—which literally means “wide-assed”—and μαλακός (malakós)—which literally means “soft.” The main ones in Latin are cinaedus, pathicus, and mollis.

Invective poets came up with even more creative insults to use when accusing men of being sexually passive. As I mentioned in my article from February 2021 about ancient Greek obscenity, the ancient Greek poet Hipponax of Ephesos, who lived in around the late sixth century BCE, insults a man named Mimnes in his Fragment 28 by calling him a κατωμόχανος (katōmóchanos), which means “a man who has been fucked in the ass so many times that his asshole gapes all the way to his shoulders.”

The Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) similarly mocks men who apparently had reputations for sexual passivity throughout his various surviving comedies. He is particularly vicious toward an Athenian man named Kleisthenes, son of Sibyrtios, who actually appears on stage in the comedy The Women at the Thesmophoria, which was first performed in 411 BCE, most likely at the City Dionysia. In the play, Aristophanes lampoons Kleisthenes as the only man who is allowed to attend the Thesmophoria, a religious festival that only women were allowed to attend, excusing it by saying that he’s so effeminate that he’s basically a woman.

Aristophanes was a comedian, but to accuse a man of being sexually passive in Greece or Rome was a very serious matter; indeed, such an accusation could potentially tarnish a man’s career. The Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 CE) in his Life of Julius Caesar 2, and the Greek historian Kassios Dion (lived c. 155 – c. 235 CE) in his Roman History 43.20 both record that none other than the famous Roman general and dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was haunted throughout his career by accusations that he had allowed King Nikomedes of Bithynia to penetrate him when he was visiting his court as a young man.

Married Greek and Roman women were expected to submit to sexual penetration by their husbands, but, even for women, being penetrated was still seen as, in some sense, a form of degradation. The difference is that this degradation was seen as a natural part of their feminine condition.

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

Ancient Greek and Roman views on premarital and extramarital sex

For men, extramarital sex was not generally considered taboo or even disreputable. On the contrary, it was generally assumed that Greek and Roman citizen men would have sex before they were married and, after they were married, continue to have sexual relations with people other than their wives, potentially including adolescent boys, both female and male prostitutes, and people whom they enslaved.

It was, however, considered deeply taboo for a man to have any kind of sexual relations with an unmarried “respectable” citizen woman or penetrative intercourse with a citizen adolescent boy, since these were considered serious transgressions against the woman or boy’s father. It was likewise taboo for him to have sexual relations with another man’s wife, since this was considered a serious transgression against the woman’s husband.

Unlike men, Greek and Roman citizen women were expected to remain total virgins until they were married (usually when they were in their mid-to-late teenaged years, to a much older man chosen by their parents whom they might barely even know). Once a woman married, she was expected to remain perfectly devoted to her husband and never have any kind of sexual relations with anyone else.

Thus, for a “respectable” citizen woman to have any kind of sex with anyone other than her lawfully wedded husband was considered deeply taboo. It is possible that, at least in the Greek cultural sphere, it may have been socially acceptable for at least some “respectable” citizen women to pursue extramarital sexual relationships with other women, since Greek men generally didn’t take the idea of women having sex with other women seriously and therefore may not have viewed such relationships as threatening.

Alas, the sources on this matter are extremely few and incomplete; the mostly fragmentary poems of Sappho (lived c. 630 – c. 570 BCE), which, as I discuss in this article I wrote in August 2021, clearly depict same-gender sexual relationships between Greek women in Archaic Lesbos, are the main source we have on this.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix dating to between c. 490 and c. 480 BCE, depicting a naked woman manually stimulating the genitals of another naked woman—one of the very few female homoerotic scenes in ancient Greek art

The importance of moderation

Based on what I’ve said so far, someone might get the impression that Greek and Roman men thought it was manly to go around penetrating anything that moves. This, however, is very far from the case. In reality, ancient Greek and Roman societies generally placed a strong emphasis on the idea of moderation and self-restraint. The ancient Greeks called this idea σωφροσύνη (sōphrosýnē) and the ancient Romans called it temperantia.

σωφροσύνη or temperantia was an integral part of the normative Greek and Roman conception of manliness. Because of this, normatively speaking, the Greeks and Romans only regarded sex and other sensual pleasures as a good thing as long as they were done in moderation. If a man was seen as indulging in excessive sex and other forms of sensuality, then he would be seen as lacking self-control and therefore deeply unmanly.

Of course, individual Greeks and Romans widely disagreed when it came down to the matter of just how much sensual indulgence was “excessive.” Some people certainly took much looser or stricter views than others. On one end of the spectrum, Aristophanes takes a generally positive view of sex, and he portrays male characters indulging in sexual activities favorably.

For instance, in his comedy The Acharnians, which was first performed at the Lenaia festival in Athens in 425 BCE, he gives a positive portrayal of the protagonist Dikaiopolis, who has negotiated a private peace treaty for himself and his family with the Spartans. Near the end of the play, Aristophanes contrasts the joyous life of peacetime luxury that Dikaiopolis is living with the gloom and suffering of war faced by everyone else.

First, the general Lamachos comes on stage, horribly wounded from battle. Then, Dikaiopolis comes on stage, presumably from the opposite end, accompanied by two beautiful naked female prostitutes. Dikaiopolis says in lines 1198–1202 (in my own translation from the original Greek):

“Attatai! Attatai!
What titties! So firm and quince-like!
Kiss me softly, oh golden pair,
one all spread over and one with a diving tongue,
since I’m the first to drain my cup!”

Later, just as Lamachos is fainting from his gory battle wounds, Dikaiopolis further announces his intentions, in lines 1220–1221:

“I also want to go to bed! I’m rock-hard
and I’m going to fuck in the dark!”

The overall message of this scene is that war is nothing but suffering and death, whereas sex during a time of peace is fun and good.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Hellenistic Greek hedonist philosopher Epikouros of Samos (lived 341 – 270 BCE) disdained sex altogether. The biographer Diogenes Laërtios, who lived in around the third century CE, quotes him in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 10.118 as having written (in my own translation from the original Greek):

“No one has ever benefited from sexual intercourse, and a man should consider himself fortunate if it has not done him actual harm.”

This hopefully illustrates the diversity of opinion that existed on this subject. For Aristophanes, a clamorous threesome with a pair of sexy prostitutes with lots of tongue-kissing is a fun time; for Epikouros, any kind of sex at all is at best a waste of time, if not actively harmful.

ABOVE: Temperantia, painted in 1872 by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones

Ōs impūrum (i.e., “the impure mouth”)

Now that we’ve established the basic norms of Greek and Roman sexuality, let’s talk about some specific sex acts that they considered taboo. Let’s start with oral sex. Normatively speaking, the Greeks and Romans thought that being penetrated in general was degrading, but they seem to have thought that it was especially degrading for a person to be penetrated orally, because oral penetration also carried with it the implication of oral defilement.

The mouth is an organ that carries especially important social functions, since it is the primary organ that is used for communication. For this reason, the ancient Greeks and Romans—but especially the Romans—were extremely concerned about the importance of oral purity.

Roman invective poets wrote many poems attacking people for their poor oral hygiene, and they routinely used poor oral hygiene to illustrate that there was something deeply wrong with a person more generally. The most notorious such poem is “Carmen 97” by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (lived c. 84 – c. 54 BCE), which reads as follows, in my own English translation from the original Latin:

“I think it does not matter at all (so may the deities help me!)
whether I smell Aemilius’s mouth or his asshole.
In no way is the former any cleaner, and in no way is the latter any dirtier.
In fact, his asshole is actually cleaner and better:
for it is without teeth. His mouth has teeth a foot-and-a-half long
and gums truly like an old wagon-box.
Furthermore, it tends to have a gape just like
the cunt of a pissing she-mule, cleaved open in the summer heat.
He fucks many women and he thinks that he is handsome
and is he not handed over to the mill for the donkey?
If a woman touches him, then do we not suppose that she would
lick the asshole of a diseased executioner?”

Given this fear of oral impurity more generally, it is not surprising that normative Roman sexuality regarded all forms of oral sex as absolutely disgusting—the lowest, most unnatural form of oral defilement.

Roman authors regularly speak of people who perform oral sex as having ōs impūrum, which means “an impure mouth.” Catullus wrote another invective poem, known as “Carmen 80,” in which he accuses a man named Gellius of giving another man regular blowjobs. This poem reads as follows, in my own translation from the Latin:

“How would you explain, Gellius, how those rosy lips of yours
have become whiter than winter snow
when, in the morning, you leave your home and when the eighth
long hour of the day raises you from soft rest?
I do not know what it is for certain: perhaps the rumor whispers truly
that you are devouring the full-grown erections of a man’s middle?
It is certainly just so: the ruptured groins of poor little Victor shout it,
and your lips marked with his drained-out seed.”

The Romans believed that the mouth of a person who had performed oral sex was so toxic and impure that it could defile anything it breathed upon. For instance, the Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (lived 38 or 41 – c. 103 CE), who lived in what is now Spain, jokes in his Epigrams 7.94 that, after a man named Papylus, who had defiled his mouth by performing some form of oral sex, sniffed a fine perfume, it turned into garum, a kind of ancient Roman sauce made from fermented fish that notoriously stank. His epigram reads as follows, in my own translation from the Latin:

“It was perfume which in measure the small onyx box bore;
after Papylus sniffed it—behold!—it is garum.”

Thus, the defilement supposedly brought on by performing oral sex was seen as capable of spreading further corruption and defilement to other things.

ABOVE: Photograph from this website showing a modern attempt to recreate garum, a kind of notoriously foul-smelling ancient Roman fish sauce

The most disgusting, degrading, and unmanly of all sexual acts

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, though, the most utterly disgusting, degrading, and unmanly sexual act that anyone could perform on another human being was cunnilingus. Because of how the Greeks and Romans viewed gender, they considered it even more shameful, degrading, and unmanly for a person to perform oral sex on a woman than for them to perform oral sex on a man.

The Greeks and Romans generally believed that all women are naturally inferior to men. Normative Greek and Roman sexuality regarded performing cunnilingus as essentially the only way someone could possibly sexually submit to a woman. For a person to sexually submit to a woman meant that the person doing the submission was inferior to the woman and even less manly than her. This, in their view, positioned the cunnilinctor (or cunnilinctrix) as the lowest and least manly of all humans.

On top of this, cunnilingus, as a form of oral sex, carried the added stigma of oral impurity. Just like a man’s penis, a woman’s vulva was believed to defile a person’s mouth, making it impure and the person’s breath toxic. In fact, the Greeks and Romans generally regarded the vulva as even more disgusting and impure than the penis.

Aristophanes wrote a comedy called The Knights, which was first performed at the Lenaia festival in Athens in 424 BCE. In the play, in lines 1280–1289, the chorus attacks a man named Ariphrades, whom they accuse of performing cunnilingus on prostitutes. The attack on Ariphrades reads as follows, in my own translation from the original Ancient Greek:

“His brother, in fact, is not akin in his ways,
Ariphrades the wicked. But he even wants this thing:
and he is not only wicked (for then I wouldn’t have noticed him),
nor utterly depraved, but he even invented something.
For he defiles his own tongue with disgraceful pleasures
in whorehouses, licking the detestable dew,
staining his beard, stirring the hotpots,
doing Polymnestos-things and being of common things with Oionichos.
Whoever therefore does not utterly despise this sort of man
will never drink from the same cup with me.”

The Romans shared the Greek revulsion for cunnilingus and they believed that it brought even greater defilement if it was done while the woman receiving it was menstruating. The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (lived c. 4 BCE – 65 CE) writes with abject horror about a Roman politician who supposedly enjoyed performing cunnilingus on his slave women while they were menstruating in his De Beneficiis 4.31.3. He writes, in my own translation from the Latin:

“When you were making Mamercus Scaurus consul, were you not aware that he would, with his mouth wide open, swallow the menstrual blood of his own slave women? In fact, he himself didn’t disguise it, did he? He didn’t want to seem pure, did he? Let me bear back to you the thing said by him in person, which I remember circulated and praised in his own presence.”

Writing a few generations after Seneca, Martialis, the same epigram writer whom I mentioned in the previous section, accuses a man named Coracinus of being a cunnilinctor in his Epigrams 4.43 in a way that suggests that being a cunnilinctor is just as bad as being a cinaedus, if not even worse. He writes, in my own translation from the original Latin:

“I did not say, Coracinus, that you are a cinaedus;
I am not so rash and audacious,
nor am I a man who would speak lies willingly.
If I said, Coracinus, that you are a cinaedus,
the flagon of Pontia would be hostile to me,
the cup of Metilus would be hostile to me;
I swear to you by the Syrian extravagances,
I swear by the Berecyntian madnesses.
What did I say, though? This thing is light and very petty—
a thing which is well-known, a thing which even you yourself will not deny.
I said, Coracinus, that you are a cunt-licker.”

The Greek medical writer Galenos of Pergamon (lived 129 – c. 216 CE), who lived about a century after Martialis and traveled extensively throughout the Roman Empire, explicitly states that it is generally accepted that cunnilingus is far dirtier than fellatio in his De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis et Facultatibus (10 = 12.249).

The later Greek grammarian and lexicographer Hesychios of Alexandria, who probably lived in around the fifth or sixth century CE, records the word σκύλαξ (skýlax), which literally means “puppy” or “young dog,” as having apparently been a slang term for an unspecified “σχῆμα ἀφροδισιακόν” or “sex act.” The sex act in question is most likely cunnilingus. (It is unlikely that the term refers to the sex position known in English today as “doggy style,” since it is already well attested that the Greeks and Romans called this position “the lioness position.”) If this is the case, then this usage implies that cunnilingus was seen as dog-like, animalistic, and sub-human.

For more information about how the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed cunnilingus in general and cunnilingus while a woman was menstruating in particular, the scholar Dunstan Lowe published an article on the subject in 2013 titled “Menstruation and Mamercus Scaurus (Sen. Benef. 4.31.3)” in the academic journal Phoenix (Vol. 67, No. 3/4, pp. 343–352). You can read the article on JSTOR if you have access. The YouTuber Marc Graves has also posted an excellent video on her YouTube channel “Classics in Color” titled “Menstrual Munching: ‘Pinnacle of Debauchery’ in Ancient Greece & Rome,” which covers the same topic.

ABOVE: Wall painting from the Suburban Baths in Pompeii, dating to the first century CE, depicting a small, fully clothed man crouching in submissive posture while performing cunnilingus on a woman, who is shown fully nude in a position of dominance

Cunnilingus as a “manly” act?

What I’ve summarized above is what we might call the normative view of Greek and Roman society in general. I feel it is important to emphasize, though, that there are hints in the ancient sources that other, more positive, but heavily marginalized perspectives on cunnilingus also existed within the immediate Greek and Roman cultural spheres.

Notably, Martialis in his Epigrams 7.67 mocks a Greek woman named Philaenis who acts masculine and who wants to have sex with both women and boys in the same manner as a man. In lines 13–17, he mocks her perspective on cunnilingus. He writes, in my own translation from the Latin:

“After all these things, when she is lusting,
she does not suck cock—she thinks that this is hardly manly—
but she plainly devours the middles of girls.
The deities give you back your mind, Philaenis,
you who think that to lick cunt is manly.”

Although we can’t necessarily be certain, Martialis’s Philaenis is most likely not a real historical individual, but rather a fictional character embodying the stereotype of the masculīna fēmina, or “masculine woman.” Nonetheless, we can guess based on Martialis’s satire that women like Philaenis who though cunnilingus was “manly” might have really existed. After all, if no one really believed this, the satire wouldn’t have had much force behind it.

ABOVE: Badly damaged wall painting from the Suburban Baths in Pompeii, dating to the first century CE, depicting two women engaging in some form of sexual activity together

The legend of Sardanapallos: sexual depravities on an imperial scale

The acts I’ve outlined above are all ones that a normal person who is not outrageously wealthy and powerful could participate in. Greek and Roman historians, however, frequently record stories claiming that certain kings and emperors whom they regarded as cruel tyrants engaged in the most elaborate and heinous sexual depravities that elite Greek and Roman men could possibly imagine.

The archetype of the sexually depraved monarch in Greek and Roman historiographic literature is the legendary Assyrian king Sardanapallos, who supposedly lived in the seventh century BCE. The version of Sardanapallos who is attested in Greek literature almost certainly has no historical basis, but his name is probably derived from that of the real Neo-Assyrian king Aššur-bāni-apli, or Ashurbanipal.

The Greek historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 – c. 30 BCE) retells a classic version of the Sardanapallos legend in his Library of History 2.23.1–2, most likely derived from the much earlier Greek historian Ktesias of Knidos, who flourished in around the 390s BCE. Diodoros writes, as translated by C. H. Oldfather:

“Sardanapallos, the thirtieth in succession from Ninos, who founded the empire, and the last king of the Assyrians, outdid all his predecessors in luxury and sluggishness.​ For not to mention the fact that he was not seen by any man residing outside the palace, he lived the life of a woman, and spending his days in the company of his concubines and spinning purple garments and working the softest of wool, he had assumed the feminine garb and so covered his face and indeed his entire body with whitening cosmetics and the other unguents used by courtesans, that he rendered it more delicate than that of any luxury-loving woman.”

“He also took care to make even his voice to be like a woman’s, and at his carousals not only to indulge regularly in those drinks and viands which could offer the greatest pleasure, but also to pursue the delights of love with men as well as women; for he practised sexual indulgence of both kinds without restraint, showing not the least concern for the disgrace attending such conduct.”

Notice how, for Diodoros, Sardanapallos’s sexual depravity stems from his effeminacy and his lack of self-control over his own sexual impulses.

ABOVE: The Death of Sardanapalus, painted by the French Neoclassical painter Eugène Delacroix in 1827

The alleged sexual depravities of Tiberius

Later Roman historians took the image of the sexually depraved tyrant to new levels, telling all kinds of salacious and sometimes deeply disturbing stories about the alleged sexual depravities of emperors whom they regarded as tyrants. These stories are, in most cases, nothing more than unverified rumors. As far as actual history is concerned, they should be taken with a more than a few grains of salt. They do, however, illustrate the kinds of taboo sex acts that the Romans imagined tyrannical emperors might engage in.

The Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 CE) describes in his Life of Tiberius 43–45 with horror and disgust the alleged sexual depravities that the emperor Tiberius engaged in during his retirement to the island of Capri, which lasted from 27 to 37 CE. Suetonius writes, as translated by John C. Rolfe:

“On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Its bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required. Then in Capri’s woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of venery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes: people openly called this ‘the old goat’s garden,’ punning on the island’s name.”

“He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction.”

“Left a painting of Parrhasius’s depicting Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her lips on condition that if the theme displeased him he was to have a million sesterces instead, he chose to keep it and actually hung it in his bedroom. The story is also told that once at a sacrifice, attracted by the acolyte’s beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother, the flute-player, too; and subsequently, when they complained of the assault, he had their legs broken.”

“How grossly he was in the habit of abusing women even of high birth is very clearly shown by the death of a certain Mallonia. When she was brought to his bed and refused most vigorously to submit to his lust, he turned her over to the informers, and even when she was on trial he did not cease to call out and ask her ‘whether she was sorry’; so that finally she left the court and went home, where she stabbed herself, openly upbraiding the ugly old man for his obscenity. Hence a stigma put upon him at the next plays in an Atellan farce was received with great applause and became current, that ‘the old goat was licking the does.’”

Notice how Suetonius focuses especially on Tiberius’s alleged lack of control over his sexual impulses and his alleged abuse of people of high status. For an elite Roman man like Suetonius, the fact that many of Tiberius’s alleged victims are said to have been of high status makes his crimes even worse. For elite Roman men, abusing a lower-class person was one thing. After all, it was common for Roman masters to sexually exploit the people they enslaved. Abusing people of the upper classes, though, was an outright abomination.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a marble portrait head of the Roman emperor Tiberius, held in the Musée Saint-Raymond

The specific sexual acts Suetonius describes are all ones that the ancient Romans would have seen as wildly excessive, unrestrained, and/or abusive toward people who were not supposed to be abused. In case you missed some, here’s a list of the acts Suetonius mentions:

• Arranging teams of male and female professional experts in anal sex to perform three-person anal sex conga lines for his entertainment and arousal

• Filling his bedrooms with all kinds of filthy pornographic paintings, sculptures, and books

• Arranging for young girls and boys dressed as nymphs and Pans respectively to perform sexual favors in the woods and groves on the island

• Training toddlers to swim between his legs and sexually pleasure him with their mouths and nipples while he was in the swimming pool

• Raping newborn babies by thrusting his penis into their mouths until he climaxed

• Accepting a painting depicting a woman performing fellatio on a man, despite an offer of one million sesterces if he turned it down, and hanging it in his bedroom

• Raping an acolyte and a flute-player immediately after a sacrifice and having their legs broken when they complained—which is especially appalling to Suetonius because it is an act of sacrilege

• Raping women of aristocratic birth

• Putting aristocratic women who resisted his advances on trial and ordering them to apologize for not surrendering themselves to him

Most of these are acts that I think most people today would still regard as pretty horrifying.

ABOVE: Wall painting from the Suburban Baths in Pompeii, dating to the first century CE, depicting two men and a woman having sex in possibly the same manner as Tiberius’s supposed “analists”

The alleged rampant promiscuity and self-prostitution of Messalina

Suetonius’s account of Tiberius is probably the most extreme case of a Roman author attributing a long list of alleged sexual depravities to a supposedly tyrannical emperor. Nonetheless, these kinds of stories are a well-established topos in Roman historiography. Suetonius also tells many scandalous stories about the alleged depravities of later emperors, such as Caligula and Nero, and later historians like Kassios Dion tell stories about even later emperors, such as Commodus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus.

I won’t discuss those later emperors here, in part because I’ve written about them extensively elsewhere. For instance, I wrote a detailed article in August 2020 about Caligula, in which I discuss many of his alleged sexual depravities, and I discuss Elagabalus extensively in this other article I wrote in August 2020 about people in the ancient world who might be considered transgender or otherwise gender-variant. I will, however, discuss the empress Messalina, since she provides an excellent example of how the way the Romans imagined absolute depravity for a woman differently from how they imagined it for men.

In historical reality, Messalina was the third wife of the emperor Claudius (ruled 41 – 54 CE). In 48 CE, the Praetorian Guard, acting under the orders of Claudius’s agent Narcissus, assassinated her for allegedly plotting to overthrow the emperor with her lover. It is highly probable that, at the very least, she really was having some kind of extramarital affair. Later Roman authors and historians, however, relentlessly vilified her for her alleged promiscuity and insatiable lust, making up wildly exaggerated and certainly untrue tales about the extent of her depravity.

The Roman poet Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, who wrote in around the late first or early second century CE, records a famous story in his Satires 6.114–141 about Messalina supposedly prostituting herself in a brothel every night while her husband Claudius was asleep. Iuvenalis writes, as translated by A. S. Kline:

“Take a look at the rivals of the gods; hear how Claudius
suffered. When his wife, Messalina, knew he was asleep,
she would go about with no more than a maid for escort.
The Empress dared, at night, to wear the hood of a whore,
and she preferred a mat to her bed in the Palatine Palace.
Dressed in that way, with a blonde wig hiding her natural
hair, she’d enter a brothel that stank of old soiled sheets,
and make an empty cubicle, her own; then sell herself,
her nipples gilded, naked, taking She-Wolf for a name,
displaying the belly you came from, noble Britannicus,
she’d flatter her clients on entry, and take their money,
then lie there obligingly, delighting in every stroke.
Later on, when the pimp dismissed his girls, she’d leave
reluctantly, waiting to quit her cubicle there, till the last
possible time, her taut sex still burning, inflamed with lust,
then she’d leave, exhausted by man, but not yet sated,
a disgusting creature with filthy face, soiled by the lamp’s
black, taking her brothel-stench back to the Emperor’s bed.”

If you recall from the previous section, Suetonius vilified Tiberius by portraying his lack of self-restraint as leading him to abuse his power. In this passage, Iuvenalis certainly portrays Messalina as lacking self-restraint, but rather than portraying this lack of self-control as leading to abuse of power, he portrays it as leading to rampant infidelity, specifically emphasizing her lack of faithfulness to her husband.

Tiberius did not have a wife at the time when he was living on Capri, but, if he had had one, I doubt Suetonius would have emphasized his lack of faithfulness to her in the way Iuvenalis emphasizes Messalina’s lack of faithfulness to Claudius.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble statue dating to around 45 CE, believed to depict the empress Messalina holding her son Britannicus, now held in the Louvre Museum