Although for a long time it has been said that homosexuality reached Rome from the contact with Greeks, it can be documented from early times the practice of homo-erotic relationships in Republican Rome, in which virility was unfailingly associated with activity, according to Francisco Salvador Ventura, Professor of Ancient History in the University of Granada, who has published a study under the title “Homosexuals in the Ancient World”, in the book “In Greece and Rome: people and things”, edited together by the University of Granada and the Spanish Society of Classical Studies, in which take part several lecturers and specialists in the classical world.
According to Professor Francisco Salvador Ventura, quoting previous studies by Salles and Vayoneke, that “Romans assocaited their power with their virile power and they proved it not only with women, but also with their male slaves –never other people´s—and male prostitutes. It was even thought that its maximum expression was apparent in the subjugation of men.” In fact, according to the researcher of the University of Granada, this fact can be clearly stablished in Plauto´s comedies or in Seneca´s emphatic affirmation: inpudicitia in ingenuo crimen est, in servo necessitas, in liberto ifficium (sexual passivity is a crime for a man, a need for a slave, a duty for a freedman).
However, homosexual relationships become unlawful when de subjugated is a Roman citizen. According to lecturer Francisco Salvador Ventura, teenagers were also considered as potential citizens, “but in Rome, unlike in the Greek world, they stressed their character of future citizens and not their imperfect, incomplete and transitional status, similar to that of women”.
Therefore, for Romans, in the Republican period it was not unlawfull to have relationships with a young Roman citizen, although he had not reached all his rights. It was even persecuted with legal sanctions.
Lesbianism, to the contrary, was considered to be an aberration. In this sense, according to Francisco Salvador Ventura, “they were direct heirs of the classical Greek tradition: women who were not a model of virtue were uncontrolled, lustful and wild creatures. Unfortunately, unlike Greece, there are not any testimonies from female sources. The male vision is unanimous on this matter, although the subject is rarely mentioned: homosexual female preactices are condemned.”
Persecution of homosexuality
But homosexuality was not always permited in the ancient world. In fact, in the last centuries of the Empire, there is a process of growing hostility against male homosexual practices, similar to that against female homosexuality.
According to Professor Francisco Salvador Ventura, “P. Veyne explained it wisely s a transformation process from rape bisexuality to reproduction heterosexuality. Thus, this increasing rejection was first apparent in the imperial legislation about male prostitution, a rejection that progressively spread to any kind of homosexuality. Punishment severity increased, including from transvestites and passive individuals´ castration to the capital punishment.”
Reference: Professor Francisco Salvador Ventura
Dpt: Ancient History. University of Granada
E-mail: fransalv@platon.ugr.es
