introduction

i. masculinity in Imperial Rome

ii. one's sexual behavior as one's essence

iii. the Roman notion of gender

iv. expectations of women

v. conclusion: the empire and the senate

1. The wall painting is from Pompeii, Region VII, and can be found in Kellum, 175.

2. Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 96 (tr. Robert Graves)

Before Actium, [Augustus] was about to board his ship and give the signal for hostilities to begin, when he met a peasant driving an ass, and asked his name. The peasant replied: "I am Eutychus ("Prosper") and my ass is called Nicon ("Victor")."

3. Tacitus, Annals, p.232

Publius Suillius Rufus accused [Asiaticus] of corrupting the army and using bribes and sexual entanglements to commit the soldiers to unbounded atrocities. Adultery with Poppaea Sabina was a supplementary charge. Another was effeminacy. At this accusation, the prisoner found his voice: "Ask your sons, Suillius," he said. "They will confirm my masculinity."

4. Songs of Priapus (anonymous, first century), no. 28 (tr. W. H. Parker)

If, evil-minded wretch, you have to steal,
Then my huge member up your arse you'll feel;
And if that doesn't make you leave your loot,
Then at a higher place I'll aim to shoot.

5. Songs of Priapus, no. 26 (tr. W. H. Parker)

O citizens, Romans, I pray you please,
There must be a limit -- I'm brought to my knees;
For passionate women from hereabout
Importune me nightly and tire me out...
I used to be hale and lusty and strong,
And able to deal with the thieves that did wrong;
But now I am in a most dangerous state,
And shudder and cough and expectorate.

6. Tacitus, Annals, p.250

For Claudius, home again, soothed and a little fuddled after an early dinner, ordered the 'poor woman" (that is said to have been his phrase) to appear on the next day to defend herself. This was noted. His anger was clearly cooling, his love returning. Further delay risked that the approaching night would revive memories of conjugal pleasures.

7. Foucault, History of Sexuality, p.43 (tr. R. Hurley)

As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood... Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidiously and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature. ...Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transformed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.

8. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 1.5 (tr. E. Gunderson)

It is said that Demosthenes [the Greek orator] in his dress and the rest of his care for his body was splendid, attractive and too polished. And so these "refinements" gave rise to insults from his rivals and adversaries as "dainty little cloaklets" and "soft little frocks." Nor was he spared foul and unworthy names; indeed he was even called too little a man and "of polluted mouth."

9. Tacitus, Annals, p.341

Octavia's maids were tortured, and though some were induced by the pain to make false confessions, the majority unflinchingly maintained her innocence. One retorted that the mouth of Tigellinus, who was bullying her, was less clean than any part of Octavia.

10. Polemo, Physiognomy (Gleason, p.395)

You may recognize [someone who is really feminine] by his provocatively melting glance and by the rapid movement of his intensely staring eyes. His brow is furrowed, while his eyebrows and cheeks are in constant motion. His head is tilted to the side, his loins do not hold still, and his slack limbs never stay in one position. He minces along with little jumping steps; his knees knock together. He carries his hands with palms turned upward. He has a shifting gaze, and his voice is thin, weepy, shrill and drawling.

11. "Anonymous Latin Physiognomy" (Gleason, p.408)

For it is by the twitching of their lips and the rotation of their eyes, by the haphazard and inconsistent shifting of their feet, by the movement of their hips and the fickle motion of their hands, and by the tremor of their voice as it begins to speak, that effeminates are most easily revealed.

12. Tacitus, Annals, pp.249-50

The execution of accomplices was ordered: Titius Proculus -- appointed Messalina's guard by Silius -- Vettius Valens, who confessed, and two further members of the order of knights, Pompeius Urbicus and Saufeius Trogus. The same penalty was visited on the commander of the watch, Decrius Calpurnianus, the superintendent of a gladiator's school, Sulpicius Rufus, and a junior senator, Juncus Vergilianus. ...Plautius Lateranus escaped the death sentence owing to an uncle's distinguished record. So did Suillius Caesoninus, because of his own vices -- at that repulsive gathering, his had been merely a female part.

13. Tacitus, Annals, p.200

His criminal lusts shamed him. Their uncontrollable activity was worthy of an oriental tyrant. Free-born children were his victims. He was fascinated by beauty, youthful innocence, and aristocratic birth. New names for types of perversion were invented. Slaves were charged to locate and procure his requirements. The y rewarded compliance, overbore reluctance with menaces, and -- if resisted by parents or relations -- kidnapped their victims, and violated them on their own account. It was like the sack of a captured city.

14. Tacitus, Annals, pp.202-203

How truly the wisest of men used to assert that the souls of despots, if revealed, would show wounds and mutilations -- weals left on the spirit, like lash-marks on a body, by cruelty, lust and malevolence. Neither Tiberius' autocracy nor isolation could save him from confessing the internal torments which were his retribution.

15. Polemo, Physiognomy (Gleason, p.390)

In the masculine there is something feminine to be found, and in the feminine something masculine, but the name "masculine" or "feminine" is assigned according to which of the two prevails.

16. Tacitus, Annals, p.225

At this time, too, Sextus Papinius -- son of a man who had been consul -- hurled himself headlong to a sudden and undignified death. The blame fell on his mother. Long divorced, she had indulged his extravagances to a point at which death was his only escape. Charged in the senate, she prostrated herself before the senators and made a long and piteous appeal, pleading especially the anguish which anybody, particularly a weak woman, must feel at a bereavement such as hers. However, she was banned from Rome for ten years, until her younger son had passed the dangerous years of youth.

17. Matron depicted as Venus, Tomb of the Manilii, Rome; now in the Vatican museums; 1.17m; marble. It can be found in D'Ambra.

18. Tacitus, Annals, p.250

[Her mother, Domitia Lepida] urged Messalina to await the executioner. "Your life is finished," she said. "All that remains is to make a decent end." But in that lust-ridden heart decency did not exist. Messalina was still uselessly weeping and moaning when the men violently broke down the door. ...Then for the first time it dawned on Messalina what her position really was. Terrified she took a dagger, and put it to her throat and then her breast -- but could not do it. And so [an] officer ran her through.

19. Tacitus on Agrippina, Annals, various

Actually, Agrippina knew no feminine weaknesses. Intolerant of rivalry, thirsting for power, she had a man's preoccupations. (p.212)

The youth [Nero Caesar] was accused not of actual or intended rebellion but of homosexual indecency. Against his daughter-in-law Tiberius dared not invent similar charges, but attacked her insubordinate language and disobedient spirit. (p.196)

Agrippina, resentful as ever, became physically ill. When Tiberius visited her, at first she wept long and silently. Then she broke into embittered appeals. "I am lonely," she said. Help me and give me a husband! I am still young enough, and marriage is the only respectable consolation. Rome contains men who would welcome Germanicus' wife and children." Tiberius recognized the political implications of this -- but did not want to show either anger or fear. So her persistence remained unanswered. (p.184)

From Tiberius came an outburst of filthy slanders, accusing her of adultery with Gaius Asinius Gallus, and asserting that she had wearied of living when Asinius died. (p.212)

20. Tacitus, Annals, p.167

I find that this Marcus Lepidus played a wise and noble part in events. He often palliated the brutalities caused by other people's sycophancy. And he had a sense of proportion -- for he enjoyed unbroken influence and favour with Tiberius. This compels me to doubt whether, like other things, the friendships and enmities of rulers depend on destiny and the luck of a man's birth. Instead may our own decisions play some part, enabling us to steer a way, safe from intrigues and hazards, between perilous insubordination and degrading servility?

21. London Times, 2/6/98

Corriere della Sera said that Caesar's subjects were not scandalized by his peccadilloes, but saw them as "a source of national pride". What really mattered -- as with Mr Clinton -- were his political abilities and achievements.

Bibliography

Barbara Kellum, "Phallus as Signifier," Sexuality in Ancient Art, ed N. Kampen (Cambridge, 1996), 170-83

Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. R. Hurley (Pantheon, 1978)

Eve D'Ambra, "Calculus of Venus: Nude Portraits of Roman Women," Sexuality in Ancient Art, ed N. Kampen (Cambridge, 1996), 219-32

Maud Gleason, "Semiotics of Gender," Before Sexuality, ed J. Winkler et al. (Princeton, 1990), 389-415

Ramsey Macmullen, "Roman Attitudes to Greek Love," Historia 31 (1982), 484-502

Amy Richlin, "Not Before Homosexuality," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1993): 523-73

Aline Rousselle, "Body Politics in Ancient Rome," History of Women in the West, ed Pauline Schmitt Pantel (Harvard, 1992), 324-336