Romans era gay
Queer Romans
Queer lives have always been part of history! For the last day of Pride Month 2021, Victoria Vening-Richards who is one of our Amgueddfa Cymru Producers has written an investigation of queer lives in ancient Rome. With thanks to Mark Lewis at the National Roman Legion Museum in Carleon for sharing his knowledge.
Queer Romans
Homosexuality within the Roman world is a much debated topic. Over the years scholars have come to varying conclusions; some suggest homosexual relations were freely practiced in the Roman nature, others argue they were both legally and socially condemned. However, neither argument has been able to reach a definitive ending. This blog will consider the use of the label homosexual, the social attitude towards same-sex relationships, and same-sex relationships within a military context.
1. The use of the label 'homosexual'
Recent studies on Roman society have argued that the term 'homosexual', essence someone who has a sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender, did not exist linguistically, within the Latin language, and socially, within Roman society. This is because male Roman citizens are assumed to h
A Brief History of Homosexuality in Italy from Ancient Rome to Today
Postwar Italy, politically dominated by the country’s Catholic party, didn’t do much against the diffused homophobia of those years. Society cared about gay people only for the wrong reasons, as it happened in 1960 when an investigation on the “homosexual scene” in the northern town of Brescia turned into a massive media case with endless plot twists and unfounded accusations (which included one of human trafficking). When the so-called “Scandalo dei Balletti Verdi ” (“Green Ballets Scandal”) reached TV personalities like Mike Bongiorno, the entire region turned its morbose attention to it.
In 1971, Fuori! (Out!), the first gay organization in Italy, was founded. Mario Mieli, the most famous Italian Diverse activist, took part in the movement before founding his own organization. A year later, a community of gay people publicly demonstrated for their rights for the first second in the history of the country.
Since then, the Italian queer community has been keeping an active role in manifesting and demanding rights. Little by little, and always at a much slower pace than most other European countries, It
As Pompeii’s House of the Vettii finally reopens after a long process of restoration, news outlets emerge to be struggling with how to report on the Roman sex cultures so well recorded in the ruins of the city.
The Metro opened with the headline “Lavish Pompeii home that doubled as a brothel has some interesting wall art”, while the Guardian highlighted the fresco of Priapus, the god of fertility (depicted weighing his oversized penis on a scale with bags of coins) as well as the erotic frescoes found next to the kitchen.
The Daily Mail, on the other hand – and arguably surprisingly – said nothing about the explicit frescoes and instead centred its story on the house’s “historic hallmarks of interior design”.
As a scholar who researches modern and contemporary visual cultures of sexuality, I was struck by how the heavy presence of sexual imagery in the ruins of Pompeii seems to confound those writing about it for a general audience.
Rethinking Roman sexuality
As a gay man and a researcher on sexuality, I am all too familiar with the ways modern gay men glance to ancient Rome in search of evidence that there have always been people like us.
It is now clear among the research
In honour of LGBTQIA+ history month, Ancient History alumni Ollie Burns takes a closer look at the social, political, and cultural implications of homosexuality in ancient Rome.
Trigger Warning: sexual violence, homophobia, paedophilia, nudity.
The presentation and perception of homosexuality in the Roman world was vastly unlike than how it is today, and gives us an example of how homosexuality has been indelibly linked with communications of power and authority in antiquity. The Latin language has no word for either heterosexual or lgbtq+, and instead partners in a sexual relationship would be presented as either active, synonymous with masculinity, or passive and therefore, feminine, regardless of the gender of the individuals involved. Freeborn male Romans had the civil liberty to do as they pleased when it came to sexual activity, and as such, the notion of a Roman male engaging in homosexual sex was in no way controversial or taboo to the Romans, as distant as it fell within certain parameters.
Rome was a deeply militarised state, with conquest and dominance deeply ingrained as desirable masculine traits. As a outcome of this, men were free to engage in
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