3 eye-opening facts about sex and gender during the Roman Empire that prove the past wasn't prudish
Serafina Kenny
- We tend to think about people in the past as more prudish and strict about sex and gender.
- But really people have been experimenting with sex and gender for as long as humans have existed.
The ancient Romans had very different ideas about sex and gender to us, meaning they had lots of practices that you might find shocking.
You might think modern conceptions and norms around sex and gender are the most liberal they have ever been, but "Sex: A Bonkers History," a documentary airing on Sky History in the UK, shows that isn't necessarily the case. People in different societies in the past got down and dirty in ways that might be surprising or scandalous to us in the modern day.
The first episode focuses on the ancient world (perfect for those men who often think about the Roman Empire).
Here are some lesser known facts about sex and gender in the Roman Empire.
Gladiators wore ancient “cock rings”
Although they were fine with nudity in certain situations, such as during athletic competitions and on stage, ancient Romans thought it was rude and shameful to expose the head of the penis in public. To get around this, they would tie the foreskin shut around the tip of the penis, and attach a string to the waist to keep the head hidden from view.
Some went further, though, and used fibulas, ancient safety-pin-like brooches, and rings which pierced the foreskin and kept it shut. These rings and fibulas were more permanent than string, and were meant to prevent masturbation and sex, because, as historian Kate Lister said in "Sex: A Bonkers History," it was believed that gladiators would be stronger if they "kept it all in" and didn't ejaculate.
A man could penetrate another man without it affecting his sexual identity
People or acts that we might now call "gay" didn't have a specific label in ancient Rome — a man could have sex with a man as long as he was older and more powerful and his partner was a younger, socially inferior man or boy.
Roman citizens (men who had political and social power) had rights over their own bodies, and were allowed and expected to have sex with men and women, as long as he was the one penetrating his partner.
Today, this sounds horribly non-consensual and tied up in power dynamics, but that was the intention, because the sexual penetration of non-citizens was seen as a metaphor for the domination of the Roman Empire.
One Roman emperor may have been "transgender"
The presenters of "Sex: A Bonkers History" call Emperor Elagabalus "the first trans person in history." This isn't strictly true — being transgender in the way we view it today didn't exist at the time, and there's been plenty of people who haven't conformed to the expectations of their biological sex throughout history.
However, there is evidence that Elagabalus was one of these people. He is thought to have preferred to be referred to as a woman, married men, and took on the role of a wife in those relationships. There's also stories of him hiring out a whole brothel, but instead of sleeping with the female prostitutes, sending them all away and servicing all the clients himself.
He even offered huge sums of money to any surgeon who could give him a vagina, seemingly wanting ancient gender reassignment surgery.
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