Invisible Romans (5 page)

There is also worry about sexual relations in marriage or, rather, women’s actions as a sexual partner. If a woman is ‘desirous of intercourse’ then this ‘indicates debauchery and wickedness’ according to the
Carmen.
It follows that a good woman does not ‘perform the act of Aphrodite in an unnatural way.’ Oral sex on one’s wife is not acceptable, nor is fellatio by the wife. Presumably the worry here is that sex with a wife should not be confused with a casual sexual encounter with a slave or prostitute. Another bad marriage outcome to worry about is that the woman is a lesbian. Artemidorus is more generous in his thinking than the
Carmen.
Although the wife should be submissive – thus ‘the one having sex according to Aphrodite’s norms completely controls the body of his compliant and willing sexual partner’
(Dreams
1.79) – she is entitled to enjoy the act too: ‘To have intercourse with one’s willing and submissive wife – one not reluctant regarding sex – this is a good thing for both.’ (It is, however, entirely possible that the wife only yield ‘with some resistance’ – and this is not interpreted as good (1.78)). In intercourse with one’s wife, the face-to-face position is called ‘natural’ (1.79); other positions include from the rear and while standing (‘men use this position only when they have neither bed nor mattress’); while the woman is kneeling or while prostrate; and with the woman on top. All positions except the ‘natural’ one are ‘taught in their wantonness, licentiousness, and drunken follies …’ The woman’s perspective is not considered important, although as noted above, Artemidorus does admit that she might enjoy the act. The desire, therefore, is for a marriage in which both partners are faithful, and the wife remains demure and passive – does not ‘play the whore’ – in their sexual life together.

Another worry was about marriages ending badly – even in murder, as in a wife poisoning her husband. More mundane bad endings are frequently mentioned, either divorce or desertion. There are many astrological scenarios concerning a woman leaving her husband’s house; this would seem to mean that it was a common fear. Likewise, Artemidorus frequently mentions divorce, indicating that it was a common occurrence. Presumably this worry was linked to the dowry, which the woman would take away with her; a dowry is assumed as normal.

The sum of a successful marriage seems to be children. There is much worry about sterility, the number of children, and whether they will be ‘good children,’ as expressed in many charts cast. There is a preference for males (‘male children [seen in a dream] are good; female are good for nothing’
(Dreams
4.10)), but there is never reference to infanticide, abortion, or contraception. Indeed, one of the great miseries and misfortunes of life is to have few children or to be childless.

Those children are under the complete control of their fathers. The relationship can be good or bad, but the expectation is that it will be good, with the parents providing what is necessary for upbringing, and for an inheritance for the children. Intergenerational relations are often stressed as parents worry about children wasting parental property and resources and in general not turning out well. There is concern for the number of children, and that they get along well; there is a particular concern that brothers get along. Here again quarreling raises its ugly head, as children are apt to get into disputes with one another, with an outcome unfortunate for the family. Beyond the nuclear family, which seems to be the assumed unit in all the evidence, and into the extended family, quarreling is again mentioned. It does seem as if a lot of arguing went on in an ordinary man’s family.

I have noted the role of sex in marriage, but it is also necessary to look more generally at ordinary men’s sexual activity. The sexual life of a male included sex with a wife for procreation; however, its other aspects are harder to gauge. The elite sources, especially Ovid, Martial, and Juvenal but also historians, rhetoricians, and literary figures of almost all sorts, contain material relating to male sexual activity. Even if complicated in the details, the overriding elite male ethos valuing domination and being ashamed of subjection meant that all sex, whether homosexual or heterosexual, was evaluated as specific circumstances
of control and submission. So a particular sexual act was acceptable or not depending not so much on the physiology of the act itself, but on who was involved and the part played by an individual in it. People considered the actors (male? female?), their status (slave? free?), their matrimonial status (unmarried? married?), the economic circumstances (paid? gratis?), the biological intent (for procreation?), and most importantly the dominant/submissive element just noted. A given sexual act was judged according to where it was positioned on the matrix of these considerations, which created the ‘rules of the game’; obviously, the situation was very complicated.

Within the basic model of sex and marriage, a wide range of other sexual activity was open, provided the rules of the game were adhered to. Most specifically, we do not find a ‘type’ of person or ‘identity’ that can be called ‘homosexual’ or ‘heterosexual.’ In fact, there is no Latin word for ‘homosexual’ – or for ‘heterosexual’ for that matter. It is essential rather to think in terms of specific acts and situations within an elite culture that never questions the centrality of male domination as the pattern of behavior and self-identity for the male.

The question is, can this fluid ethos apply to ordinary men? These men also conceptualized sexual acts as domination or submission. Sling projectiles give a wonderfully vivid proof of the equation of sexual violence and masculinity. Soldiers readying these lead, acorn-shaped objects for hurling inscribed them with a message for the enemy. Some just had thoughts like ‘Take that!’ But many others use colorful sexual language to make the message of domination clear. This
glans
(the Latin word for ‘penis’ is the same as for ‘sling projectile’) from the war against Octavian, later Augustus, bears witness: ‘I seek Octavian’s ass’
(CIL
11.6721.7) is one of the daintier thoughts; all related to sexual penetration as emblematic of domination. This view of masculine domination as sexual metaphor comes straight from ordinary men.

The magical papyri confirm this picture of aggressive male sexuality. Many of the charms and incantations are designed to subject women to men, sometimes in the grossest terms:

Let the myrrh smoke on coals and recite the spell. ‘You are Zmyrna [i.e. myrrh], the bitter and effective one … Everyone calls you Zmyrna, but I call you Eater and Burner of the Heart … I am sending you to X, daughter of Y, to serve me against her and bring her to me. If she is sitting, she may not sit; if she is talking to someone, she may not talk; if she is approaching someone, she may not approach; … if she is eating, she may not eat; if she is kissing someone, she may not kiss … She may think only of me, desire me only, love me only, and fulfill my every wish … Enter her through her soul and remain in her heart and burn her entrails, her breast, her liver, her breath, her bones, her marrow, until she comes to me to love me and fulfill my every wish. I urge you, Zmyrna … to make sure that you carry out my orders. Just as I am burning you and you are potent, just so you must burn her brain, the woman I love, burn it completely and rip out her entrails and shed her blood, drop by drop, until she comes to me.’
(PGM
1:121–4/Luck)

The violent imagery fits the aggressive, dominant male. And the action in the plays of Plautus, Apuleius’
Golden Ass,
and Petronius’
Satyricon
all features males who are concerned about domination. These works also picture a world in which homosexual acts occur together with heterosexual, and in which the elite matrix of acceptable behavior seems to apply.

Set alongside this clear concept of domination as the litmus test of masculinity and the resulting openness to acts of sexual domination, whether over males or females, is an equally clear concept that the collection of acts we might call nonstraightforward male-on-female intercourse is, as a group, considered unacceptable, not to say perverse or even deviant. Artemidorus is very specific about the view of sex that informs his dream interpretations; I assume that unless that view was widespread among ordinary people, this would not have been the case. As previously noted, his view is that there is one ‘natural’ sexual position:

Basic Nature teaches men that the ‘body-to-body’ sexual position is the only natural one; all the other positions men are taught in their wantonness, licentiousness, and drunken follies. [After noting that animals all have their own ‘natural’ sexual habits, he continues.] And so it is appropriate that men hold the proper sexual position to be the ‘face-to-face’ one; the others are invented as suitable to lewdness and drunken excess.
(Dreams
1.79)

So Artemidorus states that ‘If the sun disappears this is a bad sign for all except for those endeavoring to escape notice and performing abominable acts
(Dreams
1.36). But what exactly might those be? In his long series of interpretations based on dreams he mentions just about every possible sexual encounter and activity. He lists three general types: (1) intercourse that is natural, legal, and customary. This includes sex with one’s wife, with prostitutes, with ‘unknown women,’ with one’s own slaves, male or female, or with a female who is familiar and ‘on intimate terms’; (2) intercourse that is illegal: intercourse with a young (five- to ten-year-old) boy or girl; with one’s own son or daughter or sibling; with one’s mother; with a ‘friend’ (presumably, a free grown-up person); and (3) intercourse that is ‘unnatural.’ Here he includes pretty odd things, such as ‘having sexual intercourse with himself,’ ‘kissing his own penis,’ necrophilia, and bestiality – but not, importantly, homosexual acts.

Artemidorus is ambivalent about a clear dominant/submissive model. On the one hand, he confirms the supposition that to be possessed in a sexual act is bad; the only exception is a dream of possession by a rich man, for you will then ‘receive’ riches
(Dreams
1.78). On the other, even in dominating positions some acts are reprehensible, such as having fellatio performed by a wife or mistress, or a friend, or a relative, or a child. While Artemidorus also condemns the person performing the act, the passive partner, it is noteworthy that in either position a dream bodes ill.

Artemidorus, then, nuances the elite categorization of sexual acts. Moreover, to him, there is a norm: face-to-face sex between a male and a female. Other acts are mentioned, specifically fellatio and various sexual positions. The former seems at least with wives and free persons to be reprehensible, and he implicitly criticizes the ‘non-normal’ sexual positions. One comes away with the distinct sense that he is fully aware of the sexual habits of his contemporaries, but has a clear idea of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ about them. In his work there is an affirmation of marital sex, but unlike the elite viewpoint there also seems to be a rejection of homosexual activity, whether male or female.

The
Carmen
adds to our knowledge of how the ordinary man viewed homosexual acts. In the chapter ‘Knowledge of Sodomy,’ which completes his larger section on marriage, Dorotheus clearly has in mind not just individual acts, but people who habitually prefer same-sex acts to
heterosexual ones. In one astrological casting the person ‘will not love women, but his pleasure will be in boys’; in another ‘he will be covetous of males.’ There is analogous casting: ‘it indicates she will be desirous of women,’ just as for a male ‘he will be desirous of males.’ In a third instance: ‘if a woman then she will be a Lesbian … if a male, then they will not do to women as they ought to do’
(Carmen
2.7). So the
Carmen
adds to our understanding by making it clear that some men (and some women) acted out a long-term preference, not just more or less isolated homosexual acts.

As a final window on sexuality, the attitude of Paul needs to be mentioned. In a tirade against polytheists, he writes:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:21–7)

He goes on to catalogue all their other horrible moral shortcomings, but what is important to note is that he paints polytheists as open to homosexual acts (to put it kindly). Now this no more means that all Romano-Greeks practiced homosexual acts than that they were all malicious, deceitful, arrogant, heartless, and so on – other epithets he piles upon them in this same passage. But it surely means that such acts were an accepted part of polytheist culture. The fact that Paul makes a point of being opposed to these acts indicates that his hearers were as well, or, at least, were able to be persuaded that they should be. Such an argument
does not come out of the blue; Paul’s correspondents and hearers either were or could easily be made to be disposed against homosexual acts. Given the evidence of Artemidorus and the
Carmen,
I would argue that for a wide swath of ordinary men such a disposition would come naturally because such acts and, therefore, their practitioners were looked down upon.