We all know Rome was a weird place. After all, people went everywhere in togas, had sex with their sisters and spent their free time watching fight tigers. After all, even the most straight-laced, conservative Roman could be expected to enjoy: 10. Men and women captured during military conquests were shipped all over the Empire and auctioned off to the highest bidder — at which point they became the property of some aristocrat or other. And those aristocrats usually had one thing on their minds when buying a young slave: sex. See, slaves were absolutely devoid of rights in Roman law. They were part of the furniture, no better than the objects surrounding them. So when Augustus outlawed adultery in 31BC, the horny Romans did what any sex-addict would do and started molesting their slaves at an unprecedented rate. Looks, gender and even age were no barrier: the , for example, is a Roman goblet dated to 5 AD that sports an image of a guy casually molesting a child. In essence, being a slave in ancient Rome basically meant being a walking sex aid — speaking of which… 9. Literally every available surface in the Empire was imprinted with images of penises. There is a Roman coin featuring some sodomy and a statue that used to be displayed in the open, of the God Pan having sex with a goat. Housewives would use tiny metal penises as wind chimes see image , well-endowed slaves would be forced to keep theirs on show at all times; and images of the weighing his own gigantic member would appear over the entrance of houses as a form of good luck. The Romans were also masters of… 8. When they dug up Pompeii, one of the first things everyone clocked was the sheer amount of defacing every wall. And you better believe it was rude. My penis has given you up. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion. X-Rated Gravestones As you may have gathered, no aspect of Roman life was far removed from thoughts of coitus — and that included death. Unlike our sparse epitaphs, Roman men and women would include whole biographies on their tombstones, detailing every little moment of their lives. And since their lives were often pretty bawdy, that made for some X-Rated. What a trait to be remembered for. Obscene Literature If you thought 50 Shades was dirty, wait till you hear about Roman literature. As with everything else in their lives, it revolved strictly round sex — and not just : weird, kinky, messy fetish sex. Take Sa tyricon, one of only two surviving Roman novels. The plot focuses on the adventures of a Roman man and his child lover as they navigate a world of orgies, flagellation and dildo-wearing priestesses. Sound a little, uh, extreme? So when I say the Romans practiced , bear in mind that it was totally acceptable back then. If you were going to engage in a homosexual relationship with a free-born male, you had to wait until they were at least 12. But, as far as slaves were concerned, anything went — and it usually did. Aside from the Warren Cup, we have the writings of Juvenal and Quintilian; both casually informing us that schoolmasters liked to groom young boys. And with good reason: they were devoted almost exclusively to shagging as many people as humanly possible. By all accounts, the authorities were so troubled by the practice that they outlawed them, with punishments of severe torture imposed on anyone who continued to practice. Yet, for all the threat of torture lingered over its followers, the cult of Bacchus survived for centuries — along with its pervy, orgiastic rites. Mass Infanticide Here we get to one of the bleaker sides of Roman culture. Reading this list of debauchery, some of you may have been wondering how the Romans managed so much sex in the days before the pill. And I mean terrifying. Since we now know virtually all Roman contraception methods were useless, all the unwanted pregnancies must have gone somewhere: and that somewhere was apparently the rubbish dump. In Roman times, the phrase would have been scarily literal. Not all the time, but in the case of adultery — very much so. Basically, if you were Roman and someone slept with your wife, you would be legally entitled to sodomize them in return; with an audience if you so desired. But even within the context of Roman society, this punishment sometimes took a weird turn. Apparently, it was not-unusual for the offended party to sodomize his rival with a radish, as opposed to his own equipment. The Emperors No article on Rome would be complete without mentioning its. Nero, for example, had his favorite boy castrated and attempted to turn him into a woman. Now imagine having shoved up your bum. Now imagine the humiliation of having a radish leaf tail for the rest of the day. What if the stalks were cut off, leaving you with a giant radish stopper in your rectum? And passing it would be even less so. It was not an honour but it was not the end of the world. The article forgets to mention that Rome actually had very, very strict laws considering sexuality, being very quick at hand with death penalty. Sure, you were allowed to have sex with your own slave — that is, if you were male and it was your OWN slave. And it was just sex, a real relationship could end in severe penalties. To sum it up Rome had a much stricter moral code than we have today, especially due to the fact that breaking it was almost always a capital crime, but it was very different from ours today. There was no capital punishment around sexual stuff usually— Vestal Virgins are an exception until the fourth century AD and even that is localized. Perhaps they saw a source that does not look at the legal situation— or a source that generalizes from some stories from Livy, stories which I believe even Livy would have said were exceptional— and more representative of moralized ideals than reality in the republic or early empire. However, the article gave an overview over the developments and changes in handling sexual offenses especially for the city of Rome. Early Romans the Etruscans dug ditches in the city, and covered them with stones. These ditches channeled sewage through the city and away from the crops and citizenry. Sure, I knew the romans were a horny bunch of homosexual in most cases , child and slave raping, dirty bastards but INFANTICIDE??!!? Throwing away a newborn? The Romans were extremely moral people. Their morality was a bit different than ours. The rite was sacred and performed with ablution and extreme reverence. Sadly, anyone can post trash like this and people will swallow it, hook, line and sinker, convinced that they now know for a fact how debauched the ancients were. Oh yeah, I forgot something…, could you imagine walking outside of your home looking across the street and see penises flopping, boobies bouncing and vaginas slapping? I learned a lot from this! What a load of crap! My suggestion: leave this tripe to the gullible and study a little of the true history of ancient Rome. Over the course of 13 years, he prowled for men and lured them back to his house before drugging and strangling them. In all he took the lives of 17 men between 1978 and 1991.
