The issue of sexual excesses in ancient Rome has undoubtedly become a legendary one. We have reliable sources about sexual practices of the third wife of Emperor Claudius, Valeria Messalina. This fun-loving nymphomaniac has undoubtedly put Roman public opinion on its feet.
Pliny the Elder in “Natural History” wrote:
Other animals have had enough of having sex at one point – people never. Messalina, Emperor Klaudius’s wife, believed that it was worthy of the emperor to call for competition one of the most infamous women in paid prostitution; and the empress won with her 25th lover, after a sexy night and day1.
This is not the only disgraceful achievement of the empress, for, as a Roman satyr poet Juvenal says, Messalina escaped the imperial palace at night in order to be able to freely indulge in the pleasures of the flesh in the Roman lupanar.
Listen to what Claudius had to endure. When his wife saw him fall asleep – this noble whore was so shameless that she preferred an ordinary carpet to a bed in an imperial palace – with only a companion serving, she was leaving her home with a cap on her head. Hiding her black hair under a blonde wig, she entered a burgher room, smelling of still used, warm duvets, and occupied a room reserved for her; there, under the name of Lycisca, she gave herself with bare breasts and gold-painted nipples and showed her belly, which once carried you, a noble Britannicus. She accepted the insiders tenderly and demanded payment from everyone. And when the owner of the lupanar sent the girls home, she left sad, after the last cell had been closed, and in her vulva the desire was still burning. She returned tired of men, but still not satisfied, with dirty cheeks, dug in with lamp soot, and carried the smell of brothel into caesarean pillows2.
Scandalous behaviour has undoubtedly left a deep mark on Messalina. However, the end of her life was sealed by a conspiracy for Claudius’s life. The emperor was not his direct initiator. Unfortunately, Messalina, blinded by her love for Gajus Silius (consul in 48), first consented to the marriage, thus committing bigamy, and then agreed to Silius’ proposal for the removal of the emperor. When the conspiracy saw the light of day, there was no rescue for the empress. She was murdered in front of her mother, the Domitia Lepida in the gardens of Lucullus. It is worth to add that Messalina’s image has been removed from all public and private places. This made her the first Roman empress to be condemned to oblivion(damnatio memoriae)3.
The evaluation of the posterity also turned out to be not very kind to Emperor Tiberius. The last years of his life are considered particularly controversial. The emperor spent it on Capri, where the remains of his villa are still on the highest rock cliff. There, according to rumours, numerous erotic deportations took place. In “Caesar’s life”, Suetonius described in detail the most refined sexual practices taking place in the caesarean suite.
In the privacy of the island of Capri, he invented the arrangement of an apartment full of sofas as a place of mysterious love, where the indulgent boys and girls, attracted from everywhere, practiced a horrible relationship he invented, called spintriae, in which the intertwined in a triple embrace gave each other up in order to excite his dull senses with this view. Bedrooms located in many places of the palace were decorated with paintings, sculptures with the most vague themes and figures, and supplied with books of Elefantides, so that no one would miss the pattern of the figure ordered by Tiberius in carrying out his activities. Also in the forests and groves he arranged in various places districts dedicated to Venera and placed in grottos and hollow caves young people of both sexes wearing the costumes of little men and nymphs. For this reason, it was already openly and commonly called Capriceus, exploiting the name of the island for this ambiguity. He became even more libellous by his indulgent and disgusting actions, which he did not even agree to take up or listen to, what only to believe in their truth. Namely, he supposed to teach boys, striplings barely, whom he called fish, to circulate between thighs during his bathing and to slightly swim, excite him with their tongue or bite4.
The reliability of the description is undoubtedly questionable. There is no doubt about the negative attitude of the public towards the emperor, which is compounded by circulating rumours, which have become a tool for spreading public reluctance. The extent to which they have distorted the emperor’s image remains a great unknown.
The issue of degenerated sexual practices is also addressed in one of the chapters “Natural Issues” by Seneca the Younger. While the chapter devoted to the description of mirrors’ functioning is rather unattractive, the aversion towards the actions of someone called Hostius Quadra arouses interest.
His deviations were not limited to one sex,