Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome 

Author(s): Rabun Taylor 

Source: Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Jan., 1997), pp. 319-371 

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Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome 

RABUN TAYLOR 

Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies 

University of Minnesota 

S I N C E K. J. D 0 V E R' S pathbreaking study of Greek homosexuality 

in 1978, students of antiquity have slowly but surely recognized that the 

Roman world, though owing much to Greece, has its own distinct sexual 

history.' In the Roman sources we see a social model of male homoeroticism 

clash head-on with the perpetual Roman fantasy of ancestral virtue, 

while amid this turmoil a homosexual subculture of immeasurable influence, 

resiliency, and complexity develops in the city of Rome. Roman 

culture is a more dynamic source of information than the Athens, Sparta, 

or Crete of historical record, because it witnesses-and to some extent, 

records-a fundamental change in its sexual identity. To combat this 

alarming emergence in its own body politic, Rome's dominant culture 

My special thanks to Elizabeth Belfiore, John K Evans, and George Sheets for their 

helpful comments and encouragement during the slow and fitful gestation of this article. 

' K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, MA, 1978). For bibliographies on the 

subject, unfortunately now quite dated, sce Beert Vcrstraete, Homosexuality in Ancient 

Greek and Roman Civilization: A Critical Biography with Supplemcnt (Toronto, 1982); 

and Wayne Dynes, Homoscxuality: A Research Guide (New York, 1987). For a review of 

rccnt literature, see Mark Golden, "Thirtcen Years of Homosexuality (and Other Recent 

Work on Sex, Gender and the Body in Ancient Grcecc)," Classical Views/Echos du monde 

classique 35, n.s. 10 (1991): 327-40. Other important secondary sources will be cited in 

context. Abbreviated citations of primary sources arc those listed at the beginning of the 

2d ed. of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1970). When the author's name is given 

but no title, only one extant work or collection is attributed to that author. Most of these 

sources are available in parallel Latin-English editions from Harvard's Loeb Classical Library. 

More obscure authors and sources are given their full conventional name or title, 

cither in English or in Latin. All translations from Greek and Latin are my own unless 

otherwise indicated. 

[ Journal of thc History of Scxuality 1997, vol. 7, no. 3] 

0 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights rcserved. 1043-4070/97/0703-OOO01$1.00 

319 



320 RABUN TAYLOR 

invoked a savage moralism targeting the New Pathic, a once harmless 

(if detested) character now marked as an obnoxious threat. Behind the 

paranoia lies a case study for the development of homosexual subcultures 

in the face of adversity. 

Although four extensive treatments of Roman male homosexualityby 

John Boswell, Saara Lilja, Eva Cantarella, and Amy Richlin-exist in 

book form, only Lilja's is exclusively devoted to this topic and hers alone 

takes adequate stock of the change in attitudes and behavior during the 

early period of Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean. The best and 

most comprehensive treatment of the topic is Craig Williams's 1992 dissertation, 

"Homosexuality and the Roman Man" which, however, denies 

any substantive change in the Roman sexual identity during the 

historical period.2 All these works emphasize societal attitudes toward 

sexual behavior. But Richlin has recently opened up a new dimension of 

the study of ancient sexuality, the Roman homosexual subculture, in the 

pages of this journal.3 The present article builds on Richlin's recent work; 

it seeks to characterize not just the attitudes of the dominant culture but 

the behavior of the subculture as well. What was it like on the inside of 

same-sex adult male relationships in Rome? Time and again, a full answer 

to this question is frustrated by the unfriendly bias of the sources. Of all 

the surviving literature from the Roman period, only Petronius's Satyricon 

offers a sympathetic view of homosexual relationships between 

coevals.4 Even Richlin7s admirable article, which aspires to "flesh out the 

2John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1980); 

Saara Lil'a, Homosexuality in Republican and Augustan Rome (Helsinki, 1982); Amy Richlin, 

The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (New Haven, CT, 

1983); Craig A. Williams, "Homosexuality and the Roman Man: A Study in the Cultural 

Construction of Sexuality" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1992); and Eva Cantarella, Bisexuality 

in the Ancicnt World, trans. C. O'Cuilleanain (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992). 

See also Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia, PA, 1983). 

Another study, Franqoise Gonfroy, "Un fait de civilisation m&connu: L'homosexualite masculine 

a Rome" (diss., Poitiers, 1972), remains unpublished. Since Boswell claims that Roman 

society condoned homosexual activity from the very beginning of its recorded history, 

he is naturally troubled by what he sees as the sudden onset of homophobia in the early 

Christian period (pp. 61-87, 91). Cantarella adopts Paul Veyne's view (see n. 15 below) 

that the period of the Empire witnessed a slow but profound change from aggressivc malc 

bisexual libertinism to an ethic of heterosexual fidelity. But although she devotes a chaptcr 

of her book to the metamorphoses of sexual cthics in the Greco-Roman world, in that 

chapter she deals only with the late empire and the onset of Christianity. 

3Amy Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality: The Matcriality of the Cinaedus and the 

Roman Law against Love between Men," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1993): 

523-73. 

4Williams, pp. 341-49; T. Wade Richardson, "Homosexuality in the Satyricon," Classica 

et Mediaevalia 35 (1984): 105-27. 



Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome 321 

material circumstances of such men, to imagine their lives," falls short of 

this goal, focusing rather on the attitudes and institutions of the "outside."5 

It is strange that Richlin rarely mentions the Satyricon, surely the 

best Roman record of homosexuality from the "inside." Still, she has 

given us a fine beginning; the fact that one side of the moon is but dimly 

lit by the literary record should no longer dissuade us of its great substance 

and extent. 

It is not my intent here to advance a theory of "sexuality." This word, 

with or without its array of prefixes, has fallen out of fashion in discussions 

of premodern societies among the disciples of Foucault, who allege 

it to be a retrojection of a modern cultural construct into an alien context. 

Foucaultians such as David Halperin and the late John Winkler prefer 

to see ancient sexual experience not in terms of object preferencewhat 

we might call "sexual orientation"-but in terms of the relation 

of subject to object, that is, the gender and power roles of penetration 

and pathic compliance. Richlin and others have identified some of the 

weaknesses of this position.6 This study will try, in part, to restore the 

importance of recognizing object preference and to establish it as a phenomenon 

quite distinct from (though not independent of) dominant 

sexual attitudes. 

Halperin astutely notes that "concepts in the human sciences ... do 

not merely describe reality but, at least partly, constitute it."7 But where 

he wishes to emphasize the main propositions of this principle, I must 

take "at least partly" as a serious qualifier. There is plenty of ethnographic 

and anthropological evidence that actual behavior (the "reality") 

and the way it is socially characterized (the "concepts") are often radically 

at odds. While Halperin may be right that ancient sexual typologies 

were predicated upon power roles rather than object preference,8 there 

is good reason to dispute the notion that actual behavior rigidly, or even 

remotely, conformed to these paradigms. Behavior often subverts dominant 

attitudes even as it shapes them, creating a sort of nature-nurture 

tension. An awareness of the very real strife between act and representa- 

5 Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," p. 530. 

6Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley 

(New York, 1978); John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex 

and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York and London, 1990); David M. Halperin, One 

Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York and London, 

1990). For criticism, see Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," pp. 523-28, and the reviews 

cited in her n. 3; see also Ralph Hexter, "Scholars and Their Pals," Helios 18 

(1991): 147-59. 

7Halperin, p. 29. 

8Ibid., p. 25. 




tion, between intent and signification, must necessarily modify our ideas 

about what Romans really felt when they engaged in sexual activity. 

This said, like Williams and Richlin, I use the term "homosexuality" 

with little satisfaction. Williams writes, "We cannot understand Roman 

attitudes toward 'homosexuality' or 'homosexual acts' any more than wc 

can profitably speak of 'heterosexuality' or 'heterosexual acts.' Instead, 

the fundamental organizing issues concern physical role (penetrating as 

opposed to being penetrated), aesthetic stigma (the defilement of the 

mouth and tongue by contact with male and female genitalia), and socially 

responsible behavior (respecting the integrity of free persons, and 

in particular the dependents of the paterfamilias)."9 Ancient Mediterraneans 

would doubtless regard the aggregate of behaviors categorized as 

"homosexual" to be somewhat arbitrary. They would justifiably see little 

in common, for example, between a habitual pederast and a transvestite 

pathic. But even if Winkler and Halperin are right that ancient society 

perceived sex primarily as an instrument of status or shame, sexual orientation 

in the Roman world was not trivial. Behind the phenomenon of 

the New Pathic lies the reality that some males acted according to their 

object preference for grown men or for teenage boys who could take the 

insertive role. 

Like Richlin, when I refer to homosexuals or homosexuality, I am referring 

specifically to men who found primary fulfillment in same-sex 

unions that at times involved the assumption of the passive role. But 

although these men were "pathics" in the eyes of society, we should by 

no means impute to them a preference for the passive role, though this 

character trait, pars pro toto, was the inevitable burden of repute they had 

to bear. As we shall see below, there is abundant literary evidence that 

males of the "pathic" stamp were known, and even expected, to take the 

insertive role as well. Even this group is far from homogeneous. Many 

males within it had a subordinate interest in the opposite sex; some 

found age limits important in their object preference, but many others 

did not. The Greek ethos strictly relating age to sex role had limited 

bearing on Roman society. 

When a man's sexual nature conflicted with his social persona, it may 

have led him to seek refuge in a subculture. This institution developed 

in Rome, I will argue, in much the same way as the one in England at 

the cusp of the Early Modern period, which, according to Alan Bray, 

"was not mediated by existing social forms, of class or otherwise: it was 

set alongside them, a social institution in its own right. But most of all 

what gave it its independence in society was its elaboration of its own 

distinctive conventions: ways of dressing, of talking, distinctive gestures 

9Wiliams, p. 320; see Richlin, 'Not bcefore Homosexuality," pp. 525-30. 




and distinctive acts with an understood meaning, its own jargon." '0 The 

subculture created its own ethics and semiotics because society at large 

excluded homosexual men; but it also acknowledged the dominant culture 

and, thereby, allowed some men to shuttle between the two as convenience 

dictated. This paradigm is a far cry from Halperines, which in 

my opinion does not successfully explain the existence of or the need for 

sexual subcultures in the premodern world. 

The corpus of ancient literature contains thousands of scattered references 

to homosexual activity. The dominance of a certain point of view 

in the sources does not obscure the reality of vastly different worldviews 

and lifestyles within the Roman world. John Boswell, one of the first 

serious modern interpreters of Roman homosexuality, extracted his materials 

from a multiplicity of quarries; one cannot fail to be suspicious of 

the gleaming, monochromatic edifice he built with them.1" The richest 

sources-graffiti, invective, epigram, satire-all make liberal use of hyperbole, 

irony, and ambiguity. And in the "straighter" genres such as 

history, treatises, and epistolary literature, too often an author's word or 

opinion is taken for granted, and we forget that the opposing attitudes 

he attacks or suppresses are equally real. The author's biases naturally 

carry over to his narrative of events. Technical treatises are another important 

genre supporting the sexual attitudes of the dominant culture, 

as Halperin, Maud Gleason, and Winkler have recently revealed.'2 These 

are the works of a professional elite who shared the broad values of their 

literary colleagues. The limitations of the available sources thus render 

certain investigative biases unavoidable. The age, class, status, and occupation 

of many persons, though all-important in defining their accepted 

sex roles (which we must carefully distinguish from their actual or preferred 

roles), can sometimes only be guessed, yet the scholar who ignores 

the vast gulf in sex-role expectations between slaves and freeborn Romans, 

or between boys and men, risks going down with Boswell's ship.'3 

"'Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982), p. 86. On the 

semiotics of subcultures, see Dick Hebdige, Subculturc: The Meaning of Stylc (London 

1979). 

" For a recent summary of Boswell's views (n. 2 above), see Richlin, "Not before Homoscxuality," 

pp. 528-30. 

'2Maud Gleason, "The Semiotics of Gender: Physiognomy and Self-Fashioning in the 

Second Century C.E.," in Bcfore Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient 

Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma M. Zeitlin 

(Princeton, NJ, 1990), pp. 389-415; Winkler; Halperin, pp. 21-24. 

'3Boswell repeatedly cites the Romans' well-known tolerance for penctrative exploitation 

of social inferiors as evidence that there were no taboos against homosexual behavior 

in general. In fact, homosexual behavior in which freeborn boys or men played the passive 

role was socially condemned and legally prohibited. This did not, of course, prevent such 

boys from being sexually exploited; see inter alia Petronius 85-87; Pliny Ep. 3.3.3-4, 7.24; 




A FEW REMARKS ABOUT MALE HOMOSEXUAL 

BEHAVIOR 

Richlin asks the question, Were there men in the Roman world who liked 

to be sexually penetrated by other men?'4 Her answer is a resounding 

affirmative. But was that class of men, as many scholars suppose, satisfied 

with an exclusively pathic role in intercourse? Modern anthropological 

and ethnographic studies suggest that in most cultures where same-sex 

erotic behavior enjoys some legitimacy, sexual reciprocity is downplayed 

or discouraged, as it apparently was in Rome. But they also show that 

behavior is often quite contrary to the perceived norm. Even in Roman 

literature, one occasionally encounters such unexpected characters as a 

rich manfs male concubine who is compelled to shave his body and dress 

like a woman, yet "plays the man [i.e., takes the active role] in the bedroom" 

("in cubiculo vir est"; Seneca Ep. 47.7). Is the Roman "pathic" 

simply an encoded image of the homosexual or bisexual man who engages 

in reciprocal intercourse with others of his kind? A brief analysis 

of the usages of the terms mollis and cinacdus, which I undertake later 

in this study, suggests that this is at least partly true. Many of the characters 

we meet in Roman literature ought to be regarded as men who assume 

and enjoy both roles, even if they are not portrayed as such. But 

others seem to have been pathic both in act and in inclination. 

The prevailing attitude in Rome as in Greece recognized women, 

girls, boys, slaves, and noncitizens, to a greater or lesser extent, as potential 

pathic partners of free men.'5 But among males, effeminates alone 

were thought to be inherently pathic. In literature such men are treated 

and especially Valerius Maximus 6.1.6-12, which illustrates the continuing exploitation of 

freeborn boys throughout the Republic as well as the moral outrage and legal penaltics 

incurred by such acts. Martial and juvenal are also rich sources for this kind of cvidencc. 

See Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 157-205; and Danilo Dalla, 'Ubi Venus mutatur': Omosessualita 

e diritto nel mondo romano (Milan, 1987), a useful book-length study of Roman law 

and homosexuality. 

'4Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality" (n. 3 above), p. 524. 

'5Ibid., pp. 532-40; Williams, pp. 87-119, 157-205; FranSoise Gonfroy, 'Homosexualite 

et idWologie esclavagiste chez Ciceron," Dialogues d'histoire ancienne 4 (1978): 219- 

63, at 227; Beert Verstraete, 'Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Malc Homosexual 

Relations in Ancient Rome," Journal of Homosexuality 5 (1980): 227-36. Scveral other 

articles have tried, with varying success, to characterize Roman homosexuality as a historical 

phenomenon. Ramsay MacMullen, "Roman Attitudes to Greek Love," Historia 31 (1982): 

484-502, which is also published in Homosexuality in the Ancient World, ed. Wayne Dynes 

and Stcphen Donaldson (New York and London, 1992), pp. 340-58, attributes the increased 

visibility of homosexuality in this period to Roman adoption of Grcek attitudes and 

idcals. Paul Veyne, "Homosexuality in Ancient Rome," in Western Sexuality: Practice and 

Preccpt in Past and Present Times, ed. Philippe Aries and Andre Bejin, trans. A. Forster 

(Oxford, 1985), pp. 26-35, emphasizes the diffcrences between Greek and Roman atti- 




with contempt and ridicule; they are seen as having neither the strength 

nor the will to lead the life of a healthy male, while at the same time 

possessing a feverish sexual energy. In the dominant culture, only the 

active role in sexual intercourse was considered normative for an adult 

male, whether (within legal limits) the partner be a boy, a subordinate 

man, or a woman; Roman men were expected to be attracted to these 

"natural" objects of desire.'6 Obversely, it was deemed unnatural for a 

grown man, slave or free, to be the passive partner in the sex act, particularly 

if he desired it. A combination of law, taboo, and opinion rendered 

certain types of sexual behavior "unnatural" in the case where a person's 

age, sex, or class were not suited to such behavior. Cicero (Tusc. 4.71) 

argues that pederasty is less natural than sex between a man and a 

woman. Pliny the Elder condemns pathic behaviors as "perversions of 

sex" ("deverticula veneris") achieved "by crime against nature" ("scelere 

naturae"; HN 10.63 (83).172), while Seneca levels the same criticism at 

transvestism (Ep. 122.7). Some saw in pathic behavior an inherent character 

imbalance, or congenital malaise; others saw a cultural incursion, a 

creeping epidemic.'7 What we lack, of course, are the opinions of the 

condemned. 

The scholar who views Roman male homosexual behavior within the 

tudes and downplays Greek influence. Several sources deal in detail with homosexual relations 

between master and slave in the context of a single author's work: Maria Antonietta 

Cerverella, "Omosessualita e ideologia schiavistica in Petronio," Index (Naples) 11 (1982): 

221-34; Marguerite Garrido-Hory, "La vision du dependant chez Martial a travers les relations 

sexuelles," Index (Naples) 10 ( 1981): 298-315, and Martial etl'esclavage (Besancon, 

1981); Rene Martin, "La vie sexuelle des esclaves d'apres les Dialogues rustiques de Varron," 

in Varron, grammaire antique et stylistique latine: Recucil offert i Jean Collart (Paris, 

1978), pp. 113-26. 

16Richlin, The Garden of Priapus (n. 2 above), p. 225. See Petronius 105, where Giton's 

looks disarm not only Tryphaena and her ladies but all the male sailors as well. Modern 

Mediterranean cultures are little different. A homosexual sojourner in various Arab cities 

in the 1950s described to Alfred Kinsey how men of the dominant culture desire to have 

effeminate men for pathic partners and yet violently deny taking the pathic role themselves 

(see Martin B. Duberman, About Time: Exploring the Gay Past [New York, 1986], pp. 

173-83). 

"7See Williams, pp. 91-92. All this evidence severely compromises Cantarella's claim (n. 

2 above) that, before Christianity became generally accepted in the fourth century, the 

Romans "had not . . . invented the theory of sexuality against nature" (p. 188). Also see 

Epictetus (Arr. Epict. Diss. 3.1.27-31) and Dio Chrysostom 33.52-60. For the possible 

origins of this notion in Stoic thought, see Elaine Fantham, "Stuprum: Public Attitudes 

and Penalties for Sexual Offences in Republican Rome," Classical Views/Echos du monde 

classique 35, n.s. 10 (1991): 267-91, at 289, n. 60. For an analysis of the widespread notions 

of inherent and cultivated effeminacy in physiognomy, see Gleason. Walter Stevenson 

("The Rise of Eunuchs in Greco-Roman Antiquity," Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 

[19951: 495-5 11) evokes the "strong Roman sense of nature" in the context of emascula- 




context of the anthropological evidence is unlikely to ascribe to it a 

purely Greek origin.'8 Greece and Rome are only two among many 

cultures that attach shame and disenfranchisement to the passive role. 

Richlin's image of the socially marginal, "stained" pathic of Roman 

literature-a grown man who degrades himself by oral-genital contact 

and by accommodating the penises of men'9-is endemic to many societies, 

as is the tension between the desire to play the passive role and the 

social pressure not to acknowledge it. The result, as we see through the 

admittedly biased harangues of Martial, Juvenal, and the phallic poems 

of the Priapea, as well as the equally distorted lens of Cicero and Seneca, 

is that some men openly flaunt their homosexuality, while others fearfully 

hide it. A good deal of discussion has recently surrounded the Warren 

Cup, an Augustan relief goblet featuring (in one of its two tableaux) 

two males, apparently of equal age, nestled in anal coitus as a man or boy 

in a tunic looks on from behind a partly opened door.20 To my mind, the 

scene is the visual equivalent of a Martial epigram or Juvenal's second 

satire: the two protagonists, of a Hellenized, heroic cast, face exposure 

of their 'crime"-intercourse between freeborn males-by a voyeur 

who is meant to represent you and me. Both partners have something to 

hide here: the passive partner is tainted by his pathic act, and the penetrator 

is encouraging his corruption. The Apollonian features of the 

scene, the elder partner's laurel crown and a lyre resting nearby, suggest 

a satirization of the family of Augustus, which often adopted this imagery 

in its official art.2' 

Literary sources such as Juvenal and Martial give liberal evidence that 

some "butch" men took the pathic role in private. In many societies, 

tion. At least two classical sources suggest this is truc: the clder Seneca asserts that castrating 

young boys for prostitution is contra naturam (Controv. 1.4.17), and on the same topic, 

Petronius says, "nature sceks herself and findeth naught" (119.1.24). 

"'Williams, pp. 11-119; Cantarella; Lilja (n. 2 abovc), pp. 82, 123-24. Verstracte's argumcnt 

that Rome had undergone centuries of Greck influence through the Etruscans and 

Magna Graecia is well taken ("Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Male Homosexual Relations 

in Ancicnt Rome," p. 230). But given the paucity of early evidencc, his claim that 

"we sec from the late third century B.C. onwards an incrcasing acceptance of alternative 

sexual behaviors of almost every coloring and varicty" (p. 230) is tcnuous and is plainly 

wrong if hc means that the dominant culturc, as opposed to the subculturc, accepted any 

of these behaviors. 

'9Richlin, The Garden of Priapus, pp. 26-31; sec also Williams, pp. 206-80. 

20John Clarkc, "The Warrcn Cup and the Contexts for Reprcsentations of Malc-to- 

Malc Lovemaking in Augustan and Early Julio-Claudian Art," Art Bulletin 75 (1993): 

275-93. In The Houses of Roman Italy: Ritual, Space, and Decoration (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 

323-24), Clarke suggests that the scene represents a homosexual brothel, but therc is no 

reason why it could not be a private house. 

21 

Paul Zankcr, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, MI, 1988). 




this role inversion is perceived as a transgression of a person's social identity 

and is sometimes associated with witchcraft.22 Rome's literary moralists 

thought it a terrible thing for a free adult male to be an open pathic, 

and it was even worse if he hid it. Juvenal writes, "I blame the Fates 

for those who parade their pox with glance and gesture. Their wretched 

candor, their frenzy itself begs forgiveness. Worse are those who attack 

such things with Herculean words, and fresh from these manly harangues 

set their hindquarters humming'"23 

But men who were thought to prefer the passive role were never as 

thoroughly institutionalized in Rome as have been, for example, the 

modern pasivos in Latin America or the bayot in the Philippines.24 In Roman 

urban society, even a "pathic" who by all appearances kept in his 

place probably had little satisfaction in that fact. The thing that made 

life tolerable for men of this sort, as for the men who were less forthright 

in confessing their homosexual inclination, was the existence of a subculture-an 

institution that could hide a man's proclivities or selectively 

advertise them, according to his wishes. This provided psychological 

support and confirmation of his sexuality and allowed him to assume 

sexual roles and relationships unacceptable to society at large. It is such 

an institution to which Juvenal's Laronia refers when she says, "First 

watch and scrutinize men, for their ways are many. But their numbers 

protect them, like phalanxes joined at the nub. Great is the concord 

among pathics."25 

The view from the inside is best presented in the Satyricon. Craig Williams's 

reading of the novel reveals an environment where freeborn men 

have genuine relationships in which they trade active and passive roles 

without shame: 

We are far removed indeed from the nearly universal preoccupation 

with penetrative role discussed in the preceding chapters. In Encolpius' 

warm recollection of his encounters with Giton and Endymion, 

it seems crassly out of place to ask who is penetrating 

whom. The texts simply do not invite their readers to make such 

an inquiry.... The difference in their ages alone would have suggested 

to Petronius' readership a clear assignment of roles: Encol- 

22 Randolph Trumbach, "London's Sodomites: Homosexual Behavior and Western Culture 

in the 18th Century," Journal of Social History 11(1977): 1-33, at S. 

23"Hunc ego fatis / inputo, qui vultu morbum incessuque fatetur. / horum simplicitas 

miserabilis, his furor ipse / dat veniam; sed peiiores, qui talia verbis / Herculis invadunt et 

dc virtute locuti / clunem agitant" (Juv. 2.16-21). 

24 Frederick Whitam and Robin Mathy, Male Homosexuality in Four Societies (New York, 

1986), pp. 133-53. 

2sURespice primum / et scrutare viros, faciunt nam plura; sed illos / defendit numerus 

iunctacque umbone phalanges. / magna inter molles concordia" (Juv. 2.44-47). 




pius as active, Giton as passive. But the language they use of each 

other, particularly Encolpius' descriptions of their behavior in love 

and in danger, encourages readers to understand them not as a 

phallocentric configuration of active amator and passive puer but 

as a loving couple who share erotic pleasure.... the Satyricon offers 

its readers a glimpse at fuller three-dimensional relationships 

between male sexual partners that stand in vivid contrast with the 

normal "insert tab A into slot B" model. When these characters, 

or indeed any Roman men, speak of a male sexual partner as aJfater, 

the active/passive polarity so typical of their culture's representation 

of erotic relationships is, for once, not the central 

consideration 26 

In the Roman world, this kind of relationship could only have existed 

in a subculture. A public life is out of the question for the protagonists, 

and the fugitive status of Encolpius and Giton seems appropriate. They 

and their colleagues move from one anonymous situation to the next, 

usually in large population centers of the Roman empire, while the threat 

of being recognized is always palpable. They trade juicy stories, like Eumolpus's 

account of his secretive seduction of a freeborn boy in Pergamum 

(85-87), as they could never do in a more open context. Just as 

"brother" and "sister" are common terms of affection within the American 

homosexual subculture, so frater and soror are the terms in which 

the members of the Satyricods subculture identify their current love interest. 

In this environment of solidarity, the expression of power and 

control is of secondary importance; but significantly, as soon as lovers' 

quarrels arise, the mainstream attitudes spring forth in their full brutality. 

These men must wrestle with cultural tensions and paradoxes of quite 

a different order from the tidy moralities of Cicero or Seneca, the 

surface-dwellers. 

The world of ancient Rome seems to have had at least two identifiable 

subcultures of homosexuality. The first is a group of mendicant religious 

cults and extends well beyond the bounds of urban areas. The second is 

in Rome itself, a shadowy and ill-defined institution that one may nevertheless 

glimpse from behind the door of a hostile literature. 

A RELIGIOUS 

SUBCULTURE 

It is useful to view some Roman religious cults as subcultures in their 

own right. Greek and Roman mystery cults often disregarded social and 

gender boundaries, could be highly institutionalized, and served both as 

26Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 342, 344-45, 348-49. 




outlets and as shields for socially taboo behaviors-behaviors that could 

occasionally be seen as such a threat that the cults were banned and their 

adherents persecuted.27 The most famous instance is the persecution of 

the Italian cult of Dionysus in 186 B.C.E., recorded in book 39 of Livy's 

Roman history. Among the accusations leveled at the participants was an 

orgy of homosexual activity among both sexes. The cult involved more 

than seven thousand men and women, many of them plebeians; its leaders 

were of that class. The Roman state arrested and executed a majority 

of the participants and virtually eradicated the cult (39.13-18). 

As an instance of the fear and loathing generated by eastern cults we 

have a very curious poem in the Appendix Vergiliana (Vergil Catal. 13) 

that some have attributed to Horace and may refer to Antony, whom 

Cicero had branded a cinaedus ("effeminate") in the Philippics.28 The 

poem's addressee is "Lucienus," now a grown man, who has lived a debauched 

and improvident life since his youth, "when the boy's dinner 

parties were spent with men, / and his buns stayed wet through the 

night" (13-14).29 In his adulthood he has become a transvestite priest 

of Cotytto, the goddess of a Thracian mystery cult: 

Why do you blanch, you woman? Do my jests pain you? Or do you 

see what you have done? During the rites of lovely Cotytto you 

won't invite me for the long unused phallic charms, nor at that time 

will I see you move your loins inside your woman's dress as you 

hold the altar tight, or as you call to men reeking sailor-stench by 

the yellow Tiber, where the harbored ships stand in the shallows, 

stuck [retentae = grown limp30] in the fetid mire, and struggle in 

the meager waters; nor even on the oily Compitalia will you lead 

me to the kitchen with its paltry dinner fare when, overflowing with 

dinner and with drool, you return to your hungry wife and handily 

purge your burning bowels, and to her disgust you pucker and you 

lick. Now strike back [laede = bang away], now provoke [ lacesse = 

27For more on Greek and Roman mystery cults, see Clara Gallini, Protesta e integrazione 

nella Roma antica (Bari, 1970), pp. 30-44; Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and 

Slaves: Women in ClassicalAntiquity (New York, 1975), pp. 205-26; and J. A. North, "Religious 

Toleration in Republican Rome," Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 

n.s., 25 (1979): 85-103, at 94-95. 

28See H. Rushton Fairclough, trans., Virgil, Loeb Classical Library (1934), 2.505. 

29"Vel acta puero cum viris convivia / udacque per somnum nates" (Verg. Catal. 13- 

14). This seems to be an instance of sexual patronage. The act is deemed perverse in light 

of the Roman custom of not allowing boys to recline at meals with adults until they assumed 

the toga virilis; see Alan Booth, "The Age for Reclining and Its Attendant Perils," 

in Dining in a Classical Context, ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor, MI, 1991), pp. 105-20. 

30This is the perfect passive participle of either retineo, "hold back," or retendo, "release 

from tension." 




arouse] me, if your strength allows! I'll even let out your name: 

cinaedus Lucienus, your strength is flagging, your molars grind 

with hunger. I will see you when you have nothing left but your 

lolling brothers [fratres = male lovers],3' an angry Jupiter, a split 

belly [ventrem = loins] and the hunger-swollen feet of a herniated 

uncle !32 

The welter of double entendres and stinging insults in this breathless 

diatribe associates the cinaedus with the transvestism and pathic sexual 

behavior of an urban subculture of sailors and fratres. In the secrecy of 

the orgiastic rites of the Cotytia, Lucienus and his kind dress as women; 

their membra virilia hang unused (hence the unused fascini, apotropaic 

phallic charms worn by Roman boys, acquire a reverse symbolism), but 

they are driven to exhaustion offering themselves up as partners to sailors 

(until the latter "grow limp" in the "fetid mire"?).33 During the Compitalia 

festival, Lucienus's secret "dinner fare" is more of the same. He goes 

home and purges;34 he simply cannot be aroused by his wife and resorts 

to cunnilingus.35 The supposed rewards for the lifestyle of the cinaedus 

are split loins (rather like the "gay bowel syndrome" of modern homophobic 

tracts), angry gods, and neglected dependents. 

The real story of transvestite cultic activity is of course much more 

complicated. The first of the two homosexual subcultures in our discussion 

is embedded in a ritual framework that ironically emphasizes chastity. 

It is a group of Hellenized Anatolian fertility cults that became 

fashionable in Rome during the late Republic. The two largest individual 

cults in this group, those of magna mater (Cybele) and of the dea Syria 

31As examples of this usage, Gaston Vorberg, Glossarium Eroticum (Rome, 1965), s.v. 

frater, cites Tibullus 3.1.23; Mart. 2.4.3; 10.65.15; Petron. 9. See also Williams, pp. 

342-49. 

32 "Quid palluisti, femina? an ioci dolent? / an facta cognoscis tua? / non me vocabis 

pulchra per Cotytia / ad feriatos fascinos, / nec deinde te movere lumbos in stola / prensis 

videbo altaribus / flavumque propter Thybrim olentis nauticum / vocare, ubi adpulsae rates / 

stant in vadis caeno retentae sordido / macraque luctantes aqua; / neque in culinam et uncta 

compitalia / dapesque duces sordidas, / quibus repletus et salivosis aquis, / obesam ad uxorem 

redis / et aestuantes docte solvis pantices, / osusque lambis saviis. / nunc laede, nunc 

lacesse, si quicquam vales! / et nomen adscribo tuum. / cinaede Luciene, liquerunt opes / 

fameque genuini crepant. / videbo habentem praeter ignavos nihil / fratres et iratum Iovem / 

scissumque ventrem et herniosi patrui / pedes inedia turgidos" (Verg. Catal. 13.17-40). 

33For more direct imagery, see Priapea 68.8; Juv. 9.44; CIL X.4483. 

34For the laxative effect of anal penetration, see Priapea 17; Martial 11.88 and 13.26. 

35Lucienus's wife seems nothing more than a lugubrious concession to the dominant 

culture. Compare Ausonius's epigram 78 and the wife of a long string of cinaedi in Martial 

7.58.3-5: "Then, having tested their loins and dongs like wet thongs uncoaxed to a stand 

by your long-laboring hand, you desert weaponless bed and effeminate husband alike." 




(Atargatis), left a vivid impression on Roman authors because their 

priests-known as the Galli and Metragyrtai, respectively-were selfcastrated, 

transvestic, and-if we believe the sources-pathically oriented.36 

Following the satirist Lucian, the great antique authority on the 

Syrian cult, I will use the single term "Galli" for both priestly groups, 

which were almost indistinguishable in antiquity (Syr. D. 15). 

"What is a womans crevasse to you, Baeticus, you Gallus?" sneers 

Martial. "That tongue ought to be licking menfs midriffs. Why was your 

dick cut off by a sherd of Samos if cunt was so appealing to you, Baeticus?"37 

Martial's jape offers the interesting, and apparently authoritative, 

information that the Galli amputated not only the testicles, but the penis 

as well.38 Not surprisingly, the term "Gallus" became a convenient term 

of abuse for anyone suspected of pathic behavior. Octavian, who reputedly 

played the pathic in his youth, was once equated with a Gallus on a 

Roman stage (Suetonius Aug. 68). 

Lucian's Asinus and its literary filiation, Apuleius's Metamorphoses, 

make fun of the pathic inclinations of a band of Syrian Galli. Their uncastrated 

flutist is exhausted from the constant sexual service that he 

must provide to his employers (Met. 8.26). These Galli are so avid for 

passive sex that even bestiality is not beyond them. When the band's 

leader brings home Lucius the ass from the market, the following scene 

ensues: 

"Girls," he cried, "Get a load of the cute little slave-boy I [feminine]39 

bought for you." But those "girls" were a chorus of pathics 

who at once leaped up in joy and raised a cacophonous clamor with 

their cracked, raw, effeminate voices, thinking, no doubt, that 

some slave-boy really was standing ready to serve them. But when 

they saw that it was no doe standing in for an Iphigenia, but an ass 

for a man, with wrinkled noses they mocked their master: obvi- 

36For a convenient presentation of the source material on the Cybele cult, see Maarten 

J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult (London, 1977), csp. pp. 96-144. 

37'Quid cum feminco tibi, Baetice Galle, barathro? / hacc debet medios lambere lingua 

viros. / abscissa est quare Samia tibi mentula testa, / si tibi tam gratus, Baetice, cunnus 

erat?" (Mart. 3.81.1-4). See also Mart. 2.45. 

38N. M. Kay, Martial Book XI: A Commentary (Oxford, 1985), p. 225. On castration 

practices, see Theodor Hopfner, Das Sexualleben der Griechen und Romer (Prague, 1938), 

pp. 387-88; Charles Humana, Thc Keepcr of the Bed: Thc Story of the Eunuch (London, 

1973), p. 14; and Peter Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven und Freigelassene in dergriechischrbmischen 

Antike (Stuttgart, 1980), p. 48. 

39Catullus 63 often refers to the castrated Attis (Cybele's consort) with feminine adjectives 

and imagery. 




ously he had brought it not as a slave, but as a husband for himself. 

"Hey!" they said. "Don't you eat up this pretty little yearling by 

yourself, but share it with your dovies from time to time."40 

This seems a hopelessly paradoxical picture: frantic sexual urges 

among men who lacked their sexual organs altogether. We might be 

tempted to dismiss the image as a gross misunderstanding on the part of 

unsympathetic observers, if not for the existence of a modern anthropological 

parallel whose analogies to the ancient cults are little short of astonishing. 

The hijras (hijaras, hijadas) of India so closely resemble the 

priests of antiquity that the question arises whether their two cults could 

be distant filiations of a single group of west Asiatic fertility cults.4' 

Both the hijras and the Galli are servitors of a female fertility goddess. 

Throughout India, this goddess is the center of a series of rural village 

cults and is called by a number of names. Like Cybele and many other 

fertility goddesses, she is often paired with a lesser male god.42 The roots 

of her cult are pre-Aryan; it was probably brought into the peninsula by 

the Dravidians in the third millennium B.C.E. These may have come from 

Mesopotamia, and their culture and language were related to those in 

Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean. One authority places the origin 

of the Phrygian and Syrian cults in the same region, specifically near 

Carchemish along the Euphrates.43 It is quite possible, then, that many 

of the ritual elements in the Indian cults are related to those of the ancient 

Phrygian and Syrian cults. Although the circumstances of the two 

cult groups' rituals may differ significantly, the rituals themselves at 

40"'Puellae, servum vobis pulchellum en ecce mercata pcrduxi.' Scd iliac pucllac chorus 

crat cinacdorum, quae statim exsultantes in gaudium fracta et rauca et effeminata voce 

clamores absonos intollunt, rati scilicet vere quempiam hominem servulum ministerio suo 

paratum. Sed postquam non cervam pro virgine, sed asinum pro homine succidancum vidcre, 

nare detorta magistrum suum varie cavillantur: non enim servum, sed maritum illum 

scilicct sibi perduxisse. Et 'Heus,' aiunt, 'cave ne solus exedas tam bellum scilicet pullulum, 

sed nobis quoquc tuis palumbulis nonnumquam impertias'" (Apul. Met. 8.26). Comparc 

Lucian Asinus 36. 

41Apparently the only scholar who has explored this link is Sumant Mchta, "Eunuchs, 

Pavaiyas and Hijadas," Gujarat Sahitya Sabha, Amdavad, Karyavahi, Ahmedabad, pt. 2 

(1945-46): 3-75. I have not had access to this article, but A. M. Shah, "A Note on the 

Hijadas of Gujarat," American Anthropologist 63 (1961): 1325-30, reports that Mehta 

'traced analogous institutions in other parts of India and also in other parts of the world 

in modern as well as ancient times" (p. 1325). 

42 For anthropological parallels, sce Sir James Gcorge Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study 

in Magic and Rcligion, pt. 4: Adonis Attis Osiris: Studics in the History of Oricntal Religion, 

3d ed., 2 vols. (London and Basingstoke, 1980). 

43E. 0. James, The Cult of the Mother-Goddess: An Archaeological and Documentary 

Study (London, 1959), pp. 100, 113-20, 123; Vermaseren, p. 17. 




points are strikingly similar." The hijras studied by modern anthropologists 

belong to the cult of Bahuchara Mata, one of the mother-goddesses 

of the cultic network in rural India. Like the Galli, they practice emasculation-in 

fact, the complete removal of penis and testicles-as a means 

of spiritual purification and identification with the goddess and are characterized 

by effeminacy of manner and dress, even to the point of caricature.45 

There are numerous other parallels,46 including certain elements 

of their respective castration rituals. 

44 "During their spring festival of the Cybele/Attis cult in Rome, the Galli would throw 

themselves into a frenzy, lacerating their arms and scourging one another to the accompaniment 

of drums, cymbals, and pipes. The arch-priest sacrificed a bull to Attis on the Ides. 

Several days after the vernal equinox, the lavatio took place. The image of Cybele-the 

Anatolian meteorite that was thought to contain the goddess-was brought outside the 

pomerium [the religious boundary of the city] in a wagon procession and ritually washed" 

(James, pp. 172-74; see Frazer, 1: 273 and n. 4). The image of the Mother Goddess in 

southern India is often just a plain stone standing upright outside the boundaries of the 

village. During periods of illness or epidemic the image is bathed and sheep or water buffalo 

are sacrificed "amid wild dancing, drumming and horn-blowing.... Food is then 

poured out before Ankamma [the local name of the goddess] and the festival closes with 

the usual procession of carts round the temple" (James, p. 117). 

45Serena Nanda, "The Hijras of India: A Preliminary Report," Medicine and Law 3 

(1984): 59-75 (hereafter referred to as 'A Preliminary Report"), "The Hijras of India: 

Cultural and Individual Dimensions of an Institutionalized Third Gender Role," Journal 

of Homosexualitv 11 (1985): 35-54 (hereafter referred to as "Cultural and Individual Dimensions"), 

and Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont, CA, 1990). The 

newly castrated Gallus "was called 'icv6PqOoq' and, as the male counterpart of the Goddess, 

by sacrificing his virility he assimilated himself to her so completely that he shared in her 

life-giving power. Henceforth he adopted female attire, having consecrated himself to her 

service even at the cost of his manhood" (James, p. 168). Similarly, the emasculated hijra 

initiate "becomes one of Bahuchara Mata's favorites, serving as a vehicle of her power 

through [his] symbolic rebirth . . . emasculation certainly brings the hijra devotee into a 

closer identification with the female object of devotion" (Nanda, "Cultural and Individual 

Dimensions," p. 40). 

46According to Vermaseren (n. 36 above), p. 96, the Galli, whose name can be translated 

as "cocks" as well as "Galatians," took the rooster as their symbol; the most popular 

image of the hijras'goddess, Bahuchara Mata, depicts her riding a cock (Nanda, "Cultural 

and Individual Dimensions," p. 40). Both cults are associated with the emasculation of 

male mythological figures; in the Cybele cult, it is Attis (Catull. 63); in the Mata cult, it is 

Arjuna (Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 72, and Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 30-31), 

Shiva (Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 24, 29-30), and Bahuchara (Nanda, "Cultural 

and Individual Dimensions," p. 39). Both cults feature icons of the mother goddess (Apul. 

Met. 8.25, 27; Shah, p. 1326; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 72). Members of both 

cults are mendicant and live off the charity of others (Cic. Leg. 2.22.40; Apul. Met. 8.24, 

28; Shah, pp. 1326-27; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 69, and "Cultural and Individual 

Dimensions," p. 41); both share earnings among themselves (Apul. Met. 8.28; Shah, p. 

1328; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 69). They are itinerant (Apul. Met. 8, passim; 

Shah, pp. 1326-27; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 67) and are especially active during 




In his description of the bloodletting rites during the spring festival 

of the Cybele cult, James Frazer writes, 

We may conjecture, though we are not expressly told, that it was on 

the same Day of Blood and for the same purpose that the novices 

sacrificed their virility. Wrought up to the highest pitch of religious 

excitement they dashed the severed portions of themselves against 

the image of the cruel goddess. These broken instruments of fertility 

were afterwards reverently wrapt up and buried in the earth or 

in subterranean chambers sacred to Cybele, where, like the offering 

of blood, they may have been deemed instrumental in recalling 

Attis [Cybele's consort] to life and hastening the general resurrection 

of nature, which was then bursting into leaf and blossom in 

the vernal sunshine. 

On the Day of Blood the new Galli cast aside their masculine clothing 

forever.47 In the equivalent ritual for the dea Syria, as Lucian tells it, the 

initiate castrated himself with a sword and then ran through town with 

genitals in hand. He would then toss them into a house chosen at random, 

whose residents would be obligated to dress him in female attire 

(Syr. D. 51). 

Serena Nanda says of the ritual of the hijras, "Emasculation is the 

dharm (caste duty) of the hijras, and the chief source of their uniqueness. 

The hijras carry it out in a ritual context, in which the client sits in 

front of a picture of the goddess Bahuchara and repeats her name while 

the operation is being performed." Nanda describes the operation as 

follows: 

festivals (Apul. Met. 8.29; Shah, p. 1327; see Frazcr, 1: 266-73). Morris E. Opler, "Thc 

Hijara (Hcrmaphrodites) of India and Indian National Character: A Rejoinder," American 

Anthropologist 62 (1960): 505-11, witnessed a ceremony and dance where the hijras took 

up a collcction afterward in the folds of their dresses (p. 506), just as the Galli do in Apu- 

Icius Mct. 8.28. Both groups sing, play music, and dance using drums and cymbals (Apul. 

Mct. 8.24, 26-27; Catull. 63.21; Suet. Aug. 68; Lucian Syr. D. 50; Opler, p. 506; Shah, 

p. 1327; Nanda, 'A Preliminary Report," pp. 66, 68); both arc expected to be lewd and 

sexually suggestivc (Apul. Met. 8.26; Nanda, "A Prcliminary Report," p. 68, and "Cultural 

and Individual Dimcnsions," p. 38); both are capable of issuing curscs in the namc of their 

goddesses (Apul. Mct. 8.25; Shah, pp. 1327-28; Nanda, "A Prcliminary Report," p. 60). 

Both groups think of thcmsclves as primarily femalc or "not-mcn" (Apul. Mct. 8.26; Shah, 

p. 1328; Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," pp. 38, 44, and Neither Man nor 

Woman, pp. 15-17, 114-16) and engage in ridiculous public behavior or are ridiculed by 

the public (Apul. Met. 8.25; Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 38; Shah, 

p. 1328). Many parallels to the citations in Apulcius can be found in Pseudo-Lucian's Asinus, 

upon which Apulcius's story is based. 

47 Frazer, 1:268-70; Vermaseren, p. 97. 




There is no anaesthetic. The operator then ties a black string 

around the penis and testicles so that she [= he, a senior eunuch] 

can get a clean cut.... When the cut is made blood gushes out, 

which is claimed to be necessary to remove all the male parts.... 

After 40 days, a puja (ritual act of devotion) is performed for the 

Mata [the goddess], the patient takes a small amount of milk, and 

goes with friends and other members of the local hijra community 

in a procession to a nearby lake.... The removed genitals are either 

put in a pot and buried under a living tree, or thrown into the 

water. In the procession the patient, now healed, is dressed up "like 

a bride," painted with mendi and adorned with jewelry and new 

clothes.48 

After the Day of Blood the Galli initiates fasted from bread; hijra initiates 

have a similarly restrictive diet.49 All things considered, then, the 

rites are strikingly akin to each other: in both, an image of the goddess 

is present; and there are similar practices of ritual burial of the generative 

organs, abstinence from certain foods, and ritual adoption of feminine 

status through clothing and adornment. 

The ancient and modern cults also share a tradition that probably has 

nothing to do with ritual: homosexual behavior.50 As we have seen, Roman 

authors associate the Galli with promiscuous homosexual activity. 

This attitude has its parallel in Hindu myth, where "the notion of the 

false ascetic (those who pretend to be ascetics in order to satisfy their 

lust) abounds."5' To some extent, it is undoubtedly a misunderstanding 

of the effeminate habits of the priests, many of whom are abstinent; but 

many more, perhaps a majority, of the hijras today willingly engage in 

pathic sexual behavior, even prostitution. If the hijras indeed serve as a 

modern-day model for the behavior of ancient Galli, then the Anatolian 

48Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," pp. 39-40, and "A Preliminary Report," 

pp. 73-74. For more detail on the ritual, sec Nanda, Neither Man nor Wdman, pp. 

24-37. 

49Frazer, 1:272; Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 34. 

50Whilc there is good evidence for ritual pederastic behavior in some Greek settings 

(Jan Bremmer, "An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite: Paederasty," Arethusa 13 [1980]: 

279-98) and a few Greek cults adopted by the Romans, such as the cult of Demeter, featured 

ritual intercourse of some kind, there is no indication that the Anatolian cults discussed 

here practiced homosexual behavior in the context of ritual. As with the hijras, their 

castration seems to have been a physical confirmation of sworn chastity. This would explicitly 

put the priests' homosexual behavior outside the sphere of their religious duties and 

bclices and may help to cxplain the aura of fraud and hypocrisy that surrounds the Galli, 

especially in Lucian and Apuleius. For an update on the burgeoning scholarship dealing 

with Greek or Indo-European pederasty rites, see Golden (n. 1 above), p. 330. 

51 Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 48. 




cult may also have offered a haven for inherently effeminate men, many 

of whom had exclusively pathic inclinations. 

The preferred method of recruiting hijras is to find individuals who 

are clinically hermaphroditic by birth or males who are impotent.52 But 

many of the recruits are classic transgender men with a pronounced 

pathic orientation who became aware of their cross-gender tendencies 

early in life. Many hijras have described their effeminate inclinations in 

childhood despite strong discouragement from their parents. Half of 

them have had positive homosexual experiences in adolescence that confirmed 

their orientation and sexual role preference. This is a common 

and widespread developmental pattern for a class of homosexual males.53 

Often in their adolescent years hijras join the cult because it is sympathetic 

to transgender tendencies, including the passive sex act, in spite 

of the cult's vows of abstinence. The result is that many members either 

"marry" men or openly practice passive prostitution, or both.54 

The cult provides a context for a subculture of pathic homosexuality. 

Like brothels or bathhouses, it offers some structure and legitimacy to a 

lifestyle that is not condoned by society at large. The Galli, like their 

Indian counterparts, benefited from an aura of religious authority, even 

honor, that persisted in spite of social distaste for their lifestyle. Although 

Apuleius can describe them as "the vulgar dregs of the masses" 

("trivialis popularium faex"; Met. 8.24) and regard them as nothing better 

than shameless fakes, he must also acknowledge that many people 

have enough respect for their religious function as guarantors of fertility 

to give them money, food, and lodging for their ritual services (Met. 

8.28-30). Centuries later, Saint Augustine demonstrates the same loathing 

for the rituals of the Galli, of which he admittedly has no knowledge. 

Yet he too confesses that the priests retain a reputation for sanctity (De 

civ. D. 6.7.3). At the same time they are ridiculed and detested, especially 

by the sophisticated urban elite, for their pathic lifestyle. 

Werner Krenkel presents evidence that a tax was levied on Galli as 

52Nanda, 'A Preliminary Report," p. 73, 'Cultural and Individual Dimcnsions," pp. 

38-43, and Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 15-16. Compare Mart. 2.45: "That dick that 

wouldn't stand tall for you has been cut off, Glyptus. Fool, what need for the knifc? You 

werc a Gallus beforc." ("Quae non stabat praccisa est mentula, Glypte. / demens, cum ferro 

quid tibi? Gallus eras.") 

53Nanda, "A Preliminary Report," p. 65, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions," p. 44, 

and Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 57-59; Whitam and Mathy (n. 24 above), pp. 32-67. 

Marccl Saghir and Eli Robbins, Male and Female Homosexuality (Baltimorc, 1973), find 

that two-thirds of their sample of homosexual males recall exhibiting cross-gender behavior 

as young children. 

54Nanda, "Cultural and Individual Dimensions" (n. 45 above), pp. 44, 71, and Neither 

Man nor Woman (n. 45 above), pp. 12, 16, 61-65, 73-79, 122-25. 




male prostitutes. The criterion for being taxed was one's status as a pathicus, 

that is, a pathic prostitute.55 Although Caligula imposed a tax on 

prostitutes, scholars have been reluctant to conclude that males were included 

in this law. However, a passage in Justin Martyr (Apologia 1 1.27) 

implies that at least in the late Empire such a tax was being levied.56 The 

evidence concerning the Galli suggests that an assessment on male prostitutes 

was in place earlier, perhaps before Caligula's decree. 

Within a society that condemns the pathic, the cults just described 

have their attractions as an environment where men can exercise their 

minority sexual preference-if not with outright approval, at least with 

less ostracism than in the lonelier and more dangerous context of society 

at large. That they sacrifice their genitals is remarkable evidence of the 

lengths to which some homosexually oriented men will go to seek acceptance 

of and outlet for their sexuality. 

Homosexually active hijras and their ancient counterparts exemplify 

the "natural" pathic. Physiologically, they have real sexual desires and 

derive genuine pleasure from their sexual activities despite their emasculation. 

But the satisfactions achieved in joining the cult encompass much 

more than pure sexual need; they establish a personal social identity that 

legitimates the initiate's lifestyle. In the case of the ancient cults, we can 

only glimpse this sense of belonging through the sneers of a few Greek 

and Roman authors. That the authorities considered the cult dangerously 

seductive to Romans is likely: Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports 

that "by senatorial decree and consent, there are no native Roman Galli 

clad in pied mantles piping and parading through the city or going into 

a Phrygian frenzy for the goddess." 57 At the end of the Republic and the 

outset of the Principate, foreign cults were subject to mistrust, surveillance, 

and governmental control-partly, perhaps, for the reasons Dionysius 

gives: Roman decorum and aversion to "empty" ritual (ti34ov), 

but also undoubtedly through fear of the allure of the religious subculture. 

Hanging like a pall over all these cults was the specter of the events 

of 186 B.C.E., when the consuls of Rome brutally crushed the Italian cult 

of Bacchus for its alleged promotion of debauchery and unnatural acts. 

15Werner A. Krenkel, "Pueri meritorii,' Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Wilhelm-Pieck- 

Universitat (Rostock) 28 (1979): 179-89, at 187. Also in Dynes and Donaldson, eds. (n. 

15 above), pp. 269-79. 

56Thomas A. J. McGinn, "The Taxation of Roman Prostitutes," Helios 16 (1989): 79- 

110, at 86-87. 

57" Pwgaiov 6E xxv acryevCov oL)t gqTpayvpt6ov ns oVTE Kcata-u6j.tvO; nopEOTcwt Sta 

Tfq n6sxoy, itoioiAiv ive8&uK&; nToXiv oite 6pytauiet tiv O-6v TOI; Opvyiot; 6pytaaso;t 

iccazr v6pov Kai '1tlcrga I3ouXig" (2.19.5). 




AN URBAN 

SUBCULTURE 

A second, and much larger, Roman subculture consisted of a minority 

of men in Rome who sought pathic or reciprocal homosexual relationships 

and were thus, like the Galli, labeled cinacdi, "effeminates," or molles 

viri, "soft men." This subculture, which apparently revolved around 

certain bathhouses, brothels, and private homes, was similar to the 

"Molly-house" network that emerged in London in the early eighteenth 

century. There is evidence that such an institution existed in Rome, and 

perhaps in other cities of the Roman Empire as well.58 Makeup, depilation, 

perfume, elaborately coiffed hair, and bright clothing were the sartorial 

labels of pathic males.59 Juvenal's second satire rails at the 

dissipated lifestyles of foppish men, from philosophers to emperors. 

Martial's quip that Maternus's habits are "bright green" (galbinos, 

1.96.9) is good evidence that in the minds of many Romans, clothing 

makes the man. When a young man who is overly fastidious in hair and 

clothing comes to Epictetus, he is subjected to a storm of indignation 

against sexual deviance (Arrian Epict. Diss. 3.1-2). Such is the standard 

Stoic fare in Roman literature from the second century B.C.E. up until 

late antiquity-a distorting mirror, but the only one we have. 

Surely such observations are not entirely fabrications from the "outside." 

Subcultures of male homosexuality (modern-day Barcelona's, e.g.) 

have a way of claiming transvestism for their own, even though they also 

encompass a population of overtly masculine homosexual men as well as 

58 MacMullen (n. 15 above), p. 498, wrongly claims that homosexual behavior in Grcco- 

Roman socicty was confined to the rich and their minions; for Grecc, sec Halperin (n. 6 

abovc), pp. 88-112. Petronius, Apuleius, and more fragmentary sources display a broad 

social base in Roman society. There is little doubt that a homosexual clique existed among 

the upper class; but as historians of the early modern period have argued, upper-class or 

court networks and cross-class subcultures can exist scparately and simultancously (Trumbach, 

"London's Sodomites" [n. 22 above], esp. p. 23; M. Rcy, "Police ct sodomic a Paris 

au XVIIIc si&clc: Du p&che au desordre," Revue d'histoirc moderne et contcmporaine 29 

[1982]: 113-24). Martial 9.59 even implies that there werc two classcs of malc prostitutes 

in Romc: onc for the ordinary citizen and another, much more discrect, for the wealthy 

and discriminating. 

59 Lucilius cnumcratcs effcminate characteristics as follows: "I'm scraped, underplucked, 

scaled, pumiced, adorned, polished, and painted" ("rador subvellor desquamor 

pumicor ornor expolior pingor" [in E. H. Warmington, cd., Rcmains of Old Latin, Loeb 

Classical Library [1938], 3: 90, lines 296-97). Sce Richlin, "Not beforc Homosexuality" 

(n. 3 abovc), pp. 542-43; Valerie A. Tracy, "Roman Dandics and Transvestites," Classical 

Views/Echos du monde classique 20 (1976): 60-63; Emicl Eyben, Dc jonge Romcin vo4gens 

de Ictcraire bronnen dcr periode ca. 200 v. Chr tot ca. 500 n. C/r. (Brusscls, 1977), pp. 

180-92; and Krenkel, p. 186. For Cicero's insults, sec Richlin, The Gardcn of Priapus (n. 

2 above), p. 98; Lilja (n. 2 above), pp. 88-94; and, esp., Gonfroy, "Homosexualitc et ideologic 

csclavagiste chez Ciceron" (n. 15 above). 




bisexual men-and despite the fact that transvestism is a complex phenomenon 

that in many societies, including our own, has little bearing 

on sexual orientation. Perhaps they do so as a mechanism of maximizing 

self-expression and heightening the image that they are different from 

the culture of the majority. The same development seems to have taken 

place in Rome, eliciting a predictably hostile reaction; effeminate men 

are accused of invading even the Senate, and dressing provocatively in 

court (Cic. Phil. 3.12; Juv. 2.65-68). Richlin has frilly documented the 

received attitude toward such behavior."' A hostile Senatorial reaction to 

effeminacy in public might take the shape of Controversiae 5.6, where 

the elder Seneca describes a hypothetical case in which a young man is 

prohibited by a chastity law from speaking in court because he once 

dressed like a woman and consequently had been gang raped.6' The argument 

against him is that he willfully invited rape simply by dressing as 

he did: the act and thereby the actor are inherently unchaste. Although 

the prosecutor feigns outrage and surprise at the young man's behavior, 

he hints that it is perfectly in character with the man and his loose generation. 

The prevalence of high-pitched, effeminate voices and womanly gait 

and gestures is also well in evidence among this group. Seneca suggests 

that such habits betray whorishness in men (QNat. 7.31.2); Juvenal's 

Oxford fragment includes these features in his catalog of the quintessential 

"queen" (6.019-24). Mannerisms of speech, dress, and movement 

were so important for identifying a person's true nature that professional 

physiognomists made a living defining and identifying them.62 Feminine 

mannerisms were consolidated by the late Republic into an image that 

served both as grounds for derision by detractors and as a vehicle of selfdefinition 

for homosexual men. The stereotype of the womanish man 

may actually have strengthened the solidarity of men in the subculture 

by lending a sense of uniformity to their nonconformity. 

Because of the nature of the literature, we have little surviving evidence 

of an argot among the Roman subculture, but the various physical 

mannerisms served as a sort of rudimentary sign language misunderstood 

by outsiders. The curious habit of scratching one's head with a 

single finger, attested in several sources, appears to have been a code 

gesture among homosexual or bisexual men, perhaps for soliciting sex.63 

60Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality." 

61 

Similar laws are invoked in the Tabula Heracleensis and Ulpianis commentaries in Justinian's 

Dilgest. See Dalla (n. 13 above), pp. 5 1-53; Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 59-61; Richlin, 

"Not before Homosexuality," pp. 559-61. 

62Gleason (n. 12 above), pp. 406-11. 

63On scratching one's head with a single finger, see Juv. 9.133; Calvus fragment, in 

Carolus Bucchner, cd., Fragmcnta poctarum Latinorum (Leipzig, 1982), p. 112; Lucian 




Thus Seneca says that "the lecher is revealed by gait and the movement 

of his hand, at times by a single answer, or by putting his finger to his 

head or casting a glance.'"6 Maud Gleason sees such mannerisms as part 

of the culturally established physiognomy of effeminate men, over which 

they were thought to have no control. But she acknowledges that Dio 

Chrysostom (Or. 33.52) called such mannerisms symbola "because masculine 

deportment and grooming habits constituted a system of social 

communication."65 To this behavior might be added another indicator 

of a subculture of homosexuality: imitation of heterosexual family behavior. 

Just as the hijras of India or the American Indian berdache "married" 

men and played female kinship roles such as mother, daughter, and sister 

with each other, men of the great European urban centers of the eighteenth 

century performed same-sex weddings and even mimicked childbirth.66 

In light of this behavior, Juvenal's vitriolic description of an allmale 

marriage (2.126-43), although substantially embellished, seems 

believable. Martial 1.24 and 12.42 also attest to such marriages, but 

none of this material lends itself to useful evaluation, any more than the 

alleged same-sex marriages of Nero and Elagabalus can be introduced as 

evidence for broader behavior within a subculture.67 

Rhetorum Pracceptor 11; Plut. Pomp. 48.7, Cacs. 4. Ovid Ars Am. 1.137-38 attests that 

courtcsans used similar sign language to communicate with potential clients. 

64"Inpudicum ct incessus ostendit et manus mota ct unum interdum rcsponsum et relatus 

ad caput digitus et flexus oculorum" (Sen. Ep. 52.12). Coded messages in a questionanswer 

format are a common method of solicitation today, as they were in eighteenthcentury 

London and Amsterdam. More common in Holland were purely visual two-way 

codes, such as putting one's hands on one's hips and rcsponding in the same way or mutual 

nudges. See Theo van der Meer, "The Persecutions of Sodomites in Eighteenth-Century 

Amsterdam: Changing Perceptions of Sodomy," in Tbe Pursuit of Sodomy: Mak Homosexuality 

in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, ed. Kent Gcrard and Gert Hekma (New 

York, 1989), pp. 263-310, at p. 288; see also Trumbach, "London's Sodomites," p. 15. 

65Glcason, pp. 399-400. 

"Nanda, "A Prcliminary Report" (n. 45 above), p. 66; Trumbach, "Londonfs Sodomites," 

pp. 15, 17; P. Howell, A Commentary on Book I of the Epigrams of Martial(London, 

1980), cpigram 25. 

67For Ncro, see Tac. Ann. 15.37; Aur. Vict. Cacs. 5.5; Suct. Nero 28-29. For Elagabalus, 

see S.H.A. Heliogab. 10.5, 11.7. See also Dalla, pp. 63-69; Williams, pp. 322-3 1. Jean 

Colin, "Juvenal et le manage mystique de Gracchus," Atti della Accademia delle scienze di 

Torino 90 (1955-56): 114-216, offers the intercsting but unconvincing hypothesis that all 

thcsc weddings werc not homosexual unions but mystical marriages of an cxtraordinary 

man to the goddess Cybele or Bellona, in which the other malc partner (sometimes an 

"archgallus," sometimes a flutc-playcr for the cult) served as the goddess's surrogate during 

the ceremony and nothing morc. Yet Juv. 2.126-43 emphasizes that both partners are in 

it for the long run: he imagines aloud their hilarious efforts at conceiving children. Whether 

or not therc is a pattern of religious ritual behind thcsc scenes, ncither the authors nor their 

intended rcaders understood this as the motive for the marriages. 




We know little about how or where the men of this subculture congregated. 

Urban baths seem to have served as cruising grounds, as we shall 

see below. The evidence of Petronius and other sources further suggests 

that brothels and wharves were fairly comfortable environments for homosexual 

fraternizing and soliciting.68 The Roman theater was reputed 

to be a hotbed of pathic activity and seems to have been a favorite hangout 

for prostitutes, both male and female. Plautus (Poen. 17-18) issues 

an injunction for adult male prostitutes, scorta exoleta, not to sit on the 

proscenium once the show starts. This would imply that they posted 

themselves before the crowd to advertise their charms to the crowd of 

potential customers. The lex Roscia of 67 B.C.E., which reserved the orchestra 

for the senatorial class and the first fourteen rows of seats for 

equestrians, probably put an end to this practice-but not to cruising in 

the theater. In Petronius 126, the maid of "Circe" claims that her mistress 

looks for willing sex partners who sit behind the first fourteen rows 

among the plebs. It is possible that after the lex Roscia was passed some 

overtly effeminate men among the aristocratic orders were compelled to 

sit with the plebs (cf. Mart. 5.41), perhaps because effeminacy was associated 

with aggressive prostitution. Caesar's model town charter, the lex 

Iulia municipalis (Tabula Heracleensis 123, 134, and 138), forbids men 

who sell their bodies from sitting beside town leaders in public places.69 

What can we glean about the development of the urban subculture in 

Rome? Perhaps the most important observation is that it was not a timeless 

institution. Saara Lilja and Jane Cody have made the surprising discovery 

that there are no effeminate males portrayed in the plays of 

Terence and Plautus, which date from the early second century B.C.E. 

and constitute the earliest substantial body of literature in the Roman 

record.7' This is not out of ignorance of the type: Greek Old and Middle 

Comedy feature effeminate men, and transvestic dancers and mimes do 

appear on the fringes of Plautus's plays.7' This paucity may be due to a 

68For brothels, see A. Varone, Erotica Pompeiana: Iscrizioni d'amore sui muri di Pompei 

(Rome, 1993). The House of Jupiter and Ganymede in Ostia seems to have been a brothel 

specializing in same-sex services to males, but some women left their names on the walls as 

well. See Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy (n. 20 above), pp. 323-24. For wharves, see 

Verg. Catal. 13 and S.H.A. Heliogab. 8.7. 

69MacMullen (n. 15 above), p. 495. 

70Lilja (n. 2 above), p. 39; Jane M. Cody, "The senex amator in Plautus' Casina," 

Hermes 104 (1976): 453-76, at 473-76. Cody correctly distances the transvestic elements 

in Casina and Atellan farce from homosexuality. Cross-dressing is simply a natural device 

for producing comic situations with rich potential for sexual misadventure. The possible 

exceptions are the male dancers called cinaedi, who apparently wore womenfs clothes (see 

Plaut. Men. 513-14), and other stage types such as depilated actors (Asin. 402). But these 

are a marginal group in Plautus, and they never play significant roles in his plays. 

71 Regarding effeminate men in Greek Comedy, see Cody, p. 474. 




corresponding lack of effeminates or any sort of homosexual relationship 

in Greek New Comedy, which provided the models for the plays of Terence 

and Plautus. Still, one would expect a character type with such 

abundant comic potential to make an appearance in Plautus if in fact it 

had currency in society at large; but it simply does not seem to have 

resonated with Roman audiences of the time. The only kind of same-sex 

behavior overtly presented in extant Roman comedy of this period has 

the master penetrating the slave.72 

A typically uncomplicated Plautine pathic is Dordalus, who in Persa 

804 is presented as a cinaedus novus ("new pansy") and is promptly subjected 

to unspecified physical abuse from Toxilius, to which he responds, 

"Ow! He's ripping my buns apart!" ("Ei, natis pervellit"; 846). Then 

there is the potential pathic, on his way to becoming a new pansy: always 

a man in an inferior social position who goes unwillingly (at first) to his 

fate. In Asinaria 418-27, we have the case of a cinaedus in the making, 

the cook Congrio. Euclio, the free man, has tried with some success to 

humiliate him through metaphorical (or actual) penetration: 

EUCLIO: Why did you threaten me [with a knife]? 

CONGRIO: Shabby of me, I admit. I should have shoved it in your 

ribs [latus = loins]! 

EUCLIO: There's no greater villain alive than you-and believe 

me, no one I would do in more happily. 

CONGRIO: That's damned obvious without a word from you: my 

condition is testimony [testis = testicle] to that. Thanks to your 

rammings [fustibus], I'm far softer [mollior = more pathic] than 

any cinaedus. Why, how dare you touch me, you bum! 

EUCLIO: What's that? Still asking for it? Perhaps I did less than 

you deserved! 

CONGRIO: Back off, or it'll go badly for you, so long as this head 

[caput = penis] is functioning. 

EUCLIO: I wouldn't bet on the future, but your head sure is functioning 

now!73 

'2Lilja, p. 39. The rarc cases when a master is thrcatened with the samc (Plaut. Asin. 

703-5, Rudens 1073-75) only happen if he was oncc a pathic slavc himself; see Williams 

(n. 1 abovc), pp. 43-44. 

73" EUCLIO: Quid comminatu's / mihi? CONGRIO: Istud male factum arbitror, quia non 

latus fodi. / EUCLIO: Homo nullust te scelestior qui vivat hodie, / neque quoi cgo dc industria 

amplius malc plus libens faxim. / CONGRIO: Pol etsi taccas, palam id quidcm cst: rcs 

ipsa testist; / ita fustibus sum mollior magis quam ullus cinacdus. / sed quid tibi nos tactiost, 

mendicc homo? EUCLIO: Quae rcs? / etiam rogitas? an quia minus quam acquom erat fcci? 

CONGRIO: Sine, at hercle cum magno malo tuo, si hoc caput scntit. / EuCLIO: POI ego haud 

scio quid post fiat: tuom nunc caput sentit." 




Congrio has been beaten "softer than any cinaedus," but refuses to yield 

his poised weapon-or his manhood-to the old man's attacks. Although 

the social tension of Congrio's resistance is palpable, this does 

not imply that he will ever make a pathic of his social superior. He is 

simply trying to maintain his virility in the dispiriting context of his own 

social role as a potential pathic. Euclio's final line seems to be a veiled 

threat of castration, or simply the observation that Congrio's resolve is 

flagging (a great opportunity for a visual gag). The slave's condition, 

"mollior magis quam ullus cinaedus" carries the secondary (and more 

meaningful) meaning "far less virile than a cinaedus"-that is, he is deprived 

of the active role or the impulse to initiate sexual relations. The 

pathic disposition is seen as a debilitating and progressive disease that 

will eventually conquer its host if he repeatedly yields to penetration. 

What is notable here is that Congrio is not a cinacdus, at least not yet; he 

is fighting the impulse that would deny him his sexual vigor. A Plautine 

cinaedus is not really a sexual animal at all, and poses no threat to society. 

Libertinism in Roman comedy follows an equally simple formula. For 

example, Lysidamus in Plautus's Casina engages in bisexual behavior 

out of an excess of lust, and the masters of pueri delicati (pathic minions) 

invariably do the same. These men are never seen as effeminates or pathics. 

The idea of a passive libertine simply does not exist in Plautus, 

whereas it is a commonplace in later Roman literature.'4 Later, sexual 

debauchees are labeled primarily and often exclusively as pathics (nota 

bene the Galli), whereas in Plautus they are exclusively active and virile 

in their sex roles.75 

This is not to say that other sexual activity between free males was 

latent in this period, awaiting the onset of the second-century craze for 

everything Greek. At this point in Roman history the urban subculture 

so visible later, and undoubtedly augmented by the Greek influx, simply 

had not yet emerged in Rome. Homosexual activity among freeborn 

men was likely to be diffuse and anonymous, perhaps because of the militaristic 

sentiment of the age or because a law prohibiting pathic activity 

74 Lilja, pp. 29, 39; Cody, p. 474. Pathic behavior in Plautus is never regarded as a matter 

of choice, except possibly in the casc of Dordalus, who is accused of being a cinaedus (Persa 

804) and of depilating his buttocks (847-48). But Dordalus is a low-life pimp and probably 

of freed status; he is simply bowing to his duty as defined later by the clder Senecas friend 

Haterius: 'Unchastity is grounds for incrimination in the freeborn man, a necessity for the 

slavc, and a freedmanis duty to his patron" ("inpudicitia in ingenuo crimen est, in servo 

necessitas, in liberto officium"; Sen. Controv. 4.pr.10). There is no indication that he seeks 

out men for sexual pleasure. 

75'Therefore I cannot agree with Richlin, The Garden of Priapus (n. 2 above), pp. 91-92, 

that effcminate men throughout Roman literature are given to indiscriminate bisexual lust. 




by freeborn males was being enforced.76 But Roman comedy may also 

reflect the values and necessities of the largely agrarian and familydominated 

society of preimperial Rome, which also prevail in John 

D'Emilio's vision of the preindustrial West in modern times.77 The development 

of Rome's public, military, and commercial institutions and 

the increase in enslavement and patronage after the Second Punic War 

created a situation that devalued the Roman nuclear family, especially 

among the freeborn, and allowed many men (although perhaps very few 

women) to pursue sexualities outside of the family context. 

Here we turn our discussion to early modern London, which reveals 

some interesting parallels with Rome in the late Republic and early Empire. 

Prior to the emergence of the subculture in London, sodomy was 

not associated with men of exclusively homosexual bent, but with general 

debauchees who were prone to drunkenness, gluttony, idleness, and 

indiscriminate bisexual lechery. Randolph Trumbach goes so far as to 

define a perceived type, the Elizabethan or Jacobean London libertine 

"with his mistress on one arm and his catamite on the other."78 It is easy 

to see the parallels here to the character type in Roman comedy. 

Trumbach suggests that London's rapid growth in population in the 

eighteenth century, paralleled in other European cities, enabled the subculture 

to emerge in full only when the population reached about 

500,000.79 Although "sodomitical" networks had existed in London 

16The seduction of young freeborn males was considered a crime punishablc by death. 

Valerius Maximus (6.1) records several early instances. In 226 B.C.E., a certain Capitolinus 

was condemned in a casc of pudicitiac quaestio (trial of chastity) for seducing a frceborn 

boy (6.1.7). Similarly, in the early third century B.C.E., M. Laetorius Mergus committed 

suicidc when he was accused of trying to seduce a subordinate but was condemned posthumously 

(6. 1.1 1). These and the other cases that Valerius cites have been explained as mattcrs 

of rape or assault rather than of sexual behavior per se. But a freeborn boy's loss of his 

chastity was a deadly serious matter, regardless of how it camc about. In 108 B.C.E., Q. 

Fabius Maximus Eburnus killed his own son, whom he claimed was "of qucstionablc chastity" 

(dubiac castitatis; 6.1.5), meaning he had probably submitted to seduction. This is 

not a mattcr of assault but of personal defilement; the son's misstcp was to manifcst his 

weakness of character by assuming the sexual role of a slave. Sce Michael Gray-Fow, "Pedcrasty, 

the Scantinian Law, and the Roman Army," Journal of Psychohistory 13 (1986): 449- 

60. For a comprehensive evaluation of the legal dimension of such activity, see Fantham 

(n. 17 abovc). 

" John D'Emilio, "Capitalism and Gay Identity," in Making Troubk: Essays on Gay History, 

Politics, and the University, ed. John D'Emilio (New York, 1992), pp. 3-16. 

8Bray (n. 10 above), p. 16; Randolph Trumbach, "Sodomitical Subcultures, Sodomitical 

Roles, and the Gender Revolution of the Eighteenth Century: The Recent Historiography,' 

in 'Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality during the Enlightenment, ed. Robert 

P. Maccubbin (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 109-21, at p. 116. 

79Randolph Trumbach, "Sodomitical Assaults, Gender Rolc, and Sexual Development 

in Eightcenth-Century London," in Gerard and Hekma, eds. (n. 64 above), pp. 407-32, 

at p. 408. Thc first full European homosexual subculture arose in Venice in the fiftecnth 




and in smaller towns throughout Europe for centuries, these rather 

loose social structures bore little resemblance to a full-blown subculture; 

they went virtually unnoticed by the greater population and lent little 

sense of identity to their members.80 The anonymity of a large city and 

the newly perceived strength of numbers among homosexual men seem 

to have encouraged the rise of Molly-houses, establishments that combined 

the social functions of modern gay bars and gay bathhouses. 

The apparent rise of Rome's subculture was likewise attendant upon 

a rapid increase in population, which took place during and after the 

eastern conquests of the second century B.C.E. and rendered the city 

comparable in size to eighteenth-century London by the first century 

B.C.E.8' The homosexual subculture of urban society came into existence 

not by conscious selection but by a trickle-down effect from the population 

at large, which needed to reach a certain size before the networks 

of homosexual men could come together in a gradual realization of their 

numbers and unique cultural properties. The combination of tremendous 

urban growth and the influx of a more sexually self-aware Greek 

population augmented social activity among "pathic" men in the city of 

Rome. Such men as the elder Cato and even the Hellenophile younger 

Scipio observed these developments with displeasure.82 The huge increase 

in the slave population also played its part; through ownership or 

prostitution, "slavery afforded wide possibilities for satisfaction of every 

free male's needs or predilections."83 

The mainstream notion of homosexual males as rapacious pathics and 

effeminates appears to have arrived with the Roman subculture, as it did 

to a lesser extent with London's.84 Aristocratic and domestic effeminates 

in the Greek style begin appearing in Rome during or shortly after Plautus's 

time, as we know from various fragments attributed to the elder 

Cato.85 Cato opposes the erection of statues of certain men because they 

century (see Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance 

Venice [New York, 1985]). Fantham draws many interesting parallels between Rome's 

sexual climate and that of Venice. 

80Trumbach, 'Sodomitical Subcultures, Sodomitical Roles, and the Gender Revolution 

of the Eighteenth Century," p. 116. 

8"Picrrc Salmon, Population et depopulation dans l'Empire romain (Brussels, 1974), 

p. 15. 

82Fantham, p. 288; Williams (n. 2 above), p. 221. 

83Verstraete, "Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Male Homosexual Relations in Ancient 

Rome" (n. 15 above), p. 231. 

"4Trumbach, "Sodomitical Assaults, Gender Role, and Sexual Development in 

Eighteenth-Century London," p. 408. The earliest datable occurrences of the word pathicus 

are in Catull. 16.2, 57.2, and 112.2. 

"5Collected in Fantham, p. 288. 




are effeminati; he notes with disapproval that young aristocrats learn to 

dance and sing and wear Greek outfits to parties; and he accuses certain 

politicians of dancing, lewd singing, and prostitution at banquets. The 

first undoubtedly pathic libertine in the Latin record seems to be Sulpicius 

Galus, described by Scipio Africanus the Younger, "who walks about 

with plucked beard and plucked thighs: who, when he was younger, rcclined 

in a Greek sleeved tunic with his lover [amator, a word that implies 

the active role] at parties, who is not only wine-mad, but man-mad 

too-will anyone doubt that he does what pathics always do?"86 Subsequent 

Roman literature is heavily peopled with such characters, who 

sometimes have a taste for both active and passive sex, whether the partner 

be male or female.87 According to Suetonius, for example, Domitian 

expelled an ex-quaestor from the Senate for acting and dancing and in 

the same vein of censoriousness condemned many Roman senators and 

equestrians under the lex Scantinia, which may have outlawed sexual activity 

between freeborn males.88 But the emphasis is always on the pathic 

nature of effeminate men, even if pathic activity cannot be directly imputed 

to them. Seneca the Elder recounts a speech in which wealthy libertines 

are criticized for castrating male slaves to prolong their terms of 

sexual submission. But these masters, though the penetrators, are not 

the virile studs of Plautus; rather, they unman youths "because they are 

ashamed of being men themselves" ("quia ipsos pudent viros esse"; Sen. 

Controv. 10.4.17). 

By the first century B.C.E., pederasty had long been practiced and tolerated 

by certain elements in Roman society and would continue to be 

practiced for the duration of the Empire.89 But habitual sexual behavior 

among adult males seemed a dangerous new development to the moralists. 

The theme of the aggressive adult pathic began to appear frequently 

in the theater and in literature. From Pomponius's lost play Prostibulum 

(The Male Prostitute, ca. 100-85 B.C.E.) have been preserved the lines 

86 "Qui barba vulsa feminibusque subvulsis ambulet, qui in conviviis adulescentulus cum 

amatorc cum chiridota tunica inferior accubuerit, qui non modo vinosus, scd virosus quoque 

sit, eumne quisquam dubitet, quin idem fecerit, quod cinacdi facerc solent?" (Hcnrica 

Malcovati, ed., Oratorum Romanorum fragmenta liberac rci publicac [Paravia, 1953], 1: 

127, entry number 21.17). 

87Williams, pp. 206-80. 

"ISuet. Dom. 8.3. On the lex Scantinia, sec Richlin, "Not beforc Homosexuality" (n. 

3 abovc), pp. 569-71; Williams, pp. 187-91; Lilja (n. 2 abovc), pp. 112-21; Fantham (n. 

17 abovc), pp. 285-90; Dalla (n. 13 above), pp. 82-99; Derrick S. Bailey, Homosexuality 

and the Western Christian Tradition (London, 1955), pp. 64-65; Boswell (n. 2 above), 

pp. 65-69; and Johann F. Christ, Historia legis Scatiniae: Antiquorum codicum testimoniis 

emendandis illustrandispassim distincta (Magdeburg, 1727). 

89Regarding tolerance of pederasty in Rome in the first century B.C.E., sce Williams, 

pp. 11-22; Veyne (n. 15 above), pp. 28-29; Booth (n. 29 above), pp. 105-20. 




"how I buggered no citizen by guile, but only if he himself begged to 

bend over."90 Lucilius's roughly contemporary term barbati moechocinaedi 

combines the elements of bearded adulthood (barbati), sexual 

passivity (cinaedi), and intent to seduce (moecho-).9 This admixture of 

character traits is alien to Terence and Plautus, whereas Cicero repeatedly 

invokes the image with scornful relish.92 In Plautus the only suggestions 

of men habitually dressing like women are with reference to the 

theater, but by the time of Catullus, Cicero, and the Priapea, many men 

were dressing effeminately (if only rarely in full travesty) and depilating 

their bodies.93 It is likely that the clause in the early Augustan law entitled 

lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis forbidding stuprum ("sex offense") 

was aimed in part at pathic behavior by freeborn males.94 By the high 

90"Ut nullum civem pedicavi per dolum / nisi ipsus orans ultro qui ocquinisceret" (in 

Paulus Frassinetti, ed., Fabularum Atellanarum fragmenta [Paravia, 1955], p. 38, lines 

154-55). 

91Warmington, ed. (n. 59 above), 3:340, line 1048. The term barbati, bearded, may 

carry the additional implication that these are men of a philosophical cast, since ordinary 

Romans of the late Republic rarely grew bcards. For other pathic philosophers, sce below. 

92For example, Cic. Planc. 12.30 describes such activity as a makdictum. In Cicero, see 

also Att. 1.14.5, Cat. 2.8, Dom. 139, Fam. 16.27.1, Har. Rcsp. 42, and Vcrr. 2.2.192. 

According to Plutarch, Cicero himself accused Caesar of scratching his head with one finger 

(Plut. Caes. 4), and the Roman populace accused Pompey of the same, explicitly attaching 

the gcsture to pathic desire (Plut. Pomp. 48.7). Licinius Calvus's famous couplet accusing 

Caesar of being Nicomedes' catamite in Bithynia (Suet. Iul. 49) dates from roughly the 

same period. 

93Chalinus's cross-dressing escapade in Casina is not habitual and has nothing to do 

with effeminacy, as Cody (n. 70 above), pp. 473-76, demonstrates. 

94Dalla, p. 53. Jerome Bernay-Vilbert, "La reprcssion de l'homosexualite dans la Rome 

antique," Arcadie 250 (1974): 443-55, however, goes too far when he claims that, in 

the case of mutual consent, only the passivc partncr is condemned (p. 447). While some 

juristic statements might support this conclusion (c.g., Dig. 3.1.1.6), the lcx Iulia probably 

targets the penetrator as the offender in both consensual and violent sex acts. The juristic 

commentaries usually impute stuprum only to the penetrator (Dalla, pp. 101-31). Fantham 

argues that stuprum, at least in Republican times, encompassed illicit acts of both 

homosexual and heterosexual nature; it was "either a form of corruption or violation of the 

passive partner by the penetrator, or (whcre the passive partncr is held up for reproach) of 

self-corruption" (p. 270). For example, see Quintilian 11.1.84. According to Williams (n. 

2 above), pp. 157-205, a man may be accused of stuprum if he penetrates any person other 

than his own wife, slaves, or freedmen. Roman jurists commcnting on the lex lulia often 

interprcted the term stuprum to includc homosexual behavior. Bailey suggests that these 

interpretations were aimed specifically at protecting freeborn boys from the advances of 

men (pp. 68-69). But some intcrpretations of stuprum in the context of the lex lulia- 

"sex offense with a male" ("stuprum cum masculo"; Dig. 48.5.8) or "unspeakable lust with 

males" ('cum masculis infandam libidinem"; Inst. 4.18.4)-seem deliberately vague and 

all-encompassing. Lilja finds striking referential relations between the lex Iulia and the lex 

Scantinia, leading hcr to conclude that the former included some sort of provision against 

homosexual activity or prostitution (pp. 119-21). Dalla argues that it did not but simply 

was a refinement of the lex Scantinia (p. 109). Cantarella's conclusion (n. 2 above) that the 




Empire, "those who tampered with the most visible variables of masculinity 

in their self-presentation provoked vehement moral criticism because 

they were rightly suspected of undermining the symbolic language 

in which male privilege was written."95 The second-century C.E. physician 

Soranus's treatise On Acute and Chronic Diseases characterizes the 

condition of gaXOaKcof, translated into Latin as "soft men, that is, pathics" 

(Caelius Aurelianus, De morbis acutis et chronicis 4.9.131), as a frenetic 

behavioral dysfunction, indeed "the passion of a wicked and utterly 

debased mind" ("malignae ac foedissimae mentis passio"; 4.9.132). 

Such usage may ultimately spring from deep-seated cultural anxiety 

about the fragility of manhood, the "flickering heat" articulated by Galen 

and others, but it should not be divorced from cruder notions about 

lechery.96 The image of the New Pathic-along with ancillary associations 

of pallor, disease, exhaustion, and sexual overindulgence-are all 

combined into one imprecise character stereotype. The most important 

ingredient of this persona, however, is that he is exclusively or primarily 

interested in adult males or mature teenagers; and this is usually translated, 

rightly or wrongly, into the desire to be penetrated. 

Eighteenth-century Europeans associated the rise of "sodomitical" 

subcultures with evil omen and foreign influence. The Dutch blamed it 

on the French; its omens included stock-market woes, fevers, storms, 

plagues, and worms gnawing at the dikes. The British blamed it on Italian 

Catholics; their mythology embraced werewolves, basilisks, sorcerers, 

and popery. In Paris, men could be arrested simply for being in 

notorious places at certain times or for conversing with known sodomites; 

a man's taste for company and his social habits became a measure 

of his sexuality. The Romans blamed "unnatural" homosexual acts on 

Greece or the barbarians, and Juvenal deemed it a monstrum, as if "a 

woman bore a calf, or a cow a lamb" (2.123). All seem to have arrived 

at this pitch of hysteria because of the gradual recognition of male homosexuality 

as an institution and lifestyle rather than simply an aberrant 

late juristic reconstructions of the lcx Iulia are spurious Icads her-rather precipitously-to 

dissociate the law entirely from homosexual behavior (pp. 142-45). On stuprum, sce also 

Krenkel (n. 55 above), pp. 181-82. 

95 Gleason (n. 12 above), p. 401. 

960n viri mollcs, sce Dalla, pp. 33-35; P. H. Schrijvcrs, Eine mcdizinischc Erkilarung 

der mannlichen Homosexualitat aus der Antike (Caclius Aurelianus DE MORIBUS 

CHRONICIS IV 9) (Amsterdam, 1985); Dr. Schramm, "Viri Molles: Geistesstorung im 

Altcrtum," Archiv, Deutsche Gcscilschaft fir Psychiatric und gcrichtlichc Psychologic 17 

(1870): 19-37. An cxccllcnt study of gendcr paradigms in ancient literature, particularly 

in trcatises on mcdicinc and nature, may be found in Glcason. On the ancicnt physiology 

of manhood, see Petcr Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation 

in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), csp. pp. 10-19. 




act.97 No change had occurred in the received opinions or long-standing 

taboos about certain homosexual acts. What had changed was the visibility 

and apparent aggressiveness of those who engaged in such behavior. 

Hysteria peaked in London with the raids on Molly-houses in the 1720s. 

Alarmed Londoners became convinced that "even the adult man whose 

desires were (what they would have called) natural was subject to sodomitical 

assault because sodomites, in their universal passivity, were likely to 

seek an active sexual object."98 The Roman manifestation of this mentality 

finds its locus classicus in Petronius 23, where the impotent Encolpius 

is ravished by a pathic who may even be a eunuch; the aggressive pathic 

has tipped the sexual balance of power. The image recurs later in Pseudo- 

Lucian's Asinus (38) and of course Apuleius; here the notorious Galli 

have gang pathic sex with a young man picked up at the baths (Met. 

8 .29) .99 

RECIPROCAL 

RELATIONSHIPS 

Although pathic behavior was deemed the paradigm for Rome's subculture, 

forced acquaintance with the behavior of its members brought Roman 

society at large to the realization that many so-called pathics freely 

took both the active and passive sexual roles and were even committed 

to reciprocal homosexual relationships. While it is difficult to cite an instance 

in Latin literature of a sexual relationship between men of the 

same age other than Ascyltos and Encolpius of the Satyricon, there is 

ample evidence of the older partner, or the one in a superior social position, 

playing the pathic role. Philebus the Gallus, for example, has such 

relations with younger men, and it is clear that the youth Giton and his 

older "brother" Encolpius have reciprocal relationships.'00 As we shall 

see, Roman baths were often the venue where older, more established 

men could solicit males of lesser age or status to play the active role- 

97L. J. Boon, 'Those Damned Sodomites: Public Images of Sodomy in the Eighteenth 

Century Netherlands," in Gerard and Hekma, eds. (n. 64 above), pp. 237-48, at pp. 

241-42; Bray (n. 10 above), pp. 19-21; Rey (n. 58 above), pp. 113-24. See also van der 

Meer (n. 64 above), pp. 263-310. For Roman blame of foreign cultures, see J. P. V. D. 

Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London, 1979), pp. 225-26; MacMullen (n. 15 above), 

p. 494, n. 39. Ovid (Met. 9.727, 736) uses the word monstrum of female same-sex unions. 

For an equivalent sentiment in Greek writers, see Epictetus (Arr. Epict. Diss. 3.1.27-31); 

Dio Chrysostom 33.60. 

98Trumbach, "Sodomitical Assaults, Gender Role, and Sexual Development in 

Eighteenth-Century London" (n. 79 above), p. 409. 

9Niall W. Slater, Reading Petronius (Baltimore, 1990), p. 42; Vincenzo Ciaffi, Petronio 

in Apuleio (Turin, 1960), pp. 112-13. 

'0?Williams, pp. 341-49. 




or, more likely, to trade roles, though the dominant Roman culture only 

acknowledged the fact grudgingly and with little understanding. 

The growing awareness of homosexual reciprocity within the subculture 

is visible in the very vocabulary of literary vituperation. It must bc 

acknowledged up front, though, that the most common terms to describe 

men of "pathic" inclination, such as mollis (soft) and cinaedus (effeminate 

male) are sufficiently vague to suit the sweeping prejudices of 

Roman men.'0' Martial's use of cinaedus is liberal proof that we cannot 

reconstruct strict definitions of contemptuous terms. Only one of his 

poems, 2.28, expressly confines cinaedi to playing the passive role in homosexual 

intercourse. Two others (6.37, 12.16) emphasize the passive 

role. Verse 3.73 emphasizes active or reciprocal roles. In 7.58 and 10.40, 

cinaedi are impotent with women or uninterested in them; but in 

6.39.12-13, a man's cinaedus concubine fathers one of his wife's children. 

In 9.2 they are the product of castration-specifically, they are 

Galli; in 6.16, the phallic god Priapus threatens cinaedi with the sickle, 

implying that they are genitally intact. In 6.39, 9.90.7, 10.40, and 

12.16, they are slaves; in 6.90, 7.58, and 9.63, they are free. 

As nouns, mollis and cinaedus are roughly interchangeable, although 

the latter is restricted to men who are past their teenage years. One of 

Publilius Syrus's preserved maxims says, "Age hides the cinaedus, age reveals 

him" ("aetas cinaedum celat, aetas indicat").102 This apparently 

means that when a committed pathic passes into adulthood, he tries to 

hide his behavior from society; but the conventional signposts of adult 

pathics (pallor, depilation, etc.) reveal him for what he is. When mollisis 

a modifier, it can often be read simply as the adjectival form of cinaedus 

101 It is worth noticing that the British term "molly" refers to an cffeminatc man or a 

malc prostitute. Whilc most etymologists accept this as the diminutivc of the namc Mary, 

Latin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, cspecially in the thcatcr, had a great influencc 

on the language of the subculture. Thus in Elizabcthan times a malc prostitute or 

a malc brothel is called "spintry"(from the rare Latin word spintria, an cxotic malc prostitute); 

sec Waync Dynes, Homolexis: A Historical and Cultural Lexicon of Homosexuality 

(Ncw York, 1985), p. 23. For ctymologies, see the entrics in the Oxford En,glish Dictionary. 

"Catamitc" meaning "kept boy" (from catamitus) first appears in 1593. It is possiblc, then, 

that "molly" derives from mollis and likewise got its start in the Elizabethan, Jacobean, or 

Rcstoration theater culturcs (it is not attested until the beginning of the cightecnth century), 

which werc repositorics of classical Icarning and, likc theatcr culturcs in many socictics, 

havens for a "sodomitical" subculturc (see Bray, pp. 54-55). Many derogatory terms 

for mcmbers of a subculture are invented or prescrved by the mcmbers themsclves, not by 

hostilc outsiders. 

102 Guliclmus Meycr, ed., Publilii Syri mimi sententiac (Leipzig, 1880), p. 18, line 24. 

However, R. A. H. Bickford-Smith, ed., Publilii Syri sententiac (London, 1895), p. 2, line 

24, reads astus and aestus in the places of aetas. 




(which only rarely is used adjectivally). The words frequently appear together 

where they could be construed as synonymous or redundant.'03 

The behavioral and physiognomic association of the cinaedus with 

pathic behavior and its attendant moral inferiority have been well established 

by Richlin, Williams, and others. I hope to demonstrate that the 

term cinaedus in the late Republic and early Empire designated a grown 

man who took (and usually enjoyed) the passive role, but not exclusively. 

There is ample evidence in a variety of sources that the word came to 

reflect an acknowledgment (though not acceptance) of reciprocal roles 

in homosexual relationships as a Roman subculture of homosexuality became 

well established. 

It is generally agreed that cinaedus in Latin originally meant "dancer," 

especially of the peculiarly lewd Greek type imported in the third century 

B.C.E.'04 But like so many words, it is not attested earlier than Plautus, 

who also uses the word to mean "pathic.' The two usages spring fullblown 

into Latin from Greek, where the word's general association with 

lewdness and effeminacy extends far back into the literary record. "One 

and the same are the minds of the kinaidos and of the lowly whore," 

writes Archilochus in the seventh century B.C.E. ("'t?oo; Xcvatcou icat 

icacici; iopvs; 6 vos;" 328.1). Aristotle uses the word to mean effeminacy 

in both men and women.'05 His near-contemporary in the fourth 

century B.C.E., Aeschines, says of the effeminate Demosthenes, "It is by 

common rumor, not by his nurse, that he is called Batalos [Buns]. He 

earned the name by his unmanliness and kinaidia."'06 By imputing the 

same status of legal disenfranchisement to Demosthenes as to his opponent 

Timarchus, whom he accuses of pathic prostitution, Aeschines implies 

that Demosthenes is equally debased in his sexual pursuits 

(Aeschines In Tim. 181). Elsewhere he associates Demosthenes' kinai- 

'03See Catull. 16, 25; Mart. 3.73, 7.58; Petron. 23.3; Phacdrus 10.2-3, 18-20; Plaut. 

Aul. 422; Pliny Ep. 9.17.1. 

'04PW, s.v. "xicvatto;"; Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 214-17; J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual 

Vocabulary (Baltimore, 1982), p. 194; Lilja (n. 2 above), p. 22; Jean Granarolo, 

"L'heure de la verite pour Tallus le cinede (Catulle XXV)," Revue des etudes ancicnnes 60 

(1958): 290-306, at 292. 

'05Arist. Phgn. 808a.12, 810a.34, 813a.18, 813a.35. In the first citation, the word 

pakaico6q appears in association with this word. 

061 KoKOs c 

i)& Un 5 X%, aXk o6X imon t~; ritGr"; BdraXoo; npocayopeiTetat, ei avavbpac; 

ical xtvat6ia; iveyicdptvo; ToUvoIa" (Aeschin. In Tim. 131). Liddell and Scott's 

Greek-English Lexicon claims the origin of this nickname is Demosthenes' stutter. But the 

first- or second-century-B.C.E. lexicographer Harpocration explains that Eupolis, a fifthcentury-B.C.E. 

comedian, calls the buttocks Nitakoq and that with respect to Dcmosthenes, 

Acschines is "quoting comedy [or mocking him] about his effeminacy" ("Kce icwg rte & 

?ii pakaEKia"; 72.4). 




dia with "shameful acts" (aiaxpoupyt'a; On the Embassy 99) and calls 

him "a kinaidos impure in body, even whence his voice emanates" ("civat6ov 

... jiiKaOapU0ovta t- a6gan, j.Tr18' 0b0v tv 4iv dmio ijatv"; 

On the Embassy 88), a hint as much at fellatio as at slander. Here, as in 

Plautus, there is no hint of the active role in intercourse. 

The first evidence in Latin literature of cinaedi who take the active 

role surfaces in Catullus.107 Poem 29 describes an act of symbolic buggery, 

the greed of Mamurra, by a symbolic cinaedus, Rome itself: "Romulus, 

you cinaedus! Can you watch this and endure it? You are 

shameless, a compulsive gambler. Was it not in [Mamurra's] name, peerless 

ruler, that you went to the furthest western isle just so that fuckedout 

cock of yours could devour twenty or thirty million?" (Catull. 29.9- 

14).108 This is a fine illustration of the simultaneous voracity and exhaustion 

that Romans of the late Republic imputed to cinaedi. But this 

cinaedus is no pathic; the instrumental part of his anatomy lies to the 

fore, and it is Britain and the Roman people who are forced to proffer 

their backsides to his onslaught. The passive participle diffututa ascribes 

Romulus's exhaustion to his active role in intercourse, not to any passive 

tendencies.'09 Mamurra appears again in poem 57, this time with Caesar 

as his bedmate: "What fine accord between two foul cinaedi, both Mamurra 

the pathic and his Caesar. No wonder: the stains on each-one 

Roman, the other Formian-hold fast, will never wash clean: A pair of 

twins, both equally diseased, both little scholars on a single bed, with 

vying appetites for adultery, rival playmates of little girls, no less. What 

fine accord between two foul cinaedi." 110 

Mamurra is nominally the pathic in this relationship, but Caesar too 

is labeled a cinaedus. Caesar was widely believed to have played the 

pathic in his early manhood, and we are meant to suspect that he did so 

with Mamurra as well."' Whatever Catullus's intentions, the important 

thing to note is that both parties in a homosexual relationship are called 

'07 Not all the instances of the word in Catullus arc so flexible. Poems 16 and 25 both 

use the word to mean a simple pathic; but both poems are Priapic in naturc and, thus, 

follow the old stereotypes that dominate the poems of the phallic god. 

108 Cinacde Romule, haec videbis et feres? / es impudicus et vorax et aleo. / conc nomine, 

imperator unice, / fuisti in ultima occidentis insula, / ut ista vestra diffututa mcntula / 

ducenties comesset et trecenties?" 

109 For another example of this, see Priapea 26. 

"0"Pulcre convenit improbis cinaedis, / Mamurrac pathicoque Caesarique. / Ncc 

mirum: maculac pares utrisque, / urbana altera ct illa Formiana, / impressac resident ncc 

eluentur: / morbosi pariter, gemclli utrique, / uno in lecticulo erudituli ambo, / non hic 

quam ille magis vorax adulter, / rivales socii et puellularum. / Pulcre convenit improbis cinacdis." 

"'On Cacsar's pathic role in early manhood, see Suet. Iul. 49; Plut. Caes. 1; Dio 

Cass. 43.20.2. 




cinacdi. At the same time, both presumably take the active role in violating 

little girls. The earlier exclusivity of the word is starting to break 

down. 

A semiliterate inscription in Pompeii of unknown date, but which 

might reasonably be placed in the Neronian period, is of interest. It 

reads, VESBINUS CINEDV S VITALIO PED[i]CAVIT ("The cinacdus Vesbinus 

screwed [with?] Vitalius"; CIL IV 2319b). Whether this is a boast or a 

taunt is impossible to tell, but it does apparently place the cinaedus in 

the active role-or an undefined homosexual role, if one wants to read 

the otherwise inexplicable ablative (?) form of "Vitalius" with an implicit 

cum (with)." 2 Most likely we are dealing with a phonetic spelling of the 

accusative vitaliom. 

All five instances of the term cinaedus in Petronius's Satyricon refer to 

some rather vividly drawn brothel dwellers. Unfortunately, the fragmentary 

nature of the text and Petronius's oblique style leave great doubt 

about the nature of these characters."3 The scene in chapters 23-24, 

however, limns the rather interesting image of an aggressive pathic 

attack. A cinaedus waltzes in upon the freshly awakened guests of Quartilla's 

brothel and cries, "Come one, come all, you wild cinaedi [spatalocinaedi], 

and hurry! Stretch those legs, make tracks, gather round, o 

supple of thigh, agile of butt, brazen of hand, pansies, ancients, handgelded 

Delians!" (Petron. 23.3)."14 He proceeds to mount Encolpius as 

the latter lies on his back, smother him with foul-breathed kisses (in Roman 

literature, a sure sign of a fellator), and grind about atop his groin 

(23.4). Neither the man's invocation to his cohorts nor his own acts betray 

any disposition to penile activity. The fact that at least some of his 

colleagues are eunuchs suggests that he is perhaps one himself, castrated 

in childhood like the slave prostitutes described in 119.1.20-27 and in 

Martial (9.6, 9.8)."'5 This would make him a pathic by default and a 

prostitute by compulsion, perhaps incapable of any physical arousal. He 

would naturally never be expected to summon an erection in the daily 

prosecution of his duties, but would serve only clients interested in active 

intercourse with a male. 

112 It seems unlikely that the dative is meant instead of the ablative here, although 'for 

Vitalius" is conceivable (if Vitalius is the pimp). The verb futuo (fuck) appears several times 

with cum + ablative. See CIL IV.2258, 2192, 2193. 

113Christopher Gill, "The Sexual Episodes in the Satyricon," Classical Philology 68 

(1973): 172-85, at 177 and n. 16. 

114"Huc huc cito convenite nunc, spatalocinaedi, / pede tendite, cursum addite, convolate 

planta / femoreque facili, clune agili et manu procaces, / molles, veteres, Deliaci manu 

recisi." 

"5The practice of castrating young boys for pathic prostitution would be outlawed, 

ineffectually, by Domitian and again by Hadrian. 




But another cinacdus in Quartilla's stable is harder to place. Hc appears 

in chapter 21: "First he banged away at us, buns wrenched asunder, 

then befouled us with noxious kisses until Quartilla, holding her whalebone 

staff and tucking her skirts up, ordered that we poor souls be relieved&""'6 

One's first impulse is to assume that this is simply another 

instance of a pathic horseman with his stinking kisses, as some scholars 

believe."l7 But three things discourage such a conclusion in favor of active 

penetration. First, the verb cacdo normally means to beat with a 

weapon and is well attested as a slang term for aggressive sexual penetration."8 

Thus we read extortis clunibus as an absolute (referring to the 

victims' buttocks), not an instrumental (referring to the assailant's buttocks 

as the "weapon"). Second, Quartilla apparently lifts her skirts as if 

to deflect the man's energies to herself and to allow him to finish on her 

what he had begun on Encolpius and Ascyltos. Third, after a lacuna, the 

two victims swear that they will never bring the shame of their acts to 

light (21.3). This would only make sense if they, freeborn men, had been 

penetrated by a lowly prostitute. 

Petronius's understanding of the term cinaedus is therefore both 

broader and narrower than that of Catullus; he apparently includes men 

with different physical capacities and functions, who share the usual 

characteristic of being primarily or exclusively inclined to homosexual 

acts; yet his only usages of the word are in the context of the brothel. It 

is never used of free men. 

Juvenal's second satire is a veritable rogues' gallery of "Socratic cinaedi" 

(2.10)."'9 As usual, the author's attention rests on pathic behavior 

(2.10-13, 21, 55-57, 117-18). But Laronia's criticism of these men is 

telling: "Hispo mounts/slips under [subit] young men and pales with 

both illnesses" (2.50). The intentionally ambiguous meaning of the verb 

subeo, which can also mean "to enter" or "to assault" on the one hand, 

or "to submit to" on the other, suggests that Hispo's two illnesses are 

the compounded results of the active and passive roles. This is why Laronia 

can invoke the lex Scantinia, a law that Williams argues was directed 

at the active partner in illicit relationships with freeborn males. Unaware 

"'6Modo extortis nos clunibus cecidit, modo basiis olidissimis inquinavit, donec 

Quartilla ballaenaccam tcnens virgam alteque succincta iussit infclicibus dari missionem" 

(Pctron. 21.2). 

"7According to Richardson (n. 4 abovc) the cinacdi here are a 'class who arc capable 

of arousal and orgasm (as modern medicine confirms) although confined by surgery to 

activc pursuit of passive postures" (p. 121). 

"8Adams (n. 104 abovc), pp. 145-46. This passage from Pctronius is included in his citations. 

I"9Scc Richlin, 'Not bcforc Homosexuality" (n. 3 abovc), pp. 543-54; Jerome Bernay- 

Vilbert, "Folies romaines: Les homosexucls dans l'oeuvrc dc Juvcnal," Arcadie 259-60 

(1975): 356-64. 




of the dual role of the cinaedus in Juvenal, Williams is forced to conclude 

either that Laronia is wrong or that she is invoking the law to punish the 

cinaedus indirectly, "because if the law penalizing stuprum with freeborn 

males were to be enforced, his potential lovers might be deterred 

from becoming involved with him." 120 But Juvenal understands that cinaedi 

are not exclusive pathics; they are usually men who have chosen 

reciprocal relationships with other men. Let us recall Laronia's evaluation 

of the subculture. "First watch and scrutinize men, for their ways 

are many," she says. "But their numbers protect them, like phalanxes 

joined at the nub (umbo). Great is the concord among pathics."'2' 

Umbo, literally the boss on a Roman soldier's shield that limited the 

overlap in the testudo formation, may also mean any appendage or even 

the swelling on the front of a toga. The use of this word is clearly a sexual 

joke, implying that cinaedi are collegial participants in both offices of 

sexual union. 

There is evidence of reciprocal relationships in other sources, most 

notably among the protagonists of the Satyricon.'22 Cato the Elder is 

reported to have said, "If you are unchaste both in front and in back" 

("si tu et adversus et aversus impudicus es"; Cic. De Or. 2.256), an early 

reference not only to such libertines as Hostius Quadra, whose multiplicity 

of sex acts is described in prurient detail by Seneca (QNat. 1.16), 

but probably to men in ordinary reciprocal relationships. Cato's barb is 

not original. According to Aulus Gellius, "Plutarch says that the philosopher 

Arcesilaus used sharp words with respect to a rich man who had 

once been too effeminate, but who was said [now] to be incorruptible 

and free from debauchery. For when he saw him with his cracked voice, 

his artfully arranged hair, and his glances full of lewdness and voluptuous 

allure, he said, 'It makes no difference whether you are a cinacdus fore 

or aft.' "123 While the figurative meaning of this maxim is what gives it 

pungency (i.e., "fore or aft" means "up front or in secret"), its interest 

for us lies in the explicit assumption that cinacdi were associated with 

20Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 187-91. Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," pp. 552 

and 569-71, argues instead that the lex Scantinia is aimed at the passive partner. She concludes 

that the two "diseases" are performing fellatio and being anally penetrated, both 

exclusively the province of the pathic. 

121 "Respice primum / et scrutare viros, faciunt nam plura; sed illos / defendit numerus 

iunctacque umbone phalanges. / magna inter molles concordia" (2.44-47). 

122 

Williams, pp. 221-22, 341-49; Richardson, p. 113. 

123"Plutarchus refert Arcesilaum philosophum vehementi verbo usum esse de quodam 

nimis delicato divite, qui incorruptus tamen et a stupro integer dicebatur. Nam cum vocem 

cius infractam capillumque arte compositum et oculos ludibundos atque inlecebrae voluptatisque 

plenos videret: 'nihil interest,' inquit 'quibus membris cinacdi citis, posterioribus 

an prioribus'" (Gell. N.A. 3.5). Plutarch actually does not relate the story but only the 

saying. 




both the active and the passive role.'24 Of equal interest is the apparent 

existence of such an assumption in the Hellenistic east, long before it 

took hold in Rome. 

The term p(a)edico ("to bugger," but used only in vulgar contexts) 

appears to undergo a change closely related to the broadening of cinaedus. 

Derived from Greek 1Eait8tx0, nattctKa,'25 the verb-and the agent 

nouns derived from it, pedico and pedicator-may have entered the Latin 

language with the importation of Greek customs into Rome in the second 

century B.C.E. All of its extant incidences from the Republic and the 

early Empire, from Pomponius of Bononia through Catullus and the 

Priapea, denote the active role in anal sex. The word's frequent appearance 

in Pompeian graffiti attests to its popularity in the common vernacular. 

126 

But it appears to acquire some flexibility in Martial. Though this poet 

frequently uses the verb and noun in their traditional sexually penetrative 

sense, in 12.85 a certain Fabullus imputes to a pedico the suspicion of 

fellatio, which is invariably considered a pathic activity in Roman literature, 

by the smell of his breath: "You say the mouth of a pedico smells" 

("pediconibus os olere dicis"; Mart. 12.85.1 ).127 Then there are two epigrams 

that directly associate the word pedicare with passive behavior: 

"You ask why your ass is so wasted? You can pedicate with your ass, Sabellus" 

(3.98); "For many days now, Lupus, Charisianus has said he can't 

pedicate. When his buddies asked the reason just now, he said he had 

loose bowels" (11.88).128 In his commentary on 11.88, N. M. Kay suggests 

that Martial is using the term pedicarc ironically: Charisianus 

124 Plutarch uses the saying "fore or aft" figuratively to distinguish between open manipulation 

and secret subversion of a man's health (Mor. 126a-b) and spirit (Mor. 705e-f); i.c., 

one can be knowingly incited to 'active" debauchery (not necessarily sexual) or unknowingly 

seduced by eastern luxuries into "passive" laxity. 

125A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Dictionnaire ctymologique de la langue latine (Paris, 1932), 

s.v. paedico. See also M. Negri, "Paedicare o pedicare," Rendiconti Istituto Lombardo di 

Scienze e Lettere, classe di kttere, scienze morali, e storiche 112 (1978): 220-24. 

'26Two of the better examples are: 'ACCENSVM QVI PEDICAT VIUT MENTVLAM" ("He who 

cornholes a squire [accensum = "burning one"] sets firc to his dick"; CIL IV 1882); 

"[amat qui scrib]ET PEDIC[a]TUR QVI LEG[et Qui] oBscvLT[a]T PRVIUT [pathicus cst qui 

pr]AETE[ri]TSCRIBIT PEDICATORSEPTV[mIIVS" ("He who shall write is the bugger; he who 

shall read it gets buggered; he who kisses [?] itches; he who passes by is a pathic. Scptimius 

the bugger writes this"; CIL IV 4008). 

27 For a different reading, see Williams, pp. 314-15. 

"2"Sit culus tibi quam macer, requiris? / pedicare potes, Sabelle, culo"; "Multis iam, 

Lupe, posse se diebus / pedicare negat Charisianus. / causam cum modo quarercnt sodales, / 

ventrem dixit habere se solutum." This latter epigram has a simple medical cxplanation: 

taking the passive role in anal sex tends to relax the bowels. Charisianus, who is already 

suffering from diarrhea, does not wish to compound his problem by playing the pathic with 

his "buddies." 




claims that he is only taking the active role, but in secret his so-called 

pedicating is quite the opposite.'29 Perhaps the same sort of sarcasm is 

at work in 3.98 as well. But it does not conform well with 12.85. .1, which 

is almost sententious in ascribing to the pedico a pathic vice. Unless the 

fellow had a pungent whiff of the pathic about him, calling him a pedico 

simply would not meet the standards of Roman invective. Most likely, 

Martial is astutely acknowledging a generalizing trend in everyday usage 

of the verb and its nominalization, which at times he follows and at other 

times ridicules. "Well, Sabellus," 3.98 might be saying, "I see the rules 

have changed, and now the poked means the same as the poker. I guess 

that means you're poking with your backside:' Since the new, broader 

meaning of the verb blurred the line between active and passive partner, 

it had to be intransitive and absolute, like Martial's usage of futuo in 

11.7.13 ("whenever it pleases you [a woman] to go fuck").130 Neither 

of the two instances of the verb cited above has a direct object, and it 

may be that they are meant to have this absolute sense. 

BATHHOUSE LIAISONS, PROSTITUTION, AND PATRONAGE 

The literary sources of the Empire consistently indicate that public baths 

were foci for the establishment of male sexual liaisons.'3' They are not 

forthright, however, about the nature of these contacts. Are the bathers 

looking for boys, or for grown men? Do they seek active, passive, or 

mutual intercourse? Are they simply johns, or is there a more complex 

relationship between solicitor and solicited? 

There is no reason to conclude that fee-based prostitution is the standard 

structure of these relationships. The pattern of behavior, where it 

can be determined at all, seems rather to be one of patronage. However, 

as Krenkel notes, the line between sexual patronage and prostitution can 

be very thin.'32 The difficulty of assessing such situations is well illustrated 

by Achilles Tatius, who in his novel Leucippe and Cleitophon sets 

Greek and Roman values at odds in his portrayal of Thersander. An opponent 

suggests that Thersander's insatiable quest as a teenager for intel- 

I" Kay (n. 38 above), p. 249. 

130"Quotiens placet ire fututum." CIL IV has several instances of the preposition cum 

with the verb futuo-a sure sign that the verb had acquired an intransitive meaning by 

the early Empire. The House of Jupiter and Ganymede in Ostia Antica includes a graffito 

employing the verb with ad + accusative (see Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy [n. 20 

above], p. 324). For evidence of the agent noun fututrix, see Adams (n. 104 above), p. 

122. 

'31And, less frequently, male-female contacts; see, e.g., Ov. Ars Am. 3.639-40; Juv. 

6.418-23. 

'32Krenkel(n. 55 above), p. 181. 




lectual patronage and his fondness for developing his body in the 

palaestrae of baths were a thin facade for willful prostitution.'33 "By 

this," his accuser sneers, "he thought he was training his mind. But it 

was just a mask for his wickedness" (8.9.3). While allowing for the obvious 

malice of the rhetoric, we have a glimpse at an institution, part patronage 

and part prostitution, that was probably quite common in the 

late imperial Greek east, while perhaps no less so in imperial Rome. 

There is no question that male prostitution existed in Rome in a number 

of forms. The most common Latin term for a prostitute is the neuter 

noun scortum, which may refer either to males or females. The reader 

frequently has no way of determining the gender of a scortum, but in a 

number of passages the person thus defined is unequivocally male.'34 

With the exception of its ambiguous gender value, the term seems to 

correspond more or less to the Elizabethan or Jacobean usage of 

"whore"; that is, it can be pointedly pejorative, but also virtually neutral 

in some informal contexts. 

Another common word designating a male prostitute is ex(s)oktus 

("outgrown [male]"). This obviously has a more specific meaning than 

scortum, but usage is often imprecise. Curtius Rufus even uses the two 

terms interchangeably of the same man (6.7.33). Pseudo-Quintilian is 

equally random in his use of the two terms: "So is it thus ... that your 

scorta earn their military pay, and that you bring exoleti under our banners?" 

("Itane tandem . . . scorta tua stipendium merentur, et sub signis 

exoletos trahis?" DeclamationesMaiores 3.12). Boswell's contention that 

exoleti are male prostitutes who play the active role exclusively for clients 

of both sexes cannot be supported.'35 The term simply does not admit 

of such precision. Only two things are constant: they are always slaves, 

133 "Hc looked pompous and feigncd moderation, prctending to love learning, ever submitting 

and in cvery way prostrating himself to [= lying beneath] those who consorted 

with him for this purposc. Leaving his father's housc, and renting for himself a paltry holein-the-wall 

[= a tight crack], he made that his homc base, forever quoting Homer, wclcoming 

and bcfriending everyonc who servcd his desires" ("aievo6-ta U6pacm cam ao*pohvqv1V 

rnE?Cpiva?o, xatB6iaq npoOotoGp?tvo; epav mai Tt; Ei; -wa' v aU tj Xpgivot; xdv-ra 

1flOKcT0v xai 6xoca acktv6LEwvo; a?i. icarakXuv yap dv na-rpcav oixtav, 6Xiyov em)- 

Tcj ploua pEvo; aTWVWneIOv, ?1XeV ev &Taia o;Kici"a, 6otIpi;Wv pv ta NoW, cdvto; 

6? oir, Xp-aitou; np6; a&ep iOe?e npommatpt dro 8x6pevo;"; 8.9.2-3). 

'34Cic. Cat. 2.24, Dom. 49, Phil. 2.44, and Sest. 39.6; Curtius Rufus History ofAlexander 

6.7.33, 6.10.16, 10.1.26-42; Livy 39.42.8-12; Pctron. 9.7, 119.1.25; Plaut. Capt. 

72-73; Pscudo-Quintilian Declamationcs Maiores 3.3, 3.12. 

13sBoswell (n. 2 above), p. 79. Perhaps he has in mind the rich manfs wine servcr dcscribed 

by Scneca who, "drcsscd likc a woman, fights advancing age" ("in mulicbrem modum 

ornatus cum actatc luctatur"), and "plays the man in the bedchamber, but the boy in 

the dining room" ("in cubiculo vir, in convivio puer cst"; Ep. 47.7). Whilc his sexual task 

is apparently to take the active role, he can hardly be termcd a prostitutc. 




and they are always past their teenage years. In the five centuries after 

Plautus presented the first known usages of the word, exoletus is employed 

to refer to smooth, downy-cheeked young men (Sen. Ep. 95.24) 

and coarse, hairy men (Suet. Galba 22.1 );136 sexually functional men 

who enjoy ancillary relations with women (Mart. 12.91; Suet. Calig. 

24.3) and eunuchs (Sen. Controv. 10.4.17; Sen. Dial. 1.3.13). Sometimes 

they are working prostitutes (Cic. Mil. 55.8; S.H.A. Heliogab. 

27.7, 31.6), occasionally they are nondescript pathic lovers, as in the 

passage from Curtius Rufus; but more often they are simply presented 

as the sexual minions of wealthy and powerful men, often alongside 

young boys or eunuchs.'37 This latter understanding of the term is of 

greatest interest here. 

Exoletus with its specialized meaning of "overage male sex-partner" 

seems to have originated as a modifier of scortum. The word appears only 

three times in Plautus, always as an adjective; once in a Plautine fragment 

it modifies virgo (virgin),'38 and twice scortum (Curc. 473; Poenulus 17). 

Both of the latter citations are in "Roman" passages that Plautus either 

radically adapted from his Greek model or invented wholesale. Lilja and 

others have suggested that these citations refer to males.'39 Two things 

support such a conclusion. First, the scorta exoleta mentioned in Curculio 

come in the midst of a long list of Roman types, all of them either 

male or of unspecified gender-including prostitutes of free status 

(482), who significantly are homines (people), not specifically women. 

Second, the later meaning of exoletus as an exclusively male prostitute or 

concubine suggests that Plautus is using the adjective to distinguish the 

sex of these types from all of his other scorta, who are almost always 

female. 140 

This is not to say that age plays no role in Plautus's use of the adjective 

exoletus; it obviously does with reference to the virgin, and it apparently 

designates diminishing desirability in Curculio 473, since the clientele 

136Seneca is probably describing a eunuch, since an exoletus with normal hormonal levels, 

like the one in Suetonius, would have body and facial hair. 

'37Ampelius 11.4; Mart. 3.82.8, 12.91.2; S.H.A. Comm. 5.4; Sen. Controv. 10.4.17, 

excerpta 10.4.1, Dial. 10.12.5, and Ep. 12.8, 66.53, 95.24, 114.25; Suet. Calig. 24.3, 

Galba 22.1, Iul. 49.2, Tib. 43.1, and Tit. 7.1; Tac. Ann. 15.37. 

'38Heinrich Keil, ed., Grammatici Latini (Leipzig, 1855-80), 2: 489. 

'39Lilja(n. 2 above), p. 30; Williams (n. 2 above), p. 36. 

'4OThe exception is Ergasilus in Captivi, whose nickname is "Scortum" because "at banquets 

my lover / is liable to invoke a scortum, a scortum I say, when he rolls the dice" ("scortum 

in convivio / sibi amator, talos quom iacit, scortum invocat"; 72-73). Most 

commentaries assume that the invoked prostitute is a mistress. A simpler explanation is that 

the winner of the dice game gets to have the prostitute of his choice. This would make 

sense of a passage in Petronius, where Ascyltos is described as a male prostitute "whose 

youth is available at the throw of a die" ("cuius anni ad tesseram venierunt"; 81.4). 




of these prostitutes are men "who are accustomed to haggling" ("qui 

stipulari solent"). After all, exoletus, so often translated "fully grown" or 

the like, is the passive participle of the verb exolesco, which can mean "to 

decay" or "to decline." While it may refer to a man in his physical prime, 

it emphasizes his sexual obsolescence as a passive partner: he is beyond 

his teenage years, "has passed the terminus . . . of development" ("excessit 

. . . crescendi modum"; Festus, Gloss. Lat. 5.13), and is no longer 

suitable for that role. That exoleti generally are perceived to be pathics 

has been amply demonstrated by Williams.'4' 

We may conclude tentatively that in the minds of Plautus and most of 

his contemporaries an adult male prostitute is undesirable. The assumption 

underlying such an attitude is that appropriate male prostitutes are 

youthful, passive sexual partners-an assumption shared by many cultures, 

ancient and modern. In Plautus, such youths are simply called 

pueri or pueri cauponii ("tavern-boys," Poenulus 1298) and are often 

preferred over women or girls. The slave-girl Astaphium in Truculentus 

says on behalf of female slaves in general, "This field of ours isn't for 

plowing, it's for pasture. If you must have plow-land, you'd best approach 

the pueri, who are used to being plowed. We have public property, 

but they are the publicans." 142 We do not know the arrangements 

under which pueri were employed; there were probably many. In this 

passage the term publicani, "tax-farmers," suggests that the boys keep a 

portion of the asking price as a "collection fee" while their pimps or 

owners take the rest. The term for plowland, aratio, can refer to land 

farmed out for a tenth of the yield. Female slave prostitutes, on the other 

hand, are denied a share in their income, perhaps because they are less 

profitable; Astaphium characterizes them as public pasturage, inferior 

farmland that brings in less income. Lyco, the banker in Curculio, fancies 

buying a puer "who would be desirable enough to pay me a dividend" 

("qui usurarius / nunc mihi quaeratur"; 382-83). Krenkel interprets 

this to mean that boys are leased out to one lover at a time.'43 He 

may well be right; we see no sign of them among the scorta exoleta and 

self-employed prostitutes in Plautus's catalogs of Rome's lowlifes. 

This could explain why so many pueri in Latin sources, when they 

become exoleti, are found to be established figures in the retinues of 

wealthy men; their original masters may have sold them to clients who 

had lived with these slaves as boys, enabling the slaves to retire from 

141Williams, pp. 130-42. Compare Boswell, p. 79 and n. 87. 

142 4Non arvos hic, sed pascuost ager: si arationes / habituru's, qui arari solent, ad pueros 

ire meliust. I hunc nos habemus publicum, illi alii sunt publicani" (Plaut. Trucukntus 

149-51). 

143 Krenkel (n. 55 above), p. 184. 




prostitution into permanent or semipermanent concubinage. Or some 

may simply have earned a fixed stipend for their favors, a portion of 

which went into their peculia (slaves' private property) and a portion 

to their masters. One scholar's characterization of exoleti as "mercenary 

catamites," then, would be at least partly justified. Fourth-century-B.C.E. 

Athens had a similar class of slaves (v8paito8a ta0o0oopoivta) who 

lived apart from their masters and sent a portion of their wages to 

them. 144 

Not unexpectedly, exoleti could also be of freed status. Plautus's mention 

of pueri exoleti "who themselves sell themselves" ("qui ipsi sese venditant"; 

Curc. 482) implies that these one-time slaves are now going it 

alone as freelancers. Cicero even suggests that some freeborn men to 

their lasting shame chose the same career. After assuming the toga virilis, 

Cicero claims, Mark Antony was a prostitute until Curio extracted him 

"from that meretricious business" ("a meretricio quaestu") and established 

him "in steadfast matrimony" ("in matrimonio stabili"-that is, 

concubinage) with himself. The rules had changed, yet Antony continued 

to be paid for his services: "At the urging of lust and by need for 

compensation" ("hortante libidine, cogente mercede") he made nighttime 

visits to Curio in spite of the vehement disapproval of the latter's 

father (Cic. Phil. 2.44-45). The importance of Cicero's claims lies not 

in their historicity (the accusations are preposterous), but in the dichotomy 

they draw between prostitution and sexual patronage, as if one 

choice were forthright in its immorality, the other dark and insidious. 

Susan Treggiari has found a similar conceptual compartmentalization of 

Roman women's sexual roles.'45 

Why is Latin literature so rife with references to "overage" male partners, 

if not to reflect grudgingly that many men preferred enduring relations 

with other adult men? The patrons of exoleti clearly were not 

motivated by pedophilia, the dominant aesthetic of Roman literature, 

otherwise they would jettison their loves for younger blood. While one 

cannot suggest that the relation between a free man and his exoletus was 

equal, the sheer numbers of this type of relationship suggest the widespread 

existence of longtime reciprocal relationships between men who 

were bound to each other not by social structures, bodily lust, or financial 

contract but by enduring affection. Like Manlius Torquatus in Catullus 

61, most young free men could readily leave their young men 

144 

Bailey (n. 88 above), p. 66; Christopher Carey, "A Note on Torture in Athenian Homicide 

Cases," Historia 37 (1988): 241-45. See also Xen. Ath. 1.11; Aeschin. In Tim. 

1.97; Theophr. Char. 30.15. 

145 Susan Treggiari, "Concubinae," Papers of the British School at Rome, n.s. 36 (1981): 

59-81. 




behind when they entered married life or when their companions grew 

up, but others, at great expense to their reputations, could not. 

In the third century of our era, so many were the exokti in Rome that 

they seem to have been publicly acknowledged as a class of prostitutes 

alongside female meretrices and were taxed for the privilege (S.H.A. 

Alex. Sev. 24.3-4). The emperor considered revoking their legal status 

but declined to do so "lest by prohibiting a public [i.e., officially recognized] 

disgrace he should convert it into private debauchery" ("ne prohibens 

publicum dedecus in privatas cupiditates converteret"). Any real 

difference between "public" and "private" relationships was probably illusory. 

The term exoletus is as charged with disapprobation as cinaedus. Despite 

their apparent legality, relationships with adult catamites are cast in 

a sallow light by Roman authors; one's possession or lease of an exoletus 

inevitably casts suspicion on the strict partition of sexual roles in the relationship. 

This suspicion probably lurks behind Cicero's condemnation 

of the "steadfast matrimony" of Antony and Curio, which could exist so 

easily under the guise of friendship or patronage. 

To maintain a measure of propriety, some men had to establish the 

arrangement in a socially acceptable but rather artificial guise, such as 

ownership or patronage (a tricky proposition, as patronage was supposed 

to be chaste). Ancient relationships between coevals are "expressions 

of an attachment that existed outside the erastes/eromenos [lover/ 

beloved] relationship-an attachment largely if not totally of a sexual 

kind that found it convenient to seek sexual release in homosexual ways 

and with a degree of mutuality denied to the more formal affair." 146 

There does seem to have been some advantage to drawing a formal 

distinction between prostitution and patronage,147 even if the distinction 

was artificial-probably because a legally recognized male prostitute was 

required to pay a prostitution tax, and patronage was more respectable 

anyway. Naevolus, the aging bedmate of the wealthy Virro in Juvenal's 

ninth satire, apparently was picked up in a bath; Virro solicited him when 

he saw him naked, and slavered over "the unimagined immensity of that 

giant prick" ("longi mensura incognita nervi"; Juv. 9.34; cf. 9.33-37). 

Although we are not told how Virro views the relationship, he does give 

Naevolus money; yet Naevolus goes so far as to call himself a client 

(9.59, 72) and enumerates the services he has rendered his "patron," 

all of which are sexual in nature. From Naevolus's perspective at least, 

"46Richardson(n. 4 above), p. 113. 

147 "Circc"'s maid in Petronius 126 offers Encolpius his choice of two agrcements: "So 

if you sell us what I'm after, therc is a buyer at hand, but if you do the more generous thing 

and oblige her for free, I will owe you a favor [bccnficium]." 




everything about this relationship bespeaks patronage: the relationship 

is long-standing; the client volunteers sexual services to the master's neglected 

wife in the (vain) hope that they will be rewarded (9.70-90); 

there are no fees for services;'48 the nature of the patron's gifts is unpredictable 

(9.27-31); to ask for adequate remuneration is considered impolite 

(9.63); the client expects long-term benefits and a comfortable 

retirement for his services (9.54-62, 139-46); and there is a whiff of 

legacy hunting (9.60-62 ).149 

The theme of sexual services as a fundamental part of some patronclient 

relationships appears also in Martial.'50 Not surprisingly, the behavior 

is linked to greed, as it is in Juvenal as well,"' and it is associated 

with the bathhouses of Rome: "Syriscus pulled in the full ten million 

showered on him by his patron recently, Maximus, just by hanging about 

on cantina barstools down around the four bathhouses. Oh, what a 

gorge to gobble down ten million! Yet how much greater a feat not even 

to recline [accubare] with him!" (5.70).152 

The patron-client relationship-more specifically, legacy hunting-is 

front and center here, but the service that prompted such an enormous 

legacy is left to the reader's imagination. The most common meaning of 

accubare is "to recline at a meal," but the additional sense "to lie against" 

simmers behind Martial's feigned nafvete. What renders this whole relationship 

suspicious is the fact that Syriscus (not a freeborn man, judging 

by his name) is able to circumvent the usual client's duties such as dining 

with his patron. "How, then, did the fellow manage it? You figure it out," 

Martial snickers. "I certainly can't." By dismissing the more decorous 

mode of reclining, Martial nudges the reader to consider the other option: 

that is, just the kind of activity that gets a start "down around the 

148The careful computations described in lines 38-42 are done purely at Virro's pleasure; 

the situation is not a strict fee-for-service arrangement. That Naevolus is not asking a 

price, that he is receiving nothing but an honorarium or a fixed wage, is implicit in linc 38: 

"But what's more brutish than a tightwad fairy?" ("Quod tamcn ulterius monstrum quam 

mollis avarus?") Naevolus's unenviable situation probably reflects his advancing age and 

consequent decline in marketability. 

149 On the various aspects of Roman patronage, see Richard P. Sailer, Personal Patronage 

under the Early Empire (Cambridge, 1982). 

'IO Mart. 1.23, 6.50, and 9.63 may possibly involve sexual patronage, although the status 

of the relationships is not clear. 

"I For example, see Juv. 1.40-41: "Proculeius gets a mere twelfth, while Gillo gets 

eleven, each an heir according to the size of his cock" ("unciolam Proculeius habet, sed 

Gillo deuncem, / partes quisque suas ad mensuram inguinis heres"). In this case the amorous 

patron is a woman. 

152 "Infusum sibi nuper a patrono / plenum, Maxime, centiens Syriscus / in sellariolis 

vagus popinis / circa balnea quattuor peregit. / o quanta est gula, centiens comesse! I quanto 

maior adhuc, nec accubare! " 




four bathhouses." Syriscus too appears to be just the sort of "cymbalcrashing 

friend" ("cymbala pulsans . . . amicus"; Juv. 9.62, i.e., a Gallus)153 

who Juvenal's Naevolus so fears will steal his patron's heart-and 

Naevolus's legacy. 

What can we say about the men who are the objects of bathhouse 

cruising? Clearly physical appeal was important, but can we believe Juvenal 

when he says that Naevolus was picked up primarily because of the 

size of his genitals? Naevolus's case is not an isolated one. In fact, the 

phenomenon of cruising men for their size constitutes a veritable literary 

convention; in Petronius 92, Martial 9.33 and 11.63, Juvenal 6.374-76 

and 11.156-58, and Straton of Sardis (Anth. Pal. 12.207), young men 

who are particularly well endowed find themselves the object of wonder 

and admiration in the baths. In Apuleius's Metamorphoses Philebus's 

band of Galli brings home from the local bathhouse a rustic iuvenis (the 

term for a man roughly between the ages of twenty and forty-five) "well 

equipped with busy flanks and low-hanging loins" ("industria laterum 

atque imis ventris bene praeparatum"; 8.29) and offers him dinner as a 

prelude (and probable payment) for debauchery. 

Naturally, not all the situations cited are alike. Petronius's Ascyltos 

falls into his misadventure by accident. The prodigy of Juvenal's sixth 

satire is an adult eunuch recently parted from his "two-pound weights" 

(bilibres, 6.372), prized for his ephemeral capacity to perform active intercourse 

without the danger of impregnating his mistress. Naevolus's 

behavior, and perhaps his orientation as well, is bisexual; we have no such 

information about other bathhouse favorites. But the similarities in these 

passages are equally striking. The universal admiration of genital size 

suggests that these men are selected at the baths for their perceived excellence 

in performing the active role in homosexual intercourse. At least 

three of them-Ascyltos, Naevolus, and the generic puer of Juvenal 

11 the latter two because they habitually shave their bodies after the 

fashion of pathics-can be expected to be well versed in the passive role 

as well.'54 Moreover, most of these men are manifestly past their teenage 

years and are consequently at or beyond the terminus of desirability ad- 

'53"[Cymbals] like tympana belonged to the cult of Cybele with its cunuch pricsts" 

(Edward Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires ofjuvenal [London, 1980], p. 434). The 

Galli in Apul. Met. 8 and 9 are also equipped with them. 

154A passage in Petronius 9 makes Ascyltos's experience clear: "When I heard this I 

shook my fist in Ascyltos' face. 'What have you to say?' I cried, 'You! Worked on like a 

woman-a whore, whose very breath is unclcan?' Ascyltos first pretended to be shocked, 

and then made a braver show of fight, and roared out much more loudly: 'Hold your 

tonguc, you filthy prizefightcr.... I was the same kind of brother to you in the gardcn, as 

this boy is now in the lodgings'" (Michael Hezeltine and E. H. Warmington, trans., Petronius, 

Loeb Classical Library [1969], pp. 15-17). For Naevolus, see Juv. 9.12-15. 




vanced so inexorably in Greek and Roman amorous literature.'55 We 

must withhold judgment on the age of the generic pueri of Juvenal 11 

and Martial 11.63. They may be either adolescents or fully grown slaves. 

Even allowing for the obvious hyperbole of the satiric literature cited 

above, how could the solicitation of well-endowed, fully grown males 

take place openly in public or quasi-public spaces-especially given the 

inevitable suspicion that the solicitor sought to assume a passive role? 

We might well dismiss the entire phenomenon as a mere convention of 

satiric literature, and yet the same image seems to have struck a chord in 

readers of other genres. Of Hostius Quadra, Seneca says disapprovingly, 

"Indeed in every bathhouse he engaged in recruitment and selected 

grown men [viri] of obvious size" ("in omnibus quidem balneis agebat 

ille dilectum et aperta mensura legebat viros"; QNat. 1.16.3). Hostius 

enjoyed every conceivable act, both active and passive, with these men 

and with women (1.16.3-9). Dio Cassius reports that a certain Aurelius 

Zoticus, "greatly surpassing everyone in the size of his private parts" 

("io0Xi 8? S1 nacvta;, t, t6v ai8oftv gEyey0et 'incpatiuto; 80.2), became 

a favorite of the emperor Elagabalus when he came before him in the 

bath (80.4-5). The theme also appears in the biography of Elagabalus 

in the Historia Augusta, which reports how the debauched emperor 

constructed a public bath in the palace and opened up another bath to 

the public "that by this he would have a broad choice of well-endowed 

men. And assurance was diligently made that the whole city and the 

docks were thoroughly scoured for onobeli [men "hung like donkeys"]. 

This is what they called those who seemed particularly virile."' 56 The fact 

that this episode appears just after Elagabalus's connection with the Galli 

is an interesting, perhaps even suspicious, parallel to the scene in Lucian's 

Asinus and Apuleius's Metamorphoses where the priests enlist Lucius the 

ass as their sex-slave (Met. 8.26). Of course none of these accounts has 

any genuine claim to authenticity. Their importance lies in the consis- 

'5- See Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 120-3 1; Richlin, The Garden of Priapus; and Herbert 

Moller, "The Accelerated Development of Youth: Beard Growth as a Biological Marker," 

Comparative Studies in Society and History 29 (1987): 748-62. Boswell (n. 2 above), pp. 

74-75, tries to argue ex silentio that this formal terminus broke down in the early Empire. 

Martial is more savage to adult pathics than Boswell acknowledges, and Juvenal's Virro is 

quite forcefully condemned by Naevolus. Virro also appears in a negative light in Juv. 5. 

The term iuvenis, used of Ascyltos in Petronius and the young rustic in Apuleius, generally 

refers to a man who is between the age of the onset of beard growth and forty-five. Moller 

argues that young men from antiquity through the Renaissance acquired beards at a considerably 

later age than modern Western males-generally between age twenty and 

twenty-two. 

116"Ut ex eo condiciones bene vastorum hominum colligeret. idque diligenter curatum 

est, ut ex tota penitus urbe atque ex nauticis onobeli quaererentur. sic eos apellabant qui 

viriliores videbantur" (S.H.A. Heliogab. 8.7). 




tency of the reported behavioral pattern in the context of the bathhouse, 

a pattern that is well enough formulated to suggest a grounding in reality. 

As a sort of corrective to this phenomenon of openly pathic behavior, 

many of the same literary sources harp on a tendency to keep such preferences 

and activities secret. This clash of overt and covert activity, of selfexpression 

and social repression, reflects the complexities of real life 

that some men pursued their passions openly, while others tried to do 

so in secret. Naevolus's speech in Juvenal 9.93-123 deals with the necessity 

of keeping quiet-and the inevitability of rumor. We have also seen 

the theme of silence in Petronius 21. Many of Martial's sexual epigrams 

are funny precisely because of the notion that effeminates and pathics 

hide their behavior under the guise of social decorum. Apuleius's effeminate 

priests-who are castrated, so it is supposed, to preserve chastitysuffer 

great shame and derision when they are caught in flagrante delicto 

(8.29-30). 

Respectable men of the aristocracy apparently went to some lengths 

to avoid the stigma of disrepute in the baths (Cic. Off 1.129), so a convenient 

front for them was the patronage system. The men who practiced 

pathic behavior more openly may have frequented bathhouses that 

were notorious for such activity.'57 The very presence of this notoriety, 

and the frequency with which Roman authors express their displeasure 

at dandification and bathhouse cruising, indicates that a significant number 

of men, both within Rome and without, engaged in this behavior.'58 

A particularly mysterious bathhouse character is the draucus, often 

described by scholars as an athlete but also as a popular sex partner for 

men. The word draucus appears for certain only five times in all of extant 

canonical Latin literature, and only in Martial.'59 It is not likely that so 

rare a word had more than one meaning. In English translations, the 

words "athlete," "sodomite," "pansy-boy," "eunuch," and "stud" have 

all been used. But it seems clear that drauci are a well-defined type call- 

'57 See Mart. 3.20.15-16: 'Does he bathe in the thermae of Titus or Agrippa, or in the 

bath of shameless Tigillinus?" ("Titine thermis an lavatur Agrippac / an inpudici balnco 

Tigillini?"). When a man is inpudicus, it usually mcans that hc cngages in passivc sex acts 

(Williams, pp. 206-80). Sec also Mart. 7.34.9-10: "I prcfer Ncro's thermac to the baths 

of a pathic" ("Neronianas / thermas praefero balncis cinaedi"). In both cases, the large 

public baths are considered 'safer" than the privatc oncs. 

'5 Glcason (n. 12 abovc) suggests that opcn effcminacy was designed "to translate the 

ideal of beardless ephebic beauty, via depilation and ingratiating mannerisms, into adult 

life." But this idcal could not be handlcd in literaturc "unless it first be sterilizcd by the 

brinc of invectivc" (pp. 405-6). 

'59A. E. Housman correctly emends with dracti in Mart. 11.8.1 ("Draucus and Martial 

1 1.8.1," Classical Review 44 [ 1930]: 114-16). 




ing for no explanation from Martial.'60 One memorable characteristic of 

drauci is infibulation, the practice of pinning the foreskin with a metal 

fibula to discourage erections. The Romans thought that excessive penile 

stimulation would hasten maturity in teenage boys (Mart. 11.22; Celsus 

7.25.3) and that general overindulgence in sex was unhealthy and enervating, 

but the practice of infibulation aimed principally at preventing 

the putative degradation of the voice in male singers and actors.'6' But 

it is as sexual playthings that the drauci are victimized by Martial's poison 

pen. It is surprising, then, that A. E. Housman classes them primarily as 

athletes and only incidentally as sex partners to men: 

Draucus is as innocent a word as comoedus [comic actor] and simply 

means one who performs feats of strength in public. In two 

passages no other interpretation is possible . . . [Martial 7.67.4-6; 

14.48]. But partly because of the common though false opinion 

that muscular strength and sexual vigour go together, and partly 

because these men, being infibulati [i.e., having the foreskin 

pinned with a metal fibula] to prevent them from impairing their 

stamina, might be expected, when refibulati [unpinned-see 

9.27.12], to exhibit ardour, they were also in request for another 

purpose and could now and then earn pocket-money in their spare 

time. This, nothing more, is signified by Martial 1.96.12; 

9.27.19; 11.72.1.162 

Three of Martial's drauci obviously possess the very same characteristics 

that set apart the bath favorites discussed above. In 11.72, the unidentified 

Natta has a draucus to himself: "Natta calls it his draucu?s 

'little weenie'; compared with him, Priapus is a Gallus" ("Drauci Natta 

sui vocat pipinnam, / conlatus cui Gallus est Priapus"). Another epigram 

introduces us to drauci in the context of the baths. Maternus acts and 

"'ODraucus appears as a masculine proper name (Howell [n. 66 above], p. 308). An 

inscription from a brothel in Pompeii rcads, "ARPHOCAS HIC CUM DRAUCA BENE FUTUIT 

DENARIO" ("Here Arphocas had a good fuck with [a?] DRAUCA for a denarius"; CIL IV 

2193). Either this is the feminine form of the name Draucusor it is an actual word referring 

to some kind of female prostitute. Or perhaps it is both; it was a common practice for 

prostitutes to take or acquire suggestive names. See John K. Evans, War, Women and Children 

in Ancicnt Romc (New York, 1991), p. 138; H. Herter, "Die Soziologie der antiken 

Prostitution im Lichte des heidnischen und christlichen Schrifttums," Jahrbuch fur Antike 

und Christentum 3 (1960): 70-111, at p. 77. The suggestion that draucus was a proper 

name before it became a descriptive noun is appealing. This would place it in the same 

ctymological category as the English "john." 

161 Balsdon (n. 97 above), p. 229, assumes that infibulation involves only adolescent 

males; but the evidence is unclear about this point. For more detailed treatments, see E. J. 

Dingwell, Male Infibulation (London, 1925); PW, s.v. infibulatio. 

162 Housman, pp. 114-16. 




dresses the part of a good Roman stoic, condemning the bright colors 

that effeminates wear. But beneath this facade, "his habits are bright 

green": "How comes it I suspect he's a fag? he'll ask. Well, we bathe 

together, and he never looks up, but checks out the drauci with devouring 

eyes, and with unresting lips he ogles their dicks. Who is he? you 

ask. I've dropped his name" (Mart. 1.96.9-14).163 

What is it that Maternus wants, with his "devouring eyes" and "unresting 

lips"? The implication is that he longs to practice fellatio. This is 

made thoroughly clear in the case of Chrestus, a closet effeminate who 

disguises his "depilated balls" (depilatos coleos) and "cock like a vulture's 

neck" ("vulturino mentulam parem collo") under his philosopher's 

robes: "But if some draucus wanders in while you blather, now free of 

his overseer, whose tumescent prick has been unpinned by the smithwith 

a nod you call him and lead him away; and, Chrestus, I'm ashamed 

to say what you do with that Cato's tongue" (Mart. 9.27.1014).164 

Housman misses a fundamental point in his interpretation of this passage. 

This draucus has just been granted a lasting freedom, perhaps even 

manumission. Whether or not all drauci wear fibulae at some time, it is 

clear that this one has relinquished his for good. If, as Housman suggests, 

he could simply unpin himself whenever it was convenient, the 

fibula would be useless as a deterrent to lascivious acts. On the contrary, 

the task of removing the device is apparently tricky: it requires the services 

of a skilled craftsman, presumably the same sort who installs fibulae, 

and is quite expensive.'65 As further evidence of manumission, the 

draucus has left his paedagogus-not the sort of personal chaperon that 

freeborn boys had, but a foreman for troupes of slaves, especially-if we 

trust Martial-of the wanton, long-haired sort (perhaps actors).l66 In 

short, he is free to take an active sexual role, one that the "philosophers" 

are ever so glad to exploit. 

Perhaps Housman too readily dismisses the possibility of sexual con- 

163 "Rogabit unde suspicer virum mollem. / una lavamur: aspicit nihil sursum, / sed spectat 

oculis devorantibus draucos / nec otiosis mentulas videt labris. / quaeris quis hic sit? 

excidit mihi nomcn." 

I" "Occurrit aliquis inter ista si draucus, / iam pacdagogo liberatus et cuius / rcfibulavit 

turgidum faber penem, / nutu vocatum ducis, et pudet fari / Catoniana, Chreste, quod 

facis lingua." 

'65Juvenal 6.73: "The comedian's fibula is loosed by them at great price" ("Solvitur his 

magno comoedi fibula"). Martial 14.215: "Tell me straight, Fibula, what do you guarantee 

to comedians and minstrels? 'That they'll fuck at a greater cost.'" ("Dic mihi simpliciter, 

comoedis et citharoedis, / fibula, quid praestas? 'Carius ut futuant.'") 

'6His exact function is uncertain, but he may be an urban equivalent of the vilicus 

(Mart. 3.58). We learn from this same poem that household slaves have access to wrestling 

masters (25). Linus, the addressee of 12.49, is a paedagogus of wanton boys and the wealthy 

favorite of his patroness. 




tent in the other two instances of the word draucus as well; like several 

of Martial's epigrams on sporting themes, the poems in which these usages 

occur would appear to carry an undercurrent of innuendo. Poem 

7.67 describes a woman of prodigious masculinity who not only penetrates 

boys and girls alike, but "with an easy arm twirls the dumbbells 

which to the drauci seem heavy" ("gravesque draucis / halteras facili rotat 

lacerto"; 5-6). Dumbbells possibly appear as a metaphor for male 

genitals in 14.49, where the poet asks, "Why do strong arms flag on the 

stupid dumbbell? Men are better employed on the ditch among the 

vines" ("Quid perunt stulto fortes haltere lacerti? / exercet melius vinea 

fossa viros"). The preceding epigram reads, "In the dust of Antaeus the 

swift draucus, who makes his neck huge with empty labor, snatches at 

these [scrimmage-balls]" ("Haec rapit Antaei velox in pulvere draucus, / 

grandia qui vano colla labore facit"; 14.48). Could "neck" imply "penis," 

as in the avian simile for Chrestus's member cited above, and the 

"empty labor" suggest masturbation, as in 14.49? If read on both levels 

at once the epigram reflects the image of a man who works on improving 

his physique in high hopes of a sexual encounter, but who is reduced to 

self-stimulation and aggressive sexual advances born of desperation. 

What emerges from our examination is that the draucus is first and 

foremost associated with sexual services. There is simply not enough evidence 

that he is ipso facto "one who performs feats of strength in public." 

If we are to associate drauci with athletic behavior, it is only by virtue of 

their connection with bathhouses and their exercise grounds. As we 

know from Martial 12.82 and Juvenal 6.419-21, the athletic paraphernalia 

and activities described in the two athletic-draucus passages are 

standard features of Roman baths and are available to all bathers for their 

recreation. That drauci exercise with this equipment says less about their 

inherent athleticism than about their frequent presence at the baths. 

Their primary reason for spending much time there is suggested by the 

combined information of the other three draucus passages. They appear 

to be freedmen or privileged slaves who have been released from former 

duties-perhaps as members of singing, mime, or acting troupes (nota 

bene the fibula) under the supervision of pacdagogi. Having relinquished 

the financial security of their former life, they develop and flaunt their 

physical charms in order to secure patronage relationships with free citizens 

through homosexual contact. Hence the draucus of Martial 11.72 

is Natta's "own" (suus) in the sense that he is a kept favorite, rather like 

a younger version of Virro's Naevolus. Baths are the obvious place to 

carry out this scheme, because they are one of the few places where Roman 

men can be seen naked by other men without the immediate stigma 

of prostitution. 

While the texts are generally silent about the sexual preferences of the 




men solicited in baths (Ascyltos excepted), there is little question that 

their "hosts" are either homosexual or bisexual in inclination. The evidence 

from other cultures featuring similar behavior, such as the central 

Philippines, where heterosexual teenage "callboys" often sell sex-active 

or passive-to homosexually inclined men,'67 suggests that the younger 

partners are not exhibiting any sexual preference by this activity, but are 

simply employing themselves in a tenuous but traditional fashion before 

they move on to the stage of "responsible" married adulthood. 

Patronage goes hand in hand with homosexuality in cultures around 

the world: in the modern West, where homosexual activity is generally 

condemned, young men seek older, more established partners for protection; 

for example, the evidence of the 1730 trials in Amsterdam in 

reaction to the emerging subculture "suggests that some sodomites who 

were good-looking but not very well-to-do sought the protection of 

rich, sometimes elderly men." 168 In more tolerant cultures, a boy's sexual 

apprenticeship with an older man is often an accepted or even required 

mode of entry into adulthood. But in the Roman world, as we have seen, 

some sexual proteges do not exclusively or even primarily play the passivc 

role. Thus Cicero can claim that Catiline "loved some [of his followers] 

in the vilest way, and serviced the love of others in a shocking fashion." 169 

Likewise, his favorites learned "to love and be loved" (Cat. 2.23)-a 

not-so-oblique allegation of reciprocal sex between the man and his beholden 

boyfriends. 

CONCLUSION 

Reciprocal homosexual behavior among males was a common feature of 

the fully developed Roman subculture. But it may have taken until the 

time of Petronius or Martial for this simple reality to make its way into 

the public consciousness and, thereby, into the common vocabulary. It is 

impossible to know for certain when these semantic changes took place, 

especially with respect to vulgar terms such as pedico, which come down 

'67"It is the heterosexual male willing to enter into a relationship with a bayot [pathic 

male] who is likely to capture the bayot's heart, either for a few months or for a fleeting 

sexual relationship. Sexual relations between the callboy and the bayot are not characterized 

by the rigid activo-pasivo relations which tend to be found between homosexual and heterosexual 

in Latin America. While bayot report that callboys prefer the active role, they do 

not rigidly insist upon it, and the nature of the sexual contact largely depends upon the 

financial arrangement worked out by the partners" (Whitam and Mathy [n. 24 above], 

p. 150). 

'"Van dcr Meer (n. 64 above), p. 288. 

'69"Qui alios ipse amabat turpissime, aliorum amori flagitiosissime serviebat" (Cat. 

2.8). See Williams (n. 2 above), pp. 269-70. 




to us in uneven chronological clusters in the works of a very few authors, 

or on a few surviving walls in Pompeii dating to the Julio-Claudian or 

Flavian periods. Still, the record is sufficiently intact to show that awareness 

of nonpederastic homosexual behaviors did develop during the early 

Empire, even if tolerance did not. 

The two subcultures we have examined have a fundamental difference. 

The cult of the Galli, like that of the hijras, was a haven for a fairly small 

class of men who had strong transgender, even gynemimetic, tendencies. 

Some had sexual drives, others were asexual, but all belonged to a type 

of subculture that in modern times is sometimes called the Berdache Society.'70 

These males had no inclination, and no means, to perform the 

active role in sexual intercourse. The urban subculture of Rome embraced 

a greater variety of tastes and persuasions, all of which prefigured 

vigorous or latent sexuality. Surprisingly, the phenomenon of sexual patronage, 

so well documented in Roman literature, has held little interest 

for scholars of the Roman patronage system. Alan Booth's article has 

started down this path of inquiry, but others have neglected it altogether. 

171 

In literature, both the Galli and the urban subculture are tarred with 

the same brush. Barring anatomical distinctions, a cinaedus in Martial's 

lexicon is no different from a Gallus. As Gleason says, "The ancient cinaedus 

was defined not in terms of the gender of his sex partners, but by 

his own gender deviance, his departure from norms of 'correct' masculine 

deportment."'72 This simply describes how some men perceived 

other men. It does not even explain how effeminate or homosexually 

inclined men perceived themselves, much less explain their behavior. Yet 

behavior-in the context of the cult, the Senate, the home, the bathhouse, 

and the brothel-may often be gleaned from the literary sources. 

Never do these sources imply that sexuality was somehow contextually 

absent. Men were constrained by their identities and orientations then 

as now. 

'70Anne Bolin, "Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy 

and Diversity," in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture 

and History, ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York, 1994), pp. 447-85. 

'17 Booth (n. 29 above). 

172 

Gleason (n. 12 above), p. 41 1.

Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome

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