page_title: Sexuality in ancient Rome
section_title: Pleasure and infamy
hierarchical_section_title: Sexuality in ancient Rome / Sex, marriage, and society / Prostitution / Pleasure and infamy
caption_attribution_description: A retiarius gladiator stabs at his secutor opponent with his trident. Mosaic from the villa at Nennig.
context_page_description: Sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome are indicated by art, literature and inscriptions, and to a lesser extent by archaeological remains such as erotic artifacts and architecture. It has sometimes been assumed that "unlimited sexual license" was characteristic of ancient Rome. Verstraete and Provençal opine that this perspective was simply a Christian interpretation: "The sexuality of the Romans has never had good press in the West ever since the rise of Christianity. In the popular imagination and culture, it is synonymous with sexual license and abuse."
  But sexuality was not excluded as a concern of the mos maiorum, the traditional social norms that affected public, private, and military life. Pudor, "shame, modesty", was a regulating factor in behavior, as were legal strictures on certain sexual transgressions in both the Republican and Imperial periods. The censors—public officials who determined the social rank of individuals—had the power to remove citizens from the senatorial or equestrian order for sexual misconduct, and on occasion did so.
context_section_description: Prostitutes were among those persons in Rome categorized as infames, enjoying few legal protections even if they were technically not slaves. Infamia as a legal status once entered into could not be escaped: a prostitute was "not only a woman who practices prostitution, but also one who has formerly done so, even though she has ceased to act in this manner; for the disgrace is not removed even if the practice is subsequently discontinued".
  In the Roman moral tradition, pleasure (voluptas) was a dubious pursuit. The Stoic moralist Seneca contrasts pleasure with virtue (virtus):
  Virtue you will find in the temple, in the forum, in the senate house, standing before the city walls, dusty and sunburnt, her hands rough; pleasure you will most often find lurking around the baths and sweating rooms, and places that fear the police, in search of darkness, soft, effete, reeking of wine and perfume, pallid or else painted and made up with cosmetics like a corpse.
  Roman ambivalence toward physical pleasure is expressed by the infamia of those whose bodies provided it publicly. In a technical sense, infamia was an official loss of legal standing for a freeborn person as a result of misconduct, including sexual misconduct, but the word could be used for ill repute in general. Infamia was an "inescapable consequence" of certain professions, including not only prostitutes and pimps but performers such as actors, dancers, and gladiators: "These figures were the objects of other people's desires. They served the pleasure of others. They were tarnished by exposure to the public gaze."
  Those labeled infames (singular infamis) were liable to corporal punishment, usually reserved for slaves. Under the Republic and early Empire, one of the ways in which the citizen's liberty was defined was through the freedom of his body from physical coercion or punishment such as flogging by authorities. Citizens who chose to become public performers, however, and to use their bodies to offer public pleasure, were excluded from these physical protections, and could be beaten or otherwise subjected to violence. Any free man who became a gladiator took an oath to suffer branding, bondage, and beating, as well as potential death by the sword. Both glamorized and despised, the gladiator was supposed to exert a compelling sexual allure over women.
  Actors were sexually ambiguous, in part because they could imitate women, and were attractive to both men and women. The dictator Sulla had a long-term affair with an actor; Maecenas, the arts patron and advisor to Augustus, was in love with an actor named Bathyllus; and women of the Imperial family are alleged to have had affairs with actors. Actresses were assumed to be prostitutes.
  A man who enjoyed receiving anal sex or providing oral sex, often characterized as a cinaedus, might also be stigmatized as infamis, though if he was a citizen he could retain his legal standing.
caption: Juvenal thought the retiarius (left), a gladiator who fought with face and flesh exposed, was effeminate and prone to sexual deviance[546]
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