What did Ancient Romans think about homosexual practice, how did they engage in it, and did this influence what the New Testament writers said about it?
That’s a question that has been churning in the back of my mind for a long time. In Sex and the Single Savior Dale Martin says that Paul did, in fact, oppose homosexuality, but for reasons we would disagree with. I’ve been somewhat haunted by whether Martin is right. Here’s why.
Sex, Power, and Honor
Sex acts were viewed as expressions of power. In any given act, someone is demonstrating superiority and strength, while the other is demonstrating inferiority and weakness. The taboos about who a person could have sex with had less to do with the gender of the person and more to do with who played what roles.
Romans did not condemn male-male sexual contact out of hand, typically. It was assumed that someone going to a brothel might equally well choose a male companion as a female, and no one would look askance at either. No one would look askance, that is, unless a rumor started to spread that someone liked to be the passive / receiving partner in anal intercourse. Then the vicious rumor mill might go into high gear, costing a person considerable honor and, with it, social capital.
A “real man” had to play the part of the penetrating male in order to maintain his honor.
Sexual Pairing and Patriarchy
When Romans assessed the honor or shame entailed in sex acts, they did so using the larger framework of their patriarchal society. In that system, men ruled over women, masters ruled over slaves, parents ruled over children. Oh, and by the way, people were placed in their positions on this social hierarchy according to nature and needed to figure out how to live where they were.
In each pair of ruler and ruled there was a wide-ranging host of affiliated characteristics: strong versus weak, rational versus passionate, wise versus foolish, loyal versus cunning, self-controlled versus enslaved, strong versus weak, victorious versus conquered, hard versus soft, superior versus inferior.
Don’t miss that last pairing. Superior versus inferior. To be a strong, rational, hard manly man indicated someone of greater worth than a weak, passionate, soft woman. Patriarchy created a web of norms and expectations that had to be played out in an extended web of social negotiations.
And those social negotiations included sex.
Playing Your Part
Certain sex acts were shameful, or unnatural, when a man degraded himself by leaving aside his place in the social hierarchy by playing a role appropriate to someone beneath him. In a sex act, a woman would “naturally” be penetrated by a man, a holistic indication of her softness, weakness, womanly nature, subservience, and inferiority. A man should “naturally” be the penetrator, a holistic indication of his hardness, strength, manliness, rule, and superiority.
Most Romans also assumed that most Roman men would engage in sex acts with other men. This was not a problem as long as the man in the socially superior position did not surrender his superior status by playing “the part of a woman” by being on the receiving end of sexual penetration.
One of the most common, and accepted, relationships for homosexual relations would be an owner having sex with his male slaves (what we would consider rape today). This is an expression of his mastery over the slave, as long as the master played the active role. Similarly, a man going into a brothel to hire a male was socially acceptable—as long as he was not submitting himself to penetration by the prostitute. Julius Caesar brought infamy upon himself, not for having a “homosexual” relationship, but for allegedly playing the role of the passive (penetrated) partner in his dalliance with King Nicomedes of Bithynia (Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, II).
Romans were not opposed to “homosexuality.” They were opposed to an upheaval in the patriarchal system that occurred when a man set aside his natural superiority and took the part of an inferior by being penetrated by someone beneath him on the social ladder.
Patriarchy… and Paul?
Patriarchy is a system that nobody today agrees with or lives by. We believe that all people were created equal, and we as Christians believe that all people were re-created equal in Christ. So we cannot participate in this Roman assessment of homosexual activity.
Given that Paul was not only Jewish but also a Hellenized Jew of the Roman Empire, we have to ask if this own aversions to homosexuality reflect this concern that male homosexual contact might “degrade” a man by “downgrading” him to the position of a woman.
We’ll tackle that next week.
The overview of patriarchy and homosexual practice represented here is largely based on the work of Craig Williams, Roman Homosexuality.