With this social context in mind, I’ll now introduce Sporus the young boy who was married to Emperor Nero, a man long considered to be one of the most depraved rulers of all time. (The ‘Roman censors’ were a committee of officials who determined where in the strict social hierarchy someone’s family belonged, and occasionally removed individuals from the upper ranks of society for sexual misconduct.) In general, though, same-sex relationships among partners of the appropriate social status were considered normal and acceptable. Freeborn male minors however were strictly off limits. Socially acceptable male partners were considered to be slaves, entertainers and prostitutes, although Roman men in general seem to have preferred youths between the ages of 12 and 20 as sexual partners. Those men who took the submissive role were often frowned upon, in a strictly patriarchal society which took ‘feminine’ behaviours to be inferior. Rather, sexuality was divided into dominant/masculine and submissive/feminine. In fact, there were no Latin words for homosexual or heterosexual. Roman society was of course patriarchal (there’s honestly no surprise there) so a free-born man had had total liberty to have homosexual relationships without a loss of dignity or social status, even if he was already married – as long as he took the dominant role. The gender of your partner mattered little. In the Ancient world, homosexuality was not only accepted, but often encouraged so long as your social class provided you the freedom to choose your partner. However, the oppression of individuals on account of their sexuality is – comparatively – a modern phenomenon, arriving alongside religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam. LGBTQA+ history has been filled with tragedy, through the stripping of basic human rights from queer men and women.
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