Not only Marcus Antony was famous for male lovers. It was to no avail, Marcus Antony broke in, because through the roof, only to satisfy the need to meet his lover.Ī fresco from a suburban bathhouse in Pompeii showing sex in a triangle.
The lovers were not separated by the age difference, and they indulged in sex so passionately that Scriboni’s father placed his son under house arrest. Loud – because very unusual – was also the relationship between Marcus Antony and his peer, Scribonia Kourion. Cicero had to pay his head for this mockery – when Marcus Antony came to power, he ordered his head to be cut off with a blunt knife, and the triumvir’s wife Fulwia additionally pierced the orator’s tongue with a nail. Cicero ridiculed this account in fourteen malicious Philipics, mentioning, inter alia, the escape of the future triumvir over the roofs from the angry father of his lover. Their victim was, among others Mark Antony, who had a long relationship with Publius Clodius.
So if any high-ranking free-born Roman allowed himself to be passive during intercourse, he risked mockery. Homosexuality among men was tolerated and accepted but was definitely not the rule. In this way, the stereotype of a Roman, commander and conqueror was preserved. It was also important that the Roman had sex with a man in some way socially inferior (younger, inferior, slave). The attack on Caesar resulted from the fact that was supposed to be a passive party during intercourse. The episode in Bithynia was repeatedly the subject of satirical comments, but it did not affect Caesar’s political career. From this it can be inferred that Caesar was bisexual, in the late a period known for his high-profile romances with numerous women bisexuality was common among the Roman aristocracy at that time. It has often been suggested – probably rightly – that they were lovers. In 80 BCE a young Gaius Julius Caesar arrived to the court of Nicomedes IV, king of Bithynia (North-West Asia Minor), Caesar was sent there on the orders of praetor Marcus Minucius Termus from Asia to get the Bithynian fleet to help with the siege of the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. It is worth presenting a controversial excerpt from Caesar’s life.
Generally speaking, in civilian life, homosexuality was rather rare and treated reluctantly (as evidenced by references in source texts, which noted outrageous, characteristic and infrequent things), and such relations were tolerated, as I mentioned, if the Roman citizen was an active party (in otherwise, Roman blood was contaminated.