The Joy of Sexus

by León, Vicki

  Greek drama got a lighthearted break in the sixth century B.C., when an interval called the satyr play was introduced. The satyrs did song and dance numbers wearing hairy shorts and perky leather phalluses.

  The uproarious counterpoint was provided by the chorus, made up of twelve to fifteen men dressed as satyrs, wearing scary, hairy masks and animal skins over their naked bodies. Fore and aft, they wore perky, oversize leather phalluses and horsetails attached to a hairy pair of shorts. Throughout the play, they sang and danced, a saucy, bouncy, show-stealing hip-hop number called the sicinnis.

  In Sparta and other Doric city-states, satyrs were half men, half goats, wearing goat horns. Later satyrs followed the Ionian mythical tradition, being horse deities. Both types were traditional companions of the god Dionysus.

  Once Athenian playwrights got accustomed to the addition of the satyr play, they plunged into the spirit of the thing. A full satyr play by Euripides, called Cyclops, survives, and pieces of others do too, including Sophocles’ Tracing Satyrs. The material could get quite blue at times, although maybe the earthy Greek audiences, male and female, didn’t see it that way. Aeschylus, who helped develop and “refine” the satyr play, wrote one in which the action includes a curious or confused baby Perseus who masturbates the male organ of a satyr.

  With their prominent phallic component and their musicality, the satyr plays underlined the fact that they were celebrations of the god of wine and excess, Dionysus. As companions to the tragedies, the satyr plays furnished comic relief, a jolt of surprise and mirth to the gloomy, fateful dramas—and some terrific, toe-tapping, carthartic laughs besides.

  Vestal Virgins:

  Scapegoats in dire straits

  During its thousand-year run, ancient Rome had more than a few imperfect rulers, to say nothing of deranged, despotic, and deeply disturbed ones. The city also suffered ghastly defeats in war. But over that millennium, the city was kept from harm spiritually by the offices of the six vestal virgins and their devotion to Vesta, the patron of the city—or so most Romans ardently believed. There were a few tragic incidents, however.

  One occurred in 216 B.C., when the huge Roman army was badly defeated at Cannae by Carthaginian general Hannibal. Rome’s citizenry was in a state of panic, and its leaders resorted to scapegoating. Who better to blame for Rome’s ills than girls whose chastity must have been compromised? Vestals Opimia and Floronia were accused of licentious behavior and buried alive, while Floronia’s accused lover was clubbed to death. Were they innocent or guilty? Historian Livy claimed they’d been unchaste, but he lived two centuries after they did.

  Another instance of scapegoating and human sacrifice happened just two years later, when Rome suffered another agonizing defeat. This time, because of testimony from a slave, three vestals were put on trial for illicit behavior. All three lost their lives.

  At least a few vestal virgins seemed to have been framed for political reasons. The reign of Emperor Domitian, whose iron-fisted rule and bizarre personal behavior was the stuff of legend, provided several infamous examples. In A.D. 83, three vestals were charged with incestum, which in Latin specifically meant “an act that violated religious purity.” Instead of being buried alive, the usual punishment, the trio were forced to commit suicide, while their supposed lovers merely got sent into exile.

  Although Rome’s vestals protected the city for a millennium through their chastity, accidents did happen. A few vestals broke their vows; others were scapegoated or molested by unscrupulous emperors.

  The years A.D. 213 through 220 were again dire for the current crop of vestal virgins, largely due to two rotten emperors: Caracalla and Elagabalus. Caracalla wreaked havoc on Roman peace of mind by accusing four young vestals of sexual misconduct—a charge no one dared to challenge, given the emperor’s vicious temper. The accused vociferously protested but got nowhere. Convicted vestals Aurelia Severa, Clodia Laeta, and Pomponia Rufina were buried alive, while Cannutia Crescentina managed to commit suicide before that happened by leaping from the roof of her family’s house. A few years later, to general rejoicing, Emperor Caracalla was dispatched by his mistresses and a gladiator.

  Rome got a brief respite until a flamboyant, cross-dressing young teen named Elagabalus became Rome’s new emperor. In A.D. 219 he chose a vestal by the name of Julia Aquilia Severa to be his new bride, so that, as he boasted, “Godlike children could be produced from the two of us.” The longsuffering Aquilia put up with Elagabalus for several years, during which time the polysexual teenage emperor carried on various affairs with men and women.

  She wasn’t the only vestal virgin to be molested by a Roman emperor, sad to say. About two centuries later, among his many infamies, Nero brutally assaulted a vestal named Rubria, a crime hastily covered up by imperial family members.

  Nymphomania & Satyriasis:

  Uterine fury & sex addiction

  You may be relieved (or perhaps disappointed) to learn that nymphomaniacs never roamed the streets of ancient Athens or Corinth or anywhere in long-ago Greece. The term was coined about two hundred years ago, when a French doctor named Bienville tried to describe female hypersexuality. The word mania originally came from the Greek for fury or frenzy; and nymph could refer to maidens, brides, and/or junior-grade nature goddesses.

  Galen, a hyperactive doctor and author of the second century A.D., did discuss the nymphomania affliction in one of his million-word write-ups. He just knew that women, especially young widows, had an insatiable desire for semen, and that lack of it would lead to madness. Or, at the very least, what he dubbed uterine fury, or furor uterinus. (It sounds more dignified in Latin.)

  The cause of their female fury? According to Galen, a big believer in balancing the four bodily humours, and several other medical writers of ancient times, the humours of women’s bodies were cool and wet. Therefore, sexually mature gals needed intercourse and lots of it to heat the blood and open their wombs. If thwarted, wombs back then had a tendency to create havoc by wandering around inside the body. (Elsewhere in this book you can read more astounding medical beliefs about these womb wanderers.)

  The whole matter might sound laughable nowadays; nevertheless, ladies in prior centuries who exhibited forthright sexuality often got labeled as “abnormal.” From there, they might find themselves locked into asylums, cast out as witches or prostitutes, or on the operating table, getting an unwanted surgical makeover of their sex organs.

  As late as 1951 the American Psychiatric Association’s official guide to madness, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), listed nymphomania as a “sexual deviation,” years later modifying it to “psychosexual disorder.” Thankfully, by 1994 it had dropped the whole specious label of sexual addiction. The term, however, is still a breathless byword and a frequent topic on daytime TV.

  In today’s world, the male equivalent of nymphomania, called satyriasis, garners sympathy and smirks in equal measure—along with book contracts. There appears to be quite a cottage industry standing by to attend to today’s male sufferers of satyriasis, mostly referred to as sex addiction these days. Not so in ancient times; you’d be hard pressed to find a human male who would admit to it.

  The term comes from the Greek word satyr, referring to a lustful woodland sprite, half human and half animal (usually goat), who was a raucous drunken follower of the wine god Dionysus. Satyrs had ugly faces, smelly, hairy bodies, and coarse genitals that were considered grotesquely large. Satyrs almost never got the girl, although they constantly chased women, goddesses, and animals and raped them when they could. They were often the sidekicks of Pan, the ancient goat god, who had similar problems getting dates.

  This might sound naive, but Greek and Roman men had so many sexual outlets to meet their needs that it’s hard to imagine they were ever sexually frustrated enough to behave like satyrs.

  Nero’s Career Defilement:

  Penetrating news update

  Emperor Nero, who reigned (if you can call it
that) from A.D. 54 until his suicide in 68, committed a shocking number of crimes, from matricide to fiery persecution of Christian scapegoats. These acts appalled and frightened his subjects.

  But they paled next to his sex life. Addicted to perverse acts, terrified of becoming bored, given full rein by his imperial status, Nero pursued fetishes with single-minded gusto.

  None of it was kept secret. But what most shocked everyone was his frank admission that he enjoyed being penetrated as well as doing the penetrating. For elite Roman and Greek males, this was a staggering message. To some, it indicated that the emperor was not a regular male at all but what the Romans called a cinaedus, an effeminate man who invited anal sex. The Greek and Latin languages had nearly a dozen synonyms for cinaedus, all of them abusive.

  Today we might be more repelled by Nero’s other proclivities, including a form of bestiality. Writing six decades after Nero’s death, biographer Suetonius described his sexual hungers in this fashion: “He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, Nero was let loose from a cage. He then attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes and when he had sated his mad lust, he was dispatched [i.e., given sexual release by anal penetration] by his freedman Doryphorus. For he was even married to this man in the same way he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. I have heard from some men that it was Nero’s unshaken conviction that no man was chaste or pure in any part of his body, but that most concealed their vices and cleverly drew a veil over them.”

  Judging by the testimony of numerous writers, Nero played out every fantasy that occurred to him. And didn’t care who saw it, took part in it, or objected to it.

  Around A.D. 65, just after Nero had kicked his third wife Poppaea Sabina (and their unborn child) to death in a rage, the still-mourning emperor happened to glimpse a handsome young freedman named Sporus. The poor man had the huge misfortune to resemble Nero’s late wife. Quicker than you can say “falsetto,” Nero had Sporus castrated and took him to Greece, where he “married” the boy and the couple honeymooned. Sporus had to don a wardrobe of empress wear and endure frequent public kissing sprees with the salacious emperor.

  The sad aftermath: Sporus outlived Nero, but notoriety followed him like a cheap perfume. He was forced to become the lover of a subsequent emperor, then another. When the put-upon eunuch was told he’d be playing the part of a maiden being ravished in an upcoming public spectacle, Sporus had had enough. He committed suicide.

  Even during Nero’s more conventional marriages, he sought heterosexual liaisons, the more outré and distasteful the better. As mentioned earlier, halfway through his reign, he abducted and raped one of Rome’s vestal virgins. Needless to say, in the cowed political climate of that time, the emperor was never accused, much less punished, for any of these crimes.

  During Nero’s tenure, ancient Rome experienced its own “swinging 60s.” During that period, a growing number of male prostitutes called themselves niironas in emulation of Nero’s favored positions and sexual acts.

  Nero was not the only emperor to engage in a wide variety of sexual perversions, but he was unique in proclaiming that “anything goes” and anyone could be penetrated, including himself. When Nero was born, his unsavory father, a patrician named Domitius Ahenobarbus, famously said to those who congratulated him: “Any child born of Agrippina and of me will be a disaster and an abomination.” He wasn’t far from wrong. & Light

  Emperor Tiberius, Voyeur:

  The arcane lusts of Tiberius

  Judging by his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, which luckily has survived nearly intact, Suetonius was a keen observer and an avid collector of the personal idiosyncrasies, favorite sayings, personality quirks, and habits both virtuous and embarrassing of the imperial rulers and their families. He also had access to imperial files and primary source documents, and included what was said about a given emperor, dishing the dirt with brevity and eloquence but without taking sides. The end result: despite the gossipy, unsavory nature of many anecdotes, Suetonius comes across as strangely impartial, with no particular ax to grind.

  Here is a jaw-dropping excerpt from Suetonius’s entry on Emperor Tiberius: “In his retreat at Capri there was a room devised by him dedicated to the most arcane lusts. Here he assembled from all quarters girls and perverts, whom he called spintriae (the term comes from the Greek word sphinkter), who invented monstrous feats of lubricity, and defiled one another before him, interlaced in series of threes, in order to inflame his feeble appetite. He also had several other rooms adapted to his lusts, decorated with paintings and bas reliefs depicting scenes of the most lascivious character, and supplied with the books of Elephantis [a female pornographer who did an illustrated book on sex postures—see the entry elsewhere in this book], that no one should lack a model for the execution of any lustful act he was ordered to perform.”

  Tiberius had crummy luck in most of his marriages, but that didn’t justify his perversity. As emperor, he set up a rancid sex retreat on Capri, where he abused youngsters for years.

  So—what precisely were those “monstrous feats of lubricity”? Spintriae were young sex workers, females and effeminate males, who performed daisy-chain group sex, each submitting to different ways and places of penetration. In his late sixties, Tiberius was much more of a voyeur than an active participant.

  His other fetish, however, was a great deal more repugnant. It’s described by Suetonius in a later paragraph: “Still more flagrant and brazen was another sort of infamy which he practiced … He taught children of the most tender years, whom he called his ‘little fishes,’ to play between his legs while he was in his bath. Those which had not yet been weaned, but were strong and hearty, he set at fellatio, the sort of sports best adapted to his inclination and age.”

  Occasionally this sixty-eight-year-old child abuser had enough energy to actively chase youngsters on land. As Suetonius notes, “One day during a [religious] sacrifice, he was so smitten by the beauty of a boy who swung a censer [the incense burner] that he was hardly able to wait until the rites were over before taking him aside and abusing him as well as his brother, who was playing the flute; and that soon afterwards he had the legs of both of them broken because they were reproaching each other with the disgrace.”

  There was a chilling aftermath to Tiberius’s child perversion activities. One of his spintriae, a young boy from Rome, spent his boyhood and early youth on Capri as a student of depravity. He may have been at Tiberius’s service from age eleven to eighteen or so. According to Suetonius, he may have even become the old man’s plaything to advance his father’s career.

  Decades after Tiberius died, that young man—now in his fifties— became Roman emperor. Called Vitellinus, he was one of the three who wore Caesar’s crown, ever so briefly, during A.D. 68-69, the year of the revolving emperors.

  Eros, the God of Sexual Passion:

  Under the rose, anything goes

  Those rascally Greek gods and goddesses were a love-maddened, incestuous, philandering bunch. Take the love goddess Aphrodite, for instance. With Mercury or maybe Mars, possibly Hephaestus or even with her dad Zeus, she had a son called Eros (Cupid to the Romans), who became the demi-god of sexual passion. A wild boy, he never broke into the Olympian elite but remained a delinquent, firing barbed arrows at random and setting unauthorized fires to unsuspecting hearts.

  As her son matured, Aphrodite asked her nosy, never-miss-a-trick offspring to keep mum about her own sexual indiscretions. As a reminder, she gave Eros a rose, a Greek symbol of secrecy. As teens will do, Eros promptly looked around for someone else to do the job, and handed off the rose to another deity the Greeks called Harpocrates. The supposed god of silence, Harpocrates was virtually unknown. And for good reason. He represented the Egyptian god Horus as a child, and “child” is what his finger-
to-mouth gesture meant—in Egyptian hieroglyphs, of course.

  The god of love, Eros to the Greeks and Cupid to the Romans, was the lead deity of sexual passion. His names live on in words like “erotic.” Or “cupidity,” originally meaning “strong desire” but now signifying “desire for wealth.”

  The Greeks, however, read that gesture as “silence” or “secrecy.” This whole borrowing business was further tweaked by another error from a historian named Varro. Thanks to all these misunderstandings, the rose and the finger-to-mouth gesture, meaning silence, became a widespread symbol among the Greeks.

  Later the Romans took it up. In Latin, they called it sub rosa, “beneath the rose,” which meant secrecy, discretion, and confidentiality. Thus Roman banquet rooms, palace dining halls, and other sites where elite partygo-ers gathered often featured ceilings painted with roses. They were there to remind everyone that while sub vino, “under the influence,” revelers needed to keep it sub rosa. We might call it an earlier, more poetic version of “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

  There were occasional “oops” moments. Nero, Elagabalus, and other fun-loving emperors held orgiastic free-for-alls in which masses of real rose petals were hung in nets above the partygoers. At times (perhaps deliberately) the netting broke, literally smothering the humans below. Online and in museums you can catch a wonderful portrayal of a Roman “death by roses” orgy, painted by famed Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who specialized in such subject matter from the late 1800s on.