- Prostitutes (and sometimes entertainers and actors) were not given this legal protection and the rape of a slave would only be considered a crime of property damage against the slave’s owner.
- Males were allowed to sleep around as much as they liked so long as their mistress was unmarried, or, if they were with a boy, he was over a certain age.
- Brothels, prostitutes and dancing girls were all considered to be ‘fair game’, as were older males – on the condition that he was to be submissive.
- Children were protected from sexual activity, but ONLY if they were freeborn Roman citizens.
- Prostitution was legal and endemic. Slaves were considered as much their master’s property in sexual terms as they were economically.
And finally, here is your Roman media:
The Romans wrote about sex in their literature, comedy, letters, speeches and poetry. There seems to have been no low-culture taboo attached to writing – or otherwise depicting – sex frankly. The finest writers and artists were happy to indulge.
Roman art is filled with images that would today be regarded as pornographic. In Pompeii, erotic mosaics, statues and frescoes (used to illustrate this piece) are found not only in known brothels and bath houses which may have been places of business for prostitutes, but also in private residences, where they are given pride of place.
There are erotically-charged objects almost everywhere in the suffocated city. This was something that the Romans could cope with, but not modern Europeans – many such discoveries were kept largely under lock and key in a Naples museum until 2005.
Yeah. Rome was great. We should be like them.
But I've never studied Rome.
Would you like more articles?
Edit: I took the link I originally used out because apparently it has nasty pics. Ugh!
This is why it's really hard to take you seriously, I ask:
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What about the terrible things that happened to people in ancient Rome?
