Someone told me that same sex marriage was legal in ancient rome. Wikipedia claims it was but I remain unconvinced: basically they quote allegations against Nero and Marrk Anthony from unreliable sources.
What’s the straight dope on this?
IANA Roman historian. John Boswell is, however, and he has some interesting data in Christianity, social tolerance, and homosexuality (1981). Homosexuality was not illegal – in the records we have of Romans being charged with same-sex “sex crimes”, the crime is either that a man abused a Roman citizen, or that a superior officer, such as a tribune, coerced a subordinate into pleasuring him, thusly corrupting the morals of one he should have been setting an example for. Homosexuality in itself was not criminal, and indeed, when Calidius Bonboniensies was caught in the bedroom of a married woman and charged with adultery, he got off scot-free by explaining that he was there “on account of his passion for a slave boy”, not the married woman. It is true that an adult Roman citizen performing in the ‘passive’ role sexually (ie performing oral sex, or bottoming in anal sex) was viewed with scorn, as that was considered fit only for women, slaves, youths, and foreigners. The entire reason Caesar was ridiculed for his affair with King Nicomedes of Bithynia was because he was allegedly the passive partner, “the queen’s rival” according to Dolabella.
As for lesbians, we have less evidence, but Martial does mention a girl who could out-drink and out-wrestle any man, and who “puts it to eleven girls a day”.
But let’s talk marriage. Martial and Juvenal both mention same-sex marriage ceremonies, complete with families in attendance and dowries. Martial mentions that “bearded Callistratus married the rugged Afer”. At least one of Nero’s two husbands was considered an empress and accorded the dignity thereof. Heliogabalus also married a man, sparking a trend in the Imperial court for marriages between men. Iamblichus, in his novel Babyloniaca, has Berenice marry her female lover Mesopotamia, but other than this reference in fiction I can’t find any evidence that Roman women were known to marry one another.
Martial and Juvenal do mention same sex weddings, but they’re both doing it satirically. Martial’s poem ends, “Are you still not satisfied [with the wedding], Rome? Are you waiting for him to give birth?”, and Juvenal asks, “If a woman were to give birth to a calf, or a cow to a lamb, would you gasp and and think it a better portent?” Juvenal even makes the point that it’s not legal:
It’s possible that same sex weddings were performed, but they didn’t have any legal status. They couldn’t, because marriage was about the transfer of authority over a woman from her father to her husband. If it came to two men, there was already a way for a man to get potestas over another, and that was adoption, and if it came to women, a woman couldn’t have potestas over herself, so there was no way she could extend her potestas over someone else.
The question just doesn’t make sense to me.
Which Ceasar? The Ceasar? I could never believe that.
With Nicomedes? Yeah, The Caesar. Of course, he wasn’t The Caesar yet. He was a young Roman up and comer with a really good family name, a huge ego and not very much money who amused himself by sleeping around with other people’s wives.
Ok, apparently this man John Boswell is the Wikipedia’s source about sam sex marriage in ancient rome.
Has he been refuted?
The relationship with Nicomedes was the source of a number of bawdy poems about Ceaser in his own lifetime and has been mentioned in a number of biographies. As I recall, there was no evidence, but rather persistent rumors.
As noted before by the good captain, we should be careful with the sources. Juvenal and Martial are satyrists. As History of same-sex unions - Wikipedia notes, Cicero’s speech was intended to attack and insult Mark Antony. The same is very likely true for Nero. Relationships, yes. Experimenting allowed, very likely. But actual marriage? Probably not.
Leave their sex lives out of it.
But they are satyrists! If you read their poems backwards you hear strange noises. And Martial was of course also the father of the Martial arts.
Boswell is, even fifteen years after his death (and he died too soon. He was remarkable, and if he had lived, he would have been one of the giants in the field of medieval studies), is controversial. One of the things Boswell looked at was a ceremony/sacrament in the medieval Greek church called adelphopoiia (brother making). This was a ceremony where two men would swear oaths of loyalty and brotherhood to each other.
There’s some controversy as to what exactly the ceremony connoted. The position of the Orthodox church is, of course, It’s just an oath of spiritual brotherhood, replacing the old idea of blood brotherhood, which Christianity doesn’t believe in. Most historians say that there was at least a homophillic aspect to it…that the two men who would participate were swearing non-sexual love and devotion to each other. Boswell was pretty much alone in considering it gay marriage, though.
I rarely actually LOL at a post, but I did for this.
Where’s Helen’s Eidolon? She’s my own personal official classicist. I’m sure she’d have the definitive answer.
Aw, thanks Kyla! I live to serve 
There’s already been a pretty good consensus, but I’ll make a couple of points:
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Same-sex marriage, as a legal union, was definitely not present in Roman society. However, Captain Amazing, you’re off in your ideas of Roman marriage. What you’re describing is the theory of ideal marriage from the mythical early Republic. By the Late Republic and Early Empire, it’s fairly rare for the more archaic forms of marriage to be performed, and it seems that most women remained under the *manus *of their father and we not transferred to the *manus *of their husbands.
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Male same-sex relationships were common or, at least, not at all shocking. See: Catullus and Iuventius.
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It’s a-OK for a Roman male to DO the penetration, but not to BE penetrated. No one would take any notice at all if a upstanding citizen male was topping his male slave. I’d have to do a bit of digging to find the refence so don’t quote me on it, but I believe even Catulus, quite the conservative politician, wrote love poetry to his actor boyfriend (actors are of extremely low social standing).
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We know that some same-sex weddings were performed, at least in the Empire and under special circumstances. According to Tacitus (and I’m fairly sure Suetonius, too) Nero was publically married to two different men - once as the groom and once as the bride.
I have never heard that interpretation, and I’ve done a lot of reading on Nero. Certainly Suetonius tells us that Nero treated Sporus as his wife and Empress, but Suetonius gives no indication that this was at all acceptable to the Romans. And, you know, it’s Suetonius, so take it with a gigantic grain of salt, anyway.
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Yes, THAT Caesar. I’m not sure I believe the Nicomedes thing, though. It’s clear that the rumour comes from his political enemies and accusations sexual misconduct, especially effeminacy, are a dime-a-dozen in Late Republican political speech.
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I’d say that if you want to look for something closer to same-sex marriage, look at the Greeks. Especially Boeotia. I think I read something about Elis having formalized same-sex relationships. Xenophon or Plutarch, I think. Let me see if I can find that.
Yup, at 2.12 in Xenophon’s Lakedaimonion Politeia, he notes that in “Βοιωτοὶ ἀνὴρ καὶ παῖς συζυγέντες ὁμιλοῦσιν” - in Boeotia, “a man and a boy form a union and live together”.
Constiteram exorientem Auroram forte salutans
cum subito a laeval Roscius exoritur.
Pace mihi liceat, caelestes, dicere vestra
Mortalis visus pulchrior esse deo.
Which really, really roughly translated is,
By chance, when I was watching the dawn,
suddenly Roscius rose into view
Without offense, heavenly beings, if I’m allowed
the man looked more like a god.
I will say that Roscius was the exception to “actors are of extremely low social standing”. He started out a slave, but by the end of his life, had trained in oratory under Hortensius, had been made an equestrian by Sulla, and was personal friends with Cicero, who had defended him in a lawsuit.
Off topic, but it’s an interesting lawsuit, btw. There was somebody named Gaius Fannius Chaerea, who gave Roscius a slave to train as an actor, with the provision that anything he make as an actor be divided equally between the two of them. So, the slave was killed by somebody named Quintus Flavius. So, Roscius and Chaerea sued for the value of the slave, and Roscius and Flavius settled their case when Flavius turned over a farm to Roscius worth about 100,000 sesterces. So then Chaerea sued Roscius for half the value of the farm, claiming he was entitled to it under the agreement. Of course, what makes the thing hilarious is that Chaerea had already worked out his own settlement of 100,000 sesterces with Flavius, which he forgot to mention when he brought the lawsuit.
Anyway, Roscius died rich, successful, and socially prominent. He was one of the few actors (and his contemporary Clodius Aesopus was another one), who it wouldn’t have been considered unforgivably slumming for a Roman nobleman to spend time with (even though Plutarch didn’t approve, but Plutarch didn’t approve of much. Check out his biography of Sulla in parallel lives, where he says basically, that the old Sulla, even though he married a hot young wife, still spent all his time with actors, like the mime Sorex, Roscius the comedian, and Metrobius, the female impersonator who was also Sulla’s lover.).
Oh, and let me just add that it’s this kind of moral laxity, this betrayal of the traditions of the Republic that will lead to Rome’s destruction. It cheapens marriage and destroys it as an institution if the wife isn’t under the husband’s manus, It’s just another example of the depths of moral depravity to which formerly sensible Romans have sunk as we adopt the morals of the decadent Greeks!
Sorry, just channeling Cato the Elder, there.
Here’s a new take on this topic:
https://medium.com/eidolon/straight-talk-about-gay-marriage-in-ancient-rome-9fd466672152
…X-Xena? :eek: 
Interesting read.