Quote:
Originally Posted by maddz
Vulgar by whose standards? 
You've got to remember that Latin has no word for homosexual sexual behaviour. The Romans just saw it as part of the normal sexual continuum. The main criterion was not to be thought effeminate by being the receptive partner.
I'll take your word for Martial; Aristophanes is bad (hem-hem) enough, especially Lysistrata. |
Oh, no, the homosexuality thing was, as you say, simply a matter of Victorian social taboos. Entirely normal, as you rightly point out, in both Greek and Roman society.
Martial was essentially what we'd call today a "gossip columnists", who wrote witty and exceedingly insulting epigrams (short poems) about the leading lights in the high society of late 1st-century Rome. Here's a translation of the rude ones, which I can't possibly post here
:
https://www.well.com/~aquarius/martial.htm