My Roman Empire Was Queer AF

One of my fav things about June is how much queerness comes out of the woodwork. Another fav thing is seeing certain quarters of society try to push back on it. And one of my fav arguments is that queerness is a modern invention.

While that’s true to some degree, the historical record shows us queer people have existed since time immemorial. They maybe didn’t call themselves queer or use the LGBTQ+ labels we apply to ourselves today. But the fact of the matter is that people throughout history have been engaged in what we would call “queerness.”

So, let’s delve into some queer history. We’ll start with one of the darlings of conservative thought: the Roman Empire.

Roman Celebration of Queerness

It’s no secret that conservatives look to the Roman Empire as inspiration. The Romans expanded throughout the known world and absorbed many places, including Judaea, Egypt, and Greece, mostly through military might. The empire spanned much of Europe. We can still see evidence of the Romans in Britain, France, Spain, and parts of Eastern Europe. Even place names, like London, can trace their roots back to the Romans.

The Roman Empire is thus sometimes thought of as the height of Western power. Later imperialist powers modeled themselves on it, from Charlemagne in the ninth century to the rulers of Byzantium, to the imperialist powers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There’s a reason Mussolini’s Brown Shirts wanted to “go back” to the Roman Empire. There’s a reason that Western Europe had a ruler called the Holy Roman Emperor for centuries.

Part of this comes from the so-called decline of Europe into the “Dark Ages” after the fall of the Roman Empire. Part of it comes from Renaissance rhetoric. The Renaissance thinkers wanted to distance themselves from the Middle Ages, which they saw as backward and anti-intellectual. (The fact we still call things “medieval” or reference the “Dark Ages” is a testament to how successful they were.)

So it’s extra funny that the Romans were pretty goddamn queer when it comes down to it. The homophobes who hold the empire up as the pinnacle of Western civilization are actually celebrating a bunch of goddamn queers.

How Queer Was the Roman Empire?

Much like their Greek counterparts, the Romans had myths about deities who mixed and mingled with both sexes. We also have historical records suggesting some people had same-sex love affairs.

Unlike the Greeks, the Romans worshiped virility, or manliness. This isn’t unexpected from a culture that hung winged phalluses everywhere for good luck and worshiped a god called Priapus, who had a giant dong. Nonetheless, the Romans were down with bisexuality—or perhaps, more accurately, pansexuality.

Greek Influence on Roman Thought

It’s likely that, as in other areas, Greek thought had some influence on Roman theories of sexuality. The Greeks believed the purest form of love had to happen between two people of the same sex. Thus, two men loving each other was a “better” form of love than that between man and woman. The Greeks recognized that heterosexual relations were necessary for procreation, but love between husband and wife wasn’t the ideal.

Part of this comes from Greek misogyny; Greek thought hated women. If you’re unfamiliar with that, simply look at the writings of Hesiod. The guy natters on about how women were lazy sluts who did nothing but eat honest men out of house and home.

Since women were so reviled, it makes sense that the Greeks thought love between men was superior. This led to a theory about like begetting like.

That theory is what appealed to the Romans. Remember, Rome was obsessed with masculinity. This line of thinking brings us to the idea that lovers take on the characteristics of their partners. In practice, this means a man who loves a woman becomes more feminine. A man who loves another man, on the other hand, becomes more masculine.

You can see where this is going, right? The Romans were obsessed with masculinity, so naturally men loving men was a good thing — since it made them more masculine.

Rome Preferred Bi/Pansexuality

Unlike the Greeks, however, the Romans tended more toward bi- or pansexuality. That is, rather than saying, “Men loving men is the highest and purest form of love,” they sort of just encouraged everyone. In some ways, they’re like the frat bros of the ancient world. A guy who was getting his dick wet was doing good, and the more often, the better. Choice of partners wasn’t so much an issue.

What about women? Well, relations between women have always been harder to come across in the historical record, in part because history has mostly been written about men, by men, for men. We know about Sappho and the lesbians on the Isle of Lesbos because they left their own writing. But women in Greek society were basically cloistered away from the men. Men didn’t care to pay them much mind. So, the fact of the matter is we can really only speculate beyond what the historical record leaves us.

This is fairly true of Rome as well. Most Roman history is about men. There are a fair few women (Caesar’s mother comes to mind), but much less is written about, say, household goings on than military exploits.

Nonetheless, we can speculate that women likely had relations with each other, especially when their menfolk were off to war. Similarly, soldiers likely had relationships with each other when they were on long campaigns or stationed around the Empire.

The Romans were famous for their indulgent feasts. It’s likely that there was a bit of sexual promiscuity that went on, to some degree. Think of “key parties,” where couples mix things up by going home with each other’s partners. And, of course, we all know about the orgies. Everyone was just banging everybody!

Wait, Wasn’t That Slander by the Christian Church?

We do have to be careful here, because the historical record is fragmented. Interpolations from later writers muddy the waters a lot—especially Christian historians writing after the fall of Rome.

So, the orgies may have largely been a fabrication. Now, you might ask, why would the Christian Church want people to think the Romans were having these totally indulgent feasts and banging orgies? Doesn’t that actually … sound like a lot of fun? Wouldn’t it make people go, “Gee, wish we could go back to that. Maybe we should give these pious church types the old heave-ho”?

You’d think! But the Church argued that it was this kind of behavior that caused the fall of Rome. See, Rome was so wicked and sinful that God struck it down. (That’s also why the Christians became the ruling power in Europe, you see—they were pious, so God rewarded them.)

So, yes, we have “records” about Roman orgies and feasts, but we always have to consider who is writing and what’s motivating them to write about this. It’s one thing if Ovid or Cato or Pliny are writing about the wicked orgy their BFF Gaius held last week. It’s another thing if Theodoric the Holier-than-Thou is writing about it several centuries later.

Examining the Historical Record

Thus, we have lots of examples of people who were accused of basically engaging in queer behavior—if not being outright queer themselves. Yet a lot of those sources are not condoning or celebrating this behavior. They’re condemning it, often to make the person in question look less cool, so that formerly pagan peasants would become good little Christians. In other arenas, it might be politics motivating this sort of libellous accusation.

That said, it’s likely that a lot of Romans did practice “queer” acts. They just didn’t think anything of it—it was totally natural and normal.

So, How Queer Was Antiquity?

This is something of a debate. The evidence seems to point to the idea that antiquity was, uh … pretty gay, actually. That is, nobody really thought men with men or women with women or everyone swinging any which way was a problem, at least not in the way it’s constructed today. The concept of “sin” doesn’t equate with queer sexuality until Christian doctrine gets going.

That isn’t to say people were never persecuted for being queer or engaging in queer acts. It’s also not to say that everyone was a hundred percent cool with it all the time. Nor is it to say that everyone was into doing queer stuff.

And it’s certainly not to say that people or the societies they lived in thought about “queerness” the same way we do. The Romans, for example, seem to have normalized bi/pansexuality—which means it wasn’t “queer” at all. Instead, it was more like heterosexuality is today: everywhere, unremarkable, completely banal. Same with the Greeks. And there are plenty of other societies that exhibit similar attitudes, where queer acts are recognized and, to some degree, considered normal and even acceptable. In the case of some societies, like the Greeks and Romans, it may have even been desirable.

History Was Pretty Queer

Obviously, there are issues in that history is always a game of interpretation. Since the Romans and Greeks didn’t think of “queerness” the same way we do, it’s hard to say, “Oh, so and so was a gay person” or “so and so was queer.”

We can certainly point to attitudes and behaviors, but even then, we have to watch our step. The historical record of antiquity can be spotty. The records we do have might be filled with hearsay and what borders on libel. Historians recounting things hundreds or thousands of years after the fact cannot be trusted to have their stories straight. They could be incorporating rumor and hearsay as fact or merely reinterpreting the fragments we do have to suit their own narrative—and their own political motives.

The long and short, though is that the world has always been queer—and the Roman Empire is a very good example of that.