The prevalence of slavery in Ancient Rome impacted the sex lives of Roman men, both free and slave. One of the ways it did was by how people thought about male-to-male sexual intercourse.
In Classical Athens, there was a common practice of pederasty among men of different ages: an older man was a sort of tutor to a young adolescent. Sexually, the younger was supposed to be the penetrated, because that was considered the more passive role, appropriate for those still learning the ways of civic behavior.
In the Roman Empire, a free men’s social status was demonstrated by the way he could keep his body intact and unmarked. The enslaved person shown here is being beaten, and the violence done to his body also was a mark of shame. (This is one of the reasons Roman citizens could not be crucified as a punishment).
Because of this, the passive or penetrated role for male sexual intercourse began to be stigmatized. Of course it still happened among free men, and it was tolerated far more than it would be later in history. But among free men, a stereotype arose in which the passive partner was considered too effeminate and soft, and the penetrator rather violent. Master-slave sexual relationships were different; although it wasn’t polite conversation, the sexual abuse of male slaves was common and even served to highlight the power discrepancy between free man and slave by whose body was intact, and whose was penetrated.
Source(s): _From Shame to Sin_, Kyle Harper, Harvard UP, 2013, ch 1.
