Spinelli, Ambra (2022-01-19). "Beyond social and functional interpretations of wall paintings: mythological imagery in the tablinum at Pompeii and Herculaneum". Journal of Roman Archaeology. 35: 177–193. doi: 10.1017/S1047759421000581. ISSN 1047-7594. S2CID 250284236. Evidence found that there was smoothness at both sides of the object, and less in the middle, indicating both ends were well used. Change of purpose Sara Elise Phang, Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 93. The fresco of Mars and Venus, located in the tablinum of the House of Mars and Venus, is believed to model the proper family roles of husband and wife for those entering the home. Mars and Venus, a popular couple from mythology, were represented in many house's tablinum for this reason. [9] Venus has appeared in Pompeian artwork at least 197 times, [10] the majority of these depictions located in a home's reception area where a guest would not need an invitation to enter, although she also appears on tavern signs and political banners. [11] Previous scholarship assumed Venus would be more common in cubicula, small inclosed rooms that may function as a bedroom, due to her association with love and sex. Recent studies have shown this is not the case and that Venus is more commonly portrayed in large common rooms. [10] Approximately one third of artwork featuring Venus represents some sort of love scene. [12] There are two Venus types found almost exclusively in Pompeii, Venus Pompeiana ("Venus of Pompeii") and Venus Pescatrice ("Venus the Fisher-woman"). Venus Pompeiana is depicted standing rigidly, usually trapped with a mantle and holding her right arm across her chest. [12] She is most commonly depicted in places that would be seen by many people, possible to demonstrate a house's patron goddess or for protection as this form of Venus has special religious and ritual significance to Pompeii. Venus Pescatrice is typically shown sitting down, holding a fishing rod and is always semi-naked. [10] The depictions of Venus Pescatrice are all similar in strucuter, suggesting they derive from the same source, though this source has not been found. [10] By the end of the 4th century, anally passive men under the Christian Empire were punished by burning. [217] "Death by sword" was the punishment for a "man coupling like a woman" under the Theodosian Code. [218] It is in the 6th century, under Justinian, that legal and moral discourse on male–male sex becomes distinctly Abrahamic: [219] all male–male sex, passive or active, no matter who the partners, was declared contrary to nature and punishable by death. [220] Male–male sex was pointed to as cause for God's wrath following a series of disasters around 542 and 559. [221] See also [ edit ]

The second image, from Schefold, Karl: Vergessenes Pompeji: Unveröffentlichte Bilder römischer Wanddekorationen in geschichtlicher Folge. München 1962., with its much more brilliant colors, has been used to retouch the younger, higher resolution image here.Ovid adduces the story of Hercules and Omphale as an explanation for the ritual nudity of the Lupercalia; see "Male nudity in ancient Rome" and Richard J. King, Desiring Rome: Male Subjectivity and Reading Ovid's Fasti (Ohio State University Press, 2006), pp. 185, 195, 200, 204. Male homosexuality occasionally appears on vessels of numerous kinds, from cups and bottles made of expensive material such as silver and cameo glass to mass-produced and low-cost bowls made of Arretine pottery. This may be evidence that sexual relations between males had the acceptance not only of the elite, but was also openly celebrated or indulged in by the less illustrious, [51] as suggested also by ancient graffiti. [52]

Gazzarri, Tommaso; Weiner, Jesse. Searching for the cinaedus in ancient Rome. Leiden; Boston: Brill. ISBN 9789004548374. Statue of Antinous (Delphi), polychrome Parian marble depicting Antinous, made during the reign of Hadrian (r. 117–138 AD), his lover Bernadette J. Brooten, Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 1. The ensuing excavation, masterminded by Swiss army engineer Karl Weber, eventually unearthed one of the greatest treasure troves in archeological history: la Villa dei Papiri, home to over 1,800 carbonized scrolls and the only extant library from Roman antiquity.Clarke, John (2003). Roman Sex: 100 B.C. to A.D. 250. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-1626548800.

The abstract noun impudicitia (adjective impudicus) was the negation of pudicitia, "sexual morality, chastity". As a characteristic of males, it often implies the willingness to be penetrated. [142] Dancing was an expression of male impudicitia. [143] Kristina Minor (2014). Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii. Oxford University Press. p.212. ISBN 978-0199684618. Despite the best efforts of scholars, we have essentially no direct evidence of female homoerotic love in Rome: the best we can do is a collection of hostile literary and technical treatments ranging from Phaedrus to Juvenal to the medical writers and Church fathers, all of which condemn sex between women as low-class, immoral, barbarous, and disgusting. Catharine Edwards, "Unspeakable Professions: Public Performance and Prostitution in Ancient Rome," in Roman Sexualities, pp. 67–68. Butrica, "Some Myths and Anomalies in the Study of Roman Sexuality," in Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity, p. 212. Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 55–56.And then there was the profusion of stand-alone male organs, protruding from street corners and shop walls and, on occasion, even serving as massive concrete tombstones. As one pithy journalist would later summarize, the “display at Naples shows penises with bells hanging from them, penises with legs, penises with wings and, in one instance, a penis with bells, legs and wings.” Exoletus (pl. exoleti) is the past-participle form of the verb exolescere, which means "to grow up" or "to grow old". [98] The term denotes a male prostitute who services another sexually despite the fact that he himself is past his prime according to the ephebic tastes of Roman homoerotism. [99] Though adult men were expected to take on the role of "penetrator" in their love affairs, such a restriction did not apply to exoleti. In their texts, Pomponius and Juvenal both included characters who were adult male prostitutes and had as clients male citizens who sought their services so they could take a "female" role in bed (see above). In other texts, however, exoleti adopt a receptive position. [98] Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World, pp. 125–126; Robinson Ellis, A Commentary on Catullus (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 181; Petrini, The Child and the Hero, p. 19. Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," p. 534; Ronnie Ancona, "(Un)Constrained Male Desire: An Intertextual Reading of Horace Odes 2.8 and Catullus Poem 61," in Gendered Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), p. 47; Mark Petrini, The Child and the Hero: Coming of Age in Catullus and Vergil (University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 19–20. Hubbard, Thomas K., ed. Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents. Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN 0-520-23430-8