The poet Catullus begs to steal kisses from ‘Your sweet eyes, Juventus’ in his poem Insatiable. They enthuse over desiring love and passion as well as just power. Latin literature from the second and first centuries BCE is littered with homoerotic poems. Not all gay relationships at the time were entirely one-sided of course. Eugène Jansson’s depiction of a Flottan bathhouse | Photo: Wikimedia Commons Vers and romantic gay Romans existed too And that’s why even Roman army forts often had quite sophisticated bath houses with hot and cold rooms. That’s of course when they weren’t undressing, bathing, sweating, getting a massage or just resting in the nude.īaths weren’t just a luxury but a necessity for Roman society. Men, in particular, would use the communal bathhouses as social places and locations to hold meetings and seal business deals along with generally discussing their wealth. And no, it wasn’t just about showing off how many inches you had. You can still see a particularly famous example of this set-up today at a fort at Hadrian’s Wall.īut of course, Roman baths were another opportunity to show off your dominance. Toilets weren’t individual stalls but communal benches with holes cut in. Whether at the fort – or out on patrol, the Roman army shared communal toilet spaces. One example is the way they would go to the toilet. The Romans often behaved in ways we would find awkward or embarrassing today. The ultimate pride, was to be a master to many slaves | Photo: ITV2 Bromans The Roman Army got weirdly intimate They didn’t necessarily consider this to be a disgrace, but it was not as widely accepted. Louis Crompton, suggests in his book Homosexuality and Civilisation that Roman gay relationships were completely focused on this dominance and the master vs slave dynamic.īut it gets even more complicated if your bottom was ‘free born’ – and therefore not a slave. The master would use his property as he saw fit. And whether it was a sexual situation or not – the will or care of the slave was not really considered.