Same Sex Marriage in Ancient Rome

We only know bits and pieces about Curio the Younger, but a picture begins to form from them all.

He built the first amphitheater in Rome, ostentatiously to honor his father, a famous orator.

Curio's character was said to be flamboyant, reckless and licentious. He ran up greater debts than he could possibly afford to pay, then persuaded high ranking men to pay them off for him.

Then he married twice.  Once to Fulvia, an aristocratic Roman lady, with whom he had no children, though she did bring a step-daughter with her.  And once to Mark Anthony, of Antony and Cleopatra fame.

Anthony was only a youth at the time and he was affectionately known as Antinous. Curio the Younger so introduced him to the high life, that the young man quickly ran up a lot of drinking debts. Curio the Elder immediately banned him from the house, in fear that his own son would be left to pick up the tab.

Enter Cicero. The straight-laced statesman was a friend of the family, and also a lawyer. Though he didn't approve of the relationship between Anthony and Curio the Younger, he did have some words to say on legal matters.

The fact was that Anthony had been playing the field, until the men were 'united in a stable and permanent marriage'. (Philippic 2.18.45) In doing so, according to Roman law, the 'bride' was owed a dowry payable by the groom's family. It was Curio the Younger who acted 'just as if he had given (Anthony) a matron's stola'.

Curio the Elder just gave up and paid Mark Anthony's drinking debts. In doing so, he merely accepted the marriage.

The whole episode is notable for the complete lack of surprise felt by anyone that two men were effectively spouses in Rome, around 50 BCE. It also demonstrates the degrees of marriage available during the early Roman Empire.

Curio the Younger was married to Fulvia throughout his union with Mark Anthony. After Curio was killed, while fighting in one of Caesar's campaigns, Anthony merely took Fulvia as his wife.

The nuptials were celebrated in extravagant festivals in both Rome and Greece. The Emperor Nero arrived at the ceremony in full military garb. His husband Sporus did not.

Sporus (pictured left) was only a teenager at the time. He arrived for his wedding in a veil and all the accoutrements of a Roman bride. He received a dowry, and he was 'given away' by a family friend.

As he left the ceremony on a litter, he was wearing the dress of an Empress. All Romans were instructed to refer to him as the Empress, with all honors and titles therein.

But this was no poster boy for sane and safe gay marriage. As soon as Nero took him home, he had Sporus's testicles removed. It was noted by contemporaries that Sporus had a likeness to Nero's first (and female) Empress Sabrina. That marriage ended when the Emperor kicked her to death, while she was pregnant. Even more troubling was the fact that Nero began to call Sporus by her name.

However, many observed that Sporus was a calming influence upon the notoriously psychopathic Nero. His excesses seemed to taper off. But that didn't stop Nero being hounded by a senate uprising within eighteen months of the marriage. The result being that Nero committed ritual suicide rather than being taken alive for public execution.

The problem wasn't the gay marriage.  (Nor was it even the burning of Christians to provide a light source, nor the murder of his mother, nor anything else for which we might question today.) It was because he'd raised the taxes too high for the liking of the senate.

Decimus Lunius Luvenalis lived at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE and wrote poetry under the pseudonym of Juvenal. His most famous work was the Satires.

From his writing, it's easy to discern a world where gay marriage raised no eyebrows whatsoever. His Satire 2:132-135 discusses such a ceremony, wherein the protagonist is asked where he is going. "Nothing special," He responds, "a friend is marrying another man and a small group is attending."

But while this is a commonplace union in Roman society, certain considerations did give Juvenal pause.

The fashion (possibly inspired by Nero and Sporus) had become for one spouse to take a more feminine role, while the other was unequivocally the 'husband'. The former would arrive to their nuptials wearing a veil and a matron's stola. He would henceforth act like he was a woman. He'd do all of the shopping and cooking. He would run the house. 

As the Roman world was so hot on ideals of masculinity, this turn of events outraged Juvenal. It wasn't so much that it was happening at all - though that did concern him - but that the part of the 'wife' was too often being taken by men of wealth and high class.

It was one thing for low born pretty boys to be rendered female, but not for the gentlemen of the senator classes!

The problem with Elagabalus, as far as Rome was concerned, was not his homosexuality per se. Less than one hundred years previously, everyone had quite happily accepted Hadrian's love for Antinous.

No, the absolute issue here was that Elagabalus enjoyed flaunting his passive role in his same sex encounters. He played the part of the woman and he was the Emperor!

As has already been hinted at time and again in this historical run through, masculinity was so important in Roman society. As long as you retained your manhood, you could have who you liked.

Elagabalus preferred to dress as an Empress, rather than an Emperor. He married five different women, but there was no evidence that any of those marriages were ever consummated. His only son was adopted.

He also had many, many high profile sexual encounters with men. They were always butch, muscular individuals. But the great love of his life was an athlete (some say gladiator) called Hierocles. It was long-lasting and appeared genuinely loving. Even his contemporary biographer Cassius Dio called Hierocles the husband of Emperor Elagabalus.

During this reign, all of those elevated in social status by the Emperor were gay men with publicly announced marriages to other men. Those were the individuals who received wealth, titles and advancement within the military or senate. It was a policy so blatantly known that heterosexual men would pretend to have same sex partners, just to get ahead.

This did not go down too well with the higher echelons of Roman society, who responded in the usual way. Elagabalus was assassinated on March 11th 222.

When the Emperor Constantine overtly converted to Christianity, it set in motion a series of events which are still felt to this day.

Initially, the change in religion did not affect same sex unions. Throughout the reign of Constantine, this remained true. But he had raised his sons in the Christian faith and they were taught by their priests that homosexuality was wrong.

Constantine died in 337.  As usual in the Roman world, the succession wasn't entirely smooth, with divisions opening up between the brothers. For a moment there, all efforts were deployed on securing power.

But by 342, Constans was in charge and he was swift to announce some sudden changes to Roman law. The Theodosian Code overturned many Roman traditions and outlawed Paganism. It included this:

'We order the laws to arise, justice to be armed with an avenging sword, so that those shameless persons guilty of (homosexuality) now or in future should be subjected to exquisite punishment.'

In short, same sex unions went from commonplace to punishable by death at the snap of the new Emperor's fingers.

However, we shouldn't read too much into this. There is absolutely no evidence that such punishments were actually carried out. The Christian Emperor had enshrined his values and mores into law, but that didn't mean that any judge was compelled to follow through.

The absolutely bizarre part of this is that Constans himself WAS homosexual. He was ultimately ousted as Roman Emperor when the legions staged an uprising. They were fed up with him conferring honors only onto his favorites - the household guard - and deserted him, as soon as General Magnentius made a bid for power.

Constans was assassinated in a temple in 350, but his anti-homosexual marriage laws remained on the statute books.