Roman emperor

The Roman emperors were the rulers of the Roman state during the imperial period, conventionally considered to have started when the Roman Senate gave Octavian the titles Augustus and Princeps Senatus in 27 BC, and to have ended when the empire in the west finally fell in AD 476. Despite their initially similar titles, the later emperors in the east are generally termed Byzantine rather than Roman.

Officially, the Roman Empire remained always a republic. The English word emperor derives from imperator, meaning a military commander, but this was only one of several titles the Senate accorded the man who unofficially exercised almost absolute power, and not one limited to holders of that position.

For two reasons, the lives of the Roman emperors offer possibly unrivalled insight into how many men took a sexual interest in boys in societies with reasonably neutral attitudes towards boylove. First, Roman society accepted boylove as well as heterosexuality as legitimate and normal without having the idealistic bias towards it that the ancient Greeks had. The principal caveat to this is that, unlike in Greek society, it was unacceptable for a freeborn male to take on a passive sexual role, so men could only hope for sex with slave-boys without meeting public disapproval. Secondly, the private lives of the early Roman emperors are mostly well-documented, so they offer themselves to the historian of sex as a usable sample of men defined by rank rather than sexual proclivity.

The definition of emperor used in the following brief survey of imperial Roman pederasty is bestowal by the Senate of the title Augustus. Two in the following list, Lucius Verus and Diadumenian, bore the title at the same time as another who wielded the real power, but they are included to ensure the selection is objective.

The first twenty-six emperors listed here by their conventional short names in English were:

• Augustus (63 BC - AD 14), attested to have been sexually active with females and boys (Plutarch, Life of Antony 59; Sextus Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus I 22), without indication of preference.
• Tiberius (42 BC - AD 37), whose first wife was apparently his only love, but was described in old age as sexually debauched with boys and girls without indication of preference .
• Caligula (AD 12 – 41), whose only loves were (incestuously) his sister Drusilla and then his wife , but indulged “in lust after boys and women.” (Philo of Alexandria, On the Embassy to Gaius 2).
• Claudius (10 BC – AD 54), of whom it was considered worthy of remark that he was “very excessively passionate for females, entirely uninvolved with males.”
• Nero (AD 37 – 68), who indulged his lust for women, boys and men, the latter together with his general lack of restraint provoking ridicule. (Cassius Dio, Roman History LXI.10, LXII.28 & LXIII.13;
• Galba (3 BC – AD 69), “more inclined to desire for males, and in gratifying it preferred the tough and full-grown.”
• Otho (AD 32 – 69), enamoured of both his wife and a boy (Cassius Dio, Roman History LXIV.8).
• Vitellius (AD 15 – 69), twice married with children, but also “debauched into mutual lust” with an “adulescentulum” (early adolescent boy).
• Vespasian (AD 9 – 79), only recorded as sexually involved with women
• Titus (AD 39 – 81), who enjoyed a troop of catamites and eunuchs, as well as entanglements with women. Tacitus, Histories II 2)
• Domitian (AD 51 – 96), “most profligate and lewd towards women and boys alike,” (Cassius Dio, Roman History LXVII.6); the poet Martial celebrated the beauty of his boy favourites in three of his epigrams (Martialis, Epigrams IX 16,36 & 56)
• Nerva (AD 30 – 98), rumoured to have debauched his predecessor Domitian during the latter’s pubescence, though the context suggests this could be a calumny of Domitian . This is anyway the only romantic entanglement recorded for Nerva, whose private life is so obscure that it is not even known if he married.
• Trajan (AD 53 – 117), happily but childlessly married, was only interested in boys, so far as is recorded (Cassius Dio, Roman History LXVIII 7 & 21; Historia Augusta: Hadrianus II), and was most obviously of all the Roman Emperors a boylover.
• Hadrian (AD 76 – 138), though active with women too, was far better known for his love affairs with boys, most notably Antinous. After seven years as the imperial beloved, Antinous drowned in the Nile, aged 19 , whereupon his lover proclaimed him a god, built temples to him and founded a city in his name. ((Historia Augusta: Hadrianus XI & XIII; Cassius Dio, Roman History LXIX 11; Jerome, Interpr. Chronicon Eusebius, years CCXXIV & CCXXVII)
• Antoninus Pius (AD 86 – 161) overcame “all passion for meirakion (adolescent boys).” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations I 16)
• Marcus Aurelius (121-180), a Stoic philosopher, listed among the good examples his predecessor had given him “that he had overcome all passion for meirakion (adolescent boys). (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations I 16)
• Lucius Verus (130 – 169), whose “name was smirched not only by the licence of an unbridled life, but also by adulteries and by love-affairs with youths.” (Historia Augusta, Lucius Verus 4)
• Commodus (161 – 192) had three hundred pubescent catamites besides the same number of concubines living with him. (Historia Augusta, Commodus Antoninus V 4 & 11).
• Pertinax (126 – 193), who besides having a wife and mistress, brought back his predecessor’s catamites to minister to his pleasures. (Historia Augusta, Pertinax 7 & 13).
• Julius Didius (133 or 137 – 193), a brief and obscure Emperor of whose sexual life nothing can be inferred beyond his having fathered a daughter.
• Septimus Severus (145 – 211), said to have had a boy beloved (Herodianus of Syria, History of the Roman Empire from the Death of Marcus Aurelius III.10), as well as two wives (Historia Augusta, Septimus Severus III).
• Caracalla (188 – 217) “dishonoured women and sexually outraged boys.” (Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXXVII.7).
• Geta (189-211) “dishonoured women and sexually outraged boys” (Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXXVII.7).
• Macrinus (ca. 165 – 218), of whose sexual life nothing is known other than that he fathered a child on his wife, and the claim reported as doubtful that he had been a “public prostitute” in his youth. (Historia Augusta, Macrinus IV 2)
• Diadumenian (208 - 218), killed aged nine and without known sexual experience, despite “his mouth designed for a kiss” and being “beloved of all because of his beauty.” (Historia Augusta, Diadumenianus III 2)
• Elagabalus (203 or 204 – 222), a boy himself who included “catamites” in his varied erotic antics, but is better known for the outrage he provoked by assuming the passive role with men publicly sought out for their large organs. (Historia Augusta, Elagabalus 5-6, 10 & 31; Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.9, 13 & 24; Herodianus, History V.6)

Following the overthrow and murder of Elagabalus, there was a puritanical reaction against his sexual profligacy. His successor Alexander Severus, who “was temperate in the enjoyment of love and would have nothing to do with catamites” made special provisions regarding the taxation of boy prostitutes and considered prohibiting them, which was actually done by the Emperor Philip “the Arab” two decades later (Historia Augusta, Alexander Severus XXIV 3-4 & XXXIX 2). Attitudes to homosexuality thereafter continued to deteriorate and, especially after the rise of Christianity in the following century, it was repressed with increasingly brutal legislation.