Roman boysexuals and loving boys

In Xenophon’s dialogue the Hieron, the eponymous tyrant of Syracuse complains that he can never know if a boy really loves him or is willing simply because he’s the tyrant. Most Greek men, not being tyrants, weren’t faced with this problem, but what if you were a Roman boysexual? In that case you could not bring your charm to bear on a boy who was free and therefore had any choice in the matter. To do so would be to invite severe condemnation, and also spell lifelong social ruin for the boy if he were ever even suspected of having given himself to you. You were only allowed to bed slave-boys, either your own or a friend’s or ones in a brothel. If you were poor, then your choice had essentially to be between celibacy and brothels. But if you were a fabulously rich Roman, what could you do if you wanted something that could reasonably be called love with a boy? Contemplating this question has, I am hoping, led me to stumble on the solution to a matter that has puzzled historians, so I’m hoping for some feedback on this. However, I should hasten to add that this is only intended for the few who share my interest for its own sake in how pederasty worked in the past – it has no lessons that I know of for those engaged in the ongoing debate at to what kind of pederasty might flourish in the future. I am unapologetically much more interested in past realities than fantasies of the future, though I realise it’s an eccentric interest. Do not imagine that as a rich Roman you could find love with an attractive slave-boy sufficiently innocent for the love to feel spontaneous and uncalculated. There were no slave-boys both innocent and good-looking. Demand for pretty slave-boys was extremely high. No Roman is recorded as finding such boys unappealing. Suetonius remarked as an oddity of the Emperor Claudius that he had no sexual experience with males, but no one said that he wasn’t attracted to them; it was just that the poor man was so in thrall to his ghastly wives that he missed out on the experience. So, apart from a few notoriously stingy and puritanical men like the awful Catos, pretty much every rich Roman was looking out for sexy slave-boys. Even if men were impotent, they tended to feel a need for them in order to impress the neighbours and make them envious. As a result, while ugly boys for menial labour might seem cheap for a rich man, with good looks the price for a boy would go through the roof. At the very top end of the market were slave-boys from Alexandria, which had a reputation throughout the empire for training beautiful boys in what Martial called “naughty ways”. This wasn’t limited to training in bed, but extended to witty repartee and amusing pranks. But what if, rather than being a vulgar nouveau riche keen to show off or a pure sensualist uninterested in anything except pleasure, you were a refined and sensitive patrician longing for love? In that case, might not the Alexandrian boy’s learned tricks leave you feeling sad and empty? Being a Roman, you would also of course lament his lack (as an abject foreigner, however exotic) of good Roman taste and values. Wouldn’t you dream of a boy who would lie in your arms with rapt attention while you read Virgil to him? If so, I think I know of a partial solution for you. Instead of buying a slave-boy, Alexandrian or otherwise, calculated by others to entice your interest, pay careful attention to what you already have, and make the best of it, planning far ahead. As a wealthy man, you will have many adult slaves in your house, some of whom are breeding, and many more on your estates in the countryside, not to mention your villa in Pompeii or some such resort. Every year, several boy babies are born to them. Have them all introduced to you as toddlers and take note of which is the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the best-natured, the most fun. Surely one will touch your heart. Then free him! Free his parents too, so that he will feel as free as possible. Love him in his early years just as if he were your son. Find him the best tutors and send him off to athletic trainers to perfect his body as well as his mind. The nature of the love you want with him will change when you want it to. He will be aware why he was chosen well before he reaches puberty and so will his parents. They will all be extremely grateful that this has happened. He will be looking out eagerly for the slightest sign that he will be welcome in your bed. It will happen without need for words. And your friends will commend you for your good taste and success in having such a fine and beautiful boy so utterly devoted to you (bought slaves had a reputation for faithlessness). It’s not a full solution to Hieron’s dilemma. Every Roman held the office of tyrant in his own household and freedmen were considered to be under obligations to their former masters that precluded truly free choice. But I’d say it was a great improvement on the Alexandrian. More to the point, that is what I now believe decent Romans thought. All this is my interpretation of a moving poem by Statius, Silvae II 1, consoling his heart-broken friend Melior on the death of his twelve-year old beloved. I have been studying it quite intensely and the foregoing is my conjecture as to what was going on. Modern historians have been wangling over it for decades, with many in denial that a man described as taking a boy on as his foster-father could have had sexual intentions, while others point out the overwhelming weight of the literary evidence that Statius was celebrating an explicitly pederastic love affair without offering suggestions as to how the erotic dimension arose. Perhaps it’s more challenging for muggles to fathom. It is incidentally the best but not the only example of its kind and I suspect that a lot of the relationships between Romans and their pueri delicati (pleasure-boys) were of this loving kind. Statius himself wrote another poem, Silvae II 1 lamenting his own boy, evidently younger. Here, the nature of the love is mysterious, but my guess is that it concerns a boy who had been taken on in the same way as Melior’s, but died before the expected love affair came to fruition. If our history interests you, please read the poem at the link below and tell me what you think. www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112 (https site) Glaucias and Melior, AD 90 [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst]