Shame to Sin

From Shame to Sin: the Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity by Kyle Harper

This book was off the beaten path from my usual reading, but fascinating nevertheless. The author's portrait of Rome behind closed doors belies the popular image of the Roman Empire as a sex-soaked "anything goes" kind of a place. Sex in the Rome was governed by a pretty strict and simple code, and shame at transgressions was a potent social force. At a basic level, for free men, the guiding principal was pretty much anything was OK as long as you were not the passive partner, the person on the bottom, the one on the receiving end. And you were supposed to respect free-born men, women and children (boys). For free women, preservation of virtue until marriage and motherhood was paramount. There is a giant caveat looming here though; and it centers on the word "free". The population of Roman society is estimated to have been 30-40% slave, and between free men and slaves it seems that anything did go. Along with the huge number of slaves, there was a large population of prostitutes of both sexes selling their bodies for survival and profit. The bodies of slaves and prostitues were not their own, but belonged to whomever owned or paid for them to be used or abused as desired.

Christianity revolted at this abuse of the unfree and made sex outside of marriage a sin, period. Sex between same-sex partners was an even graver sin, period. It was when the latter code became institutionalized and codified by the Empire, especially during the reign of Justinian that things took an ugly turn with the active persecution and execution of homosexuals and prostitutes.

This book re-emphasizes a point I made in my review of Apuleius "Golden Ass" and Petronius "Satyricon". Ancient Rome and Greece were not just like modern America and Europe, but with people dressed in togas and with more primitive technology. In fact, the ancient world was a very, very strange and rather scary place vis-a-vis our own.