The Sex Lives of the Caesars

If you only need to know one thing about Roman attitudes towards sex, it’s that they’ve given us the word “vagina” which, in Latin, translates as the sheath of one’s sword.

Macho and militaristic, elite Roman culture revolved as much around a man’s ability to demonstrate his sexual prowess as it did around scoring political points against rivals by accusing them of a lack thereof. And since many of Rome’s early emperors were phenomenally unpopular with the Roman elite, and it was the elite who wrote the histories, this goes some way towards explaining why the Caesars have come down to us as templates for sexual degeneracy and sadistic cruelty (in the literature the two are often indistinguishable).

But how much of what we think we know is true? 

In this piece, we’ll be looking mainly at anecdotes from “The Lives of the Twelve Caesars” by the first-century CE court biographer Suetonius—who, if you’ve never read him, is essentially the ancients’ answer to a Daily Mail columnist. Only far more reliable, and a much better read.

A lot of what he wrote might be fanciful and fictitious. But by adding historical context and comparing his anecdotes with those of other writers, we can at least get a feeling for the sexual attitudes of the authors if not for the sex lives of the Caesars.

Visiting Rome? Let me show you around!

Julius Caesar

Admittedly Julius Caesar is better known to history as the penetrated rather than the penetrator. Sexually speaking, however, he was both.

Known as the “bald adulterer” Julius Caesar fit the Roman political stereotype perfectly by sleeping his way to power. As a young man he spent a considerable amount of time at the court of King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia, fuelling a series of rumors about an affair in which Caesar was the submissive party.

His return to Bithynia just a few days after leaving to “collect a debt” only fanned the flames.

The Roman biographer Suetonius tells us that this was the only stain on Caesar’s masculinity. But it was a stain that proved difficult to wash out and he would be reminded of it throughout his prematurely ended life.

One colleague, Bibulus, addressed Caesar as “the queen of Bithynia.” During an assembly, a man named Octavius hailed his co-consul Pompey as “king” and Caesar as “queen”. Even the great Cicero couldn’t resist a poke, writing that it was on a Bithynian couch that Caesar—the son of Venus—lost his virginity.

Caesar was just as badly behaved in the provinces – his veni, vidi, vici mantra applying as much to his sexual as to his military conquests. 

While in Egypt he had a fling with another historical A-lister, Cleopatra, who forced their introduction by having herself smuggled into his palace wrapped in a carpet.

She clearly made an impression.

Within nine months she gave birth to their son Caesarian; an unfortunate child who wouldn’t survive the purges of Caesar’s successor Octavian.

Caesar’s behaviour in Gaul didn’t go unnoticed by his men either. During his military triumph celebrating his success there, they chanted:

“Men of Rome, look out for your wives,

We’re bringing the bald adulterer home.

In Gaul you fucked your way through a fortune

Which you borrowed here in Rome.”

With Caesar returning, there was good reason for men to lock up their wives (and, indeed, daughters). Caesar had slept his way through the rank and file of aristocratic Roman women, even seducing the wives of fellow consuls and political allies.

But these weren’t the only exploits his soldiers sang about on this triumphal occasion. They couldn’t resist referring to his submission to a certain Bithynian king, and in the course of their banter also boomed out: “Caesar might have conquered the Gauls but Nicomedes conquered him!”

Homosexual tendencies weren’t frowned upon in Roman culture per se. Granted, they might earn you the derision of your macho-militaristic cohort. But as long as sexual favours were rendered to advance your political career, they could be overlooked. At least it showed some degree of interest in the proper, political values an aristocratic Roman male should have – thus we’ll see it crop up time and again throughout the sex lives of the Caesars.

This didn’t exonerate Caesar in his colleagues’ eyes. But, when Gaius Scribonius Curio, an orator and outspoken opponent of Caesar, called him “a man to every woman and a woman to every man”, it at least took a sting out of the tail.

Augustus

Despite sharing many of his predecessor’s sexual proclivities, Caesar’s successor enjoyed a much better reputation. Throughout his life Augustus (or Octavian as he was called prior to becoming emperor) used sex in a thoroughly Roman way: as a means of obtaining power.

Politically, this justified his homosexual escapades towards the beginning of his career—most famously with Aulus Hirtius: a consul and military writer by whom Octavian allowed himself to be buggered for the bargain-basement price of three-hundred-thousand sesterces.

The man who repeatedly reminded Octavian of this was Lucius Antonius, the brother of Marcus Antonius (or Mark Antony). Initially his co-consul, Mark Antony would become Octavian’s bitter rival until his defeat at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. We shouldn’t be surprised that Mark Antony and his allies sought to portray Octavian in these terms.

As someone said to have driven a chariot led my lions, Antony was the quintessential Roman: bold, brash – a military man through and through.

He knew full well that, in the thoroughly macho culture of the Roman elite, the best way to trash your opponent was by emphasizing his effeminacy.

This is why Mark Antony alleged Octavian had only earned Caesar’s favour by sleeping with him; why Lucius Antonius claimed he practiced singing his legs with roasting nutshells to soften the hairs; and why Sextus Pompey—another dynast who fought against Octavian—taunted him as a man given to effeminacy (or mollitia as the Romans called it). And it wasn’t just his submission to men that his enemies picked up on.

Not even Octavian’s allies could deny his proclivity for adultery, although they stressed that he was motivated by politics rather than passion

In what was presumably a bare demonstration of power, Augustus was said to have taken the wife of an ex-consul from a banqueting table to his bedroom, returning with her a while later her hair disheveled and her ears glowing. His friends would routinely procure women for him and, like slave dealers, strip them down for him to inspect and select.

Most shockingly, his later wife Livia would do the same, but exclusively to satisfy his penchant for deflowering virgins.

Augustus had three wives but was faithful to none, a pattern we’ll see concerning the sex lives of the Caesars. His first, Clodia Pulchra, he divorced in order to cement a political alliance with the family of his second, Scribonia. However he felt that Scribonia nagged him too much, and he divorced her as soon as she’d given birth to their daughter Julia.

Augustus would later exile Julia to the Pontine island of Ventotene in 2 BC. Our sources cite treason as the reason. But in all likelihood, Julia was exiled for her serial adultery, which seriously (if not somewhat hypocritically) undermined Augustus’ family-orientated marriage policies of 18 BC.

Augustus’ third wife was Livia, with whom his relationship could hardly be described as romantic. But their marriage doesn’t seem to have been based on romance. It was more a relationship of political pragmatism than passion; more Lord and Lady Macbeth than Romeo and Juliet.

Tiberius

Tiberius holds pride of place as the most perverted among the Pantheon of Rome’s early emperors.

As a young man, he was relatively restrained, as he had to be amidst the prying eyes of the capital as a potential heir apparent. It was only during his self-imposed exile in the Villa of Jupiter on the island of Capri (where millions of tourists still flock every year) where he unleashed his depravity.

The walls of the imperial palace were awash with pornographic imagery, much like that still on display inside the brothel (lupanar) in Pompeii. And with pornography as his backdrop, Tiberius would command his “tight bums”—groups of young boys whose “talents” are clear from the name—to perform threesomes in front of him in order to stimulate his flagging libido.

From sexual deprivation to simple stripped-down sadism, during banquets Tiberius would fill his drinking companions with vast quantities of wine before tying ligatures around their penises, preventing them from urinating.

But it was for paedophilia that Tiberius was most notorious. 

Tiberius trained infants he called his “little fish” to swim between his thighs when he took a bath and nibble on his genitalia. And that’s not even the most horrendous. We’re also told that he would take newborn babies from their mothers and hold them to his genitals, hoping they would respond to him as if to their mother’s breast.

Tiberius buggered two boys during a sacrificial ceremony on the island, and when they complained he had their legs broken. He also sexually assaulted aristocratic women, causing one woman, Mallonia, such trauma that she was driven to suicide.

In old age, Tiberius was hairy and pungent, and theatrical audiences would taunt him by chanting “the old goat is licking the old does’ asses”. Given that in Latin the word for goat is caprea, contemporary references to Tiberius’s twisted pleasure palace on Capri as “the old goat’s garden” is a pun that would have been lost on no one.

We’ll never know exactly to what extent these stories about Tiberius’s sexual depravity were true. There is, undoubtedly, a kernel of truth; the weight of sources and their cohesion make complete fabrication extremely unlikely. But Tiberius was hated by the Roman elite—far more so than his predecessor Augustus had been. And we’d do well to bear in mind that it was the Roman elite, their tradition coming down to us in the writings of Tacitus and Cassius Dio, who wrote the histories.

Suetonius is the source for the most deplorable information – as he always is when it comes to the sex lives of the Caesars. 

He worked at the court of Hadrian around the end of the first century until being dismissed on murky grounds (probably for copping off with the emperor’s wife, Sabina). This is why his early biographies from Caesar to Nero are full, detailed, and brimming with primary sources—letters, quotes, speeches—while the rest are shorter and much vaguer. His “Life of Tiberius” was written while still at court, when he still had access to letters, memoirs, and other court documents.

And despite the clear bias, the disturbing truth is that Suetonius probably captures much more of the man than we would like to think.

Caligula

Known to history as Caligula (meaning “little boots” after the military attire his father paraded him in as an infant), Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus experienced an upbringing that condemned him to a life of cruelty and depravity.

His entire family fell victim to the political intrigues of the imperial palace, dying from poison, starvation, or suicide. At the tender age of eighteen, Caligula was sent to live with his uncle Tiberius on Capri. Constantly fearing death, he showed nothing but neutrality towards his uncle, silently observing his sexual perversions.

When Tiberius died on 16 March 37 AD, many had reason to believe Caligula had helped him on his way.

As emperor, all went well for the first few months until Caligula fell seriously ill in October that same year. Few thought he would recover. When he did, all semblance of normality had gone and he revealed his true, evil nature. Suetonius tells us that he habitually committed incest with his sisters, once spit-roasting himself between them and his wife during a grand banquet. He was so infatuated with one sister, Drusilla, that in her childhood he deflowered her; and in adulthood, he abducted her from her husband Cassius Longinus, and publically paraded her as his wife.

The incest accusations are most likely fabricated. 

Not only do no contemporary writers mention them but they also fit in well with Caligula’s portrayal as an eastern-style, Hellenistic despot, particularly one of the Ptolemies who married and interbred with their sisters (all of whom, conveniently, were called Cleopatra).

We should also keep in mind that accusations of incest were common in political invective aimed against unpopular dynasts; not least because they undermined the purity of the bloodline that gave the family their legitimacy. But while he may not have been incestuous, it’s likely that, as Suetonius suggests, he did routinely use sex as a way of demonstrating his power.

Following in the footsteps of Augustus, Caligula would insist that aristocratic women accompany their husbands to his banquets. Over dinner he would make them pass by his couch while he examined them like livestock, commenting on their physical attributes and forcing those who looked away to meet his eyes. He would then retire to his chambers before sending for the woman who had pleased him most. Later, when she returned flushed and dishevelled, he would evaluate her performance in front of her husband: pointing out both the positive and negative aspects of her sexual performance.

On one occasion he even forced a consul’s wife to divorce her husband, sending him the divorce bill personally.

Caligula is alleged to have had several homosexual relations – another common charge in the sex lives of the Caesars. His most notable fling was with the patrician Valerius Catullus (who admitted quite publically that he was absolutely exhausted by the emperor’s sexual demands). But he was also strongly attracted to the pantomime actor Mnester, who Caligula would rush up and kiss during the middle of his performance.

Most of all, Caligula made no distinction between sensuality and cruelty. Whenever kissing the neck of a lover he would remark that, with one command, he could have it severed at his pleasure. He would ultimately take his taunting too far, and in 41 AD he got himself assassinated by Cassius Chaerea, who the emperor had mocked for his effeminacy and high-pitched voice.

Claudius

We would probably know more about Claudius’s sex life if it didn’t completely pale into insignificance when compared to that of his wife, Messalina.

What Messalina managed to get away with is absolutely astounding if we suspend disbelief and follow our ancient sources. Pliny the Elder records that she held a competition in the imperial palace with one of Rome’s most notorious prostitutes to see how many men they could sleep within a day.

Needless to say, Messalina came out on top: after non-stop intercourse day and night her final headcount was 25 to her opponent’s 24.

And that’s not all.

In one of his satires, the poet Juvenal has her working surreptitiously at a local brothel; “she-wolf” being her nom de guerre.

In 48 AD Messalina put into action what must go down as one of the worst planned conspiracies in history. As soon as Claudius had left the capital for a lovely day at the sacrifices down the road in Ostia, his wife Messalina decided the time was right to marry her senatorial lover, Gaius Silius. Up until this point, their affair had hardly been private; she was actually growing tired of how easy it all was, we’re told.

But as soon as Claudius was out of sight, they celebrated a wedding ceremony, complete with witnesses, sacrifices and, of course, the all-important consummation.

Suffice to say it didn’t work out well for them. Without hesitation, the Praetorian Guard arrested Silius and Messalina upon their emperor’s return. Silius was executed immediately while Messalina was held in a cell away from the emperor.

Weak and indecisive when it came to women, Claudius wanted to spare her. But it was advisors who were running the show, and they chose to act differently. They had Messalina put to death.

The only thing that Claudius could say upon receiving news of her death was that he would like some more wine.

Claudius comes across as quite vanilla on the scale of the sex lives of the Caesars. He wasn’t as perverted as his predecessors, but in line with his character, he was astoundingly hypocritical. After Messalina’s death, he addressed his Praetorian Guard and told them that, if he ever married again, they should not hesitate to kill him. Lo and behold by New Year’s Day 49 AD he was remarried, this time to his niece (Caligula’s sister and Nero’s mother) Agrippina the Younger.

By no strange coincidence, Claudius passed a motion in the Senate later that year legalizing incestuous marriages.

We know next to nothing about Claudius’s sex life with Agrippina. Suetonius tells us that throughout his life he was an ardent lover of women, though he never slept with men. We can assume that this continued during his marriage to Agrippina – Roman emperors not being famous for their marital fidelity.

What we do know is that Agrippina loved power more than her husband. The details are hazy, but their relationship rapidly deteriorated in 54 AD (Claudius was often heard lamenting his lousy choice of wives over the years) and on 13 October, after consuming a plate of poisoned mushrooms, Claudius loudly defecated and died.

And few were in doubt who had killed him.

Nero

Freud would have had a field day with Nero.

Having helped murder his adopted father Claudius, he went on to have what the sources suggest was a fully incestuous relationship with his mother Agrippina. We’re told that whenever they rode together in a litter, the stains on his clothes would betray what they had done.

We are told Agrippina was complicit as she sought to share his power.

Tacitus tells us that she would get him drunk to loosen him up. But being the good historian that he was, Tacitus also offers the view of a contemporary writer, Fabius Rusticus, who had it on good authority that Nero needed no such encouragement.

Nero would ultimately kill his mother in 59. He had initially planned to drown her, sending her out into the bay of Baia on a boat rigged to collapse. But the plan went awry when Agrippina escaped and swam to shore. When Nero panicked and prevaricated, his advisors took charge, sending a group of centurions to finish the job. Realizing her fate as they approached her in her coastal villa, Agrippina pointed to her womb before uttering her final words: “strike here”.

Nero had several wives throughout his short but eventful life. The first, Octavia, he forced to commit suicide. The second, Poppaea Sabina, he kicked to death during her pregnancy after she rebuked him for returning home late from the races. The third was his former mistress, Statilia Messalina, and in 66 Nero forced her unfortunate husband—the consul Marcus Junius Vestinus Atticus—to commit suicide so he could go ahead and marry her. And then there were his male wives, Pythagoras and Sporus.

Pythagoras (not to be confused with the man who invented the theorem) or “Doryphorus” as some sources call him, was one of Nero’s favourite freedmen (or “ex-slaves”). In 64 AD he participated in a bizarre wedding ceremony, marrying Nero who took on the role of the veiled bride. But Pythagoras wasn’t Nero’s only husband. The empeor had another paramour, a young boy called Sporus, who the emperor had castrated and married in 67 AD.

Like his uncle Caligula, he sexually assaulted the wives of senators. Replicating a vice we see often in the sex lives of the Caesars.

Nero also devised an utterly bizarre sex game in which he would dress up in wild animal pelt, sally forth from a cage, and attack the genitalia of men and women who were tied to nearby stakes. Once he’d had enough, he would be run through by his husband, Pythagoras, while moaning, in the words of Suetonius, ‘like a vestal virgin being deflowered.’

Still, nothing should surprise us about someone whose philosophical principle was that no man was truly pure or chaste but merely concealed their vices behind a veil of decency.

It’s hard to establish the truth behind these stories.

Granted Nero was no Mother Theresa. But it’s also hard to reconcile his mother-f*ck*ng, wife-killing, slave-marrying, sexually assaulting, pelt-wearing persona with the fact that he managed to retain power for almost 14 years.

What’s worth remembering is that Nero was the last of a dynasty, and it was in the interests of later writers under subsequent dynasts to blacken his name to the benefit of theirs.

Vitellius

Abnormally tall and fat, with hanging flesh and a face flushed from alcohol, Vitellius’ description is eerily evocative of anyone emerging from 2020’s Coronavirus quarantine.

He is also one of the few emperors whose statues perfectly capture what was written about his appearance. He never stopped eating, feasting at least three times a day (excessive for the ancients) while drinking copiously in between. You might assume from this that Vitellius was in no condition to rival the otherwise rampant sex lives of the Caesars.

And you would be right; at least insofar as our sources go.

It was during his youth that Vitellius earned his sexual notoriety. He spent part of his childhood on Capri with his “friend” and former emperor, Tiberius. I say “friend” in inverted commas because during his time with Tiberius, and for reasons we really don’t need to go into, Vitellius came to acquire the nickname “tight-bum”. In fact, Suetonius tells he used his asset (for want of a better word) to great effect, and that the emperor’s access to it secured his father’s political promotion.

After Tiberius’s death, he endeared himself to the emperor Caligula who repaid the favour by driving his chariot into Vitellius and crippling him for life.

After Caligula’s assassination, Vitellius befriended his successor, Claudius (their friendship was founded on a mutual love of gambling). Vitellius even managed to navigate (or should I say hobble) his way through Nero’s reign, taking up the emperor’s theatricality and playing the role of his biggest sycophant. He finally, and briefly, came to power during the civil war of 69 AD (known otherwise as The Year of the Four Emperors). Vitellius, to his misfortune, was the third.

His rule was short and not particularly sweet. He spent his few months in power eating his way around various houses of the Roman aristocracy, being excessively and unnecessarily cruel, and—in order to fulfill a prophecy—starving his mother to death. His administration was guided by the counsel of one Asiaticus, a freedman who Vitellius made a knight. Many said that from a young age, they had been mutual partners in buggery and this explained Asiaticus’s astronomical rise through the imperial court. This may or may not have been true. For Asiaticus’s sake we can only hope, on account of the presumably horrendous gout from which Vitellius suffered, it wasn’t.

Vitellius would meet a particularly nasty end on 22 December 69 AD. Upon the arrival of his rival Vespasian’s army, he was dragged from his hiding place. With his hands bound behind his back and a noose around his neck, he was hauled through the streets—the whole time being pelted by faeces and weight-related insults—towards the Gemonian Stairs. This was never a good place to be dragged as they were a common place of execution. And it was here, after a final plea to his people that he was executed.

As a final insult, a hook was put through his lifeless body and he was thrown into the Tiber.

Domitian

Demystifying Domitian is no easy feat. Our sources portray him as the black sheep of the family, the disappointing third installment of the Flavian franchise, succeeding his father Vespasian (69-79 AD) and his older brother Titus (79-81 AD).

Domitian ruled for 18 years, the longest reign of any emperor since Tiberius. But he shared the same fate as Nero in that, being the last ruler of a dynasty, he was always going to be reviled under the propaganda of the next. He was certainly ruthless. But while senators hated him his soldiers admired him, and on balance his policies and reforms and went a long way in setting the tone for the next century of peace.

A great deal of mystery surrounds Domitian’s love life. Unusually for a Roman emperor he only married once. He rebelled against Vespasian’s attempts to wed him to his brother’s daughter, Julia Flavia. Instead, he betrothed himself to the woman he loved, Domitia Longina, after the small matter of making her divorce her husband.

They appear to have had a happy marriage, save one significant hiccup in 83 AD. For reasons unknown, Domitia was banished from the palace and sent into exile—perhaps because of her failure to produce an heir, perhaps because Domitian was indulging a vice typical to the sex lives of the Caesars and having an affair – this time with Julia Flavia.

But Domitia returned within a year, and other than this there doesn’t look to have been anything particularly noteworthy.

That is until you read Suetonius. 

Right from the outset, the biographer writes about how Domitian would continually harass the wives of men of high reputation, following an autocratic precedent set by Augustus, Caligula and Nero and fundamental to the sex lives of the Caesars.

He had a penchant for removing the hair from his lovers’ bodies with his own hands, Suetonius tells us, and loved nothing more than swimming in the baths with common prostitutes. He was adulterous with his niece, Julia Flavia, and in forcing her to abort their child, he ended up killing her.

A lot of this seems unlikely: reading more like political propaganda than a character portrait. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that it’s rampant, racy, and a bloody good read.

The best and most quintessentially Roman anecdote of all is that Domitian referred to sexual intercourse as “bedroom wrestling”. We will never know if this – like many other anecdotes about the sex lives of the Caesars – was apocryphal or not, though my guess is that it probably is.

But the truth behind it is less important than the fact that it perfectly encapsulates the machismo of Roman sexuality, and adds a whole new layer of meaning to Seneca’s famous dictum vivere militare est—to live is to fight.