A Brief History of Sexual Norms: Sexual Norms in the Ancient World
From the earliest times through the rise of Rome marriage was for procreation and powerful men used others for their sexual pleasure
When we start to look at the history of sexual norms, we need to start by noting that what we are talking about is the social norms, not if this or that practice was ever engaged in within a society.
To start back at the beginning, little is known for certain about pre-historic societies. Despite the attempts by feminists like Marija Gimbutas and Riane Eisler to find a female, peaceful pre-historical European culture, which has been dubbed the Kurgans, there is no evidence that such a society ever existed.[1] When we look at what real history teaches us, it is limited; however, it has been noted that virtually every society has had strong prohibitions against adultery. In general, the emphasis was also on reproduction and child-rearing, as this was essential for the survival of each tribe or people group.
Polygamy
Today we find many people arguing that there has never been a uniform definition of marriage, so our society is right in redefining it to include homosexual marriage. Some go beyond this to suggest polyamory, or marriage between numerous people, should also be included. Much of this argument rests on the ancient practice of polygamy as opposed to monogamy.
This argument, however, comes from a verbal sleight of hand. In reality, polygamy was never the marriage between multiple people, rather it is the entering into multiple marriages by one person, generally a man. So, if a man had two wives, the women were not married to each other, rather the man married each and at different times. Consider the Biblical example of Jacob marrying Leah and Rachel (Gen 29): there never was a marriage between the two sisters, and in fact they became bitter rivals. It should be noted that while the Old Testament recounts numerous cases of polygamy, none is given as an ideal, and every example ends up badly.
The common purposes of polygamy in the ancient world were not analogous to those offered today. In general, there were two types of polygamy: that of rulers and that of other wealthy men. For rulers, Biblical examples include Kings David and Solomon, many of the marriages were part of treaties. The theory was that you would be hesitant to go to war against another king if he is married to your daughter. This type of marriage was really a subset of the practice of sealing of treaties with the exchange of family members who would live as “guests” (more like hostages with privileges in the household) of the other monarch as an assurance that the other would not attack him, lest he kill these “guests.”
The second purpose for polygamy, that of the wealthy which also included some of the kings’ additional wives, served not only as a show of their wealth, but also as a means of providing for women who would not otherwise have a spouse. Behind this it is important to note that at times there were more women than men in a society due to the men dying either through hunting accidents or war. Sometimes, it might be a woman who is single, but there are not enough young men left after a war, so she becomes a second or third wife for one of the remaining men. Other times, it was a matter of the women being taken as a spoil of war. Her husband would have been killed in battle, and now she is taken, usually as a concubine rather than wife, by one of the victors. The final option is that sometimes the commanders would marry the widows of men who died under their service to provide for her in a society where she could not own property or engage in commerce on her own. An example of this can be found with David and Bathsheba (2 Sam 11). In this case, David tries to use this practice as a cover for his infidelity with Bathsheba. By arranging for her husband’s death in battle, David can take her as his wife but make it look like he is being the generous monarch who is providing for the widow of one of his valiant warriors.
In all of this, however, what we find is not the practice of multiple people falling in love with each other and deciding to marry. Rather, it was just the man choosing to marry multiple times, and usually for reasons other than love and companionship.
Ancient Greece
When we look at Western culture, we often hear people make the assertion that homosexuality was common in Greece and even that Plato was gay. However, it is not as simple or straightforward as that. As we will see, the very category of someone having a homosexual identity did not start until the 19th century with Sigmund Freud. It is true that the men were neither monogamous nor strictly heterosexual, but it goes beyond that.
In Sparta, which put a great emphasis on warfare, homosexual relations were encouraged between the soldiers with the hopes that one would fight harder to protect his lover. However, these men were also married to women whose responsibility was to bear and raise children. Lycurgus put forth the idea that the family undermined Spartan society, so wives were to be taken in the dark and could be shared.[2]
Athens, seen as the pinnacle of Greek culture, exemplified the aspect of most Greek city-states where the freemen had lives of dominance over everyone else, including sexually. While some will point to Plato’s Symposium to argue that Plato and Socrates were homosexuals, this is not really accurate. In the Symposium, which is about the nature of love, the men start by talking about male lovers, but these are not other men, but adolescents; therefore, this is actually pederasty. The practice of pederasty, a man having a 12–16-year-old boy as his lover, was common in Greece.[3] Likewise, while Socrates does appear to have had a younger male lover, we also know that he was married and had children by his wife. In fact, in the Phaedo Socrates’s wife Xanthippe is there with their child crying as Socrates is about to be executed. All of this is to say that this was far from a “homosexual lifestyle,” rather it was a culture where men used others for their sexual pleasures and their wives for the production of heirs.
Interestingly, after the demise of Greece and the rise of the Roman Empire, many Romans looked down on the Greek culture as weak because of its homosexuality. However, before long similar practices became common in Rome as well.
Rome
In Rome, like all ancient societies, heterosexual marriage was considered to be essential to the ordering of society. For most, it was considered a duty to state and society and not built around love or companionship.[4] For the Romans, marriage was more about producing an heir to ensure the passage of property and the stability of society.
Following Greek custom, pederasty was common in Rome, with freemen using their choice of either adolescent boys, mistresses, or any combination thereof for their sexual pleasure. For much of pagan Roman society, and especially for the upper class, sexual practices were rather open, with some practicing open homosexuality amongst men, and even bestiality was not unheard of. Some of the privileged few Roman women would take on younger male and female lovers as well.[5] However, the majority of the society did look down on those who held such license, which is understandable because in each of these cases it was the powerful using the less powerful for their own pleasure.
“Birth Control” in the Ancient World
Throughout history, people have always sought ways of avoiding responsibility for their actions, and this has always included sex. In fact, sex is one of those actions that inevitably often leads to consequences that impact your life and cannot be hidden: namely pregnancy and children. The ancients, therefore, did seek forms of contraception, but these were never very effective. This meant that they had to find ways to try to dispose of what some today crassly call “the products of conception.” Like many ancient societies, the Greeks experimented with potions that could induce an abortion. These were dangerous, often leading not only to the death of the child, but also the mother. The great Greek physician Hippocrates considered this practice so immoral that he included in his Hippocratic Oath “I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.”[6] Nevertheless, the practice was fairly common in the Greco-Roman world.[7]
The more common practice was for the woman to hide her pregnancy, which was not as hard for many as it sounds as women lived very restricted lives, rarely leaving their houses, and give birth and then get rid of the child. The preferred practice was called “exposure” where one would take the infant out into the woods and just leave it to die.[8] Throughout most ancient cultures, the practice of infanticide was common.[9]
Concluding Observations Regarding Sexual Norms in the Ancient World
In short, the ancient world did embrace a wide variety of sexual practices, but most of them should offend our sensibilities. The common stream throughout was that of the powerful using sexuality for their own benefit. The powerful men would use women and boys for their personal pleasure, not for companionship or real love. Rulers and the wealthy would use wives as pawns in treaties or shows of their wealth or even their benevolence. Children who were conceived that were seen as in the way were discarded, often literally left to die.
Marriage, however, remained a universal value. Adultery, along with murder and betrayal, has been universally condemned by societies. Marriage was always connected with procreation and the passing on of inheritance. Therefore, the concept of a homosexual marriage would have been a contradiction in terms. Likewise, a marriage was always between one man and one woman, with the only question being how many a man would be able to enter into at the same time.
The next part of this series will look at how Christianity changed sexual norms.
[1] The most popular attempt at this is: Riane Tennenhaus Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (New York: Harper, 1995).
[2] Plutarch, “The Life of Lycurgus,” trans. John Dryden, Lycurgus, n.d., http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/lycurgus.html.
[3] Alvin J. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 85–86.
[4] T. G. Tucker, Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 292.
[5] Schmidt, Under the Influence, 85–90.
[6] Practo, “The Hippocratic Oath: The Original and Revised Version,” The Practo Blog for Doctors, 10 March 2015, https://doctors.practo.com/the-hippocratic-oath-the-original-and-revised-version/. It is a curious commentary on our society that after millennia of this oath guiding the practice of physicians that in 1964 Dr. Louis Lasagna revised the oath to remove this and many medical schools have abandoned the oath entirely!
[7] Schmidt, Under the Influence, 55–57.
[8] Schmidt, Under the Influence, 52–53.
[9] Schmidt, Under the Influence, 49–50.