afaik the deal with rome is that it was really specifically that powerful men were expected to have twinks to “mentor”, sexually dominating another man showed that you were powerful, and being dominated did much the opposite. Being a lesbian seems to have just been strange to them although i don’t recall hearing of it being illegal or anything.
in general a lot of our ideas of identity and sexuality are quite modern and in the past it depended WAY more on where specifically you were and what social class you belonged to. Like why would anyone give a shit what some rural people do in their bedroom? the only ones who are likely to give even the slightest shit about that are their fellow villagers and they’re probably gonna actually care about them being happy.
As far as I’m aware there were only a few instances mentioned of older men having sexual relationships with young boys and they were looked on with disgust from the population and even other elites.
As for villagers being gay I think they were treated really badly because religion and having children was really important back then.
afaik the deal with rome is that it was really specifically that powerful men were expected to have twinks to “mentor”, sexually dominating another man showed that you were powerful, and being dominated did much the opposite. Being a lesbian seems to have just been strange to them although i don’t recall hearing of it being illegal or anything.
in general a lot of our ideas of identity and sexuality are quite modern and in the past it depended WAY more on where specifically you were and what social class you belonged to. Like why would anyone give a shit what some rural people do in their bedroom? the only ones who are likely to give even the slightest shit about that are their fellow villagers and they’re probably gonna actually care about them being happy.
As far as I’m aware there were only a few instances mentioned of older men having sexual relationships with young boys and they were looked on with disgust from the population and even other elites.
As for villagers being gay I think they were treated really badly because religion and having children was really important back then.