Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (39 page)

Many epigrams from the
Priapea
:
The Priapus Poems: Erotic Epigrams from Ancient Rome
, trans. Richard W. Hooper (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 18–19.

Virgil… was more inclined to boys:
Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 89; Suetonius,
The Lives of the Caesars
and
The Lives of Illustrious Men
, ed. J. C. Rolfe, vol. II, Loeb Classical Library 38 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), Verg. 9.

“
I hate those embraces
”: Ovid,
The Love Books of Ovid
, trans. J. Lewis May (London: J. Lane, 1925), 150.

The emperor Claudius was:
Suetonius,
Lives of the Caesars
, Claud. 33.2.

Not everyone, however, was fair game:
Julia Haig Gaisser,
Catullus
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 12–13; Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 17–19, 103–9.

25 to 40 percent of people were slaves:
Different scholars occasionally give vastly different estimates of the number of slaves, but most estimates range from 25 to 40 percent of the population, as in Keith Hopkins,
Conquerors and Slaves
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 99–132; Peter Lampe,
Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries: From Paul to Valentinus
(London: Continuum, 2003), 172–73; Mary T. Boat-wright,
Peoples of the Roman World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 22, 25; Arthur A. Ruprecht, “Slave, Slavery,” in
Dictionary of Paul and His Letters
, ed. Gerald Hawthorne et al. (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 881–83.

special clothing, the
toga praetexta
: Judith Lynn Sebesta, “Symbolism in the Costume of the Roman Woman,” in
The World of Roman Costume
, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 46–53.

necklace called a
bulla
: Ann M. Stout, “Jewelry as a Symbol of Status in the Roman Empire,” in
The World of Roman Costume
, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 77; Oskar Seyffert,
A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities
, trans. Henry Nettleship and J. E. Sandys (New York: Macmillan, 1901), 234.

This is in direct contrast to the Greeks:
Williams Armstrong Percy,
Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996); Eva C. Keuls,
The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens
, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 274–99.

As with stereotypes
: Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 191–208; Amy Richlin, “Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the
Cinaedus
and the Roman Law Against Love Between Men,”
Journal of the History of Sexuality
3 (1993): 523–73; Rabun Taylor, “Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome,”
Journal of the History of Sexuality
7 (1997): 319–71.

“
a man who daily is adorned”:
Gellius,
Noct. Att
. 6.12.5, quoted in Richlin,
Garden of Priapus
, 93.

The most surefire way to identify:
Juvenal, “Satura IX,” The Latin Library (online), accessed October 23, 2012: 133; Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 199; Younger,
Sex in the Ancient World
, 44; Catherine Edwards,
The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 63–64; Carlin A. Barton,
The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 139.

The
cinaedus
or
catamitus
is not gay:
Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid,” 51–52; Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 218–30.

The worst insult you could throw at a Roman:
Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid,” 51–52; Swancutt, “
Still
Before Sexuality,” 40–41.

the “most sacred part of the body”:
Cicero of Gabinius, quoted in Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 219.

“
Zoilus, why are you”:
Martial,
Epigrams
, 2.42.

“
You sleep with well-endowed boys”:
Martial,
Epigrams
, 3.73.

“
They are twin brothers”:
Martial,
Epigrams
, 3.88.

What is the flip side of
cunnilingus? Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid,” 51–52.

Even the Forum of Augustus:
Barbara Kellum, “The Phallus as Signifier: The Forum of Augustus and Rituals of Masculinity,” in
Sexuality in Ancient Art
, ed. Natalie Boymel Kampen and Bettina Bergmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 170–83.

According to Freud:
Sigmund Freud,
Totem and Taboo
, trans. A. A. Brill (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1918), 30.

things that would taint a religious rite:
Richlin,
The Garden of Priapus
, 9; Celia Schultz, “Juno Sospita and Roman Insecurity in the Social War,” in
Religion in Republican Italy
, ed. Celia E. Schultz and Paul B. Harvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 207–9; Otto Kiefer,
Sexual Life in Ancient Rome
(London: Constable, 1994), 113.

There was also the mysterious Mutunus Tutunus:
Kiefer,
Sexual Life in Ancient Rome
, 109; Karen K. Hersch,
The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 269–72.

Wedding guests would sing fescennine songs:
Hersch,
The Roman Wedding
, 151–57.

an epithalamium… by Catullus
: Catullus,
Poems 61–68
, ed. and trans. John Godwin (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1995), 24–39.

the
ludi florales:
Richlin,
The Garden of Priapus
, 10; Clarke,
Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans
, 134–35.

Obscene words were thought to be magical:
Henderson,
The Maculate Muse
, 13–14; William Fitzgerald,
Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 61–64.

Victorious generals were serenaded:
Barton,
Sorrows of the Ancient Romans
, 142–43; Adams,
Latin Sexual Vocabulary
, 4.

When Julius Caesar returned to Rome:
Suetonius,
Lives
, vol. I, Caes. 49.

Some verses were even more specific:
Fitzgerald,
Catullan Provocations
, 62.

does the government still have “good reason”:
Adam Liptak, “TV Decency Is a Puzzler for Judges,”
New York Times
, January 10, 2012.

As Lenny Bruce supposedly noted
: These lines are from the Dustin Hoffman movie about Bruce,
Lenny
, quoted in Pinker,
Stuff of Thought
, 346.

Roman curses were much more elaborate:
The best introduction is John Gager,
Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

“
Malchio son/slave of Nikon”:
Henk S. Versnel, “An Essay on Anatomical Curses,”
Ansichten Griechischer Rituale
, ed. Fritz Graf (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1998), 223.

Gladiators and charioteers:
Florent Heintz, “Circus Curses and Their Archaeological Contexts,”
Journal of Roman Archaeology
11 (1998): 337–42.

On the back of Malchio’s tablet:
Versnel, “An Essay on Anatomical Curses,” 223.

the hierarchy of genres:
Adams,
Latin Sexual Vocabulary
, 2, 218–25; Michael Coffey, “The Roman Genre of Satire and Its Beginnings,”
Latin Verse Satire: An Anthology and Reader
, ed. Paul Allen Miller (New York: Routledge, 2005), 327–31.

The most taboo words:
Varone,
Erotica Pompeiana
; Rex Wallace,
An Introduction to Wall Inscriptions from Pompeii and Herculaneum
(Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005); J. A. Baird and Claire Taylor, eds.,
Ancient Graffiti in Context
(New York: Routledge, 2011).

“
Oh wall, I am amazed”:
Wallace,
An Introduction
, xxiii.

“
The goldsmiths unanimously urge”:
Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, eds.,
Roman Civilization Selected Readings: The Empire
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 2:237.

“
Dickhead recommends”:
John F. DeFelice,
Roman Hospitality: The Professional Women of Pompeii
(Warren Center, PA: Shangri-La Publications, 2001), 117.

“
Eulale, may you enjoy”:
Varone,
Erotica Pompeiana
, 164.

Since the surviving graffiti is so florid:
For a quick summary of both the “lower classes” and the “well-educated” view, see Kristina Milnor, “Literary Literacy in Roman Pompeii: The Case of Vergil’s
Aeneid
,”
Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome
, ed. William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 291–92.

“
Crescens’s member is hard”:
Varone,
Erotica Pompeiana
, 87.

But scholars who study ancient literacy:
William V. Harris,
Ancient Literacy
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 266.

Although he was a Roman citizen:
For Martial’s biography, see J. P. Sullivan,
Martial: The Unexpected Classic
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

The patron-client relationship:
Richard P. Saller,
Personal Patronage Under the Early Empire
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 119–45; Richard P. Saller, “Patronage and Friendship in Early Imperial Rome: Drawing the Distinction,”
Patronage in Ancient Society
, ed. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (London: Routledge, 1989), 49–62; Michele George, “The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga,”
Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture
, ed. Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

“
can’t please without”:
Martial,
Epigrams
, 1.35.

“
my little book”:
Ibid., 11.15.

“
my page is wanton”:
Ibid., 1.4.