What would you do if you were the most important man in the world? Would you fill your palaces with nubile young women? Or perhaps pretty young men? Or possibly both? Well, that's exactly what Roman emperors did. No one was surprised. Rome was founded on a series of rapes. The city was full of brothels catering to all tastes. There was sex in the theatre, in the arena and in the baths. Roman legions were even led into battle by topless totty on horseback. Victories were celebrated by sexual practices unknown today. Then there were the extravagant orgies.
Emperors fought wars to sleep with a lover – or in the case of Augustus not to sleep with one. Julius Caesar swung both ways. Tiberius, Caligula and Nero were even more promiscuous than they have been painted. Claudius was comprehensively cuckolded by his wives. Hadrian of wall fame was gay and Elagabalus combined rampant sex with religion.
Sex Lives Of The Roman Emperors takes you emperor by emperor, through the entire sexual history of ancient Rome, its mores and its literature, and lays bare, if not the heart, other organs of the civilisation that laid the foundations of our own.
