A Boy's Perspective

My name is Marcus and I am a young male in Ancient Rome. Sexuality in Rome is complicated for us young males. In the elite class, we have slaves that play the passive role in sex with us. They have clean shaven bodies and we call them cinaedi. This is what you were referring to Caecilius in your post, but the reason we don’t understand the free men that take a passive role is because they are doing something that only a slave is good for.  Everybody knows that we young males engage in sex with a cinaedus as the active partner, but the adults turn a blind eye. I think they do so because there is no harm done in penetrating a slave since the slave will always be passive. Other than that, adults do not want us having sex because they think that excessive stimulation will hasten our maturity and they think it is unhealthy and enervating. The adults are also worried that we will be pushed into taking the passive role in sex which will disgrace us and turn us into viri. That being said, sexual activity makes us more admirable to some of the older males in society– especially those of us who are well endowed. If a young male is well endowed, sometimes he will skip the sex with his slave and will test his luck at the baths because he knows everyone will be admiring him. This is pretty typical since Roman men often find themselves attracted to not only women, but also young males. Since sex is discouraged for young males, but it is clearly available to them, there are many rules that exist to control it. As a school boy, I am not to trust my male teachers and my parents want me to be chaste. As I said before these rules exist throughout our boyhood until we become men to protect our honor. In Ancient Rome, there is a firm line drawn between the status of being a boy and being a man. To become a man, a boy’s genitalia are inspected among other things. If he passes the tests of manhood, he turns in his bulla and gets a toga. Also, by the time a boy has become a man and gets married, he ditches his clean shaven slave boy for his wife. I am excited for that day to come, but until then I will have to have sex with my cinaedus.