![75 loads gay twitter 75 loads gay twitter](https://fournews-assets-prod-s3-ew1-nmprod.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2012/05/22_gay_w.jpg)
To have consensual anal sex with a freeborn man (someone not born into slavery) was even criminalised – but it was the passive person who would be prosecuted, rather than the “active” man. To get around the idea, the Romans saw the penetrated person (women and enslaved, younger males) as of a “lower social status”. Seeing the world – and women – as things to be conquered and ruled, ‘authentic’ men were considered to be “impenetrable predators”. The Romans were more hardline in their views and had a similar workaround. The ways men could avoid being perceived as passive was to be “active” outside of the bedroom, such as by marrying and procreating – men could still receive and be considered manly men, Oatley said, as long as they married and reproduced. In other words, the act of bottoming itself wasn’t strictly considered non-masculine – being passive was. “What was immoral for the Greeks was not bottoming but being passive in your pleasures,” Oatley continued. There was, however, a lot of nuances within the stigma. Some men would even practice intercrural sex (between the thighs) to avoid being penetrated and therefore feminised.
![75 loads gay twitter 75 loads gay twitter](https://fournews-assets-prod-s3-ew1-nmprod.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2014/06/17_george1_w.jpg)
The meaning of erômenos is passive (one who is sexually desired) while erastês is active (to sexually desire). “To be penetrated was to be placed within the inferior and feminising position,” Oatley explained. You can see the power play even in the words themselves. Their ‘tops’, meanwhile, were typically older, bearded men called “erastês”. The closest thing in Ancient Greek culture to the modern bottom was the “erômenos,” Oatley said, an adolescent male who couldn’t grow a beard. (Getty/ Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Archaeological Museum/ DeAgostini) “Sexual acts were a zero-sum game – the person penetrating always won.” Symposium scene, circa 480-490 BC, decorative fresco from the north wall of the Tomb of the Diver at Paestum, Campania, Italy. “The person to penetrate was dominant, the person to be penetrated was submissive. “Positionality and power are two key concepts that defined ancient understandings of same-sex relations,” he added. “Same-sex relations were both legally and culturally accepted, and commonly engaged in within Ancient Greek and Roman societies,” Oatley told PinkNews.