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LGBTQ history in Italy

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Through Mesolithic and Bisexuality

BCE

  • 5th millennium BC - Examples of homosexual eroticism in Upper Paleolithic or Mesolithic European art in Sicily. In Addaura incision is a group of people dancing around two men, both with erections, possibly indicating a homoerotic ritual.
  • 530 BC – One of the earliest examples of Etruscan art on homosexuality, found in 1892 in the Necropolis of Monterozzi near Tarquinia. The painting, situated in what has been called the Tomb of the Bulls (Italian: Tomba dei Tori), depicts on the right a bull with a man's face (Acheloos) and an erect phallus that is aggressively approaching two men having sexual intercourse. On the left, another bull is turned around, as though indifferent, in front of men and women having sexual intercourse. The women are consistently depicted in light tones, while the men are brown. Under the frieze is Achilles (on the left) waylaying Troilus. This representation is the only one in archaic Tarquinian parietal painting representing a scene derived from Greek mythology; it used the legend about the bisexuality of Achilles to demonstrate that, among the Greeks, same-sex love was a common and ordinary fact. This shows how, even then, homosexuality could be a worthwhile topic in the conflict between populations. Below is the tree of life, full of leaves, linked by the sash of life with the skeletal tree of death, with the black festoon of death hanging from a branch. The onomastic inscription in the centre of the upper frieze names he who probably was the owner of the tomb: Aranth Suprianas.
  • 470 BC – An important example is the "Tomb of the Diver" in Paestum, in particular the painted scene of the Symposium.

600 BC – 1 BC

  • 509 BC – The Roman Republic is founded. Homosexuality, as in Greece, is widespread and legalized throughout the Roman heyday, from the Republic to the Empire (see Homosexuality in ancient Rome).
  • 149 BC – The Lex Scantinia, a Roman law, regulates homosexuality for the first time on record. According to the law, homosexuality should be denied between freeborn adult males and for the youth of noble families not to participate in male prostitution. It is also probable that such a law was meant to prevent the possibility of a noble-born man becoming subject to sodomy by a slave.

1st century BC

  • 100 BC – 100 AD – Found in the Terme suburbane of Pompei is the only representation of a lesbian scene surviving from the Roman era, and also a fresco of triple intercourse between men.
  • 80 BC – Julius Caesar allegedly has a love affair with king Nicomedes IV of Bithynia.
  • 57 BC – 54 BC – Catullus writes the Carmina, including love poems to Giovenzio, boasting of sexual prowess with youth and including violent invective against passive sodomites.
  • 42 BC – 39 BC – Virgil writes the Eclogæ vel Bucolica, with many references to homosexual love and relationship.
  • 27 BC – The Roman Empire begins with the reign of Augustus. The first recorded same-sex marriages occur during this period.
  • 26, 25, and 18 BC – Tibullus writes the Carmina, with references to homosexuality.

Romans, like Greeks, tolerated love and sex among men. Two Roman Emperors publicly married men, some had gay lovers themselves, and homosexual prostitution was taxed. However, like the Greeks, passivity and effeminacy were not tolerated, and an adult male freeborn Roman could lose his citizen status if caught performing fellatio or being penetrated.

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