Sex Lives of the Roman Emperors [Hardcover]

This book is not for those who believe in what you see today on TV and in Films like "The Gladiator", "Spartacus", "Rome" etc. Having read a number of books on Roman history this one by Nigel Cawthorne has made me reevaluate almost all of them.

The Book is supposed to be about sex but there is at least as much information about torture and murder as there is about sex. In fact there is so much about torture that I sometimes had to stop and think about how it was possible to even come up with all those methods to kill all those humans.

Nigel Cawthorne writes in a typical British way with a large amount of dry humor (one example: "Astrologers were flogged and banished - I bet they didn't see that coming") that makes it all a little more easy to take in. He has no personal views on what he is describing and leaves it up to the reader to decide how to process all this information. It is probably the only way to approach this subject and finish the book project instead of being bogged down in the process of putting it all into some sort of perspective.

To my amazement there is a lot of detail available on the subject and this book is packed with information. I will never be able to see another film about gladiators fighting it out in the arena without remembering that the real action took place in the stands instead of on the floor.

One aspect that makes you wonder how far we are from these people that lived almost two thousand years before is the subject of homo- and bisexuality. If this book is to be believed almost every male in the upper classes in Rome were homo- or bisexual. Today we know that about 4 % of the male population is homosexual and most research points to the fact that this is something that you are born with. It is in the DNA. The Question is, did the Romans have a different DNA?

Another thing that makes you think about difference is the level and amount of torture that took place and apparently with full acceptance of the population. Again, different DNA? The Roman emperors makes Josef Stalin look like a soft teddy bear in his attempt to torment his people. Also, what the Romans did to children makes you think about that DNA again.

This book was a real eye opener. If you are interested in the Roman empire and skip this one you will always be handicapped in your interpretation of what took place during that period. Also, there is a lot of information in this one that will make you the center of the party next time when you "BTW did you know..."

Why not five stars? Two reasons. First of all Cawthorne loves to sprinkle Latin into the text. Unfortunately he does not translate this so a lot of his comments are impossible to understand. Someone should have helped him to understand this on the way to the printers. The Other thing is that there is no information or discussion about the level of Venereal Disease. With the amount of sex described in this book and the number of partners they had, VD must have been a big issue. It is the back side of sex and should have been discussed.

Any book with a title like this is not aimed primarily at Oxford graduates, yet time and again, Cawthorne pretentiously uses Latin and doesn't bother to translate. Like Nigel Cawthorne's web site, this practice is all about trying to show how clever he is. If it was just common phrases, he might be forgiven, but when Cawthorne is quoting obscure Roman commentators, the average reader has no chance of understanding or inferring the meaning.

That one major criticism aside, the book is not too bad. Unlike Stephen Barber's salacious, and monstrously inaccurate work Caligula: Divine Carnage, in which Barber goes on what appear to be deviant sexual journeys of personal fantasy, one does not get the feeling with Sex Lives, that Cawthorne had his pen in one hand and his penis in the other. It's moderately restrained, and almost seems schizophrenic, mostly talking in scholarly but usually unpretentious language about the historical facts, but then occasionally slipping into schoolyard expressions like "shagging" and "nookie".

It very much depends what you are looking for. I bought Barber's book because I was interested in all the sordid details, but it was so clearly written to arouse the degenerate mind, that it was almost unreadable. Sex Lives has been titled to tittilate, but written to educate, and I actually find it a more interesting insight into the Roman culture. Both books spend much time talking about the pedaristic homosexual practices of most emperors, but whereas Barber almost writes with a tone of longing, like a person who was not invited to a really popular party, Cawthorne writes with a kind of non-judgemental, neutral detatchment that enables you to see a wider scope.

I particularly like the way that he quotes multiple commentators and observers from the times, as well as works by the emperors themselves. Unlike Barber, he keeps ridiculous and lewd conjecture to a minimum, theorising only around what the facts suggest, and making it clear when he is doing so.

The problem with this subject matter, is that if Cawthorne got too close to the practices of the emperors, it would almost have transformed the reader from interested observer, to aroused voyeur (which is perhaps what the book's title implies it will deliver). As a result, he sometimes runs short on detail, and pads the book with wider Roman history and politics. This does still have relevance to the relationships the emperors had, but it leaves one wanting to know more either about precisely what the emperors did, or about the other characters, many of whom were more interesting.

Overall, this is a fair read that (sometimes too carefully) walks the line between crudeness and political correctness.