Cunnos habere duos. Anal penetration as a sexual practice in Martial's Rome

Abstract

In the following essay we’ll study the epigram XI, 43 of Marcus Valerius Martialis, roman poet from the first century CE, where we’ll find clear references, on a first level, to the sodomization or anal penetration, erotic practice that can be only executed by the dominus (master of the house) and his puer (slave), but forbidden to the uxor (wife). We’ll argue how this reading from the sexual world is crossed by a reading from the political, social and cultural world.
On a second level, we’ll find elements that belong to the mythical tradition, operating in the epigram as poetic resources with double purpose: create the needed tension that culminates in the fulmen in clausula, that means, the acid core, ironic and loaded with poison, where hides what the poet doesn’t want to say explicitly (Adams, 1975); but also, become subverted exempla, that means, exemplary mythical altered models that assist to legitimize anal penetration as an erotic regularized practice in Rome in first century CE.
In this way, we’ll not only recognize in the Martial’s figure a poet that knows, choose and use his mythical-literary tradition with artfulness, but also a roman man that analize, with a critical and, in the words of Cardoso de Oliveira (1996), “disciplined” look, the people and the society that surround him.