Roman Sexuality: Images, Myths, and Meanings
The University of Nottingham, 14 January – 10 April 2011

This exhibition at the University of Nottingham’s Weston Gallery brought together a varied collection of Roman artefacts sharing one common feature: they all depict scenes of a sexual nature. The guest star of the collection was the Warren Cup, a 1st century AD silver drinking vessel that gained notoriety as the most expensive acquisition to date when it was purchased by the British Museum in 1999. Because it depicts two pairs of male lovers, the museum delayed their acquisition of the piece for years over concerns that it could be seen as morally objectionable. There is more than a little irony in the thought that as an expensive piece of dinnerware this was an object made originally for display, not concealment. The story of the Warren Cup is a prime example of how Roman sexual imagery can seem deceptively familiar to the modern viewer. Sex is a fairly straightforward biological act – or so we think. Sexual images are another story. What is considered acceptable and what is considered taboo has changed so much even within our own century that it is difficult to tell which is which in ancient culture. Any discussion of sexual images therefore must begin with their role as images: who made them, who saw them, what they are for and where they are found.

I was pleasantly surprised by the care taken in the display as well as the thoughtfulness of the accompanying text. The Weston Gallery is only a single room but the space had been used to good effect in displaying the collection with adequate text to guide the visitor. Less space was devoted to discussion of the historical reception of Roman sexual images than the images themselves. The Warren Cup itself stood in a case apart and is much easier to see than in its crowded home at the British Museum. The exhibition explained that it is not the images themselves that make the Warren Cup remarkable (similar scenes have been found on Roman pottery) but the survival of such material and the quality of the workmanship.

Many of the items were quite mundane in material and function, a fact that draws attention to the two themes that reoccur when modern eyes look at Roman images. The first is the ubiquity of sexual scenes in ancient daily life. Lamps, tableware, architectural decoration, and even small personal objects depict sexuality and nudity in ways that would be excluded from general public viewing in our own society. Yet the everyday settings in which these images occurred suggests that they were not meant to be constantly titillating, and that the Roman concepts of eroticism and public decency were quite different than our own. The difference between modern and Roman representations of sexual acts and the sexual body serves as the second theme. On mass-produced objects like pottery it is easier to see a repertory of stock poses. While some of these poses focus on the display of the nude body for the benefit of the viewer they are markedly different from a modern pin-up or even from the depiction of nudes in the European art tradition.

The next question is how such scenes were interpreted by the original Roman audience. The sexual body can also be humorous and decorative as well as erotic, like the well-endowed dwarfs in figurines and embellishments. A ritual and religious aspect is also brought into play when gods are depicted in sexual situations and when phallic imagery is used as a good-luck charm. The exhibit text sometimes struggled with this distinction, insisting that some objects are “not erotic” and “not sexual.” I personally do not understand how a depiction of a sexual organ is “not sexual,” especially when its identified meaning as a religious symbol is derived from its implied fertility. This is not an interpretative flaw so much as a battle with the English language and our own cultural standards. In our contemporary society imagery labelled as “sexual” has the connotation of the taboo, prurient, and hidden. The religious and sexual meanings of a Roman phallic amulet are related, and such imagery was not considered risqué enough to be removed from public view. This quibble shows how difficult, and how important, it is to understand the difference between Roman and modern attitudes.

The only major criticism of the object-centred approach is it seemed more difficult for the non-specialist to understand what is typical for Roman art and how it relates to Roman society at large. The text cards stated several times that the images give a picture of Roman sexuality at odds with the literary evidence. What this picture is, and what kind of literary evidence was used to produce it, was never fully explained. There were missed opportunities to introduce literary references – such as the terra sigillata fragment showing a woman kissing a donkey, reminiscent of scenes in the comic fiction of Apuleius and Lucian. However, the small size of the exhibit combined with a desire to break from traditional reliance on literature to explain imagery left literature largely out of the picture, perhaps a justly corrective bias.

The variety of objects and imagery in this exhibit demonstrated clearly that there is no single meaning for depiction of sex in Roman visual art: each image must be understood in terms of its context and conventions. We may not be able to completely understand the reaction of the original Roman viewers, but recognizing that these objects are meant to be viewed is the first step.

Note: This exhibit has ended, but the webpage is still up and includes a short video interview with the curators.