[Most Likely NSFW] - How did sex orgies in Ancient Rome differ from contemporary sex orgies? (Aside from the loud music)

Slave girls, slave boys, and there was a lot more food.

Google “Nero debauchery” for a prime example. Under his regime, anything went. There was plenty of loud music but on the lyre, flute, horns and drums rather than electric guitars.

Nero was a firm believer in equal-opportunity carnality and slept with everyone, including (it is rumored) his sister (before he murdered her).

The participants rarely hid their excesses under the label of religious rites.

The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius.

“Suetonius’ explicit depictions of Nero’s sexual exploits border – some will argue transcend – the pornographic. In older translations of the work, parts of the life of Nero are either deleted, asterisks mark off the censored passages, or they are left in the original (a practice which induced many a schoolboy to improve his Latin). Generally speaking, Suetonius’ history can be described as very lascivious, gossipy, filled with great story telling, and, often, downright funny.”

There were also the Dionysian mysteries. But that was different.

There was actually a lot more debauchery going on in Roman Times than in modern day orgies. Men, women, children of either sex, an occasional animal. Read up on Caligula. And they had no qualms about relatives or if it resulted in someone’s death.

As far as I’m aware, the housewives were not invited. At the least, this was true in Greece. Greek women (often considerably younger than their husbands – to the tune of 15–20 years commonly) had to make do with pleasuring each other or themselves. There’s some very interesting pottery portraying female masturbation and all its accompanying accoutrements.

Watch or read “I, Claudius” for some nasty Roman shenanigans.

Spent minutes wondering about this and came up with…no condoms?

@mazingerz88 Don’t need them if you’re screwing slaves or young boys.

My slaves fed me the choicest grapes then.

No worries about AIDS, but plenty of worries about bacterial STDs.

^^^Plus having your head cut off, being torn limb from limb and everyone’s favorite, being poisoned. It is alleged that Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar, injected poison into a fig still hanging on the tree. In spite of Augustus’s paronoia (justified as it turned out), he watched her pluck the fig and feed it to him. Ave atque vale, as they say.

Many of the court of Nero, Caligulia and others of their ilk were persuaded to commit suicide in place of something nastier.

@gailcalled Don’t eat the figs.

Not on today’s menu, as it happens.

@gailcalled That Nero certainly lived by the tenet of ‘anything goes’! What an evil man, but I don’t suppose he was any worse than many others.
I reckon that modern day orgies would be a lot less debauched, no, deadly. Well, I hope they would be as think of the paperwork involved in any police investigations started by the neighbours.