Intimacy in roman times (1st-4th centuries B.C.E.)

Sexuality, the body and gender are the focus of much cultural and social debate, as well as playing a role in the spheres of politics and economics. The dialectic that currently exists around these issues can be contemporised by an examination of classical society, assuming the necessary conceptual and mental distancing and avoiding possible errors of anachronism that these subjects have recently been subjected to.

The aim of this brief presentation is to explore how erotic/sexual iconography allows us to understand sexuality in Roman times as one of the many instruments of the process of domination and acculturation undertaken by Rome in the subjugation of other peoples.

The visual culture associated with sexual relations may have contributed, in the westernmost part of the empire, to the creation of a specific discourse relating to a provincial and plural sexuality, as can be seen in other provinces of the Roman Empire.

Given the lack of studies of this nature relating to Portuguese territory, this debate is crucial to obtaining useful information for the study of regional Roman sexual identities.