Koveras
Joined: 09 Oct 2008
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 Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 8:08 am Post subject: |
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| JMO wrote: |
| Koveras wrote: |
| JMO wrote: |
| Koveras wrote: |
| Well, this is a minefield of a topic, and I'm not qualified to give the question the treatment it deserves. In a general way, I'd define the decadent period as beginning with the civil wars, crescendoing through Nero, then wobbling and worsening until the rise of Stoicism and Christianity, which together rescued and revitalized much of Roman civilization. I realize how ridiculous it is to summarize everything in a sentence, but that's all I have the time and desire to do. |
Well if you start the 'decadent period' with Marius modernising the military and making the legions the deciding force in the empire more or less, and end with Constantine then you have a period of almost 400 years. Its hard to discount a period so long as being atypical of Roman culture. This period was also when Rome's power was at its highest with some fluctuations. |
That's a good point. Then again, I wasn't saying that what might be called homosexual tolerance was precisely co-extensive with the period of Roman decadence; it was in fact shorter, and also sporadic. |
Maybe not generally tolerated but Gibbons did say that Claudius was the only fully straight emperor. Maybe it was just an upper class thing. |
I don't really know if it was just an upper class thing. St. Paul in the 1st C. AD thought that sexual immorality was widespread. In Lex Scantinia and Lex Iulia, we can see as well that the emperors were (hypocritically?) concerned with public sexual morality. |
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