Explanation: When we reflect on Ancient Rome in modern day fiction, we often see it in epic terms. Even when comedic, it often involves reflection on questions of morality and integrity, sometimes unresolvable questions.
… but when fiction written in Ancient Rome wasn’t being annoyingly moralistic, it was a wild, alien, and often intensely petty ride! Novels of men who travel to the moon by accident, comedies of errors about rescuing one’s love from bandits, poems about how straight you are and how you’ll sexually assault your male critics for asserting otherwise, toilet humor, erotically-charged sexventures through upper-class society, idle chatter in the baths, heart-thumping tales of the supernatural, and constant arguing over whether sex with men or women is more satisfying (from a male point of view - women were rarely asked).
… perhaps related, the Romans regarded satire as the art form they did better than the Greeks (whom Romans regarded as masters of drama and tragedy), and the period of the Late Republic and Roman Empire saw satire flourish even in the provinces.
Can anyone recommend a website/book with examples of the more wild classical Roman stories? It sounds like some of them were a hoot, but I’m not keen on digging through the boring “normal” stories to find them.
I can definitely recommend a few! Wiki has links to several versions at the bottom, in ‘external links’, of each work. Finding a good translation is often a matter of taste, and you can definitely find other, often better translations if you’ve a mind to search for them.
Fair warning - the Romans were not shy in the least about humor that we would regard as bawdy, cruel, or outright immoral, including bestiality and rape. It… gives the internet a run for its money at points, and doesn’t always land with modern sensibilities of humor. You should go in prepared for the worst. I love ancient literature, but I also wouldn’t want to send someone in unsuspecting, you know?
Verae Historiae is a proto-science-fiction tale that makes fun of mythology and out-there travelogues, by claiming to be the only TRUE such tale… because it’s the only tale that admits it’s a total lie. The protagonist visits the moon, amongst other places, and it’s full of all sorts of fun weirdness of a kind of speculative fiction sort of way, making up how the people in extreme and exotic places make war, how they look, their customs and values… it’s real neat, I love it. The least offensive of the lot, and also the most absurd by far.
Catullus 16 is the poem referenced about sexually assaulting one’s male critics for claiming the poet isn’t manly enough! It’s pretty hilarious, honestly, and very short, I highly recommend it!
Lover of Lies is a good chunk of humorous supernatural ribbing in the satirical tradition.
Leucippe and Clitophon is the comedy about love and bandits. It’s pretty fun and silly, by Classical standards!
The Golden Ass is a pretty… folklore-ish novel about all sorts of bizarre supernatural happenstance, 1001 Arabian Nights style. The protagonist is curious about magic, and turns himself into a donkey, and hijinks ensue - some quite… lurid, including bestiality. It’s particularly interesting in that much of it centers around lower-class (relatively speaking) Romans and provincials, the tales they tell each other and how they treat one another (and their unlucky donkey!)
The Satyricon is about a man (how old is uncertain, but implied to be 20s or 30s) and his 16-year old boytoy carousing around upper-class urban society, getting into risqué situations filled with violations of social norms, grotesque indulgence of appetites, and un/lucky coincidences, generally of a humorous (or meant to be humorous) sort. While genuinely funny at times, it also dips into the horrifying by modern sensibilities - early on, the 16 year-old boytoy is forced (by a brothel madam who has captured both him and the narrator against their will) to have sex with a 7 year-old girl. The narrator objects on account of her age, but is shushed by the brothel madam who asserts she was that age when she lost her virginity. And then they all watch through the keyhole.
Like I said, be prepared for the worst. That one’s probably the worst, at least of what I remember.
Any of the plays of Plautus or Terentius also give a good view of Roman wildness and humor. “Oh, he likes the bearded ones!”
I asked for some leads, and PugJesus dropped a whole-ass library on me.
Your body is a machine that takes ancient knowledge and generates memes. Thank you for your service.
Well, takes ancient knowledge and scavenges memes, at least! I rarely make the memes, just the explanations (unless noted as from the original OP)!
But thank you all the same, a humble reposter lives to entertain! 🙏
You find all these memes? Oh wow.
The ancient Roman’s wrote some HORNY stuff. Historians believe that this is due to the fact that the authors were horny.
It soothes my heart that the modern internet isn’t just thinking about the Roman empire, they’re actively living it in the form of hornyposting.
“Ha ha oh noooo these strange foreign priestesses are going to penetrate me and my boyfriend with dildos, how horrible!” - Some Roman writer with one hand under his tunic
