A History of Orgies

Burgo Partridge

• Editorial: Muriwai Books
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787207479
• Categoría: Geschichte
• Categoría: Geschichte der ägyptischen Antike

An orgy, the dictionary tells us, is "a wild gathering, marked by promiscuous sexual activity, excessive drinking, etc." Burgo Partridge tells us precisely what that has meant down through the ages. He begins with the Greeks, who celebrated sexuality at Dionysian festivals, and the Romans, who imported unwholesome brutalities into their orgiastic celebrations. We then learn of the penchant for group sex displayed by medieval popes, the junketings of Restoration England, the aristocratic hedonists of the Hellfire Club and Scotland's notorious Wig Club, the orgiastic tastes of Casanova and the Marquis de Sade, right into the 20th century and the bizarre excesses of Aleister Crowley.

TWO—THE ROMANS

NO greater difference can be imagined than that which existed between the philosophy of life of the Romans and that of the Greeks, judged by the knowledge that we have of the ordinary people of the two civilizations.

In his everyday life the Greek, as we have seen, displayed an unmistakable zest for life which was accompanied by grace, style and understanding in and for the art of living: in the eating of his food, the wearing of his clothes and in the control of his sexuality. One of the first impressions that one receives in reading about this aspect of the lives of the two peoples is that the Greeks controlled their sexuality, but that the sexuality of the Romans became their master, that they abandoned themselves to this master, and that he destroyed them as they had foreseen and partially intended.

Greek sexual life was extraordinarily free from perversions. (I exclude homosexuality from this category, since it does not arise from a mistaken concept of sexuality.) One of the surest signs of the presence or absence of disease in the sexual life of a civilization is to be found in its literature, and by this standard the Romans stand condemned, just as the Greeks pass the test as well as, if not better than, any modern nation. This, like any other ethical judgement is essentially subjective not objective, but much of the unhappiness resulting from sexuality appears to me to be only caused by a partial and possibly unconscious renunciation of sexual activity, therefore I do not think that sexuality can justifiably be regarded in any measure a possible cause of misery but rather as a cause of happiness.

The literature of the Greeks contains many references to homosexual love, but, as we have seen, this love is always idealized, admired and mystified: the whole Greek attitude indicated an appreciation of and admiration for the possibilities of purely sensual delights, undefiled by the heresy that it is impossible to mix intellectual and physical pleasures, which leads inevitably and undesirably to the sacrifice of one to the other.

When we look at the literature of the Romans we see something different. It is not as obvious as one might expect, but it is there, nevertheless, an obsession with cruelty, more important, an attitude towards cruelty, which is to be seen nowhere in the literature of the Hellenics. That this presence was reflected in actual life, everyone is aware. I am fairly convinced in my own mind as to the cause of this phenomenon, and if I am right, this cause is exceedingly relevant to an examination of the ways in which the Romans sought their pleasures, and why, as I shall try to show, they failed. First, I want to demonstrate the quite amazing extent to which the thanatic instincts came to make themselves felt in the life of the people.

The Greeks, of course, like everybody else, had feelings of aggressiveness and sadistic desires, but the word ‘sadism’ is in fact here singularly inappropriate, for the whole essence of the Greek attitude towards these instincts was its complete freedom from morbidity. Orgiastic festivals such as the Dionysia served not only as a means of achieving the ‘theolepsy’ already described, but also served, as I have said, as a safety-valve to thanatic as well as erotic instincts.

This latter (the safety-valve) is the true function of the orgy, the notion of theolepsy being a romanticized explanation by semi-primitive man of things which he did not lucidly comprehend.

Many people will not admit to their sadistic instincts, others become completely fascinated by them. In this fact lies one of the dangers of the orgy if it is used by people who do not understand its nature. The Romans were such a people.

There are those who find it incredible that individuals derive actual pleasure, pleasure of an erotic origin, from the contemplation of suffering. That there are, or at any rate were, people who derive pleasure from contemplating actual death, with or without torture, is more incredible but unfortunately still less capable of being rejected on the grounds of subjective incomprehensibility.

According to Rosenbaum large numbers of prostitutes (History of Syphilis) used to assemble in brothels near the Circus Maximus, for the purpose of intercepting as they returned from the games, men who had been raised to a high pitch of sexual excitement by the gladiatorial shows, the mutilations by and of wild animals, and all the other obsessional insanities of the arena. One of the most prominent, repellent and characteristic features of these ceremonies was the organization, the high degree of ritual with which they were performed. It is this, the elaboration, the planning, the constant devising of new implements of torture, the odious ceremony, which brands the Romans as perverts. Into every newly invented mode of execution, into every torture was always brought one feature, the flogging of the victim or of the condemned man. It was not enough to be killed. Death was nothing, a mere negation, there must be positive pain first. ‘Strike so that he feels he is dying,’ said Caligula, and although it may be thought unfair to quote the words of an epileptic and a lunatic, history shows with hideous but fascinating clarity that in his time Caligula’s outlook was not confined to one man, or even to a small circle. Everywhere we look we find the same thing. Roman society was based on slaves and these slaves were treated abominably, not only by their masters but by their mistresses as well; nor can this cruelty be explained away on the grounds of necessity, the different humanitarian conventions of past ages, or by anything else other than the simple and interesting truth. Juvenal attacks the sadism of women.

But you should know what Everywoman does

at home all day. Suppose her husband turns

his back to her in bed. God help the housemaid!

The lady’s maids are stripped, the coachman’s thrashed

for being late (punished because another slept)

rods are broken, bleeding backs are scourged

and lashed: some women keep a private flogger.

She scourges while her face is made up, talks

to her friends, examines a gold-braided frock

and thrashes, reads the daily paper through

and thrashes, til the thrasher tires, and she

screams GO NOW, and the inquisition’s over.

She rules her home more savagely than a tyrant.

Has she an assignation, wants to look

more beautiful than usual, quick, he’s waiting

under the trees, or in Queen Isis’ brothel,

poor Psecas combs the mistress’s hair, her own

tattered, with naked shoulders and bare breasts

“This curl’s too high.” At once the oxhide thong

lashes the wretch, her crime was a coiffure.

Juvenal’s account is not without its sexual undertones.

In seeking the cause of a feature so prominent in a society, one naturally examines the system of education. Here, as elsewhere, we find the same old story, the frequent and severe floggings, the indoctrination in aggressive manhood which, as in the situation which was to echo it two thousand years later, could only lead to eventual misery for all concerned. But it is to be questioned whether these elements in Roman and German education should be accepted as causes or whether they are not rather a mere result, a symptom of the original disease.

The cruelty of the games and the luxuriance of private individuals increased as military activity declined. For many years the Romans had indulged in cruelty and violence more or less incidental to their ultimate aims. When the need ceased, they found that none the less they could not break themselves of the habit. What had started as something non-sexual had become by stealth based in eroticism. This is a process which can be, and has been, observed elsewhere, particularly in the case of religious cults. The sexual instinct is very strong, the capacities of the human mind for creating sexual symbolism unlimited. Small wonder then if eroticism is so pervasive. Every human being is to some extent polymorphically perverse, the seeds of many perversions lie in all of us, and of these seeds none responds so easily to fertilization as those of sadism and masochism. The sadism of the games undoubtedly aroused an echo in the hearts of many. Augustine tells the following story:

A young Christian was living in Rome as a student. He had long avoided the amphitheatre, but was at last taken to visit it by friends. He told them that they could drag his body there but not his soul, for he would sit with his eyes closed, and so be really absent. This he did, but a great shout induced him to open his eyes in curiosity. Then his soul was stricken more sorely than the bodies of those he yearned to see, and his fall was more lamentable than that which had caused the shout. For with the sight of blood he absorbed a lust for cruelty; he could not turn away; his gaze grew fixed; he was drunk with the lust for blood. Why should I say more? He looked, his blood burned, and he took away with him a madness which goaded him to return again.’

Behind the sado-masochistic idea lies an equation of violence and copulation. This implies various preliminary ideas. First that in sex there exists something foul and criminal, second, following on from this, that the active participants are committing an offence on the passive. Following this will come the impulse-desire towards retribution.

The possessor of either of these perversions has, at some level of his consciousness, gone astray. Either he has, by a tortuous and mistaken process of subconscious thinking, decided that he must sacrifice his sexuality to save his conscience and the people with whom he comes in contact. Or, in the case of the sadist, he will be tortured by a well-founded guilt.

This is what I believe happened in the case of Imperial Rome. Because the Romans behaved brutally it does not follow, and indeed would be the greatest possible error to conclude, that they were basically and entirely brutal men. Nobody is an entirely straightforward character, nobody is entirely free from animal instincts, but nobody is completely an animal, and nobody who is not an animal can be completely free from conscience.

Roman society was balanced on a society of slaves. It was built on a debt which the slave-masters owed to the slaves, which they might pretend not to recognize, which they might attempt to adjust within themselves, but which would be a potential and constant danger to their peace of mind.

This is not fanciful Freudian speculation. An examination of the pleasures of the Romans will reveal many of the characteristics of the obsessional gambler, who acts ostensibly in the hopes of winning, but whose behaviour indicates that he is also attracted by the notion that he may lose, and who extracts his pleasure largely from this element of danger to himself. This characteristic appears again and again in Roman activities. The Romans were not Hedonists, no matter how passionately they were addicted to luxury, because it must have been obvious to them, as to their posterity, that what they were doing contained an element of the suicidal, and was bound to defeat its own ends. The Hedonist is not necessarily betraying his philosophy by buying present happiness at the price of future misery, unless in the back of his mind he uses ‘buy’ as we say of a criminal released from jail that he has ‘paid’ for what he has done. Too often this confusion is made.

So far the picture painted is gloomy enough, it is an accurate representation, but not all the Romans were practising sadists. Apart from the individual exceptions to any rule, there were plenty of aspects of Roman life where the dominating preoccupation of the race lay quiescent, although strangely enough it is some of these which have received the brunt of the abuse showered on the ‘decadent’ Roman state.

Sadomasochism represents one misconception of the nature of sexuality, religion represents another, as we have seen in the case of the Greeks. Perhaps this is not quite accurate. Sadism represents a misconception, religion an idealization. Both are inferior to an acceptance of sex at its face value, but the latter is infinitely preferable to the former. One represents defeat, the other a compromise. One can cause infinite harm, the other little.

Nearly all the Roman deities connected with sexual life, whether imported or indigenous, rapidly became discoloured by the character of their human progenitors.

Venus, theoretically the goddess of love, appears in Roman life in several different, almost irreconcilable forms. She was the guardian of honourable marriage, her worship being celebrated by the matronae, the mothers of families. But this impression of her character, as being essentially unconnected with pure lust, is set at naught by the discovery that she was also the patron of meretrices—of harlots. Thirdly, and possibly most significantly, she was in some way the mother of the Roman nation. (In view of the fact that the symbol of the Roman state was the fasces, this connexion between the nation and the erotic instinct is, to say the least, interesting.) Confusing us still further, Venus appears a fourth time as Venus Verticordia, the turner of hearts (from licentiousness). The worship of this form of the deity originated in 114 B.C. when three Vestal Virgins were condemned to death for disobeying the laws against sexual intercourse. It is difficult to make much of this confusing goddess, whose different forms were all celebrated at different festivals. The patroness of harlots, called Volgivaga, or street-walker, had her festival on 23 April, according to Ovid, who, unfortunately, does not particularize. The whole worship of Venus shows the capacity of the Ancients for transforming into the form of cults, many subjects which to modern minds are quite unsuited to deification.

The worship of a deity known as Fortuna Virilis, said by some to be connected with Venus, and worshipped by women of the poorer classes in the men’s baths, and the naive explanation that ‘there, those parts of the male body are uncovered which seek women’s favour’ display the same rather Hellenic attitude.

The god Liber, at any rate in his origin, was a comparatively straightforward fertility god. In various parts of Italy he was honoured by Phallic cults. In these a large wooden phallus was ceremoniously carried on a cart through the city and fields, finally being crowned by a matron. The Romans may or may not have originally conceived him as being unconnected with any fertility other than that of the soil, the symbolism was obvious and convenient, and another element soon began to creep in. Augustine refers to these ceremonies:

‘Varro says among other things that the rites of Liber were celebrated at the crossroads in Italy so immodestly and licentiously that the male genitals were worshipped in honour of the god...and this not with any modest secrecy but with open and exulting depravity. That shameful part of the body was, during the festival of Liber, placed with great pomp on wagons and carried about to the crossroads in the country, and at last into the city. In the town of Lanuvium, a whole month was dedicated to Liber. During it all the citizens used the most disgraceful words until the phallus had been carried across the market place and put to rest again. It was necessary that the most honourable of the matrons should publicly place a wreath on that disgraceful effigy. The god Liber had to be propitiated to ensure the future of the crops, and the evil eye had to be repelled from the fields by compelling a married woman to do in public, that which not even a harlot might do under the eyes of married women in a theatre.’

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