Le thème de la bouche souillée par le sexe oral à la fin de la République romaine et au début de l’Empire

Abstract

In some texts written at the end of the Republic and at the beginning of the Empire, we read that some people had an impure mouth, because of their practice of oral sex. This impurity was the result, not of the rape of the mouth, the irrumatio evoked in our oldest sources (Plautus, Terentius), but of a voluntary practice, from prominent people, whom the authors of our sources blamed for submitting themselves to an excessive research of pleasure. Oral sex caused a stain because it contradicted ideal virile behaviour. This explains why it was rarely envisaged as feminine behavior, except in a few marginal cases at the end of the Republic.