LIVY ON THE OUTRAGE BY PAPIRIUS IN 326/5 BC
Titus Livius (59 BC – AD 17) was the author of by far the most substantial history of early Rome, the Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), which he began writing around 33 BC and publishing in 27 BC. Though, however, his history covered the whole history of Rome down to 9 BC, much of it is lost.
Presented here is the only Greek love episode to be found in Books I-X or the epitomes of the lost Books XI-XX, covering from before the foundation of Rome to 219 BC.
The translation is by B. O. Foster in the Loeb Classical Library volume 191 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1926).
VIII 28 i-viii
On events in the consular year 326-5 BC:
| In that year the liberty of the Roman plebs had as it were a new beginning; for men ceased to be imprisoned for debt.[1] The change in the law was occasioned by the notable lust and cruelty of a single usurer, Lucius Papirius, to whom Gaius Publilius had given himself up for a debt owed by his father. The debtor’s youth and beauty, which might well have stirred the creditor’s compassion, did but inflame his heart to lust and contumely. Regarding the lad’s youthful prime as additional compensation for the loan, he sought at first to seduce him with lewd conversation; later, finding he turned a deaf ear to the base proposal, he began to threaten him and now and again to remind him of his condition; at last, when he saw that the youth had more regard to his honourable birth than to his present plight, he had him stripped and scourged. The boy, all mangled with the stripes, broke forth into the street, crying out upon the money-lender’s lust and cruelty; and a great throng of people, burning with pity for his tender years, and with rage for the shameful wrong he had undergone, and considering, too, their own condition and their children’s, rushed down into the Forum, and from there in a solid throng to the Curia. The consuls were forced by the sudden tumult to convene the senate; and as the Fathers entered the Curia, the people threw themselves at the feet of each, and pointed to the young lad’s mutilated back. On that day, owing to one man’s outrageous injury, was broken a strong bond of credit, and the consuls were ordered to carry a proposal to the people that none should be confined in shackles or in the stocks, save those who, having been guilty of some crime, were waiting to pay the penalty; and that for money lent, the debtor’s goods, but not his person, should be distrainable.[2] So those in confinement were released, and it was forbidden that any should be confined thereafter.[3] | [i] Eo anno plebei Romanae velut aliud initium libertatis factum est, quod necti desierunt; mutatum autem ius ob unius feneratoris simul libidinem simul crudelitatem insignem. [ii] L. Papirius is fuit, cui cum se C. Publilius ob aes alienum paternum nexum dedisset, quae aetas formaque misericordiam elicere poterant, ad libidinem et contumeliam animum accenderunt. [iii] Florem aetatis eius fructum adventicium crediti ratus, primo perlicere adulescentem sermone incesto est conatus; dein, postquam aspernabantur flagitium aures, minis territare atque identidem admonere fortunae; [iv] postremo, cum ingenuitatis magis quam praesentis condicionis memorem videret, nudari iubet verberaque adferri. [v] Quibus laceratus iuvenis cum se in publicum proripuisset, libidinem crudelitatemque conquerens feneratoris, [vi] ingens vis hominum cum aetatis miseratione atque indignitate iniuriae accensa, tum suae condicionis liberumque suorum respectu, in forum atque inde agmine facto ad curiam concurrit; [vii] et cum consules tumultu repentino coacti senatum vocarent, introeuntibus in curiam patribus laceratum iuvenis tergum, procumbentes ad singulorum pedes, ostentabant. [viii] Victum eo die ob impotentem iniuriam unius ingens vinculum fidei; iussique consules ferre ad populum ne quis, nisi qui noxam meruisset, donec poenam lueret, in compedibus aut in nervo teneretur; pecuniae creditae bona debitoris, non corpus obnoxium esset. Ita nexi soluti, cautumque in posterum ne necterentur. |
Commentary by Craig Williams
Roman Homosexuality by American historian Craig A. Williams is the most thorough study yet of the subject of the title. The following comment on the episode described above is taken from page 110 of the second edition, published by the Oxford University Press in 2010.
Livy’s narrative consistently directs the reader’s focus away from the sexual dynamics of the incident. While condemning Papirius’ lustfulness (libido), the narrative dwells not on the intended result of that desire (namely, the sexual violation of a young man) but rather on Papirius’ beating of a Roman citizen. In Livy’s terms, what kept the young Publilius from acceding to his creditor’s wishes was not a horror of homosexuality, nor even the fact that his masculine integrity was being threatened, but a consideration of his status as freeborn. Likewise what so greatly inflamed the crowd was not horror at an attempted homosexual seduction but pity for a freeborn youth who had been beaten: when the consuls convened an emergency meeting of the Senate, the people brought Publilius to the entrance of the Curia and there displayed the youth’s lacerated back to the senators as they went in. They did not point fingers at Papirius as a pervert. The principal issue for Livy is not Papirius’ sexual desire for the youth but rather his arrogant disregard for the physical inviolability of the freeborn Roman citizen.
[1] The plebs had gained political liberty on the expulsion of the kings and the adoption of the republican government. Now they were assured of personal liberty as well. [Translator’s note]
[2] Ironically the new law was called the lex Poetelia Papiria because one of the two consuls at the time was also called Papirius. [Website footnote]
[3] Other shorter versions of this episode were given around the same time by Dionysios of Halikarnassos in his Roman Antiquities XVI 9 and later by Valerius Maximus in a list of violations of chastity that provoked outrage in his Nine books of memorable deeds and sayings VI 1 ix. These both say the event took place after the disaster at the Caudine Forks in 321 BC, the boy being the son of a consul or tribune thereby ruined., They also add the detail that the Senate sent the violator (unnamed by Dionysios and called Plotius by Valerius) to prison. But though Valerius, in contrast to Livy, laid stress on Papirius’s sexual misbehaviour, it cannot have been this for which he was punished: besides the fact that both authors make it clear that what the boy complained about was his general mistreatment as a freeborn Roman citizen, and that it was this that provoked the new law, this case predates by about a century the Lex Scantinia, which made pedication of a freeborn Roman male a crime. [Website footnote]
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