10 Mind Blowing Acts of Sexual Depravity Committed by Roman Emperors

When it comes to the corrupting influence of absolute power, few instances make the point more convincingly than the self-indulgent perversities of the Roman emperors. Free to do whatever they wanted these shameless beasts sunk to levels of depravity that still shock us today. These are 10 mind blowing acts of sexual depravity committed by Roman emperors.

1.) Many readers will have heard of Caligula (37 – 41 AD), Rome’s third emperor and quite possibly its most unhinged. Caligula was obsessed with fornication. He conducted orgies and turned a section of the imperial palace into a brothel where he forced the wives and daughters of senators and dignitaries to work as prostitutes. His treatment of the Senate is important because it may have colored later accounts of his reign, which were written by men of the senatorial class, who despised him and have every reason to discredit him.

2.) The third century senator Elagabulus (218 – 222 AD) was an oddball. He hailed from Syria in the far east of the Empire and was viewed as an exotic outsider. He was also screechingly gay. Fond of dressing up in women’s clothing, he engaged in public acts of affection with his male lovers and liked to play the part of a prostitute, hanging out in the doorways of brothels and beckoning to strangers with a come-hither look.

3.) Nero (54 – 68 AD) was perhaps Rome’s most reviled emperor, which is saying a lot when you consider what his counterparts got up to. Among his depraved antics, Nero, who swung both ways, became obsessed with a slave boy who he thought resembled his deceased wife Poppaea, who he had accidentally kicked to death in a fit of rage. Unwilling to be separated from his beloved wife by a little thing like murder, Nero had the boy castrated, then married him in a public ceremony, declaring him his new empress.

4.) When it came to unbridled debauchery, Nero was building on the foundation laid by his predecessors, Caligula and Tiberius. As Rome’s second emperor following the salutary reign of his stepfather Augustus Caesar, Tiberius (14 – 37 AD) was a cranky, disagreeable old man by the time he got to wear the purple. He spent most of his time at his summer retreat on the island of Capri where he indulged in shocking acts of pedophilia, including forcing a group of young boys to engage in threesomes while he masturbated in a futile attempt to maintain an erection.

5.) For his part, Caligula preferred women, but he wasn’t particular about their relationship to him. He allegedly had sex with his three sisters, preferring the middle sister of the three, Drusilla, who he became so besotted with he tried to name her as heir to the throne.

6.) When it came to incest, however, Nero took the prize by engaging in sexual relations with his mother. Yet his affection for her didn’t prevent him from arranging for her murder when she became inconvenient to him.

7.) Never one to deny whatever his perverse imagination could dream up, Nero also liked to stage savage rapes in which he dressed in animal skins like a barbarian and sexually assaulted his victims.

8.) During his lifetime, Nero was roundly despised by almost everyone who knew him. After a half century of perverse cruelty at the hands of Julio-Claudian emperors, the senate and the public were fed up, and Nero was assassinated. But in the early days of the dynasty, the behavior exhibited by the emperors left onlookers aghast but powerless to act, which only encouraged worse behavior. The first emperor to abuse his power publicly was Caligula, who loved nothing more than to humiliate senators. According to historians, he would hold banquets during which he would rape and abuse the senators’ wives while the senators looked on, and then ridicule the senators to their faces as beneath him in sexual prowess.

9.) Again, it’s important to note that the historians writing the biographies of these emperors years after the fact were themselves from the senatorial class with a motive and opportunity to drag the reputations of these men through the mud. Nevertheless, the forensic details provided in their accounts, coupled with a complete lack of pushback, suggest at least a grain of truth. Undoubtedly, Tiberius was a perverse old man with a penchant for young boys, but whether he filled his nubile companions with drink and then tied their penises with lute strings to prevent them from urinating, as alleged, suggests a level of senseless cruelty that’s hard to fathom.

10.) Tiberius’s reputation as a sexual monster didn’t end there. He allegedly trained little boys to swim between his legs and nibble on his genitalia when took a bath. Worse yet, he purportedly held unweaned babies against his genitalia and encouraged them to nurse. The very idea is revolting, and we are encouraged to hate a man whose sick mind could conceive of such things, but there remains the possibility that propagandists seeking to disparage Tiberius dreamed it all up. Then who’s the sicko?

Whether unhinged tyrants actually committed these outrageous acts, or propagandists weaved them out of whole cloth to gain a political advantage, we are justified in recoiling in disgust at the ugly things the Roman imagination could think up as a way of exercising power over those they considered their inferiors. Power corrupts, indeed.