The boy that emperor Nero made his ‘wife’: what the tragedy of the castrated Sporus tells us about homosexuality in ancient Rome

Sporus isn’t someone we can ever hear from directly. We only know about Sporus through the writings of Roman historians, who had reason to depict Nero in as negative and debauched a light as possible. Sporus’s own voice has been completely lost; there is no knowing how he felt about what happened to him or if he considered himself homosexual in any modern sense of the word.

His life was short and tragic, and only recorded by posterity in relation to a more powerful man. Yet it can help to reveal the complex attitudes toward sexuality, gender and power in ancient Rome, especially the acceptance and perception of homosexuality.

Who was Sporus?

Sporus was a young boy of extraordinary beauty, though it is important to note that the young boy’s name may not have been Sporus at all. The Greek word σπόρος (sporos) means ‘seed’ or ‘semen’, so was likely a belittling epithet that seems to have been given to the boy after his abuse began.

It was said that Sporus bore a striking resemblance to Nero’s second wife, Poppaea Sabrina, who had died in AD 65. Suetonius has it that she had complained to her husband about how much time he spent at the races and, in a fit of rage, Nero kicked her to death, losing both his wife and his unborn child. Another possibility is that Poppaea died in childbirth.

Either way, Nero is said to have become deeply infatuated with Sporus upon seeing him. In AD 67, the emperor ordered the boy be castrated, turning him into a eunuch. There were several methods of castration in Roman times, including rubbing or squeezing the gonads to pieces. Sometimes, the penis would also be removed.

What was life like for Sporus as the ‘wife’ of Nero?

At this point, Nero already had a new wife – his third, a noblewoman named Statilia Messalina – as well as a ‘husband’, a freed slave named Pythagoras. In that, Nero took the role of ‘bride’.

With Sporus, it seems that he wanted to switch roles again. Suetonius wrote that Sporus was dressed in women’s clothing and decked out in jewellery befitting an empress, before being married “with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil”.

Dio Cassius corroborated this account, writing: “Though already ‘married’ to Pythagoras, a freedman, he formally ‘married’ Sporus… and the Romans as well as others publicly celebrated their wedding.”

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While it is impossible to say what Sporus thought of all this, Suetonius provides an intriguing clue from later on in the ‘marriage’. Sporus gave Nero a gift: “a ring with a stone on which was engraved the Rape of Proserpina.”

In Roman mythology, the goddess Proserpina was abducted by the god of the underworld and ultimately made to live with him for six months of every year. A ring depicting that scene hardly made for a romantic present: perhaps it expressed how Sporus really felt.

What happened to Sporus after Nero?

It would not be long before Sporus’s life was uprooted again. In AD 68, Nero was ousted from power and, fleeing Rome, committed suicide. Amidst the chaos that followed, Sporus taken by a Praetorian prefect named Nymphidius Sabinus, who treated him as a wife and called ‘Poppaea’.

When Nymphidius was killed – by his own soldiers as he bid to be made emperor – Sporus was passed on to Otho, the second to rule in the so-called ‘Year of the Four Emperors’. In a bizarre coincidence, Otho had been married to Poppaea Sabina before Nero.

After Otho came Vitellius, who ruled for eight months and heaped more woe upon Sporus. He decided to use the boy for public entertainment in the gladiatorial arena, planning a re-enactment of the Rape of Proserpina.

To avoid this abominable fate, Sporus killed himself sometime in AD 69.

Male homosexuality in ancient Rome

What can Sporus’s life tell us about homosexuality and gender in ancient Rome? The answer is quite a lot, particularly about the supremacy of the penis and the hierarchy of Roman relationships, which were about power, dominance and virility rather than the gender binary.

The accounts of Sporus and Nero demonstrate how the wider tolerance of male same-sex acts in Rome largely came down to social class. Romans had a ‘penetrator-penetrated’ binary model, where there would be a passive, inferior partner that would certainly have been of lower status instead of a fellow freeman.

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For a freeborn Roman man to enter into a submissive sexual relationship with another freeborn Roman man would have been emasculating, shameful and, if the Greek historian Polybius was to be believed, dangerous. He reported that the punishment for a Roman soldier who willingly submitted to penetration by another freeborn man was fustuarium, or being cudgelled to death.

Masculinity was linked to dominance, both in social and sexual contexts. It was totally natural and acceptable for a Roman man to engage in sexual acts with both women and men, but only as long as he was the penetrative partner (the vir).

For a freeborn Roman man to enter into a submissive sexual relationship with another freeborn Roman man would have been emasculating, shameful and, if the Greek historian Polybius was to be believed, dangerous

The status and gender of the passive partner (the cinaedus) were crucial too. The penetration of women, slaves and male prostitutes was acceptable. Male entertainers were fair game too, since their lifestyle placed them in a nebulous social realm called infamia, which led to a loss of legal and social standing.

For a freeborn man, to have a passive role in anal sex resulted in a loss of masculinity. Yet none of this means that equal, loving relationships between freeborn men did not exist; rather that negative societal attitudes combined with a fear of being clubbed to death ensured that they were conducted in secret.

As well as cinaedus, other terms were used for passive male partners, like Sporus. These included puer delicatus (‘exquisite’ or ‘dainty’ boy), pullus (‘chick’), mollis (‘soft’), tener (‘delicate’), debilis (‘weak’) and effeminatus (‘effeminate’).

How do we know about Sporus?

The fact that we know about Sporus, and Pythagoras before him, is proof of how negatively Nero’s subversive relationships were perceived by wider Roman society. Suetonius and Dio Cassius presented the boy’s castration and status as ‘wife’ as evidence of the emperor’s moral depravity; a grotesque parody of a traditional marriage that proved Nero’s madness and disregard for Roman values.

Taking a lowly slave as a cinaedus was one thing. Marrying them and publicly parading them around Rome as a facsimile of your dead empress was a step too far.

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Sporus's feminisation reflected the Roman obsession with control over others' bodies. He wasn’t merely a eunuch, but a symbol of Nero’s power. The emperor could remake reality according to his desires and assert his imperial power over societal norms. Essentially, Nero wanted everyone to know that he could do what he wanted, and Sporus was the victim of his hubris.

His tragic story should continue to serve as a potent reminder of how, far more than things like sexuality and love, power and privilege defined the sexual and gender boundaries of the ancient world.

Hilary Mitchell is a journalist with a Masters degree in Classics from Edinburgh University, where she specialised in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age of Greece