How "degenerate" were the Romans? Do we have any written accounts of their debauchery?

How "degenerate" were the Romans? Do we have any written accounts of their debauchery?

Romans were cucks

Roman cuckholdry is attested by Romans themselves

>Caelia you give yourself to Parthians, you give yourself to Germans, you give yourself to Dacians. You do not reject the beds of Cilicians and Cappa-docians. From the Pharian city the Egyptian stud comes for you as does the black Indian from the Red Sea. You don't even draw the line at the circumcised members of the Jewish race and the Alan with his Sarmatian mount does not pass you by. What is your reason that although you are a Roman girl you do not find pleasure in the members of the Roman race?
>From Epigrams of Marcus Valerius Martialis


The "Romans" soldiers were in fact Gauls btw


>By that time it so happened that the Arborychi HAD BECOME THE SOLDIERS OF THE ROMANS. And the Germans, wishing to make this people subject to themselves, since their territory adjoined their own and they had changed the government under which they had lived from of old, began to plunder their land and, being eager to make war, marched against them with their whole people. But the Arborychi proved their valour and loyalty to the Romans and shewed themselves brave men in this war, and since the Germans were not able to overcome them by force, they wished to win them over and make the two peoples kin by intermarriage.
>From The Wars of Justinian of Procopius of Caesarea,

The wife of the emperor Claudius had a contest with Rome's wealthiest whore to see who could fuck the most amount of men, and she won.

They were degenerate pagans until they embraced Christianity and God.

They were actually rather prudish.

Then they became degenerate and retarded Christians

You can get some sense in one of the surviving Roman novels, Petronius's Satyricon.

It's fiction but historians use it to learn about daily life in the Empire.

The story is told in first person and the protagonist is basically chasing around his boy slave, along the way the characters stay at a brothel, visit a market, go to an art gallery, sail the see, get raped by members of a fertility cult they offended, and attend a gaudy dinner hosted by a nouveau riche freedman

They were mostly prudish and called anyone they disliked "sluts/mansluts". Of course there were some degenerates, but they were mostly prude people who hated degenerates.

Italians are the most decadent and degenerate people in Europe only after the french. So do the math

t. Italian

they didn´t live in a constant orgy, their calendar had some special holydays to loosen up a bit.
part of it survives as carnival and mardi gras in catholic countries

Well if watching bestiality as a form of entertainment isn't degenerate, i don't know what is.

I remember hearing Nero had pet eunuchs for his own pleasure.

Emperor Elagabalus also pretended to be a female prostitute and sold his boypussy to anyone who paid a good price. He would also prank nobles by putting stones in their bread at feasts and lure them into rooms full of lions.

Newborns were also of no value until they became like 5 years old because of infant mortality. You could leave an infant on the street and no ne would give a shit. This isn't degeneracy in it's sexual term however.

I don't get why this "degenerate" behavior is such a pressing matter to people from places like /pol/. Romans just wanted a good time. Sexuality only becomes political if you make it political. Muh Christian values or some shit. Just my 5 cents.

very informative post

>Indian from the Red Sea

Clearly geography was not their thing

that's really cool. I'll have to check this out

Wew this is some heavy heathenry that you have going kafir.

>The "Romans" soldiers were in fact Gauls btw
Yeah in 500 AD apparently, when Gaul had been romanised for 600 years

They were in actual fact pretty conservative. The people that talk about their degeneracy are Romans themselves complaining about morality and customs being debased. Romans were the ultimate conservatives so in their eyes everything was always falling down in terms of cultural norms. From the very first Roman sources in the 3rd century down to the 5th century AD you've got Romans whining about the same shit, about women running off with foreign slaves etc.

In actual fact Romans were generally very conservative and became more so as they became Christian. The Gibbonian idea of a Roman Empire enervated or weakened by unmanly Christianity has been debunked for like two hundred years. Most Roman degeneracy is just Roman authors making shit up about emperors they hated.

>The "Romans" soldiers were in fact Gauls btw
*surrenders*

Satyricon is probably what started the Roman debauchery meme, but Satyricon is caricature. It's like trying to get a sense of our own moral standards by reading Bukowski.

Nope, the Roman legions drew upon British and Gallic manpower enormously even in the High Empire period. The other guy is also wrong though, Italian soldiery until up about the late 3rd century was some of the finest fighting stock on earth.

India meant Ehiopia and Southern Arabia at that time.

>Be Based Galatian Ubermensch
>Slaughter the Huns and their Germanic slaves
>Slaughter thousands upon thousands until your sword grow dull and their blood reach your knees
>Behead them all in the name of Taranis

Caesar already had Gallic legions from Cisalpine Gaul

Elagabalus was a Syrian culturally

Exactly.

Ignorant post

Knowledgeable post

...

i heard they are Roman woman who are fucked by baboons

>It's fiction but historians use it to learn about daily life in the Empire.
what could go wrong

>black Indian from the Red Sea
AETHIOP'D

This would be a very imfortative post if you didn't make the blunder of generalizing senatorial aristocrats or just the historians of the day for the general public. They were far more concerned with Roman virtues and conservative traditions than the people at large. That's a very good reason why Commodus wasn't hated by the public until the end of his reign. The historian and senatorial aristocrats just want it to appear as such.

Please don't assume the person writing the history is objective.

I really doubt the credibility of claims like this
seems like obvious slander to try and delegitimize a ruler or his legacy