[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Sex through History
Long before the emergence of Christianity, starting in the fourth century B.C.E., early Roman philosophers produced sexually grounded political theories designed to create a more just and harmonious society. By their reasoning, human reproductive and other sexual mores are central to any endeavor to attain social order, justice, and well-being. Without the right procreative and other sexual principle, wide-scale disorder and inequity become the ingrained norm that falsely poses as the good society.
For different reasons, early Roman philosopher all found Roman society poorly constructed in its sexual foundation. In response, they went to work like city-planning contractors and put in their utopian bids to construct sexual system that would create new and improved society. These blue prints for new civic order appear in various Roman writing. The writing had little or no immediate social influence beyond their authors’ philosophical circles. The male citizen of Rome howled with laughter at communal sexual reforms of sort seen in early Roman literature, and a number of readers were shocked at the communal sexual proposals. Though the Roman philosophers did establish their countercultural community in Rome, other inhabitants violently disbanded their organization and drove the Roman philosopher out of town and out of the region as well.
Thus the philosophers had good reason to doubt, as they did near the end of his life, whether their ideal city plans would ever have any influence over Roman sexual behavior and society. Before arrival of Christianity, one of the most striking descriptions of Roman sexual attitudes is that distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality would have no meaning in Roman culture. In Roman history before Christianity, the Roman distinction is that of a passive versus active role. Active means penetration with a penis into any orifice and passive means being penetrated. Active is male and passive is female. A male can be passive, but a female can not be active......
