The Ancient "Hotwife" Culture Who Loved Wife-Swapping
What the Romans had to say about the Etruscans leads us to believe they loved some familiar erotic dynamics.
This profound resignation makes you mine forever. I intend, tomorrow, to treat you to an orgy of delights, to make all your senses boil. I want you to behold me in pleasure’s throes; and I want to behold you in them; and when we are both very merry and very high from lewd sights and lewd doings, you shall be given the venom that is to put an end to the abhorrent existence of that contemptible creature I failed to avoid bringing into this world.
— Marquis de Sade; Juliette
A curious distortion happens when we look back on our distant past as a species, and a tendency to whitewash history flows naturally from us as readily as we intuit the sweetness of sugar or the bitterness of pure cocoa.
When we think of our parents or grandparents, we tend to think of them as asexual stoics belonging more to polite society than kinky bedrooms.
Yet, we know that for us to be here, sex must’ve transpired between them at some point.
Truthfully, there’s been a long arch of erotic trends that has spanned for millennia. As Abrahamic religions rose, sex was smitten by the iron fists of rulers, kings, and the Church. Now those religions have receded, and human sexuality is finally beginning to flourish again.
For most people, it feels like we’re finally able to take our first full breath in centuries.
And now, thanks to anthropological discoveries and the power of science, we can understand our ancestors and those who lived in ancient times in a more intimate light.
It turns out they aren’t so different from us.
If you held up ancient descriptions of human sexuality to contemporary human sexuality, you’d have many more similarities than differences.
Ancient porn and modern porn are strikingly similar.
One place this is especially true is with the Ancient Etruscans.
Ancient Mediterranean Cultures
Ancient Mediterranean cultures liked to drink and have sex—a lot of it.
In this, the prudish Romans were quite the exception. They were a hypermasculine culture that didn’t even give women their own names.
Women took the feminized version of their family name. She was named in relation to her husband.
When the Romans encountered the Ancient Greeks, they were astonished at what they saw as “naked people playing all the time” and having drunken, sexually-charged festivals.
The Greeks were somewhere in the middle when it came to sexual liberation. They weren’t anywhere near as strict as the patriarchal Romans.
In Roman society, a man could kill his wife, which wasn’t even a crime.
The Etruscans were the polar opposite. They revered women.
For those who hardly remember history class, the Etruscans were an ancient civilization in Northern Italy that ruled over the Romans for an extended period of time.
Rome was militarily weak, but eventually, they figured out how to build an effective army and augmented the military tactics of the Etruscans into their forces. This allowed them to overthrow the Etruscans and eventually conquer the Italian peninsula.
The Romans destroyed the Etruscan civilization, leaving little direct evidence in their wake. The Etruscans can’t speak for themselves. But from what the Romans tell us, they were really fond of wife-swapping.
The Etruscans & Their Open Relationships
In Etruscan civilization, it wasn’t uncommon for women to walk around naked. Like the Greeks, Etruscans prized beauty, especially the beauty of the nude body.
Interestingly, from our references, the patriarchal control of women that we see in Roman society, Judeo-Christian societies, and Islamic societies is wholly absent.
The Ancient Greek writer Theopompus tells us:
It is customary with the Etruscans to share their women in common; the women bestow great care on their bodies and often exercise even with the men, sometimes also with one another; for it is no disgrace for women to show themselves naked. Further, they dine, not with their own husbands, but with any men who happen to be present, and they pledge with wine any whom they wish.
They are also terribly bibulous (they love to drink a ton of wine), and are very good-looking. The Etruscans rear all the babies that are born, not knowing who is the father in any single case. These in turn pursue the same mode of life as those who have given them nurture, having drinking parties often and consorting with all the women. It is no disgrace for the Etruscans to be seen doing anything in the open, or even having anything done to them; for this also is a custom of their country.
I’ll admit, there’s something beautiful about the naturalism described here. It seems to strike a chord that resonates with a primordial part of our modern selves that dreams for simpler times.
Today, life is filled with work obligations, emails, and the headaches of having to keep up your face in polite society. Some people have started reaching back to ancient traditions as a way to break free from the chains of modern corporate bondage.
From History to Now
I’ve covered hotwifing and cuckold relationships at length. I think it’s lovely that people all over are exploring their sexuality despite the prying judgments of society. There seems to be a sexual revolution afoot!
In the 2012 book A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desires (available on Amazon here), researchers dug through countless adult searches online to see if they could find any patterns in the erotic data.
The beauty is that this allowed researchers to find out what really makes people tick sexually behind closed doors. People are uninhibited in their online porn searches. You get to see who they really are, even if they’re just metadata.
The book comprised many incredible discoveries about private sex and the human mind. Still, one of its most intriguing findings is that cuckold porn ranked second among the top male porn searches.
Wife-sharing is wildly popular, to the degree that most of us don’t quite comprehend. Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D., writes for Psychology Today that it’s actually the norm, not the exception, and the difference between our social and private selves makes us question if this behavior, or desire, is morally wrong.
Between homophobia and leftover Protestantism, many people still feel shy admitting they have such feelings.
Concrete Data Etched in Stone
Considering how ancient writers thought, it would be no surprise if Theopompus and others made up their descriptions of the Etruscans to make them look bad.
History writers in the ancient world weren’t concerned with leaving us things to remember facts accurately.
They were propagandists whose job was to distort the truth and make anyone who wasn’t Roman look inferior.
But a discovery in the early 20th century changed everything.
In 1960, a tomb was unearthed near Tarquinia, Lazio, Italy, north of Rome, and it turned out to be a scarce find. It dates back to the Etruscan era before the Romans even contemplated building an Empire.
At this point, the Romans were still living under the Etruscan rule. It would be nearly another century before Rome turned the tables and shook off the Etruscans in 396 BCE.
The tomb is an exceptional relic from an antiquated culture. But even more remarkable is the faded artwork in the tomb that confirms Roman descriptions of the Etruscans.
Most notably, a scene strikes us for its overt sexuality.
Here we see two Etruscan men standing on opposite sides of what’s presumably a woman, though the faded fresco makes it challenging to be sure. Judging from the different hairstyles, it appears to be a woman.
Both men flagellate her as she gives the man before her oral sex and the man behind her vaginal or anal sex.
The man behind is adorned with an olive wreath and holds up a stick as if to whip her. The man before holds up an open hand, ready to strike down upon her.
The scene oozes with pleasure, striking in how racy and libertine it is, especially for a prehistoric work. The Etruscans had very liberal sexual attitudes; thus, the person in the center could have been a man.
Interpret the piece as you like.
For the Etruscans, marriage was a mere formality, something they did to solidify family bonds and commit to long-term pair bonds between husband and wife.
This makes you question how much of your sexuality is yours and how much of it is what you’ve adopted from the culture in which you grew up.
In today’s world, even with technological advancements that foster the erotic spirit, “hotwife” relationships are among the ultimate taboos.
That’s why some people gravitate toward it for its erotic value.
But as we stare back at the Etruscans by staring at these walls and reading the ancient texts, we gaze across the ample time to witness a humanity so similar to ours and a culture so very different.
It starts to make you feel like sexuality is a cultural phenomenon more than a biological one.
Since time immemorial, humans have revered the incredible powers of romantic love, deep attraction, and sexual desire. Even before they were literate, they understood the tremendous energy contained therein.
And they’ve harnessed it to make life that much sweeter.
It feels like we’re collectively waking up from a long dream that’s gone on for 2,000 years now, a dream where this erotic power has been reduced and diluted in our lives. And finally, we embrace it again.
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Fantastic historical write up!