When in Rome...

To my mind this is another example of people seeing what they want to see.

The above is taken from side B of the Warren Cup. It clearly shows a handsome Roman youth making sweet gay love to a prepubescent boy. But it has been taken by some as evidence that “anal” sex is not a “modern” thing.

Personally I'm not convinced. Whatever the neo-Marxist-style revisionist historians of the “gay rights” movement may claim, Roman homosexuality (for which, of course, they had no word) wasn’t quite the same thing as it is today. My suspicion is that “anal” sex probably is quite modern, given that the Roman custom when males had sex with each other was “intercrural” intercourse rather than full penetration. And that, apparently, is what we're seeing here.

Up the bum was in fact taboo, though it seems to me quite likely that, that being the case, it was also thought of as being hilariously funny.

And that of course is the problem with objects like the Warren Cup: we have no idea of the "context". Was it supposed to be simply raunchy? Or was it supposed to be a joke?

Or, indeed, why not both?