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astrological scenarios concerning a woman leaving her husband’s house; this would seem to mean that it was a common fear. Likewise, Artemidorus frequently mentions divorce, indicating that it was a common occurrence. Presumably this worry was linked to the dowry, which the woman would take away with her; a dowry is assumed as normal.
    The sum of a successful marriage seems to be children. There is much worry about sterility, the number of children, and whether they will be ‘good children,’ as expressed in many charts cast. There is a preference for males (‘male children [seen in a dream] are good; female are good for nothing’ (Dreams 4.10)), but there is never reference to infanticide, abortion, or contraception. Indeed, one of the great miseries and misfortunes of life is to have few children or to be childless.
    Those children are under the complete control of their fathers. The relationship can be good or bad, but the expectation is that it will be good, with the parents providing what is necessary for upbringing, and for an inheritance for the children. Intergenerational relations are often stressed as parents worry about children wasting parental property and resources and in general not turning out well. There is concern for the number of children, and that they get along well; there is a particular concern that brothers get along. Here again quarreling raises its ugly head, as children are apt to get into disputes with one another, with an outcome unfortunate for the family. Beyond the nuclear family, which seems to be the assumed unit in all the evidence, and into the extended family, quarreling is again mentioned. It does seem as if a lot of arguing went on in an ordinary man’s family.
    I have noted the role of sex in marriage, but it is also necessary to look more generally at ordinary men’s sexual activity. The sexual life of a male included sex with a wife for procreation; however, its other aspects are harder to gauge. The elite sources, especially Ovid, Martial, and Juvenal but also historians, rhetoricians, and literary figures of almost all sorts, contain material relating to male sexual activity. Even if complicated in the details, the overriding elite male ethos valuing domination and being ashamed of subjection meant that all sex, whether homosexual or heterosexual, was evaluated as specific circumstancesof control and submission. So a particular sexual act was acceptable or not depending not so much on the physiology of the act itself, but on who was involved and the part played by an individual in it. People considered the actors (male? female?), their status (slave? free?), their matrimonial status (unmarried? married?), the economic circumstances (paid? gratis?), the biological intent (for procreation?), and most importantly the dominant/submissive element just noted. A given sexual act was judged according to where it was positioned on the matrix of these considerations, which created the ‘rules of the game’; obviously, the situation was very complicated.
    Within the basic model of sex and marriage, a wide range of other sexual activity was open, provided the rules of the game were adhered to. Most specifically, we do not find a ‘type’ of person or ‘identity’ that can be called ‘homosexual’ or ‘heterosexual.’ In fact, there is no Latin word for ‘homosexual’ – or for ‘heterosexual’ for that matter. It is essential rather to think in terms of specific acts and situations within an elite culture that never questions the centrality of male domination as the pattern of behavior and self-identity for the male.
    The question is, can this fluid ethos apply to ordinary men? These men also conceptualized sexual acts as domination or submission. Sling projectiles give a wonderfully vivid proof of the equation of sexual violence and masculinity. Soldiers readying these lead, acorn-shaped objects for hurling inscribed them with a message for the enemy. Some just had