With apologies to Tawdry Tuesday devotees, this post is definitely safe for work. Turns out, Cicero was not a big fan of sex. I hear he also didn’t like dessert.

Letter to Octavian, 10

“Brutus will hear that the very people he himself and his children freed from kings have descended into slavery for the sake of filthy lust. This news will come to him quickly—and I will take it if no one else will. For if I cannot escape such things while alive, I have decided that I will flee them and life at the same time.”

audiet Brutus eum populum, quem ipse primo, post progenies eius a regibus liberavit, pro turpi stupro datum in servitutem. quae quidem, si nullo alio, me tamen internuntio celeriter ad illos deferentur; nam si vivus ista subterfugere non potero, una cum istis vitam simul fugere decrevi.

Tusculan Disputationes, 4.68

“And as those who are carried away with joy when they enjoy Venus’ pleasures are filthy, those who share their desire with a burning spirit are criminal. Indeed, the whole thing which is commonly called ‘love’—and by god it is impossible to name it anything else—is of such meaninglessness that I know of nothing I think is comparable.”

Et ut turpes sunt qui efferunt se laetitia tum, cum fruuntur Veneriis voluptatibus, sic flagitiosi, qui eas inflammato animo concupiscunt. Totus vero iste, qui vulgo appellatur amor—nec hercule invenio quo nomine alio possit appellari—, tantae levitatis est, ut nihil videam quod putem conferendum

De Senectute, 39

“The third typical criticism of old age follows this, and that is that people complain that it lacks [sexual] pleasures. Oh! Glorious wealth of age, if it takes that from us, the most criminal part of youth! Take this from me, most noble young men, this is the ancient speech of Archytas of Tarentum, which was repeated to me when I was a young man working for Quintus Maximus there: “Nature has given man no deadlier a curse than sexual desire.”

XII. Sequitur tertia vituperatio senectutis, quod eam carere dicunt voluptatibus. O praeclarum munus aetatis, si quidem id aufert a nobis, quod est in adulescentia vitiosissimum! Accipite enim, optimi adulescentes, veterem orationem Archytae Tarentini, magni in primis et praeclari viri, quae mihi tradita est cum essem adulescens Tarenti cum Q. Maximo. Nullam capitaliorem pestem quam voluptatem corporis hominibus dicebat a natura datam