Sporus was the name of a boy whom the Emperor Nero had castrated and subsequently married. After Nero's death, the Emperor Vitellius planned to rape and murder Sporus in a public re-enactment of the Rape of Proserpina. Sporus committed suicide to prevent this. Was Vitellius just mad, or did the Romans actually do things that horrific in public?
The source for this story is Cassius Dio. Here is the excerpt:
" Vitellius, when he heard about it, remained where he was and even then went on with his luxurious living, among other things arranging gladiatorial combats. In the course of these it was proposed that Sporus should be brought on to the stage in the rôle of a maiden being ravished, but he would not endure the shame and committed suicide beforehand." (Dio 64.10).
I personally do not believe this to be true, as I don't believe many at all of the allegations of sexual impropriety and brutality for all emperors between Augustus and Vespasian and many later overthrown Emperors. Accusations of sexual immorality and brutal conduct are common slanders in the literary accounts of this period. The Julio-Claudians (aside from Augustus) are basically reviled in the sources, and it's my understanding this has a lot to do with the political affiliations of the literary authors and the need to reinforce the right-to-rule of the actual Emperors when these texts were being written. In the case of Suetonius, who perhaps gives us the most detailed repertoire of sex-and-violence-oriented slander, he was establishing the legitimacy of the Flavians to succeed the allegedly corrupt descendants of Augustus. Augustus himself remained the model Emperor, and received far less criticism than any other Julio-Claudian.
In the case of Cassius Dio, who wrote about 150 years after the events he describes allegedly occurred, he served the Severan dynasty, who also had legitimacy problems (the first Severan emperor, Septimius Severus, was an African who was proclaimed Emperor and killed his rivals in the aftermath of Commodus' assassination). Such stories of the wickedness and barbarity of past Emperors served his purposes particularly well in highlighting the degenerate state of Roman politics until the glorious Septimius Severus, Our Benefactor, whom Dio was on personal terms with, came along and saved the Empire.
I'm by no means a specialist on this period and these sources, but all-up I would take this story with an enormous grain of salt and just personally I don't believe it at all, especially considering that Suetonius and Plutarch do not mention this at all, even though they mention Sporus on numerous occasions, and the first reference we have to this incident is in Cassius Dio, 150ish years later.
Another question: is there any relation between the "rapes" of sculpture and painting (meaning the kidnapping of someone) and "rapes" in the modern sense (sexual violation)?
I mean, did Greeks and Romans understood it was implicit that kidnapped mythical girls and boys were sexually violated?