No doubt, similar traits might be found in the peasantry of other parts of Europe.
What may be regarded as true sexual inversion can be traced in Europe from the beginning of the Christian era (though we can scarcely demonstrate the congenital element) especially among two classes--men of exceptional ability and criminals; and also, it may be added, among those neurotic and degenerate individuals who may be said to lie between these two classes, and on or over the borders of both.

Homosexuality, mingled with various other sexual abnormalities and excesses, seems to have flourished in Rome during the empire, and is well exemplified in the persons of many of the emperors.[43] Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Commodus, and Heliogabalus--many of them men of great ability and, from a Roman standpoint, great moral worth--are all charged, on more or less solid evidence, with homosexual practices.

In Julius Caesar--"the husband of all women and the wife of all men" as he was satirically termed--excess of sexual activity seems to have accompanied, as is sometimes seen, an excess of intellectual activity.

He was first accused of homosexual practices after a long stay in Bithynia with King Nikomedes, and the charge was very often renewed.

Caesar was proud of his physical beauty, and, like some modern inverts, he was accustomed carefully to shave and epilate his body to preserve the smoothness of the skin.