>>10916204>It wasnt even present in Rome for christs sake.I don;t think you are correct here.
Romans experienced romantic love, but among the upper classes, where duty to family and the state were more important than anything, a "virtuous" man was expected to subordinate it to those more important considerations.
But Pompey the Great was noted to have actually been in love with Julia, Caesar's daughter, and to have been devastated by her loss when she died in childbirth. Hadrian's commitment to his lover Antinuous went way beyond the sexual, and included deifying the relative nobody youth in the emperor's grief following his death. Marcus Antonius fucked over everything in his life for love of Cleopatra.
Romans clearly differentiated between the entwined concepts of Amor and Eros.
