A manless adultery: the story of Bassa as related in a Marcus Valerius Martialis’ epigram

During the Golden Age of the Roman Empire, Rome was transformed into a magnificent city where architecture, the arts, and commerce flourished. An inconceivable amount of wealth was accumulated by a handful of noble families, while the masses starved. In such a context, moral values inevitably decline, while sexual mores are liberalized and ever more veer towards salacity. This reality was elegantly illustrated in short, often sarcastic poems known as epigrams. Herein, we present a case of a woman with enigmatic appearance of the external genitalia, exhibiting unrestrained homosexual activity, as described in an epigram by Marcus Valerius Martialis (a contemporary poet who lived in the 1st century AD). Based on the information provided in the ancient text, we formulate a differential diagnosis and deduce that this woman was, in fact, a case of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). To our knowledge, this is the earliest literary description worldwide of a case of CAH as a cause of homosexuality and unquenchable lust.