Marriage between males was not uncommon in ancient Rome; there are many references to it, in fact, and none of them are favorable, such as Lucian’s strange science fiction story about “gay marriage” on the Moon, described as an “unusual custom” (Lucian, True History 1.22). However, the most scandalous of these reports seem to be those involving the Emperor Nero, who participated in wedding ceremonies with men on at least three different occasions. The first, to Sporus:
“[Nero] had a boy named Sporus castrated and tried to transform him into an actual woman; he married him in a regular wedding ceremony, with a dowry and a bridal veil, took him home in front of a great crowd, and treated him as his wife. A witty remark that someone made about this is still circulating: that human kind would have been well off, if his father Domitius had had the same kind of wife” (Suetonius, Nero 28-29).
The second, to Doryphorus, in which Nero was the bride:
“…he invented a new kind of game (so to speak) in which, dressed in the skin of a wild animal, he was released from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women who were bound to stakes and, when he had had enough of this savagery, he was finished off (as it were) by his freedman Doryphorus. This Doryphorus he took as his husband, just as Sporus had with him, and in doing so he imitated the cries and wailing of a virgin who is being raped” (Suetonius, Nero 28-29).
And the third, to Pythagoras, in which he was also the bride:
“A veil was placed over the emperor, the interpreters of the auspices were sent; a dowry, a wedding bed and marriage torches -- in the end, everything that is concealed by night even in the case of a woman was on display” (Tacitus, Ann. 15.37).