Brothels of Ancient Pompeii | Hacker News Reader

Brothels of Ancient Pompeii

historytoday.com

137 pointsdiodorus51 comments

If you'd like to read some more (very amusing) Pompeii graffiti examples there's some more here. The original page is slightly broken now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20171124060939/http://www.pompei...

It's fascinating that aside from being Latin, most of that ancient graffiti could have just as easily been scribbled on a modern toilet stall. Dick jokes are fundamental to what it means to be human.

In the case of the brothel, it was their version of Backpage (with reviews and everything!)

I also found fascinating reading Herodotus book, we really haven't changed much in that regard.

> "Defecator, may everything turn out okay so that you can leave this place"

I guess they had shit-bandits back then too.

I like the graffiti complaining about graffiti.

Article mentions Mark Twain's visit to Pompeii brothels in passing, as if he stumbled upon it during his travels, which certainly is not the case.

Twain is probably not the first name that pops to mind when erotica is mentioned but he was quite into it. His posthumous 1601 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1601_(Mark_Twain)) was an early example of "pornography" in America; scare quotes since the content is quite tame by today's standards (you can judge for yourself: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3190/3190-h/3190-h.htm)

His sex toys were in the news about a decade ago (https://www.thedailybeast.com/mark-twains-sex-toys, but see for a less hysterical writeup)

> but see for a less hysterical writeup)

See where? Did you miss including another link here?

Thanks for pointing out, link is this one: https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/9857/mark-twain-his-own-devices...

This article gets confused.

A particular example:

> Enslaved men and women most often staffed ancient brothels ... like all enslaved persons, their bodies were also vulnerable to sexual assault, rape

What? If they were enslaved people compelled to engage in sexual services, that was just straight up rape/assault, not vulnerability to rape/assault. An enslaved person can't give consent.

> An enslaved person can't give consent.

Yes they can. Consent means you agree to do something: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consent

Prisoners are effectively slaves and they frequently consent to have sex with each other.

Legally a prisoner can’t give consent to their captors

That is legal construct to make rape prosecution and corruption prosecution remotely possible. Plus, generally institutions don't want prisoners to have consensual sex or relationships with guards either.

To the prisoner having that sex, there is difference between when he/she wants that sex, is willing to barter sex for something and is forced to have sex without wanting it.

I think they’re just trying to find a way to point out that all enslaved people were vulnerable to this, not just brothel slaves.

they had no rights. Hence they were vulnerable to rape.

It must be tiring to read everything so trigger happy.

> while at the same time being expected to provide emotional services to clients through small talk or writing flattering boasts about them. Like all enslaved persons, their bodies were also vulnerable to sexual assault, rape, beatings and even torture.

It makes more sense in context of "emotional services" as "writing flattering boasts" and "beatings and even torture" which are closer to the vulnerability.

The paragraph is not only about sex.

Of course they can give consent. What you mean is they cannot refuse giving consent when whomever owns them (God, that is even hard to type, it’s so wrong it feels grammatically incorrect!) instructs them to engage in sexual relations with somebody.

Romans... Slavers who washed their mouths and clothes with urine, and shat on the streets. They really weren't into this "treating people humanely" thing. Most of their lives were quite brutal: https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2016/05/arthriti...

> The average ancient Roman worker was riddled with arthritis, suffered broken bones and was dead by 30 thanks to a diet of rotting grains and a lifetime of hard labour, a new study has found

> They really weren't into this "treating people humanely" thing.

As opposed to all the other ancient empires who were.

Or modern ones for that matter.

Yes, human culture was different in the past. Judging an ancient culture by our standards doesn’t make for a strong argument, their way of looking at the world would be completely alien to us.

The ancient Assyrian empire would allegedly make corpse piles and skull pyramids after putting entires towns to the sword, humans are and always have been cruel to each other.

I'm probably too squeamish to wash my mouth with it (did Romans really do that?) but washing clothes with publicly collected urine is generally considered to be a pretty impressive bit of urban engineering, not to mention very environmentally friendly. Wouldn't knock it till you've tried it.

Washing clothes with publicly collected urine was done as recently as the 1800s in many parts of colonial pre-federation Australia.

> (did Romans really do that?)

There's a Catullus poem that suggested they did, but clearly it wasn't all Romans, and some of the others even derided them for it.

http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/e39.htm

Love the long-form put-down style here

Urine is recorded to being used for whitening teeth since at least ancient Egypt. I always thought they used something like a swab for it though, but you can be sure someone out there had the idea to use it as mouthwash lol.

I think it would make more sense to promote peeing on trees as an environmental thing.

(I briefly tried to figure out how to promote that, but I know nothing about starting campaigns of that sort. shrug)

> peeing on trees

if you want to kill them that is. Pee need to be diluted with water before being used as a fertilizer.

Not in my experience. I saw a tree that was half dead come back to life from being peed on regularly for months.

Furthermore, the idea I had was not that urine would be the only fluid the tree would get, but that peeing on a tree would mean flushing the toilet one less time per day. Most toilets use premium tap water, not grey water, and water shortages have been a big global issue.

Plus tree were dying from drought in California by the millions when I had the idea. I'm sure peeing on them would have been less deadly for most of them than extreme drought.

Funny, I have the exact opposite experience : the trees I was "helping" became yellow quite quickly and came back green once I stopped peeing on them.

It was summer but no drought though. I guess it depends on the trees.

Could also depend in part on the pee. (shrug)

Too lazy to look it up but IIRC it helped kill bacteria in the mouth.

I think it was to whiten teeth just as it was used to whiten clothes

What does any of this have to do with the article?

And I'm not positive, but maybe the average lifespan in Rome was 30(considering all the newborn deaths), but I really doubt adult workers were keeling over at 30 on average.

In the city of Rome, I think many adults did actually die young, in addition to infant mortality. And they were replaced by imports from the countryside.

In fact I think no large city was self-sustaining, perhaps until London, c 1800? Having that many people in proximity simply wasn't healthy. For much the same reason, very few wars before WWI (perhaps none?) had more men killed by the enemy than by disease.

It doesn’t have to do with the article but the life expectancy of a Roman slave was shockingly low

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome#Demo...

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