So as many of you have probably figured out from past posts,
Pompeii and Roman culture in general was not conservative by any means. They were very sexually open and this is seen in the explicit
artwork is everywhere and has caused many controversies. Thus, it was not too
surprising when I found out there were many brothels in the city.
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| This is looking into one of the smaller rooms within a brothel that the women would have 'worked' in |
It was once thought that there were as many as thirty-five brothels
in Pompeii. That is practically one on every corner! This has since been
proven untrue, however. The greatest indicator that thirty-five is too large of a
number is the size of the city itself. Pompeii housed around ten thousand inhabitants
in 79 CE when it was destroyed. Doing the math, that equates to 286 people or about
71 men for every brothel. That seems excessive, especially when we compare the
numbers to the ancient city of Rome, which is estimated to have forty-five brothels
for a population over one million. Pompeii could not have supported such a vigorous
sex trade. Though it is important to remember that thirty-five is the number of
brothels, the houses or ‘place of business’ for the prostitutes, so that was
not the number of working women in the city. Some brothels would have housed
several women and there would be prostitutes working full or part time in bars
and inns, and sometimes the street.
So why did people think there were so many brothels? Well many
archaeologists assumed any building with erotic paintings, sculpture or
graffiti was a brothel. It was pointed out that visiting any public bathroom
today and it is not out of place to see boastful sexual writing, and it does
not indicate a sex trade. This is why this form of identification was
problematic to say the least. In addition, if you remember the blog about the bathhouses,
those too had erotic mosaics but they were probably seen more in humor. I
compare it to our culture today, there are many sexual images in the media and
in art etc., but that does not mean we have whorehouses everywhere.
Now, after considering the fact that any erotic symbol in
any form does not denote a brothel, it seems that there are only ten in the
city of Pompeii. This is much more likely because that equates to one brothel
for every 250 adult males. However, it is likely that not all buildings used as
brothels were created or used for that singular purpose. These would have been
counted in the high number of thirty-five but left out of the more conservative
estimate of ten. In addition, sex trade probably was not limited to brothels.
It was pointed out that wealthy Romans with slaves would not have visited
brothels or prostitutes for they already owned people for free sexual use.
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Link to Source:
http://emma-oxenby-wohlfart.suite101.com/how-many-brothels-were-there-in-pompeii-a175213
First off, very nice use of the disclaimer! This post is informative and logical in its reasoning, although at one point my brain went; “Oh 35 brothels, that seems reasonable, oh wait, only 10, that actually makes more sense, wait… why am I thinking about the ratio of houses to brothels?!” Kind of like looking at the floor plan, plumbing, and electrical schematics for the Playboy Mansion, you know it’s dirty, but you try to look at it objectively, only to find… it’s still dirty.
ReplyDeleteIt is true however that the graffiti in Pompeii has an explicit nature to it, and so to assume that every building with erotic or sexual artwork is a building designated for the sex trade, just doesn’t sound accurate. Just as today we find explicit graffiti in bathroom stalls all over, but not all stalls are used for fornication… at least, I don’t think so… it’s still dirty.
You bring up a valid point with the wealthy citizens owning slaves who would have been used for carnal purposes, although I would guess that since this was Rome, it was not merely the stereotypical image of a man who owns a group of women. It is possible that wealthy men and women used their slaves or servants for sexual experimentation and homoeroticism. … still dirty.
Honestly, I found this to be a good post, and the lack of images is of course permitted. I chuckled at the notion of scholars counting the number of brothels and getting into serious debates as to whether or not a particular room was designated for storage or for… something else. I wanted to write a funny post for this subject, but your post is interesting and informative… and I will think twice about using public restrooms from now on.
I never knew that Pompeii held such an extensive sex trade network.. When you stated that there were 35 brothels in such a small city I was shocked. How could one city hold so many? But the fact that archaeologists just assumed some spots were brothels based on graffiti was bad analyzing on their part. You're right that just because something sexual is posted somewhere doesn't mean it is a whore house. I also found the fact that the prostitutes even worked outside of the brothels quite interesting. At least they didn't make it their only source of income! Great work, I enjoyed it.
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