You can also add newsletters iflscience. IFLScience needs the contact information you provide to us to contact you about our products and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For information on how to unsubscribe, as well as our privacy practices and commitment to protecting your privacy, check out our Privacy Policy. Pompeii is famous for being one of several ancient Roman metropolises preserved by the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in the year What you may not know about it is that it was also home to some fairly zealous sexual activity and imagery.
Both this buried city and nearby Herculaneum are literally covered with carvings of phalluses, including one bronze chandelier that depicts a flying male member. Pompeii itself is home to a mural of Mercury who appears to have an incredibly oversized erection.
As reported by CBC News , new images of an excavated brothel within Pompeii are giving the public new insight into the randy shenanigans of the long-list residences of this part of Italy.
Much of the art in this particular brothel depicts sex acts that archaeologists think were advertisements to potential clients. Only the wealthiest Pompeiians could afford to spend their time here, some of who appear to have scrawled on the walls their tales of sexual derring-do. The only known brothel in the city, it was five storeys high and was equipped with a balcony from which sex workers called down to potential customers on the street.
Despite prostitution being legal in Pompeii, most of the women working there were slaves. Married men were allowed to get it on with anyone except the wives of other men. Married women were forbidden from sleeping with anyone other than their husbands. If you are not able to make it to Pompeii to see the remnants of the Lupanar in person, you can tune in to CBC's The Nature of Things , a recently aired documentary featuring a tour of the notorious brothel.
