Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Inside the Brothel of Pompeii

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Sex work was everywhere in the ancient world, but a known dedicated space for it (a brothel), is an extremely rare and important thing.Pompeii offers exactly that, with details such as graffiti and drawings immaculately preserved in the only known brothel from this period.Who were the people who worked there? What can we find out about the nature of sex work in this period? And why are there penises drawn everywhere in Pompeii?Joining Kate today is the wonderful Sarah Levin-Richardson, author of The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, Class & Gender at the Margins of Roman Society, to help us find out.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Bertwix the sheets. You lucky, lucky thing. I'm the lucky one. I'm really glad that you're here.

I'm really glad that we're just all here together. I have so much fun doing this. But before we can continue, before the fun can commence, I have to tell you the really unfun bit. Here we go. This is an adult podcast, talking about adults to other adults, about adult things in an adulty way,

covering a range of adult subjects. and you should be an adult too. We have to tell you that, because if anyone has just wandered in here, completely naive to the fact that a podcast called Betwixt the Sheets might be a bit adulty, they have to be given the Fair Do's warning. And now they can't get mad because Fair Do's,

we did tell you. Right, on with the show! What a lovely day it is here in Pompeii Betwixters. The year is 79 AD. No one's exactly sure which month it is, but there isn't a cloud in the sky. Well, apart from those puffs of ash that are starting to appear over Mount Vesuvius.

It's kind of pretty, really. I'm sure that that's nothing to worry about. Anyway, we are strolling through the streets looking for the Lupinar, the Wolf Den. This is the first purpose-built brothel of the entire era that we are aware of. There may have been others. They may have just been smashed down and lost to history,

but this brothel is special because it's the only one that survives from the Roman world. We are off on an exciting adventure and I can't wait to stop by and find out what exactly goes on in this place. Who's on shift? What's the latest gossip? Who were their regulars?

How much did everything cost? What kind of lives were going on in here? And I promise you, it's fascinating stuff and we really should crack on because that cloud above the mountain is starting to look a bit ominous. What do you look for a man? Oh, money of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning enough and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Shoots, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Sex work was everywhere in the ancient world, and they weren't subtle about it either. But what was rare is a purpose-built brothel. Not a room that sex was being sold out of in somebody's basement or above a pub or in a bathhouse,

an actual establishment that is only for selling sex in. That is rare, unbelievably rare. And in Pompeii, that's exactly what we have. And because it's Pompeii, so much detail has been beautifully preserved underneath the volcanic ash. Details that can take us back vividly into this world and offer answers to questions such as who were the people working? working here. Where did they come from? And who were their customers? Today, I'm joined by Sarah Levine Richardson, author of The Brothel of Pompeii, Sex, Class and Gender at the Margins of

Roman society, and she's going to help me find out what went on inside these walls. I am ready if you are. Let's crack on. Oh, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Sarah Levin Richardson. How are you doing? I am doing great. I'm so excited to be here. We are talking about one of my favorite ever subjects, the brothel in Pompeii. I love it so much. And you are the author of, hang on let me get the title right. The brothel of Pompeii, sex, class, and gender at the margins of Roman society. As an origin story, what made you want to write this book? I did not set out to write this book. It was kind of something that I stumbled into. So when I was in college and decided to study Greek and Roman antiquity. I went to Europe to see some of the Greek and Roman sites. And of course,

you go to Pompeii. And back then, it was a little bit less crowded than it is today. And so I was wandering around the site. And I literally stumbled into the brothel. And there was no one else there. No. Wow. And I thought to myself, what is this place? And I thought that was going to be the end of the story, that it was just a tourist experience. And then I kept on having questions about the building and the people who worked there. And no one was asking those questions. And so in grad school, I worked on it a little bit. And I thought that was going to be the end of it. And then after grad school, still no one else was asking these questions about the real people who did the work, who patronized these individuals. And so the book was kind of an accident. But I'm very happy it's there. And so that's

the story of the book. I'm so happy it's there. I've just not long got back from Pompeii. me and the dashing down snow were doing some filming over there. And we were lucky enough to be shown the brothel really early before the tourists got there. So slightly dazed at 7 in the morning looking at Cox on a wall of just like, okay, okay. But it was such an amazing experience to be there and be in that space. And you know, I know that I'm a sex historian, so this is my whole bag. But I think, I genuinely think it's one of the most important buildings in the whole of Pompeii, if not the whole of the ancient world.

Do you think I'm overselling it? You're preaching to the choir. I mean... I am. Sot everyone else. We think it's amazing, right? Yes, everyone should make a beeline there and is the most important structure.

So the thing that I think is really ironic about this structure that, of course, I love, and I wrote a book on it, is it's unique. Pump hands never do a brothel like this again. Romans never do it again. What I think is going on is it's a failed economic experiment. Like, it didn't make sense. There's prostitution practiced everywhere in the city.

And I think the idea of building a structure where the one thing that they sell is sex and they can't charge higher prices than like the street prostitutes, it's like literally just not bringing enough money. And people are like, you know what? We already have prostitutes wandering the streets and in bars and taverns. Let's not invest the money in a structure that's not going to actually bring us more profit. We should say that from the outset. It's the only known purpose-built brothel ever discovered.

Yes, exactly. And prostitution is everywhere, but building a structure just so that you can sell sex. It's the only example agreed upon from the Roman world. There are some spaces in Pompeii that people have arguments about and that they go, no, no, it was, it was, it was a brother. How are we defining this? How do you define it? That's a great question. So there are two sets of criteria that scholars have used for trying to identify brothels, especially at Pompeii, because it's so well preserved. So one set of definitions is, does it have either erotic frescoes or erotic graffiti, or does it have these kind of built-in cement beds?

And if you use that criteria, there are 50 to 60 properties at Pompeii that have at least one of those criteria. Okay. If you use that definition, you're getting a really high number for a population that we think is about 25,000 people. Most of these are like taverns and ins. If you take a stricter definition of a brothel as a place where the primary source of income has to be the sale of sex, right? So it's not a side hustle for your waitresses. It's the primary thing you're selling. And you have to be able to host more than one sex worker at a time.

then you get just our one purpose-built brothel. So that's where the debate is. You know, there's lots of places where sex is sold. Is it technically a brothel according to kind of modern definitions? No, but why are we interested in that definition? Like, what are the questions behind that that we're trying to ask? Are we trying to ask about how visible is it? In which case, does it matter that there's only one purpose built?

I don't think so. So I think we're moving away from strict definitions and into what are the questions that we want to answer by thinking about spaces where sex was sold. There's very strong arguments to be made for, this is a room where someone scratched a woman's prices into the wall, and it's on the side of a house. So they might have used that room to sell sex. And there's a tavern that may be somewhere out the back.

Yeah. But the Lupinar is the only one purpose built. And I know perhaps I should move beyond the why, what is the definition of it? But for me, that opens up a lot of debates around, well, what did what we call sex work look like in this space. Yeah. And I like, I love what you said there probably. Maybe it failed as a business venture because there was so much sex everywhere. It's like, why would you go to this specialist building?

Tell me a bit more about that, but why you think it was a failed business venture? Well, I think, I mean, no one sets out to have a failed business venture. So I think they had a unique idea that possibly could. have worked, which is. One of the things I think is going on in this structure is that the individuals who are performing sex. So we've got probably mostly enslaved sex workers of all genders, male and female, and they're not just providing sex because they're writing graffiti on the wall with clients, there's like this experience that they can offer that extends beyond just you come and pay for sex and leave. You then linger a bit. You think about what you want to write on the wall.

You read what your best friend wrote on the wall like a week ago and you want to do something even better than that. We also have at least some of the items that were used by the people who worked out of this space. And some of the items are cups and bottles. So someone's probably drinking alcohol. And we don't know who, but realistically, it's probably that clients are being offered alcohol.

And we have indications in the graffiti themselves of prostitutes praising. clients, for the client's ability to have sex. You're so good at what you do. You fuck so well. And what I think is going on is that there's this idea that when you go to this purpose-built structure, you're getting a whole experience. It's longer. It's got emotional aspects. You're really kind of forging a relationship with someone who's more like a boyfriend or girlfriend, or at least that's the conceit, I think. So I think that's what they're aiming to offer. And where it doesn't work is from the few graffiti that have prices and not a lot do, but a few do, they're not actually able to charge more money than the prostitutes who are just on the streets. And so that's why I think it ultimately fails.

I think this idea of providing this kind of more emotional connection is a good one. But I think it doesn't actually bring in more money. It may bring in more repeat clients, but there's no way to really, it's not easy to track that. No. I mean, there's brothels still very much with us to this day. And there's a lot of research around, well, what sex work looks like today. And I suppose it'd be an interesting question of why do people still go to brothels to this day? When most sex work is online, is what does that offer that is not offered by just booking somebody through adult work? Like, what is the pull of going to an actual building? Are they still getting this holistic, that's a weird word to use? But like, like, a holistic experience within that space. Yeah, that's a really great observation. Absolutely. I don't know. God, it's fascinating. Do you know what? I've jumped way, way, way ahead of myself because there'll be people listening to this going, wait, slow down, Kate. What's Pompey? I've jumped straight in with brothels. Let's talk a bit about what Pompey is and why it's so important.

So Pompeii is a small town of about 25,000 individuals. That's our current guest estimate. Small town. Small town. Small town. So Rompe. at this time, by the way, is about a million people. So there's a huge difference in terms of population there. Pompeii is 150 miles south of Rome, so that's about 250 kilometers. That may not sound very far in antiquity that would take a few days to get from Rome to Pompey. It's on the coast, the west coast of Italy. And it's really important for Roman historians due to a tragedy, actually due to the eruption of the local volcano in the year 79, and it caused immense destruction, but the ash from the eruption actually covered over the site. And for the most part, people

didn't rebuild. They kind of abandoned the site, and it turned into agricultural fields. And what that meant is that when it started to be excavated in the 1700s, we had an entire citys preserve for us with every, like, you know, everything you can think of that a city needs, So brothels and other places of prostitution. It's got bars. It's got places to repair your broken statues. It's got places to do your laundry, baking your bread. So we have this entire cityscape that we can then ask questions about daily life. So that's why it's so important. And of course, it's got lots of sexy stuff. So that's why I'm interested in it. So much sexy stuff. And it's quite eerie when you go because it's not like walking around a ruined castle or something where there's just sort of stumbling. of buildings. You're on a Roman street and you can see exactly what this would have looked like. I found it like the experience of it is it's quite dislocating because it's all, it is like you've time traveled. It's like, wow. Absolutely. How did you find it when you walk around it? Are you completely used to it now? Or do you still, because this is so weird. No, I still find it

magical. But I have to say it really depends on, it's now become so full of tourists that that can really affect the experience, right? If like you're trying to experience the brothels, with a hundred strangers at a time and you're pushed in and out. But no, it's absolutely magical. And walking on the sidewalks or the pavements that Pompeians did and then the stepping stones in the middle of the street so that you can cross from one side to the other without getting your feet wet.

It feels like you're really, really close to the people who live there. I'll be back with Sarah after this short break. And as you said, there's a lot of sex in Pompeii, which really shocked the victor. when they were excavating it. They really disrupted their idea of this kind of noble, classical Roman image. There are cocks everywhere in Pompeii. There are cocks everywhere, yes.

So many of them, it's ridiculous. When we were filming, we had to have a member of the crew to be on Cockwatch, which was just to make sure that a penis didn't come into view in the shot somewhere because that would mean that we had to put it on later, later on at night. I've just a whoa, whoa, there's a dick, there's a dick. slow down everybody to get rid of it. Why are there so many penises? I know that's not a fair question, but if you were to guess, why are there so many

penises in Pompey? So penises are signs of good luck. And it's interesting that it's only male genitalia. It's only penises. Isn't it? I was scouring for a vulva or a pair of boobs. Not to be had. Nope, not to be had.

They are not into female genitalia. Nope. But fallaces and penises, they bring good luck. So they carve them in their houses. They carve them on their street corners. They carve them on the streets themselves. They make them into wind chimes. And they have dicks that have dicks that have dicks.

And they're all flying and they're part human and they're part animal. It is something that brings luck. So it's something that, you know, we have to, I can't believe there's someone whose job was literally, I have to watch out for dicks. It's somebody just going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a penis. Stop. I heard tour guides while we were there I was eavesdropping and they were saying the penises that are carved on the floor point the way to the local brothel.

Urban legend, sorry to disappoint. So I know exactly what you're talking about. There's this one paving stone for the road and it's made out of basalt and so it's really heavy stone and there is a beautiful phallus carved into it. And it is just literal coincidence that it happens to point roughly in the same direction as the brothel. But if you were to do a tally of all of the penises all around Pompeii, they are pointing in all sorts of different directions. It's not true, is it? But what is true is the brothel is the most popular tourist destination in Pompeii. Why do you think that is? I think people are

fascinated. I mean, we're preaching to the choir. People are fascinated by sex, right? I think there's, this structure is unique. You can still see the frescoes, the sexy. frescoes, right? The graffiti actually are really hard to see. And if you're a tourist, you probably don't even know that they're there. But I think this idea of having an experience that's a little bit scandalous, but ultimately, the frescoes in this structure are really vanilla and bland. I thought that. Yes. I thought that when, oh, I'm so glad you said that. Sorry, go on, do continue. They're so vanilla. They're so boring. It's kind of disappointing. But I think that this particular structure allows tourists to have a little bit of a scandal.

experience, but actually not think too deeply about sexual activity that may be a little out of their comfort zone. So, for example, in the imagery, all the images show male-female couples engaged in genital-to-genital sex. There's no oral sex. There's no male sex. There's no female-female sex. There's no group sex. By the way, we know that all of those things are taking place in this brothel because the graffiti tell us. So we also know that Pompeians know how to paint all of those types of sexual couplings because there's another structure closed to the public called the suburban baths and it's got all those things that I just mentioned. And that is a different type of tourist experience, right? That is something where you're like, oh, what am I supposed to make

of this? Yeah, like you're there with the family of a nice day out with Pompeii and there's depictions of blowjobs and anal sex going on. And conalinguists, just like right there. And you're like, okay, all right, next kids. Oh, we should. talk about this one, another Pompeian myth, because I heard them still saying this one, the frescoes in the brothel are a menu. Another urban legend. Yeah. Yeah.

It's easy to think that, and I think a great thing about this podcast is we think about the stories, right, the stories that we can tell from antiquity, but also the stories we like to tell ourselves today. And I think this way, it's got to be so hard to be a tour guide, right? Because you have, what, like one minute to sum up this structure that's actually really complicated to a group that has folks coming from like all over the world. And the tourist menu idea. So basically this kind of story from tour guides is you go into the brothel, maybe as an ancient client, maybe you're a seafarer, maybe you don't even speak Latin or Greek. Both languages are used there.

So you have to look at the pictures on the wall, which I've already mentioned super vanilla. And then you basically like either grunt at one of them to indicate what you want or you, you're you, you see one over a doorway and you're like, that's the thing I want. I'll go into that room. But we already know that there's a lot of activities, sexual activities that you can buy that are not represented. And there's not a one-to-one correspondence between the sexual frescoes and the rooms. So some of the sexual frescoes are actually at the back of the hallway where there's a latrine.

So you're definitely not going to go there and be like, I want that. Oh, sorry, I just walked in on someone doing their business. It's about creating a fantasy. And in brothels today, there's still erotic images on the wall and pornography being played on a television. And it's all about creating an erotic space. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that the frescoes do create an erotic space, but in a different way than is easy to communicate to a tour group in, you know, 30 seconds. So one of the things that I think is really interesting about that set of frescoes is that there's only ever depicted the couple on the bed. And the reason I mention this is because in other examples of Roman erotic art, you can fill the surrounding space with enslaved people. And it signifies that the people on the bed are probably the slave owners. They're in this, like, rich house and they're doing, they're doing like the luxury version of sex.

In the brothel, the frescoes have enough space where they could have included enslaved people along the edges. So there was a choice not to do that. And what I think that means is that the two people on the bed, we actually know nothing about, there's no kind of visual indicators of what their status is. It could be two slaves. It could be two former slaves. It could be free people. It could be rich.

They could be poor. And I think this is purposely done so that any guy who walks into the structure, whether he himself is a slave or he's like a Pompeian bigwig, he can look at those frescoes and be like, that could be me in that fresco. So I think it is creating a kind of erotic atmosphere just in a different way than tour guides can communicate in a quick fashion. I think that's fair. And you can't blame them, can you?

No, absolutely not. Moving through there real quick and sort of telling people scandalous facts, even if they're not entirely true. Right, right. What was the state of sex work in the Roman world anyway? Because when you said that perhaps the idea of a brothel didn't catch on, And that makes sense when you think that it was actually widely available everywhere. But what were the Roman attitudes to sex work?

Romans were very open to sex work, but it was very differently construed for those who purchased sex, so male clients, and those who provided the sex. So for a guy who wants to buy sex, it's completely legal and it's completely socially acceptable. And the only kind of wrinkle there is if you end up spending your entire inheritance, On prostitution, that has seen something bad. Yeah, that's fair. Exactly. That's fair.

Leave some for your kids. So no stigma at all for men patronizing prostitutes of any gender and doing what they want there. For the people who provided sexual labor and who managed it, it wasn't illegal, but they didn't have as many legal rights. I mean, Roman society is so hierarchical. And one of the things that they do to keep people in their hierarchy is they have a set of, legal barriers for people who practice sex work. So most of them were probably enslaved anyways, and so didn't actually have legal rights to begin with. But if you were like a young widow with a family to raise and you had no source of income, a freeborn woman, you could enter prostitution.

Right. And there were certain things that then you could not anymore do. So you couldn't marry up the social ladder anymore. There were restrictions on how much money you could inherit. And your access to the legal system was restricted. You couldn't bring a lawsuit on behalf of yourself or other people. And this is really interesting, right? Because like, prostitutes are subject to a lot of violence. Yeah. And a lot of theft and everything else. Absolutely. So they're really, really vulnerable. They're the ones who really need access to the legal system. And the legal system is like, no, if you become a prostitute, you give up the rights to access. Yeah, you're on your own. Let's talk about who was working at this brothel. Because for me, that's one of the most.

most important things about it, because to find actual voices in their own hand, in their own voice of women from Rome is so rare. It's incredibly rare. To find the voices of people who are enslaved, almost non-existent. To find the voices of someone selling sex, a handful of them. And in this building, you have got the voices of enslaved women selling sex. That can't exist anywhere else in the entire world. Again, this is why Pompey is such a gem for those who study Roman history. we only have these attestations, these graffiti that were scratched into the wall because the eruption of Vesuvius preserve the wall plaster, right? It may be in other places. Prostitutes also scratched messages on walls, but wall plaster falls off over time. And so we don't have that.

So this is our one main source, and you're absolutely right, is such a rich source for all of these types of individuals where we otherwise wouldn't get to hear their voices. So one of my favorite women from the brothel is a woman named Mola. This is 100% a stage name. There is no person in the Roman world who would name their daughter Mola. It means grindstone, like the stone you use for grinding flour. Okay, yeah. That's her stage name, the grindstone. And in a certain, one of the graffiti, she's called a fucktress. And the Latin word is fututrix. This is a super, super rare Latin word. This is one of three times in all of Latin that we get this word. And it's interesting because the ending TRI-X, it means a woman who does whatever the verb is at the beginning. So this is a

woman who fucks. And, wow. To me, it is such a great expression of a person who is demonstrating pride and agency in the sexual activity that she has to partake of. And if she is enslaved, right, then she actually doesn't have the ability to control much in her life, including saying yes or no to clients. And yet nevertheless, and to be fair, we don't know if she wrote it. Could be someone else. It could be a client. It could be a pimp. But someone in that structure is wanting to highlight the fact that she is really good at what she does, right? And her name Mola then kind of combines with that. And it seems like this was not a universal perception of this particular sex worker.

So in that same room, there's also one of the graffiti that says, I fucked Mula. So someone misspelled her name. I fucked Mula here. And Mula means a mule. So someone has taken this badass woman who's really good at her job and been like, yeah, Miss Grindstone, you know what? I think you're a mule. And I fucked you. So there's this really interesting dialogue going on the wall of female sexual agency and what we do with that.

And maybe there's some like disparate opinions among those who were in the structure. Let's talk about agency because that it can seem very counterintuitive because we're assuming that most of the people that work there were enslaved. And we can talk about how we know that in a second, but not all of them. But the idea of agency within that space, it seems very. counterintuitive when somebody was enslaved. What's your thoughts on that? Yeah. No, it's a great question. And some scholars don't even want to use the word agency when discussing slavery because... It's shit, isn't it? Yeah, it's slavery. Right. No, it's slavery. So we could use the word action if we wanted a different word. I think we should at least be attuned to ways in which enslaved people and

sex workers are taking what is a really tough situation, really grim, a situation where even in the kind of best of scenarios where you're not a slave, you're freeborn. If you're participating in prostitution, you probably don't have a lot of other choices at that moment. So ways of thinking through how these individuals are able in any way possible to exert any sort of control over their lives or over how they're represented. And if these statements in the brothel are written by sex workers themselves, and I think there's compelling evidence to suggest, suggest it's at least possible, if not likely, then we can see like one area where they're trying to craft their persona. So even if they can't say no to a client, even if they don't otherwise have control or agency, I do think that it's important to pay attention to the

ways in which they're trying to work the situation for their benefit. And the idea of emotional labor comes in here, too, because, you know, I mentioned that one of the common statements in the brothel is prostitutes praising clients for their prowess. I think prostitutes are doing this so that their clients will be like, oh, Mola really thinks I'm great in bed. You know, maybe I will slip her a tip next time. Or you know what, I'm really starting to fall for Mola. Maybe I will see if I can scrape enough money together to buy her freedom.

That's like the best case scenario. So that's how I would kind of deal with agency. I'll be back with Sarah after the short break. I think as well, and this is. something very controversial, but I'm going to say it anyway. I think that when we're looking at something like sex work in Rome, you have to park all modern preconceptions about it, all modern attitudes. And yeah, these people were enslaved, but the Romans wouldn't have seen that as a bad thing. You can't find any voices of the people going, hang on a minute, maybe this is a bit

shit. So they're taking this as this is just what happens. And something that I've learned, as I've been going along, is that contained within the category of slave, of an enslaved person, it is subject to gradation. Now, this sounds completely bonkers, but just go with me. You can have better and worse types of enslavement. Like if somebody is sentenced to be a slave in the minds, that's pretty much a death sentence. Exactly. And apparently, people were sentenced to work in bakeries as slaves as slaves. That blew my mind because I thought it would be quite lovely to work in a bakery. But apparently, that was an awful hellish thing as well. So you do have certain types of enslavement

that are thought of as better than the others. And I wonder where sex work fits into that. I wonder if you were given the option of being a slave in this space, which is shit anyway, what you would go for. Would that be regarded as, oh, it sounds mad to say it, one of the better categories of enslavement? I think it's better than working in a mind because you're right, that's a death sentence.

it's not, I would say, other than minds, it's one of the less good tasks you can have as a slave. So you're right. Some enslaved people, especially those who work in the imperial household. And gladiators. Yeah, although gladiators are interesting because they can get famous, but they're still disparaged. But sex workers can get famous too. Who is it who wrote his book about famous prostitutes? It was one of the big Roman authors.

They can too. They can too. Most of the ones that we like know their names, they're no longer slaves. They're freed slaves or they're not citizens in some other way. And you're right that there are examples of kind of higher class call girls or maybe like girlfriends on the side. But that's, it's pretty rare. Even in the literature that's written by elite Roman men, they present sex work as something that is dangerous. Like, there's a lot of kind of joking among Roman elite authors about, like, beating up prostitutes.

Yeah. I know. It's really grim. So I don't think it's a great task. And also something that, you know, you mentioned we have to really throw away our preconceptions. When I started this project, especially when I, you know, met Mola through the graffiti, I was like, oh, my God, we have this, like, righteous, awesome sex worker. She's, like, proud of what she does. and as I worked on this project, and this was after the book.

So after the book, I thought I would never come back to the brothel, and I can't quit it. I still have questions. And I thought more about Mola. And I thought to myself, I wonder how old she was. And it was something I never had to address in the book because there's nothing in the brothel that speaks to the age of any of these people. But as I sat down and thought of it, I was like, you know what? Realistically, she's like 10 or 12. Oh, no.

I know. Oh, Moeller. Oh. Romans, I know. This is why I say, you know, going to the brothel in the tour guide version covers up a lot of the nuance and the kind of darker aspects. We just, yeah, we have a lot of evidence that Romans are starting to prostitute and slave people from a really young age. So that's more likely than like an 18 year old. Yeah, it's absolutely grim however you look at it, isn't it? Probably the best thing we could say about it is it's better than working. in the mines, which is an insanely low bar. Let's talk about some of the graffiti, because I've got in front of me, my trusty book on Pompeian graffiti here. And so some of the things that people are writing on the walls, Felices has fucked here, Felix, you fuck well, Bravo, Paris.

Good luck to those from Potoly. Phoebus the perfumer had a great fuck here. There's a theme, isn't there? Selain Minis, you fuck well. I have fucked here. And Mr. Garlic Farts. Mr. Garlic Farter. Tell me about Mr. Garlick Fartz.

Oh, Mr. Garlick Farter. This is certainly also a made-up name, but, you know, no parent would be like, oh, I'm going to name my little bundle of joy, Mr. Garlick Fartor. He's probably a client. So the graphito reads, Mr. Garlick Fartor, so the Latin is Scortoporonicus. It's a totally made-up name. We don't see it anywhere else. fucks well here who he wished. So I'm guessing this is a nickname that this guy had and he's either

okay with it and is writing this on the wall himself or like maybe a friend is writing it. So garlic is thought of as an aphrodisiac in antiquity. So I'm not sure how much in this nickname is entirely mockery and how much is maybe with this aphrodisiac a little bit less mockery than you. usual. So that's a fun guy, Mr. Garlic Farter. And he, in the Latin, it's indicating that he is having sex with both men and women. So that's one of our pieces of evidence for male prostitutes in the structure. And there's other graffiti that are written by male prostitutes that make that more explicit. And somebody called Paris comes up quite a lot. And that seems to have been a male sex worker, which opens up the question. I'd be fascinated to know what you think about this one,

is were they servicing male clients or female clients? Is that what do you think? Do you think there's any chance that Roman women were sneaking away to the brothel? There is a chance. There's a chance. And there's one scholar who thinks that there are female clients who interprets my favorite Mola as a woman, as a female prostitute who services female clients. Oh, okay. And there's another grafito in the structure that says, I was fucked here. And in the Latin, it's a feminine form. So I, a woman was fucked here. And the scholar says, why would a female prostitute need to write that on the wall? Like, obviously, female prostitutes are fucked in the structure. So he takes those two pieces of evidence together and says, maybe there are female clients, either for female prostitutes or male

prostitutes. I want to hold space for that because it's really hard to know what to do with evidence that doesn't fit with what we know. And especially for... the history of sex, right? Sometimes we only have one piece of evidence. And then the question is, what do we do with that? So I want to hold space for that theory. But I'm also confronting Roman ideas more generally about female sexuality. And the norm is, for women, you're allowed to have sex with your husband. Like, end of story. And not to say that all sorts of things don't happen because they do. We know from texts that if you're rich, and especially if your husband has died, you can basically do what you want. People will talk about you behind your back, but you can do it. So I think that,

especially for purchasing sex at a brothel, I think there'd be such a societal stigma that I think it's unlikely to happen. I think it's more likely that maybe like a woman had like a boy toy or boyfriend, but I think going to the brothel is unlikely. But there are scholars who think that and I do want to hold space for that possibility. It just seems unlikely with everything I know a, a, about Roman society, which admittedly is far from everything, but their ideas of gender were very, very binary and women were very much confined to the domestic sphere and reputations would be irrevocably damaged with the slightest hint of sexual impropriety. That's you off to go and live on an island somewhere for the rest of your life, banished. Exactly, exactly. Right? And the repercussions for women

are right, like you could... Hush. You could lose your inheritance. And I do want to... to say, though, that there is graffiti elsewhere at Pompeii that speaks about female homoeroticism. There's this love poem written on a wall from one woman to another. So we do know that that's taking place. But I don't think that it's necessarily taking place in a brothel setting. No, I can't. I mean, I kind of hope it did in a weird way. But yeah, I can't see that one happening either. I think it's more likely that the men or boys working there were servicing male clients. I think that's right. Yeah.

Is there anything on the walls or anything in the evidence that shows us how the brothel operated? Obviously, people came there to have sex and then they paid the money yet. Obviously they did. But if it's like other brothels and certainly like the later brothels in Italy that we've got some evidence for, but not in ancient Rome, is it would have been run by a madam, probably a woman. Is there any sense of who owned it, where they live? Was there someone taking money payment there? on site? Is there anything like that?

Gosh, that's such a great question. And the frustrating answer is that there is nothing that we can look at that that tells us anything about that. And so when I was writing the book, I was like, what about the person who, you know, ran this structure? There is nothing there. I have a lot of, I have a lot of theories. Okay. So presumably there was someone there, right? So if most of the people who work there are enslaved, you need someone kind of keeping an eye on things. Keeping an eye in them, right? And in Roman literature and law also brothels are run by either a pimp or a madam. So it's very likely that that's the case. We don't have any physical evidence of that person. I personally think, so the brothel is a two-story structure. The brothel proper, like the area where sex was sold is on the ground floor. That's where tourists go. There is a second level that's completely separate. It's accessed by a separate staircase. It's set up for basically like you can rent small rooms. I myself, and there's no physical evidence to support this,

but I myself think that whoever's managing the structure is living upstairs because they can then keep an eye on what's going on. Yeah. I've got a number of sex worker friends and have studied sex work for a long time now. And I was fascinated by the information that I learned when I was in Pompeii, that there is, like you said to it earlier, there's a little latrine in the brothel. something that they found was razors and cleaning paraphernalia. And that for me made me go, oh, right, because that's the one ask any full service sex worker today. And they will tell you,

just please be clean. I just saw that. And I wondered, is that the same thing back in Pompeii, where they asking clients to wash beforehand? Oh, that's a great question. As far as I know, I don't know if we have any testimonies to clients washing beforehand. I don't know. I think we assume, so we've found this little, we have a description. We don't have the object anymore, but this little shell-shaped basin that was for water. I myself assumed it was for the prostitute to wash after sex. And the razor was for facial hair. So there are other ways to depilate the rest of your body hair.

So they're doing waxing. They're doing plucking. They're doing singeing. But it seems like they're using razors only for facial hair. So that's another piece of evidence that there are male prostitutes. in the structure and that they're trying to keep themselves looking young and desirable. It's so tantalizing, isn't it? You've just got this space, but there's so many questions within it. Who were these people? How old were they? Were they happy? Were they okay? Probably not.

Like, what was happening afterwards? Who ran it? Who were the clients? That's the other thing. Do we know who was, apart from Mr. Garlic Fards? But I have heard it said that this is where the poor people would have come. This is where the impoverished people would have come. I'm not sure that's the case, you know, because impoverished people throughout history have just sold sex on the street. The brothel seems to be attempting

to do something more experiential. What do you think? Who's visiting this establishment? So our best source of evidence is the graffiti, and most of the names that we have there are names that are typical of enslaved men. We do have the names, the kind of full official names

of, I want to say, two or three freeborn men. And one thing to think about is not everyone who goes into the structure is necessarily going to leave their name on the wall. So it may be that there's kind of a broader spectrum of people showing up, but for whatever reason, most of the names are coming from enslaved folks. And what I think is really interesting about this is if these are enslaved men who are coming to the structure to purchase sex, these same individuals, when they return, to their, they're probably working in someone's house, right?

They're probably enslaved in someone's house. They are the sexual objects of their enslaver. So at home, both male and female enslaved people are subject to, you know, non-consensual sex whenever the enslaver wants. And then these individuals choose to use, if you're a household slave, your enslaver can give you a small allowance. And they're choosing to use that money to then go to the brothel and then to be the ones who perform masculinity in this very elite way with the male or female prostitutes who work there.

So I think it's this opportunity for them to allow them to be experienced like real men, real freeborn men, and these emotional, potentially also these emotional connections that could be forged. So final question then, if I had a time machine and if I could transport you back to the brothel, the Lupinar, when it was in full flow and you're allowed in, no one's going to get upset with you for interrupt. in business. What do you want to find out? What is the one thing that I need to know the answer to this question? What a great question. I want to know what life is like for those sex workers when there are no clients there. When it's either like, I don't know what times of day people purchase sex. I don't know if it's like the morning hours. Like what is their morning routine? Right. And like are they

friendly with each other? What are they doing to support themselves? That's a huge question that I have. and I don't think there's any way to answer that with the evidence we have. But they exist outside of the world of providing sex to clients. They exist as people with their own hopes and dreams. And for the ones who aren't enslaved, who are freeborn, are they going back at the end of the day to their families? Right? To their daughter or their mother that I really want to know about their lives

actually outside of sex. Sarah, you have been magnificent to talk to you. And if people want to know more about you and your research, I understand you're not on social media, which is very smart of you. But where can they find you? Do you have a website? I do.

I have a website at academia.edu for anyone who has access to that. And folks can also find my faculty page at the University of Washington Department of Classics. Thank you so much for talking to me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Sarah for joining me. And if you liked what you heard,

don't forget to like review and follow along, whatever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hi, then you can email us at betwixtat history hit.com. We've got episodes on everything from the history of red lipstick to medieval lesbians all marching your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit.

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