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Regio
VII
Brothel
Pompeii’s
Lupanare (this names derives
from “lupa” that in Latin means prostitute) is a small two floor
building: five small rooms
downstairs, sort of five cells with stone beds and small windows
where prostitutes usually used to meet their clients;
five environments more spacious
upstairs, connected by an hanging balcony an two latrines, one for
each floor. Outside two wooden doors protected from indiscreet
looks.
Downstairs the
walls are adorned by some paintings
figuring different erotic positions (the different “performances”,
each with its price) and by graffiti:
from these graffiti, about two hundred, eighty names of prostitutes
and clients have been identified. The rooms
upstairs don’t present erotic paintings not even graffiti; perhaps
the destination was different.
It’s the only
Lupanare in Pompeii, but we must
remember that only the 2/3 of the ancient city have been discovered.
This doesn’t mean that it was the only place in which the
sexual commerce
was practised. It was, however, the only place in which the sexual
commerce was practised in “notorious
and
indiscriminate” way as it’s defined by the Roman right:
it means without the possibility to choose their clients. In fact in
Pompeii there were other forms
of prostitution but that according to the Roman right it was nor
prostitution: for the staff, masculine and female, of the
thermal baths and of the
taverns it was common practice
to have sexual commerce with the clients. But for the law this was
not prostitution because it wasn’t “notorious
and
indiscriminate”.
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