[HN Gopher] Brothels of Ancient Pompeii
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       Brothels of Ancient Pompeii
        
       Author : diodorus
       Score  : 65 points
       Date   : 2020-02-19 19:33 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
        
       | Jun8 wrote:
       | 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)
        
       | LessDmesg wrote:
       | 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
        
         | biztos wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | infecto wrote:
           | Too lazy to look it up but IIRC it helped kill bacteria in
           | the mouth.
        
           | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
           | > (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
        
         | EL_Loco wrote:
         | > They really weren't into this "treating people humanely"
         | thing.
         | 
         | As opposed to all the other ancient empires who were.
        
           | callmeal wrote:
           | Or modern ones for that matter.
        
           | LessDmesg wrote:
           | Not all, but Romans do stand out. While Greeks were
           | discussing philosophy and building mechanisms like
           | Antikythera, Romans were slaves to the rich, building roads
           | and aqueducts with arthritis and broken bones, and rotten
           | grain for food.
        
             | smogcutter wrote:
             | Oh come on, as if "the Greeks" were sitting around the
             | agora all day chatting with Socrates. That would sure be
             | news to a Spartan helot.
        
             | manfredo wrote:
             | "The Greeks" were a diverse group of peoples spanning three
             | continents over the course of most of a millennium with
             | varied cultures and social structures. Many of them,
             | including some of the most iconic Greek societies like
             | Athens and Sparta, were comprised of 40-60% slaves with
             | treatment on par with that of Roman slaves or worse (e.g.
             | Helots in Sparta).
        
             | quickthrowman wrote:
             | Uh, Alexander the Great was the greatest general in ancient
             | history, and also Greek. Greeks wielded power just like the
             | romans, there was a few hundred years of Greek hegemony in
             | the eastern Mediterranean after Alexander died.
        
         | quickthrowman wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | oh_sigh wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | kipchak wrote:
       | 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...
        
         | cultus wrote:
         | 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.
        
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       (page generated 2020-02-20 23:00 UTC)