[HN Gopher] Brothels of Ancient Pompeii ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2020-02-20 23:00 UTC)