The History of Sex: Pompeii -- The Fascinating Fascinum -- (Chap. I, Pt. 3)

The modern view of the ancients tends to be that they were sexually liberated in extremis, without any of the Judeo-Christian hang-ups that afflict Western society today:

If only we could be more like the Romans—goes a popular line of thought—The Coliseum and crucifixions were a bit much, but when it came to sex, they sure did know how to have a guilt-free good time.

And it's true: the Romans didn't see anything shameful (let alone sinful) about sex per se.

Pompeii proves they were masters of sex in all its manifestations: as an act of violence, pleasure, reproduction, power, luck, religion, necessity, luxury, entertainment—and even love.

Historians had long known about the debauchery of certain emperors and the ruling elite: the scurrilous accounts of Claudius' nymphomaniac wife, Messalina, moonlighting in a whorehouse in the capital, for instance, or Tiberius indulging in lurid acts on Capri, just across the bay from Pompeii, supposedly even using suckling babes for fellatio.

But Rome and Capri were imperial pleasure centers; Pompeii and Herculaneum were just provincial seaside resorts, popular with wealthy holidaymakers and sailors on shore leave, but at their heart thoroughly ordinary, mid-sized towns.

It was only when they were excavated in the mid-1700s that the world realized just how pervasive erotica was in everyday Roman life.

Hic Habitat Felicitas -- 'Here Dwells Happiness'
(Ancient Roman for 'God Bless This House')

The Romans had a special word for the talismanic male organ—fascinum—and their variations on the theme were certainly, well, fascinating.

The penis was omnipresent: disembodied members were painted on walls, cast in bronze, molded in terracotta and carved into the volcanic building stones of Pompeii, adorning amulets, shop signs, street corners and paving blocks.

Then there were the explicit scenes on everything from pendants to public walls: twosomes, threesomes, foursomes and more-somes indulging in sodomy, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender-bending and bestiality.

The extent of this apparent perversion mortified the Romans' Catholic descendants and shocked the eighteenth-century empire-builders who idealized Rome's accomplishments.

Suddenly, aficionados of the Renaissance were confronted with not just a few isolated artefacts dug up around the Mediterranean and hidden away in the private collections of 'discerning gentlemen,' but two entire towns brimming with pornographic 'filth.'