The History of Sex: Pompeii -- Screw Your Own Slave -- (Chap. I, Pt. 9)

'People with any sort of wealth bought their slaves and screwed them at home whenever they wanted. With one ass, I could buy a piece of bread, a glass of wine or a sexual favor. That was the minimum rate.

Graffiti in Pompeii:
'Fortunata, (slave of) Antonius,
gives her favors for two asses'
(source: Pompeii's Erotic Songbook)

'But—attenzione—if I want a woman who's dark and lovely and perhaps Greek, I have to spend sixteen asses.'

I ask him why Easterners were so prized.

'Why are Asian women in vogue in New York?' he laughs.

But the term 'Greek love' is still used today. I'm wondering if the Romans paid more because their Greek subjects would bend over to please them.

Dr. Varone rejects this out of hand, quoting Martial, who lived at the time of Pompeii's demise and penned what must be one of the great pederastic putdowns of all time.

'He writes of a wife who finds her husband penetrating a young male slave's ass, and she starts to scream in a really loud voice. And the man says, "Why do you scream and tell me that you, too, have a bottom? What you have is two vaginas; an ass is something completely different, and it's all male."'

This cracks up the two old boys sitting behind us.

Dr. Varone peers at me through his spectacles. 'That's what Martial said, eh—not me.'

'Let Fortunata suck!'
(source: Pompeii's Erotic Songbook)

Then he grins at Angela, who's blushing in mid-translation. 'You didn't think you'd be doing this today, did you? If you wanna talk about art, we could talk about art, but I don't think that's what this guy came here for.'

LESBIAN PROSTITUTION

As for the ins and outs of prostitution, Varone reckons the 'she wolves' prowled the streets rather than waiting for their prey to come to them.

'There were various kinds of prostitutes—females, children and males—and various sorts of homosexual prostitution going on. Including lesbian prostitution.'

'In the lupanar?' That's the first I've heard of it.

'And elsewhere.'

He laughs, explaining that the Romans used one verb to describe the masculine act of penetrating and another for being penetrated. 'Futuo is the giving end of it; nubo is the receiving end of it,' he says, and to make it absolutely clear to me, he rams his index finger in and out of the circle formed by his other hand.

'So when we see a reference to a prostitute who's called a fututrix, we know that she was a woman who would not engage in licking activities but would play the role of the man with a woman.'