How could it be otherwise, “The oldest trade in the world ”, as we have read in many texts, was also exercised in the cities and colonies of Rome. Much of our terminology when defining this ancient dedication comes from these times. Today we will talk about brothels, which is what brothels or brothels were called at the time. The term lupanar derives from the Latin word lupa, which means she-wolf. Today we also colloquially call those who are dedicated to these tasks "she-wolves", but the origin of this definition must be found in the ancient Roman rites.
Lupanar
As some reader may already know from my article on Februarius, in this month the Lupercales took place, festivals in honor of the god Luperco . The women who practiced a type of sacred prostitution with the god's priests, the luperci , ended up being called lupae .
Like the rest of the usual businesses in a Roman city, there were catering establishments where you could enjoy the company of their service in private for a few extra coins. This only happened in some cauponae or thermopolium that they had a loft to accommodate clients, as we saw in “Eating and sleeping away from home”.
But the business that concerns us today is the professional of these services:The brothel. Let us take into account a fundamental nuance when delving into the sexuality of those times:our current modesty and congenital blush for some topics, such as sex, is imbued in our minds by the Judeo-Christian education that we have received since childhood and that some of our elders still profess. But in Greco-Roman society the concept of "sin" and "homosexual" do not exist, nor is pederasty or any other form of sensual pleasure considered a moral attack. For this reason, we should not be shocked that in those brothels we could find boys and girls of any age serving all kinds of clients. The important thing was not who you slept with, but what role you played in the relationship, active or passive. César himself raised more suspicions of his amorous tendencies because of how he dressed than because of his evident masculine dalliances.
In each city of Hispania that housed merchants or citizens passing through, there was at least one brothel. In order to describe to you what the Tarraco, Caesaraugusta, Saguntum or Valentia would have been like, I will base myself on one that I could see almost intact:the Pompeii lupanar .
The lupanar was located behind one of the two most important arteries of the city, accessible to passing customers but not too visible to the native citizen, between several taverns, some hot springs. It is curious to see carved on the slabs of the decumanus small phalluses whose tip indicates the direction we must take to find it (like our current road signs) It had two floors, the upper one dedicated to a clientele with greater purchasing power with a good balcony from which the love workers seduced passers-by with its proposals and contours, while the ground floor had the most limited space and was reserved for the use of slaves and proletarians (Let no one be offended, that's how citizens without property were known back then who ended up raising offspring to feed the legions, offspring ) In this particular one there were five fornices , the rooms of the prostitutes who gave their name to an obvious verb.
Phallic Indicator
A beautiful gifted Priapus presided over the narrow hall. It is curious how on the entrance of these small cubicles they painted frescoes showing the specialties of their users. The customer knew very well that he was buying. A quadrantarian was not the same (so called because he only charged a quadrant for his services, a pittance), that a felatora , a specialist in a practice that no woman or man worthy of Rome would perform in a normal situation. The fornices' beds were made of mortar and a straw or down mattress was placed on them to make the act more comfortable. Some lamps and a washbasin were the only furniture they contained. You can still see the scratches on its walls, identical to those that today populate toilets around the world, showing phrases such as "Varinia loves Marcelo", "the baker is a felon", "Crasus has it by a span" or "Cato he fucks Lucila”…
Priapus welcomes
As, unfortunately, still happens today, it was generally not free boys or girls from the land who were engaged in this, but slaves from exotic lands with whom the leno (the business owner) was getting better returns. A normal service in the 1st century AD. could range from six to eight aces, that is, two sesterces (a glass of wine in a caupona It cost an ace) Therefore, buying in the slave market pretty British slaves with light skin and copper hair, athletic brunettes from Nubia or plump blondes from Gaul was to guarantee clientele and, of course, a good income.
Not all the prostitutes worked in those hovels, since, like the hetairas Greek, there were also free and influential women who served as company ladies with the option of friction. Of course, whether they were slaves or freedwomen, they paid taxes, they had to wear peplos or reddish-brown tunics and have their hair dyed to show their profession and not be confused with the chaste matrons. Some lady of rank frequented these places more for vice than for sesterces.
The most brazen case was that of the wife of Emperor Claudius, Valeria Messalina , nymphomaniac and promiscuous woman who came to practice prostitution in the dangerous Roman neighborhood of Subura under the pseudonym Lycisca (as narrated by Juvenal) How libidinous this woman would be who, taking advantage of her husband's absence when leaving for the Britannia campaign, organized a contest in the palace with the prostitutes of Rome based on seeing who could sleep with more men in a single day. The "school" of prostitutes accepted the challenge and sent Scylla , a true professional who performed twenty-five coitus before giving up… Messalina continued through the night and, after declaring that she was still not satisfied after having lain with seventy men, she continued until dawn. The final count was two hundred…
Collaboration of Gabriel Castelló.