Just as we recently discovered a coin from Rome in the shape of a ham, we now have the spintriae , coins or tokens in which different sexual positions were represented on the front and a number on the back...
What were these types of coins used for?
The most conservative and least original versions establish that the spintriae (coined in the time of Caesar Augustus and his adoptive son Tiberius) were coined as a mockery of the morality campaign that Caesar Augustus implemented. According to Suetonius, by having one of these coins depicting the emperor in a brothel or latrine, you could be charged with high treason. It is also said that they could be tokens from some kind of game.
But I'm going to stay with other much more original versions...
Knowing that in Rome they had everything perfectly organized – prostitution was regulated by the licentia Stupri – I wouldn't be surprised if they had been used as tokens in brothels. Upon entering the brothel, the leno was paid -the owner- the contracted service, he gave you the spintriae that represented said service and in which the number on the back indicated the cabin where you would be attended . The number was painted on the passenger compartment door and inside they had a mortar bed on which a mattress was placed. straw or down; some skylights and a washbasin were the only furniture. In Pompeii, 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 ”, “Crassus has it by a foot ” or “Cato bangs Lucila ”…
And put to give them utilities -this bordering on the comical-, it is said that the spintriae could also have been used by the legionnaires. In their conquests around half the world, the legionnaires had to deal with people of different languages that were unknown to them, so using the spintriae they told the local prostitutes the service they wanted…
