Lupanar (Pompeii)

The Lupanar of Pompeii is the most famous brothel in the ruined Roman city of Pompeii. It is of particular interest for the erotic paintings on its walls. Lupanar is Latin for "brothel" and literally means "den of she-wolves", lupa being misogynistic slang for "prostitute" in a predatory sense.[1] The Pompeii lupanar is also known as Lupanare Grande.

Contents

Location

The Lupanar (VII, 12, 18-20) is located approximately two blocks east of the forum at the intersection of Vico del Lupanare and Vico del Balcone Pensile.[2]

Brothels

Early Pompeian excavators, guided by the strict modesty of the time period, quickly classified any building containing erotic paintings as brothels. Using this metric, Pompeii had 35 lupanares. Given a population of ten thousand in Pompeii during the first century CE, this leaves one brothel per 286 people or 71 adult males. Using a stricter standard for identifying brothels brings the number to a more realistic figure including nine single room establishments and the Lupanar at VII, 12, 18-20. [3]

Brothels during this period were typically small with only a few rooms. The Lupanar was the largest of the brothels found in Pompeii with 10 rooms. Like other brothels, rooms in the Lupanar were plainly furnished. A mattress on a brick platform served as a bed. [4]

Graffiti

134 graffiti have been transcribed from the Lupanar at Pompeii. The presence of this graffiti served as one of the criteria for identifying the building as a brothel.[2]

Examples of graffiti from the Lupanar include:

Other examples can be traced to other locations in Pompeii. Given that persons of wealth generally did not visit brothels because of the availability of mistresses or slave concubines, the names can't be connected to known historical figures. The graffiti do tell stories, however. Various authors respond to each other's carvings in a sort of dialogue.[8]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Thomas A McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World (University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 7–8: "one of the terms they [i.e. Romans] commonly employ to describe brothel only succeeeds in converying a sense of misogyny. Lupanar (or lupanarium) signifies in a literal sense 'den of wolves,' specifically she-wolves, since the word for female wolf, lupa, is often used for prostitutes. Such terminology emphasizes the rapacious, predatory, and greedy nature of the prostitute as a type, and, at the same time, denies her humanity."
  2. ^ a b "Seeing the Past: Sex, Sight, and Societas in the Lupanar, Pompeii". http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/SeeingThePast/345. Retrieved 2007-05-11. 
  3. ^ John R. Clarke (1998). Looking at lovemaking: constructions of sexuality in Roman art, 100 B. C.-A. D. 250. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20024-1. 
  4. ^ Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002ff. BNP 2, 790-791
  5. ^ "CIL IV. 2175".
  6. ^ CIL IV. 2175; observation by J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982, 1990), p. 120 online.
  7. ^ Thomas A McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World (University of Michigan Press, 2004), p. 162.
  8. ^ Franklin, James L. (1986-04-). "Games and a Lupanar: Prosopography of a Neighborhood in Ancient Pompeii". The Classical Journal 81 (4): 319–328. JSTOR 3297215. 

Further reading