If you walk amidst the remains of the ancient city of Pompeii, you can possibly get a good idea of how the now abandoned ruins were once a bustling city of Rome. The city was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and buried it under tonnes of rubble and volcanic pumice. Ancient Romans were way ahead of their time, having invented so many contraptions that are widely used in construction and infrastructure in the present day. They invented the modern sewage system, underfloor heating, roads, cement, and a recent discovery has revealed that the Pompeiians were the pioneers of recycling.
Now, year old graffiti on the stone walls excavated from the city also detail how sex trade was prominent in the city and how it worked in ancient times, implying that Romans were indeed very forward. Pompei was first discovered in the 16th century, after which innumerable excavations have been conducted to retrieve artifacts from the historic site. In the 18th century, archeologists recovered venereal artifacts like phallic-shaped lamps, prompting a study into how the ancient Romans perceived sexual intercourse.
They discovered the ' Lupanar of Pompei ', a famous brothel comprising ten rooms, which was extremely popular with men. The walls of the ancient brothel feature a number of erotic paintings that depict group sex and many other sexual acts, indicating a myriad of sexual services that the brothel offered. These murals are almost pornographic, illustrating fair-skinned women in the nude, with styled hair and assuming various sexual positions with young, tanned, athletically-built men.
Each of the ten rooms even housed a stone bed that was covered with a mattress and was used by prostitutes to entertain their clients. The wall paintings also ascertain that many male prostitutes also rendered their services in the sex trade. Women were prohibited from having sex with anyone besides their husbands, so the clients who accessed male sex-workers for their services were mostly men.
As a matter of fact, ancient Romans condoned male-on-male sexual encounters, as long as there was no penetration involved. There was a variety of buildings that conducted similar activities, including inns, lunch counters, and taverns, that were identified as brothels, and they all housed murals.
