Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society Inside the Brothel of Pompeii About this episode Sex work was everywhere in the ancient world, but a known dedicated space for it (a brothel), is an extremely rare and important thing.
Pompeii offers exactly that, with details such as graffiti and drawings immaculately preserved in the only known brothel from this period.
Who were the people who worked there? What can we find out about the nature of sex work in this period? And why are there penises drawn everywhere in Pompeii?
Joining Kate today is the wonderful Sarah Levin-Richardson, author of The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, Class & Gender at the Margins of Roman Society https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brothel-Pompeii-Gender-Margins-Society/dp/1108496873, to help us find out.
This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media.
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0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
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1:14 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets, you lucky, lucky thing. I'm the lucky one. I'm really glad that you're here. In fact, I'm really glad that we're just all here together. I have so much fun doing this. But before we can continue, before the fun can commence, I have to tell you the really unfun bit. Here we go. This is an adult podcast, podcast about adults, about adult things and an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. We have to tell you that, because if anyone has just wandered in here, completely naive to the fact that a podcast called Betwixt the Sheets might be a bit adulty, they have to be given the fair do's warning. And now they can't get mad, because fair do's, we did tell you. Right, on with the show.
2:04 Kate Lister? What a lovely day it is here in Pompeii, Betwixtus. The year is 79 AD. No one's exactly sure which month it is, but there isn't a cloud in the sky. Well, apart from those puffs of ash that are starting to appear over Mount Vesuvius. It's kind of pretty, really. I'm sure that that's nothing to worry about. Anyway, we are strolling through the streets, looking for the lupinar, the wolf den. This is the first purpose-built brothel of the entire era that we are aware of. There may have been others. They may have just been smashed down and lost to history. But this brothel is special, because it's the only one that survives from the Roman world.
2:46 Kate Lister? We are off on an exciting adventure, and I can't wait to stop by and find out what exactly goes on in this place. Who's on shift? What's the latest gossip? Who were their regulars? How much did everything cost? What kind of lives were going on in here? And I promise you, it's fascinating stuff. And we really should crack on, because that cloud above the mountain is starting to look a bit ominous.
3:19 Speaker 02 What do you call a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
3:25 Speaker 03 I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.
3:37 Speaker 02 Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
3:40 Speaker 04 Goodness, what beautiful day. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek.
3:48 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Shit, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Sex work was everywhere in the ancient world, and they weren't subtle about it either. But what was rare is a purpose-built brothel. Not a room that sex was being sold out of in somebody's basement or above a pub or in a bathhouse. An actual establishment that is only for sex. Selling sex in, that is rare, unbelievably rare. And in Pompeii, that's exactly what we have. And because it's Pompeii, so much detail has been beautifully preserved underneath the volcanic ash, details that can take us back vividly into this world and offer answers to questions such as, who were the people working here?
4:33 Kate Lister? Where did they come from? And who were their customers? Today, I'm joined by Sarah Levine Richardson, author of The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, Class, and Gender at the Margins of Roman Society. And she's going to help me find out what went on inside these walls. I am ready if you are. Let's crack on.
4:56 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Sarah Levin Richardson. How are you doing?
5:03 Speaker 05 I am doing great. I'm so excited to be here.
5:05 Kate Lister? We are talking about one of my favorite ever subjects, the brothel in Pompeii. I love it so much. And you are the author of, hang on, let me get the title right. The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, Class, and Gender at the Margins of Roman Society. As an origin story, what made you want to write this book?
5:24 Speaker 05 I did not set out to write this book. It was, it was kind of something that I stumbled into. So when I was in college and decided to study Greek and Roman antiquity, I went to Europe to see some of the Greek and Roman sites. And of course, you go to Pompeii. And back then, it was a little bit less crowded than it is today. And so I was wandering around the site and I literally stumbled into the brothel and there was no one else there.
5:47 Kate Lister? No, wow.
5:49 Speaker 05 And I thought to myself, what is this place? And I thought that was going to be the end of the story, that it was just a tourist experience. And then I kept on having questions about, about the building and the people who worked there. And no one was asking those questions. And so in grad school, I worked on it a little bit and I thought that was going to be the end of it. And then after grad school, still no one else was asking these questions about the real people who did the work, who patronized these individuals. And so the book was kind of an accident, but I'm very happy it's there. And so that's, that's the story of the book.
6:24 Kate Lister? I'm so happy it's there. I've just not long got back from Pompeii. Me and the dashing down snow were doing some filming over there and we were lucky enough to be shown the brothel really early before the tourists got there. So slightly dazed at seven in the morning, looking at cocks on a wall of just like, okay, okay. But it was such an amazing experience to be there and be in that space. And you know, I know that I'm a sex historian, so this is my whole bag. But I think, I genuinely think it's one of the most important buildings in the whole of Pompeii, if not the whole of the ancient world. Do you think I'm overselling it?
7:01 Speaker 05 You're preaching to the choir. I mean,
7:02 Kate Lister? I am. Sod everyone else. Let's, we think it's amazing, right?
7:06 Speaker 05 Yes, everyone should make a beeline there and it's the most important structure. So the thing that I think is really ironic about this structure that of course I love, and I wrote a book on it, is it's unique. Pompeians never do a brothel like this again. Romans never do it again. What I think is going on is it's a failed economic experiment. Like, it didn't make sense. There's prostitution practiced everywhere in the city. And I think the idea of building a structure where the one thing that they sell is sex and they can't charge higher prices than like the street prostitutes, it's like literally just not bringing enough money. And people are like, you know what? We already have prostitutes wandering the streets and in bars and taverns. Let's not invest the money in a structure that's not going to actually bring us more profit.
7:51 Kate Lister? We should say that from the outset. It's the only known purpose-built brothel ever discovered.
7:58 Speaker 05 Yes, exactly. And prostitution is everywhere, but building a structure just so that you can sell sex, it's the only example agreed upon from the Roman world.
8:10 Kate Lister? There are some spaces in Pompeii that people have arguments about and that they go, no, no, it was, it was, it was a brothel. How are we defining this? How do you define it?
8:20 Speaker 05 That's a great question. So there are two sets of criteria that scholars have used for trying to identify brothels, especially at Pompeii, because it's so well-preserved. So one set of definitions is, does it have either erotic frescoes?
8:37 Speaker 05 Or erotic graffiti, or does it have these kind of built in cement beds? And if you use that criteria, there are 50 to 60 properties at Pompeii that have at least one of those criteria.
8:50 Kate Lister? Okay.
8:50 Speaker 05 If you use that definition, you're getting a really high number for a population that we think is about 25,000 people.
8:57 Kate Lister? Yeah.
8:57 Speaker 05 Most of these are like taverns and inns. If you take a stricter definition of a brothel as a place where the primary source of income has to be the sale of sex, right? So it's not a side hustle for your waitresses. It's the primary thing you're selling and you have to be able to host more than one sex worker at a time. Then you get just our one purpose built brothel. So that's where the debate is. You know, there's lots of places where sex is sold. Is it technically a brothel according to kind of modern definitions? No, but why are we interested in that definition? Like, what are the questions behind that that we're trying to ask? Are we trying to ask about how visible is it? In which case, does it matter that there's only one purpose built? I don't think so.
9:40 Speaker 05 So I think we're moving away from strict definitions and into what are the questions that we want to answer by thinking about spaces where sex was sold?
9:49 Kate Lister? There's very strong arguments to be made for this is a room where someone scratched a woman's prices into the wall and it's on the side of a house. So they might have used that room to sell sex. And there's, there's a tavern that may be somewhere out the back.
10:04 Speaker 05 Yep.
10:04 Kate Lister? But the Lupinare is the only one purpose built. And I know perhaps I should move beyond the why, what is the definition of it? But for me, that opens up a lot of debates around, well, what did what we call sex work look like in this space?
10:21 Speaker 05 Yeah.
10:21 Kate Lister? And I like, I love what you said there, probably. Maybe it failed as a business venture because there was so much sex everywhere. It's like, why would you go to this specialist building? Tell me a bit more about that, but why you think it was a failed business venture?
10:35 Speaker 05 Well, I think, I mean, they didn't, no one sets out to have a failed business venture. So I think they had a unique idea that possibly could have worked, which is, one of the things I think is going on in this structure is that the individuals who are performing sex. So we've got probably mostly enslaved.
10:54 Speaker 05 Sex workers of all genders, male and female. And they're not just providing sex. Because they're writing graffiti on the wall with clients. There's like this experience that they can offer that extends beyond just you come and pay for sex and leave. You then linger a bit, you think about what you want to write on the wall. You read what your best friend wrote on the wall like a week ago, and you want to do something even better than that. We also have at least some of the items that were used by the people who worked out of this space. And some of the items are cups and bottles. So that someone's probably drinking alcohol. And we don't know who, but realistically, it's probably that clients are being offered alcohol.
11:38 Speaker 05 And we have indications in the graffiti themselves of prostitutes praising clients for the client's ability to have sex. You're so good at what you do. You fuck so well. And what I think is going on is that there's this idea that when you go to this purpose-built structure, you're getting a whole experience. It's longer, it's got emotional aspects. You're really kind of forging a relationship with someone who's more like a boyfriend or girlfriend. Or at least that's the conceit, I think. So I think that's what they're aiming to offer. And where it doesn't work is from the few graffiti that have prices, and not a lot do, but a few do.
12:20 Speaker 05 They're not actually able to charge more money than the prostitutes who are just on the streets. And so that's why I think it ultimately fails. I think this idea of providing this kind of more emotional connection is a good one. But I think it doesn't actually bring in more money. It may bring in more repeat clients, but there's no way to really, it's not easy to track that.
12:43 Kate Lister? No, I mean, there's brothels still very much with us to this day. And there's a lot of research around, well, what sex work looks like today. And I suppose the interesting question of why do people still go to brothels to this day? When most sex workers online is what does that offer that is not offered by just booking somebody through adult work? Like, what is the pull of going to an actual building? Are they still getting this like holistic? That's a weird word to use, but like a holistic experience within that space?
13:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's a really great observation. Absolutely.
13:18 Kate Lister? I don't know. God, it's fascinating. Sure, I've jumped way, way, way ahead of myself because there'll be people listening to this going, wait, slow down, Kate. What's Pompeii?
13:27 Kate Lister? I've jumped straight in with brothels. Let's talk a bit about what Pompeii is and why it's so important.
13:34 Speaker 05 So Pompeii is a small town of about 25,000 individuals. That's our current guesstimate.
13:40 Kate Lister? Small town.
13:41 Speaker 05 Small town. So Rome at this time, by the way, is about a million people. So there's a huge difference in terms of population there. Pompeii is 150 miles south of Rome, so that's about 250 kilometers. That may not sound very far in antiquity. That would take a few days to get from Rome to Pompeii. It's on the coast, the west coast of Italy, and it's really important for Roman historians due to a tragedy, actually, due to the eruption of the local volcano in the year 79, and it caused immense destruction. But the ash from the eruption actually covered over the site. And for the most part, people didn't rebuild. They kind of abandoned the site and it turned into agricultural fields. And what that meant is that when it started
14:26 Speaker 05 to be excavated in the 1700s, we had an entire cityscape preserved for us with every, like, you know, everything you can think of that a city needs, right? So brothels and other places of prostitution. It's got bars. It's got places to repair your broken statues. It's got places to do your laundry, baking your bread. So we have this entire cityscape that we can then ask questions about daily life. So that's why it's so important. And of course, it's got lots of sexy stuff. So that's why I'm interested in it.
14:57 Kate Lister? So much sexy stuff. And it's quite eerie when you go because it's not like walking around a ruined castle or something where there's just sort of stumps of buildings. You're on a Roman street and you can see exactly what this would have looked like. I found it like, the experience of it is it's quite dislocating because it's all, it is like you've time traveled. It's like, wow.
15:19 Speaker 05 Absolutely.
15:20 Kate Lister? How did you find it when you walk around it? Are you completely used to it now? Or do you still, God, this is so weird?
15:26 Speaker 05 No, I still find it magical, but I have to say it really depends on, it's now become so full of tourists that that can really affect the experience, right? If like you're trying to experience the brothel with a hundred strangers at a time and you're pushed in and out. But no, it's absolutely magical and walking on the sidewalks or the pavements that Pompeians did. And then, you know, the stepping stones in the middle of the street so that you can cross from one side to the other without getting your feet wet. It feels like you're really, really close to the people who live there.
16:04 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Sarah after this short break.
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19:00 Kate Lister? And as you said, there's a lot of sex in Pompeii, which really shocked the Victorians when they were excavating it. They really disrupted their idea of this kind of noble, classical Roman image. There are cocks everywhere in Pompeii.
19:16 Speaker 05 There are cocks everywhere, yes.
19:18 Kate Lister? So many of them, it's ridiculous. When we were filming, we had to have a member of the crew to be on cock watch, which was just to make sure that a penis didn't come into view in the shot somewhere, because that would mean that we had to put it on later, later on at night of just, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a dick, there's a dick, slow down, everybody, to get rid of it. Why are there so many penises? I know that's not a fair question, but if you had to guess, why are there so many penises in Pompeii?
19:44 Speaker 05 So, penises are signs of good luck. And it's interesting that it's only male genitalia, it's only penises.
19:51 Kate Lister? Isn't it? I was scouring for a vulva or a pair of boobs, not to add.
19:57 Speaker 05 Nope, not to be had. They are not into female genitalia. Nope. But the, but phalluses and penises, they bring good luck. So they carve them in their houses. They carve them on their street corners. They carve them on the streets themselves. They make them into wind chimes and they have dicks that have dicks that have dicks. And they're all flying and they're part human and they're part animal. It is, it's something that, that brings luck. So it's something that, you know, we have to, I can't believe there's someone whose job was literally, I have to watch out for dicks.
20:29 Kate Lister? Somebody just going, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a penis. Stop. I heard tour guides while we were there, I was eavesdropping and they were saying, the penises that are carved on the floor point the way to the local brothel.
20:44 Speaker 05 Urban legend. Sorry to disappoint. So I know exactly what you're talking about. There's this one paving stone for the road and it's made out of basalt. And so it's really a heavy stone and there's a beautiful phallus carved into it. And it is just literal coincidence that it happens to point roughly in the same direction as the brothel. But if you were to do a tally of all of the penises all around Pompeii, they are pointing in all sorts of different directions.
21:10 Kate Lister? It's not true, is it? But what is true is the brothel is the most popular tourist destination in Pompeii. Why do you think that is?
21:21 Speaker 05 I think people are fascinated. I mean, we're preaching to the choir here. I think people are fascinated by sex, right? I think there's, this structure is unique. You can still see the frescoes, the sexy frescoes, right? The graffiti actually are really hard to see. And if you're a tourist, you probably don't even know that they're there. But I think this idea of having an experience that's a little bit scandalous, but ultimately the frescoes in this structure are really vanilla and bland.
21:48 Kate Lister? I thought that, I thought that wouldn't, oh, I'm so glad you said that. Sorry, go on, do continue.
21:53 Speaker 05 They're so vanilla, they're so boring. It's kind of disappointing. But I think that this particular structure allows tourists to have a little bit of a scandalous experience, but actually not think too deeply about sexual activity that may be a little out of their comfort zone. So for example, in the imagery, all the images show male female couples engaged in genital to genital sex. There's no oral sex, there's no male male sex, there's no female female sex, there's no group sex. By the way, we know that all of those things are taking place in this brothel because the graffiti tell us so. We also know that Pompeians know how to paint all of those types of sexual couplings because there's another structure close to the public called the suburban baths.
22:38 Speaker 05 And it's got all those things that I just mentioned. And that is a different type of tourist experience, right? That is something where you're like, oh, what am I supposed to make of this?
22:48 Kate Lister? Yeah, like you're there with with the family, a nice day out with Pompeii and there's depictions of blowjobs and anal sex going on.
22:55 Speaker 05 And kind of lingus, just like right there. And you're like, okay, all right, next kids.
23:00 Kate Lister? Oh, we should talk about this one, another Pompeian myth, because I heard them still saying this one. The frescoes in the brothel are a menu.
23:09 Speaker 05 Another urban legend.
23:11 Kate Lister? Yeah.
23:11 Speaker 05 Yeah. It's easy to think that. And I think a great thing about this podcast is we we think about the stories, right? The stories that we can tell from antiquity, but also the stories we like to tell ourselves today. And I think this way, it's it's gotta be so hard to be a tour guide, right? Because you have, what, like, one minute to sum up the structure that's actually really complicated to a group that has folks coming from like all over the world. And the tourist menu idea, so basically this kind of story from tour guides is you go into the brothel, maybe as an ancient client, maybe you're a seafarer, maybe you don't even speak Latin or Greek. Both languages are used there. So you have to look at the pictures on the wall, which I've already mentioned, super vanilla.
23:56 Speaker 05 And then you basically like either. Grunt at one of them to indicate what you want, or you see one over a doorway and you're like, that's the thing I want, I'll go into that room. But we already know that there's a lot of activities, sexual activities that you can buy that are not represented. And there's not a one to one correspondence between the sexual frescoes and the rooms. So some of the sexual frescoes are actually at the back of the hallway where there's a latrine. So you're definitely not gonna go there and be like, I want that. Oh, oh, sorry, I just walked in on someone doing their business.
24:28 Kate Lister? It's about creating a fantasy. And i- in brothels today, there's still erotic images on the wall and pornography being played on a television. And it's all about creating an erotic space.
24:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah. And I think that the frescoes do create an erotic space, but in a different way than is easy to communicate to a, to a tour group in, you know, 30 seconds. So one of the things that I think is really interesting about that set of frescoes is that there's only ever depicted the couple on the bed. And the reason I mention this is because in other examples of Roman erotic art, you can fill the surrounding space with enslaved people. And it signifies that the people on the bed are probably the slave owners. They're in this like rich house and they're doing, they're doing like the luxury version of sex. In the brothel, the frescoes have enough space where they could have included enslaved people along the edges.
25:27 Speaker 05 So there was a choice not to do that. And what I think that means is that the two people on the bed, we actually know nothing about, there's no kind of visual indicators of what their status is. It could be two slaves, it could be two former slaves, it could be free people, it could be rich, they could be poor. And I think this is purposely done so that any guy who walks into the structure, whether he himself is a slave, or he's like a Pompeian big wig, he can look at those frescoes and be like, that could be me in that fresco. So I think it is creating a kind of erotic atmosphere, just in a different way than, than tour guides can communicate in a, in a quick fashion.
26:05 Kate Lister? I think that's fair. And you can't blame them, can you?
26:07 Speaker 05 No, absolutely not.
26:09 Kate Lister? For moving through there real quick and sort of telling people. Scandalous facts, even if they're not entirely true.
26:16 Speaker 05 Right, right.
26:16 Kate Lister? What was the state of sex work in the Roman world anyway? Because when you said that perhaps the idea of a brothel didn't catch on, that makes sense when you think that it was actually widely available everywhere. But what were the Roman attitudes to sex work?
26:33 Speaker 05 Romans were very open to sex work, but it was very differently construed for those who purchased sex, so male clients, and those who provided the sex. So for a guy who wants to buy sex, it's completely legal and it's completely socially acceptable. And the only kind of wrinkle there is if you end up spending your entire inheritance on prostitution, that is seen as something bad. Yeah, that's fair. Exactly.
26:58 Kate Lister? That's fair.
26:59 Speaker 05 Leave some for your kids. So no stigma at all for men patronizing prostitutes of any gender and doing what they want there. For the people who provided sexual labor and who managed it, it wasn't illegal, but they didn't have as many legal rights. I mean, Roman society is so hierarchical. And one of the things that they do to keep people in their hierarchy is they have a set of legal barriers for people who practice sex work. So most of them were probably enslaved anyways and so didn't actually have legal rights to begin with. But if you were like a young widow with a family to raise and you had no source of income, a freeborn woman, you could enter prostitution. But there were, right?
27:42 Speaker 05 And there were certain things that then you could not anymore do. So you couldn't marry up the social ladder anymore. There were restrictions on how much money you could inherit. And your access to the legal system was restricted. You couldn't bring a lawsuit on behalf of yourself or other people. And this is really interesting, right? Because prostitutes are subject to a lot of violence.
28:04 Kate Lister? Yeah.
28:05 Speaker 05 And a lot of theft. Absolutely. So they're really, really vulnerable. They're the ones who really need access to the legal system. And the legal system is like, no, if you become a prostitute, you give up the rights to access those. Yeah, you're on your own.
28:18 Kate Lister? Let's talk about who was working at this brothel. For me, that's one of the most important things about it because to find actual voices in their own hand, in their own voice of women from Rome is so rare. It's incredibly rare. To find the voices of people who are enslaved, almost non-existent, to find the voices of someone selling sex, a handful of them, and in this building, you have got the voices of enslaved women selling sex that can't exist anywhere else in the entire world.
28:50 Speaker 05 Again, this is why Pompeii is such a gem for those who study Roman history. We only have these attestations, these graffiti that were scratched into the wall because the eruption of Vesuvius preserved the wall plaster, right? It may be in other places prostitutes also scratched messages on walls, but wall plaster falls off over time and so we don't, we don't have that. So this is our one main source and you're absolutely right, it's such a rich source for all of these types of individuals where we otherwise wouldn't get to hear their voices. So one of my favorite women from the brothel is a woman named Mola. This is a hundred percent a stage name. There is no person in the Roman world who would name their
29:30 Speaker 05 daughter Mola. It means grindstone, like the stone you use for grinding flour.
29:36 Kate Lister? Okay, yeah.
29:37 Speaker 05 That's her stage name, the grindstone. And in a certain, one of the graffiti, she's called a fucktris. And the Latin word is fututrix. This is a super, super rare Latin word. This is one of three times in all of Latin that we get this word. And it's interesting because the ending trix, it means a woman who does whatever the verb is at the beginning. So this is a woman who fucks.
30:08 Kate Lister? And wow.
30:10 Speaker 05 To me is such a great expression of a person who is demonstrating pride and agency in the sexual activity that she has to partake of. And if she is enslaved, right, then she actually doesn't have the ability to control much in her life, including saying yes or no to clients. And yet nevertheless, And to be fair, we don't know if she wrote it. Could be someone else. It could be a client. It could be a pimp. But someone in that structure is wanting to highlight the fact that she is really good at what she does. Right? And her name Mola then kind of combines with that. And it seems like this was not a universal perception of this particular sex worker.
30:53 Speaker 05 So in that same room, there's also one of the graffiti that says, I fucked Mula. So someone misspelled her name. I fucked Mula here.
31:04 Kate Lister? Yeah.
31:05 Speaker 05 And Mula means a mule. So someone has taken this badass woman who's really good at her job and been like, yeah, Ms. Grindstone, you know what? I think you're a mule and I fucked you. So there's this really interesting dialogue going on the wall of female sexual agency and what we do with that. And maybe there's some like disparate opinions among those who were in the structure.
31:27 Kate Lister? Let's talk about agency because that it can seem very counterintuitive because we're assuming that most of the people that worked there were enslaved. And we can talk about how we know that in a second, but not all of them. But the idea of agency within that space, it seems very counterintuitive when somebody was enslaved.
31:48 Speaker 05 Yeah.
31:48 Kate Lister? What's your thoughts on that?
31:49 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, it's a great question. And some scholars don't even want to use the word agency when discussing slavery because.
31:56 Kate Lister? It's shit, isn't it? Yeah, it's slavery.
31:57 Speaker 05 Right, no, it's slavery. So we could use the word action if we wanted a different word. I think we should at least be attuned to ways in which enslaved people and sex workers are taking what is a really tough situation, really grim. A situation where even in the kind of best of scenarios where you're not a slave, you're you're freeborn. If you're participating in prostitution, you probably don't have a lot of other choices at that moment. So ways of thinking through. How these individuals are able in any way possible to exert any sort of control over their lives or over how they're represented. And if these statements in the brothel are written by sex workers themselves,
32:42 Speaker 05 and I think there's compelling evidence to suggest it's at least possible, if not likely, then we can see like one area where they're trying to craft their persona. So even if they can't say no to a client, even if they don't otherwise have control or agency, I do think that it's important to pay attention to the ways in which they're trying to work the situation for their benefit. And the idea of emotional labor comes in here too, because, you know, I mentioned that one of the common statements in the brothel is prostitutes praising clients for their prowess. I think prostitutes are doing this so that their clients will be like, oh, Mola really thinks I'm great in bed.
33:25 Speaker 05 You know, maybe I will slip her a tip next time. Or you know what, I'm really starting to fall for Mola. Maybe I will see if I can scrape enough money together to buy her freedom. That's like the best case scenario. So that's how I would kind of deal with agency.
33:44 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Sarah after this short break.
34:04 Kate Lister? Hello, Betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that.
34:33 Kate Lister? Right, let's get on with it.
34:34 Speaker 01 Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeists. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.
35:20 Kate Lister? I think as well, and this is something very controversial, but I'm gonna say it anyway. I think that when we're looking at something like sex work in Rome, you have to park all modern preconceptions about it, all modern attitudes. And yeah, these people were enslaved, but the Romans wouldn't have seen that as a bad thing. You can't find any voices of the people going, hang on a minute, maybe this is a bit shit. So they're taking this as this is just what happens. And something that I've learned as I've been going along is that contained within the category of slave, of an enslaved person, it is subject to gradation. Now, this sounds completely bonkers, but just go with me. You can have better and worse types of enslavement.
36:03 Kate Lister? Like if somebody is sentenced to be a slave in the mines, that's pretty much a death sentence.
36:08 Speaker 05 Exactly.
36:08 Kate Lister? And apparently, people were sentenced to work in bakeries as slaves. As slaves. That blew my mind because I thought it would be quite lovely to work in a bakery. But apparently, that was an awful hellish thing as well. So you do have certain types of enslavement that are thought of as better than the others. And I wonder where sex work fits into that. I wonder if you were given the option of being a slave in this space, which is shit anyway, what you would go for? Would that be regarded as, oh, it sounds mad to say it, one of the better categories of enslavement?
36:44 Speaker 05 I think it's better than working in a mine because you're right. That's a death sentence. It's not, I would say, other than mines, it's one of the less good tasks you can have as a slave. So you're right, some enslaved people, especially those who work in the imperial household.
37:04 Kate Lister? And gladiators.
37:05 Speaker 05 Yeah, although gladiators are interesting because they can get famous, but they're still disparaged.
37:12 Kate Lister? But sex workers can get famous too. Who is it who wrote his book about famous prostitutes? It was one of the big Roman authors. So they can too.
37:20 Speaker 05 They can too. Most of the ones that we like know their names, they're no longer slaves. They're freed slaves or they're not citizens in some other way. And you're right that there are examples of kind of higher class call girls or maybe girlfriends on the side. But that's, it's pretty rare. Even in the literature that's written by elite Roman men, they present sex work as something that is dangerous. Like there's a lot of kind of joking among Roman elite authors about like beating up prostitutes.
37:53 Kate Lister? Yeah.
37:54 Speaker 05 I know, it's really grim. So I don't think it's a great task and also something that, you know, you mentioned, we have to really throw away our preconceptions. When I started this project, especially when I, you know, met Mola through the graffiti, I was like, oh my God, we have this like righteous, awesome sex worker. She's like proud of what she does. And as I worked on this project, and this was after the book. So after the book, I thought I would never come back to the brothel and I, I can't quit it. I still have questions. And I thought more about Mola and I thought to myself, I wonder how old she was. And I was, it was something I never had to address in the book because there's nothing in the brothel that speaks to the age of any of these people.
38:37 Speaker 05 But as I sat down and thought of it, I was like, you know what? Realistically, She's like 10 or 12.
38:43 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
38:45 Speaker 05 I know.
38:46 Kate Lister? Oh, Mola. Oh.
38:48 Speaker 05 Romans, I know. This is why I say, you know, going to the brothel in the tour guide version covers up a lot of the nuance and the, and the kind of darker aspects. We don't, we just, yeah, we have a lot of evidence that, that Romans are starting to prostitute, enslave people from a really young age. So that's more likely than, than like an 18 year old.
39:10 Kate Lister? Yeah, it's absolutely grim, however you look at it, isn't it? Probably the best thing we could say about it is it's better than working in the mines, which is, which is an insanely low bar. But let's talk about some of the graffiti, because I've got in front of me, my, my trusty book on Pompeii and graffiti here. And so some of the things that people are writing on the walls. Felices has fucked here. Felix, you fuck well. Bravo, Paris. Good luck to those from Potoli. Phoebus the perfumer had a great fuck here. You get, there's, there's a theme, isn't there?
39:44 Speaker 05 Yep.
39:45 Kate Lister? Selene Minis, you fuck well. I have fucked here. And Mr. Garlic Farts.
39:52 Speaker 05 Mr. Garlic Farter.
39:53 Kate Lister? Tell me about Mr. Garlic Farts.
39:55 Speaker 05 Oh, Mr. Garlic Farter. This is certainly also a made up name, but, uh, you know, no parent would be like, oh, I'm gonna name my little bundle of joy, the Mr. Garlic Farter. He's probably a client. So the, the graffiti reads Mr. Garlic Farter. So the Latin is Scortopordanicus. It's a totally made up name. We don't see it anywhere else. Fucks well here, who he wished. So I'm, I'm guessing this is a nickname that this guy had, and he's either okay with it and is writing this on the wall himself, or like maybe a friend is writing it. So it, garlic is thought of as an aphrodisiac in antiquity.
40:31 Kate Lister? Okay.
40:32 Speaker 05 So I'm not sure how much in this nickname is entirely mockery and how much is maybe with this aphrodisiac, a little bit less mockery than usual. So this, that's a fun guy, Mr. Garlic Farter. And he, in the Latin, it's indicating that he is having sex with both men and women. So that's one of our pieces of evidence for male prostitutes in the structure. And there's other graffiti that are written by male prostitutes that make that more explicit.
41:05 Kate Lister? And somebody called Paris comes up quite a lot. And that's, that seems to have been a male sex worker, which opens up the question. I'd be fascinated to know what you think about this one is, were they servicing male clients or female clients?
41:19 Speaker 05 That's a great question.
41:21 Kate Lister? Do you think there's any chance that Roman women were sneaking away to the brothel?
41:25 Speaker 05 There is a chance, there's a chance. And there's one scholar who thinks that there are female clients who interprets my favorite mola as a woman, as a female prostitute who services female clients.
41:38 Kate Lister? Oh, okay.
41:39 Speaker 05 And there's another graffiti in the structure that says, I was fucked here. And in the Latin, it's a feminine form. So, oh, I, a woman, was fucked here. And the scholar says, why would a female prostitute need to write that on the wall? Like, obviously, female prostitutes are fucked in the structure. So he takes those two pieces of evidence together and says, maybe there are female clients, either for female prostitutes or male prostitutes. I want to hold space for that because it's really hard to know what to do with evidence that doesn't fit with what we know. And especially for the history of sex, right? Sometimes we only have one piece of evidence. And then the question is, what do we do with that? So I want to hold space for that theory. But I'm also confronting Roman ideas more generally about female sexuality.
42:25 Speaker 05 And the norm is, for women, you are allowed to have sex with your husband. Like, end of story. And not to say that all sorts of things don't happen because they do. We know from texts that if you're rich, and especially if your husband has died, you can basically do what you want. You'll, people will talk about you behind your back, but you can, you can do it. So I think that especially for purchasing sex at a brothel, I think there'd be such a societal stigma that I think it's unlikely to happen. I think it's more likely that maybe like, A woman had like a boy toy or boyfriend. But I think going to the brothel is unlikely. But I there are scholars who think that and I and I do want to hold space for that possibility.
43:05 Kate Lister? It just seems unlikely with everything I know about Roman society, which admittedly is far from everything, but their ideas of gender were very, very binary and women were very much confined to the domestic sphere and reputations would be irrevocably damaged with the slightest hint of sexual impropriety. That's you off to go and live on an island somewhere for the rest of your life, banished.
43:31 Speaker 05 Exactly, exactly. Right. And the repercussions for women are are right. Like you, you could
43:36 Kate Lister? Hush.
43:37 Speaker 05 You could lose your inheritance. And I do want to say, though, that there is graffiti elsewhere at Pompeii that speaks about female homoeroticism. There's this love poem written on a wall from one woman to another. So we do know that that's taking place, but I don't think that it's necessarily taking place in a brothel setting.
43:55 Kate Lister? No, I can't. I mean, I I kind of hope it did in a weird way. But yeah, I can't see that one happening either. I think it's more likely that the men or boys working there were servicing male clients.
44:07 Speaker 05 I think that's right. Yeah.
44:08 Kate Lister? Is there anything on the walls or anything in the evidence that shows us how the brothel operated? Obviously, people came there to have sex and then they paid the money. Yeah, obviously they did. But if it's like other brothels and certainly like the the later brothels in Italy that we've got some evidence for, but not in the ancient, not in ancient Rome, is it would have been run by a madam, probably a woman? Is there any sense of who owned it, where they live? Was there someone taking money payment there on site? Is there anything like that?
44:39 Speaker 05 Gosh, that's such a great question. And the frustrating answer is that there is nothing that we can look at that tells us anything about that. And so when I was writing the book, I was like, what about the person who, you know, ran this structure? There is nothing there. I have a lot of, I have a lot of theories.
44:57 Kate Lister? Okay.
44:58 Speaker 05 So presumably there was someone there, right? So if most of the people who work there are enslaved, you need someone kind of
45:05 Kate Lister? Keeping an eye on things.
45:06 Speaker 05 Keeping an eye on them, right? And in Roman literature and law also, brothels are run by either a pimp or a madam. So it's very likely that that's the case. We don't have any physical evidence of that person. I personally think, so the brothel is a two-story structure. The brothel proper, like the area where sex was sold is on the ground floor. That's where tourists go. There is a second level that's completely separate. It's accessed by a separate staircase. It's set up for basically like you can rent small rooms. I myself, and there's no physical evidence to support this, but I myself think that whoever's managing the structure is living upstairs
45:48 Speaker 05 because they can then keep an eye on what's going on.
45:52 Kate Lister? Yeah, I've got a number of sex worker friends that have studied sex work for a long time now. And I was fascinated by the information that I learned when I was in Pompeii that there is, like you said to earlier, there's a little latrine in the brothel. And something that they found was razors and cleaning paraphernalia. And that for me made me go, oh, right. Because that's the one, ask any full-service sex worker today and they will tell you, just please be clean. I just saw that and I wondered, is that the same thing back in Pompeii where they're asking clients to wash beforehand?
46:29 Speaker 05 Oh, that's a great question. As far as I know, I don't know if we have any testimonies to clients washing beforehand. I think we assume, so we found this little, we have a description. We don't have the object anymore, but this little shell-shaped basin that was for water. I myself assumed it was for the prostitute to wash after sex. And the razor was for facial hair. So there are other ways to depolite the rest of your body hair. So they're doing waxing, they're doing plucking, they're doing singeing. But it seems like they're using razors only for facial hair. So that's another piece of evidence that there are male prostitutes in the structure and that they're trying to keep themselves looking young and desirable.
47:12 Kate Lister? Oh, it's so tantalizing, isn't it? You've just got this space, but there's so many questions within it. Who were these people? How old were they? Were they? Happy? Were they, were they okay? Probably not. Like, what was happening afterwards? Who ran it? Who were the clients? That's the other thing. Do we know who was, apart from Mr. Garlic Fards? But the, I have, I have heard it said that this is where the poor people would have come. This is where the impoverished people would have come. I'm not sure that's the case, you know, because impoverished people throughout history have just sold sex on the street. The brothel seems to be attempting to do something more experiential. What are you thinking? Who's visiting this establishment?
47:53 Speaker 05 So our best source of evidence is the graffiti and most of the names that we have there are names that are typical of enslaved men.
48:01 Kate Lister? Ah, right.
48:02 Speaker 05 We do have the names, the like, kind of full official names of, I want to say, two or three freeborn men. And one thing to think about is not everyone who goes into the structure is necessarily going to leave their name on the wall. So it may be that there's kind of a broader spectrum of people showing up, but for whatever reason, most of the names are coming from enslaved folks. And what I think is really interesting about this is if these are enslaved men who are coming to the structure to purchase sex, these same individuals, when they return to their, they're probably working in someone's house, right? They're probably enslaved in someone's house. They are the sexual objects of their
48:43 Speaker 05 enslaver. So at home, both male and female enslaved people are subject to, you know, non-consensual sex whenever the enslaver wants. And then these individuals choose to use, if you're a household slave, your enslaver can give you a small allowance. And they're choosing to use that money to then go to the brothel and then to be the ones who perform masculinity in this very elite way with the male or female prostitutes who work there. So I think it's this opportunity for them to, allow them to be experienced, like, real men, real freeborn men. And these emotional, potentially also these emotional connections that can be forged.
49:23 Kate Lister? So final question then, if I had a time machine and if I could transport you back to the brothel, to the Lupinar? When it was in full flow and you're allowed in, no one's going to get upset with you for interruption business. What do you want to find out? What is the one thing that I need to know the answer to this question?
49:41 Speaker 05 What a great question. I want to know what life is like for those sex workers when there are no clients there. When it's either like, I don't know what times of day people purchase sex. I don't know if it's like the morning hours. Like, what is their morning routine? Right? And like, are they friendly with each other? What are they doing to support themselves? That's a huge question that I have, and I don't think there's any way to answer that with the evidence we have, but they exist outside of the world of providing sex to clients. They exist as as people with their own hopes and dreams. And for the ones who aren't enslaved, who are freeborn, are they going back at the end of the day to their families?
50:20 Kate Lister? Yeah.
50:21 Speaker 05 Right? To their daughter or their mother? I really want to know about their lives actually outside of sex.
50:26 Kate Lister? Sarah, you have been magnificent to talk to. And if people want to know more about you and your research, I understand you're not on social media, which is very smart of you, but where can they find you? Do you have a website?
50:37 Speaker 05 I I do. I have a website at academia.edu for anyone who has access to that. And folks can also find my faculty page at the University of Washington Department of Classics.
50:47 Kate Lister? Thank you so much for talking to me today. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
50:51 Speaker 05 It's been a pleasure.
50:58 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Sarah for joining me. And if you liked what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hi, then you can email us at [email protected] . We've got episodes on everything from the history of red lipstick to many evil lesbians all marching your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckford. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
51:42 Speaker 01 Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeists. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.
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