How to Find a Brothel in Pompeii

Pompeii’s material remains, frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, offer an unparalleled look at what a first-century A.D. Roman city was like. We are all familiar with Pompeii’s lavish villas and colorful wall paintings—some of which, wrote a bashful Mark Twain, “no pen could have the hardihood to describe.” But it wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that scholars began to pay serious attention to some important evidence of everyday life in Pompeii—evidence suggesting how these ancient Italians actually lived. 020 The evidence in question concerns prostitution. Pompeii provides the most extensive archaeological […]