Inside the Brothel of Pompeii

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

Society, Sex, Scandal, Education, History

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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, 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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Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm your host, Kate Lister.
0:02.4	If you would like betwixt the sheets, add free and get early access, sign up to History Hit.
0:08.7	With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of original documentaries with top history presenters.
0:16.0	And enjoy a new release every single week.
0:19.8	Sign up now by visiting history hit.com forward slash
0:23.5	subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to
0:29.2	Bertwicks the sheets. You lucky, lucky thing. I'm the lucky one. I'm really glad that you're here.
0:36.2	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, talking about adults to other 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
0:59.0	sheets might be a bit adulty, they have to be given the fair do's warning and now they can't
1:04.4	get mad because fair dues, we did tell you. Right, on with the show.
1:17.8	What a lovely day it is here in Pompeii for Twixters.
1:19.9	The year is 79 AD.
1:22.5	No one's exactly sure which month it is,
1:24.5	but there isn't a cloud in the sky.
1:26.7	Well, apart from those puffs of ash that are starting to appear over Mount
1:28.8	Vesuvius. It's kind of pretty, really. I'm sure that that's nothing to worry about. Anyway,
1:34.5	we are strolling through the streets looking for the Lupinar, the Wolf Den. This is the first
1:40.5	purpose-built brothel of the entire era that we are aware of. There may have been others.
1:46.8	They may have just been smashed down and lost to history, but this brothel is special because
1:52.7	it's the only one that survives from the Roman world. We are off on an exciting adventure and I
1:58.8	can't wait to stop by and find out what exactly goes on in this place.
2:03.7	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?
	...

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