Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects

from BBC Radio 4. I'm in Tate Modern in London and I've been standing for a while looking at Rodin's famous sculpture, The Kiss. It's a life-sized white marble,

carving of a naked man and woman engaged in passionate embrace. Almost everybody here

circles the statue with an embarrassed curiosity.

But just a hundred years ago, this amorous couple was seen very differently,

as unforgivably and more important unexibitably erotic.

When the wealthy American Edward Warren, who'd commissioned the statue from Rodin,

offered it to the Sussex town of Lewis, the townspeople rejected it as pornographic, as did the city of Boston.

In 1914, neither Boston nor Sussex was ready for Rhoda,

and neither may yet be ready for the other famous artwork

that Warren owned and also kept in his Sussex home. It's a Roman silver cup

2,000 years old with scenes of sexual coupling between adult men and adolescent boys.

I think this is one of the most beautiful objects in the British Museum. I love it because I just think it is so tender.

I've got two daughters and I've actually determined that this is how I'm going to introduce the subject of homosexuality to them,

bring them to have a look at the Warren Cup and then explain what's going on.

There is certainly an idea that the Greeks and Romans were a much more sexy culture than we are.

A history of the world in a.D. from Bittier near Jerusalem.

Last week we looked at power and how it was exercised around the world 2,000 years ago.

The theme of this week's programmes is pleasure, social activities.

We're spinning the globe again, taking in pipe smoking and ball games in North and South America, and in China a kind of de Brett's guide to court etiquette for women.

We start and end the week, though, with the Roman Empire and with spice both actual

and metaphorical. We end with pepper and we're going to begin with porn.

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