What Are Brothels In Pompeii's Lupanar?

The information about brothels in Pompeii is much disputed. Some of the common markers of a brothel, like sexual graffiti, erotic art, and small rooms with stone beds, are found in more than 35 sites around the city. These include bars, inns, and baths, as well as stalls on the street that could easily have been shelter for the poor. However, there is only one location, now called the Lupanar, which has been conclusively identified as a brothel. The Lupanar is located just behind the Suburban Baths, about two blocks east of the forum. The area surrounding it seems to be rife with possibilities for prostitution, including “one crib virtually across the street, another down the block, the largest hotel in town lying across the way, a sizeable

Modern sensibilities cause us to assume that brothels and prostitution were underground operations. However, there is evidence in Martial 7.61 that Emperor Caligula enforced a tax on prostitution, “which was pitched at a high rate and enforced with great vigour, in many places collected by the military” (McGinn, 18). Additionally, there seems to have been a relationship between politicians and places where sex may have been sold-- “the dice throwers ask for Cn. Helvius Sabinus” (CIL IV 3435). It has been suggested that in the Roman world, prostitution was seen almost as a necessary evil off of which money was to be made. In fact, one of the first recorded negative opinions was that of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, in the third century CE, where he says, “...having entered the brothel, the location of the sewer and the slimy black hole of the rabble, he has befouled his own sanctified body, God’s temple, with hateful filth…” (Ep. 55.26 [CCSL 3.1.289]). This suggests, but does not by any means confirm, that the thought of prostitution as a terrible practice was not introduced until the Christian era, and was therefore not prevalent at