As countries around the world grapple with whether to make prostitution legal, what β if anything β can we learn from the legalised brothels of ancient Pompeii?
In , archaeologists began to excavate the two-story brothel, which sits between the forum of Pompeii and its main North-South business district. It catered to Roman men who bought sexual services from both male and female prostitutes. Just five years after its initial excavation, Mark Twain would visit the structure and remark on the fact that female tourists at the time were kept from entering it due to the rather racy wall paintings.
Since the renovated brothel reopened to the public in , thousands of men β and now women β per day have visited a space where sexual and emotional labour were sold, paid for and even taxed. Levin-Richardson covers the archaeological remains of the brothel and reconstructs the poignant but ephemeral physical and emotional experiences that happened in and around it.
An appendix presents the evidence, but it is Levin-Richardson who deftly describes how they together reveal a hierarchy of male competition. Enslaved men and women most often staffed ancient brothels.
They sold physical services such as penetrative sex or shaving their clients, while at the same time being expected to provide emotional services to clients through small talk or writing flattering boasts about them. Like all enslaved persons, their bodies were also vulnerable to sexual assault, rape, beatings and even torture. Whether licit or illicit, sex work has always exposed prostitutes to abuse from pimps, johns and the public.
