History channel had a show on last night called Sex in the Ancient World.  I figured it would just be about the insanity of Caligula but it covered several other time periods.  It is amazing how open sex and prostitution was in this time period.  What amazes me is how prude we have become over the past 2000 years.  Sex rooms and brothels were in crazy high concentration within the cities.  Even the wives of the elite would work at the brothels all the way to sex slaves at the other end.  Worth the watch if you can did it up OnDemand or just keep an eye out for it.

Manginas.....a term that is WAY over used, give it a rest!!

I can't remember if I have seen this particular one, but I love them all. I will look for this one and see if I've seen it. Thanks!

-- Modified on 10/10/2012 1:55:29 PM

Basically pompeii was buried in ash and forgotten.  When the archeologists (ie a british king) went down there to excavate, they quickly found statues of pan (god half man and half goat) having sex with a goat).  They found statues of a god with a massive penis.  They found stones in the walls depicting a penis/balls.  They promptly sealed those areas, and painted over the images of people having sex that was adorned all over the place and from their largely elizabethan attitude tried to pretend that's not what they found.  

The interesting thing was the assumed that this was an exception.  But the argument made on the program was that the only exceptional thing was that we have a small city left intact and that the fact was- this was life in any big city.  And since Rome's aristocracy were the pimps back then (queitly because it was frowned upon) and the providers were often slaves, the rich benefited from the enterprise and it was woven into roman life.  So the argument goes that the huge number of brothels and little rooms directly across from the taverns  (ie dozens of each) for just a population of 6,000, is pretty remarkable.

The program was from 2009.