@Willow_Wisp As I said these Chads originated in the 1940s when an in cell was a torch battery.

@LenHazell53 Ain't I glad that the Will has me blocked. I don't have to see such assertions. "In cells"!

@OldMetalHead Unlikely because most of these activities were illegal in Rome, so either the Pompeii bordello was actually illegal, or the art was used to titillate potential customers while not actually breaking laws.
I was of course too young to remember for certain.

So enjoy the photos of my visit to the tomb of Frédéric Chopin Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, I had a score to settle.
He owed me a skull..

@Willow_Wisp
"most of these activities were illegal in Rome,"
Who on earth told you that rubbish, a significant part of the Roman Empires economy was derived from the tax on brothel owners, both static and mobile and the services they provided.
It was illegal to marry a prostitute, because she (or he) was a slave and the property of the Whoremaster, and so like all slaves has no human rights.

@LenHazell53 Check again, you're obviously out of your depth.

The idea that Rome was an extremely promiscuous and licentious society is, in reality, if nothing else a massive over-simplification of a complex picture. It’s a simplification that has served erotic artists – often unable to portray their own times as genuinely sexual – well in every medium from oils to digital video.

There may be an element of religious propaganda to this image of Rome too. The Catholic Church took hold in the last centuries of the Empire. It was in the Church’s interests to portray the pre-Christian, pagan Roman world as one of out-of-control desires, orgies and endemic rape that they had brought under control.

The Romans did have an abiding set of moral guidelines called the mos maiorum (“the way of the elders&rdquo, a largely accepted and unwritten code of good conduct. These customs did consider sexual excess outside the bounds of ideal behavior defined by virtues, an ideal state of masculinity that included self-control. Women too were expected to be chaste (pudicitia).

The written laws also included sexual offences, including rape, which could carry a death sentence. Prostitutes (and sometimes entertainers and actors) were not given this legal protection and the rape of a slave would only be considered a crime of property damage against the slave’s owner.

Marriage itself was, in reality, a lopsided affair. Women who married weren’t expected to attain any pleasure or enjoyment form it – they simply wedded in order to abide by the moral code and procreate. Moreover, the subservient wife was expected to turn a blind eye to her husband’s sexual infedelity. Males were allowed to sleep around as much as they liked so long as their mistress was unmarried, or, if they were with a boy, he was over a certain age.

Brothels, prostitutes and dancing girls were all considered to be ‘fair game’, as were older males – on the condition that he was to be submissive. Being passive was considered women’s work: men who submitted were considered deficient in vir and in virtus – they were denounced and reviled as effeminate.

An example of this moral code was seen with Julius Caesar’s long and public affair with Cleopatra. Due to the fact that Cleopatra was not with a Roman citizen, Caesar’s actions were not considered adulterous.

The Romans were, in many ways, more sexually liberated than we are. There was a strong sexual element in much of Roman religion. The Vestal Virgins were celibate in order to keep them independent of male control, but other religious ceremonies celebrated prostitution.

Moreover, divorce and other such legal proceedings were as easy for women to undertake as men. In this sense, women were, in many cases, more sexually liberated than they are in many nations to this day.

Homosexuality was also considered unremarkable, certainly among men – in fact, there were no Latin words to differentiate between same-sex and different-sex desire.

Children were protected from sexual activity, but only if they were freeborn Roman citizens.

Prostitution was legal and endemic. Slaves were considered as much their master’s property in sexual terms as they were economically.

We can quite accurately measure the Romans’ laissez-faire attitude toward sex because we know so much about their sex lives. A similar survey of, say, British writing in the 19th century wouldn’t provide nearly so clear a picture.

The Romans wrote about sex in their literature, comedy, letters, speeches and poetry. There seems to have been no low-culture taboo attached to writing – or otherwise depicting – sex frankly. The finest writers and artists were happy to indulge.

Roman art is filled with images that would today be regarded as pornographic. In Pompeii, erotic mosaics, statues and frescoes (used to illustrate this piece) are found not only in known brothels and bath houses which may have been places of business for prostitutes, but also in private residences, where they are given pride of place.

There are erotically-charged objects almost everywhere in the suffocated city. This was something that the Romans could cope with, but not modern Europeans – many such discoveries were kept largely under lock and key in a Naples museum until 2005.

@Willow_Wisp Sorry but you are wrong, all prostitutes had to be licenced and registered, as did brothels for tax purposes, in fact famously one of the major factors that lead to the assassination of Caligula was his attempt to raise the prostitution taxes to 75% and to abolish "patronage" which was a way to avoid taxation by moving your you own sex slave in to your household for personal "usage" and pay her with board and lodge. Something much of the senate benefitted from.
Check your sources.

@Willow_Wisp oh how intellectually honest, you go back and re-edit an 8 word insult in to a huge essay, vehemently agreeing with me in places and self contradicting in others.
Okay have it your own way, if revisionist historians are something you wish to be associated with.