The ancient Romans and Greeks had a highly liberated attitude toward sex—one that is surprising, even by today’s standards. They had gods devoted to it, festivals to partake in it, and local economies that surrounded it. Sex was not something to be ashamed of or hidden from public view. Rather, it was something to rejoice in.

10Phallic Bricks Of Pompeii

We all know the legend surrounding Pompeii. The original City of Sin’s people basked in a perpetual heat of promiscuity—promiscuity said to have inspired the gods’ rage with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Since excavation of its near-perfectly preserved remains began in the 18th century, archaeologists have discovered a great deal regarding Pompeii’s sexual identity.

Pompeii’s economy thrived on more than 40 brothels, the most famous of which was named “Lupanare Grande,” translated today as “pleasure house.” The rooms in these brothels were often cramped and dim, with a small straw mattress positioned beneath a piece of pornographic artwork hung on the wall. Despite their appearances, it would be misleading to classify these brothels as the seedy underbelly of Pompeii’s economy. Rather, they existed on a highly public and unashamed platform, alongside the forum and communal bath houses, both of which were important sites of a larger (public) sex system.

Visit the ruins of Pompeii today, and you will no doubt see the “phallic bricks” of Pompeii pointing the way to the nearest pleasure house with an erect phallus engraved into its stone. And if those weren’t clear enough markers, erect phalluses were often positioned above the doors of brothels and private residences as tidings of good luck.

9Voyeurism

“You may look, but don’t touch,” was somewhat of a guiding theme across Ancient Roman and Greek artwork, as indicated by the many pieces of art uncovered today displaying such provocations. One could discover this for themselves at The Gabinetto Segreto in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

This “Secret Cabinet” houses a collection of erotic artwork from Ancient Rome. One such wall painting from, unsurprisingly, Pompeii, displays this voyeurism with a man and a woman having intercourse in front of their attendant, who is visible in the background.

In Ancient Greece, there exists a body of art dedicated to Maenads, the feverous female followers of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, ritual madness, religious euphoria, and theatre. Artwork surrounding these women were highly explicit, and the sexual acts represented by the artwork displayed the figures as objects to be observed. This idea of voyeurism in erotic art was twofold, where a voyeur existed within the artwork, as was the case in one hydria painting Sleeping Maenad and Satyrs, as well as external to the artwork, where the onlooker (or “innocent bystander”) also became a voyeur.

8The Wife-Sharing Economy

The Etruscan civilization was assimilated into the Roman Republic during the fourth century BC. However, their customs remained largely intact.

The Etruscan women were known for their liberated attitude toward intercourse and nudity. They kept their bodies in fit condition and often walked around in the nude, enjoying the pleasure of all men who came by. “Marriage” was a loose construct. It was common for children to have no clue who their father was, and for women not to ask.

Frescoes painted on the Tombs of The Bulls, The Bigas, and The Floggings, in Tarquinia, display these kinds of erotic scenes.

7Fruitful Contest Of The Sexes

Kenneth Reckford, an expert of the Classics, analyzed Aristophanes’s work in a series of essays entitled Aristophanes’s Old-and-New Comedy. One essay, “Aischrologia,” addresses the season ritual of Thesmophoria in Ancient Greece. Only married Athenian women participated in this ritual, which aimed to promote fertility. In preparation, women would abstain from intercourse and oftentimes bathe as an act of purification. During this three-day affair, women would perform various acts of “fertility magic.” In addition, they would share lewd jokes and tales of their indecencies, and play with toys replicating both the male and female genitals.

This ritual, coupled with the Eleusinian Haloa festival, gave women the opportunity to release pent-up sexual frustration through liberal use of sex symbols, pornographic sweets, raucous activities, and free-range slut-shaming—for lack of a better phrase. During Haloa, according to Reckford, Greek women could “say the most ugly and shameful things to one another,” shooting insults at each other regarding sexuality and vulgarity, while proclaiming their own indiscretions.

6Fun At The Carnival

According to Mikhail Bakhtin, a scholar of literary theory and philosophy, the Carnival of ancient literature was a free-for-all, where people would throw class division, respect, and sensitivity out the window. There was no “saying no,” and certainly no saying “too much.” Carnival was pure id. Suspend reality and imagine a scene of extravagance, with banquets of food and wine, laughter, and sex. At Carnival, everyone was equal, and even degrading remarks inspired a regenerative energy—though, that may be in part due to the number of drugs and intoxicants they used to strip inhibitions.

Arthur Edward Waite in his book A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry says, “The Festivals were orgies of wine and sex: there was every kind of drunkenness and every aberration of sex, the one leading up to the other. Over all reigned the Phallus.”

These Carnival rituals date back to as early as the fifth century BC and were held during the spring equinox. It should come as no surprise that these festivals, called The Dionysian Mysteries, were dedicated to Dionysus, the Greek god of all your earthly desires and the enabler of all your poor decision-making. This carnival inspired the Roman equivalent, Bacchanalia.

Most of the initiation process for men and women are known thanks to a collection of frescoes preserved in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. And, in all fairness, it is a bit reminiscent of what one might expect in Greek life initiation today. The murals a declaration of initiation at the feet of the priestess followed by a descent into the underworld (katabasis), before returning anew. Aristophanes, in his play The Frogs, assumes the origin of this ritual with descent of Dionysis into Hades.

5Before Viagra, There Was Priapus

The Greeks had a very firm relationship with the phallus—more an obsession, really. In particular was Priapus, the Greek god equivalent to Dionysus, known for his extremely long and permanently erect penis. If you think you recognize the term, it’s because Priapus inspired the medical term priapism.

And even if Priapus didn’t play too well with the other gods, he was revered on Earth. The Priapeia contains a collection of 95 poems dedicated to the sexually driven vulgarity of Priapus.

With this gift of dirty pictures
from the tract of Elephantis
Lalage asks if the horny
deity could help her do it
just like in the illustrations

The law which (as they say) Priapus coined
for boys appear immediately subjoined
“Come pluck my garden’s contents without blame
if in your garden I can do the same.”

4They Threw Some Serious Shade

Hipponax of Ephesus was a highly controversial iambic poet, even for ancient Greece. Where he excelled were his insults, which were raunchy and lewd and often satirical of the high (dignified) language of his targets.

In fact, as the story goes, he was so skillful at insults, they drove one victim to suicide. Hipponax was apparently after the daughter of Bupalus, but Hipponax’s deformed looks ultimately led to his rejection. In jest, Bupalus made a statue of Hipponax so ugly that Hipponax retaliated with accusations of Bupalus having an incestuous relationship with his mother:

“Bupalus, the mother-f—r with Arete, fooling with these words the Erythraeans preparing to draw back his damnable foreskin”

Other notable shade interpreted in Hipponax’s work includes the dissection of Bupalus’s name, Bou-phallus, meaning quite literally “ox phallus,” and the ever-charming “interprandial pooper,” meaning a person who must get up during the middle of a meal to defecate.

3Using Sex For World Peace

Aristophanes, considered one of the most famous comic playwrights of ancient Greece, was known for his poignant commentary of the social and political landscapes of Athens during the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC. In one such play, Lysistrata, Aristophanes parodies warfare with a battle of the sexes.

The women use the men’s desires against them, forcing abstinence to compel peace between the Athenians and the Spartans. Women thus use their sexuality to put things in perspective for men, and to ultimately remind them of the “transcendental significance” of sex. According to the women, the men had forgotten this amidst their stubbornness over more trivial matters, like war.

In the end, Peace appears to the men as a young, naked woman to remind the men of their sexual desires to “plow a few furrows” and “work a few loads of fertilizer in.” The men, in turn, realize the importance of sex to their society enough that they put war behind them.

2“Ars Amatoria”

A short cry from Karma Sutra was the work of one Ancient Roman poet, Ovid (43 BC–AD 17). His work provided instruction for sexual proclivities, with titles including “Amores” (Love), “Medicamina Faciei” (Remedies for Love) “Remedia Amoris,” and most infamously, “Ars Amatoria” (the Art of Love). While his work may sound wholesome, Ars Amatoria became a guidebook for lovers and adulterers alike.

In many ways, he created The Game, which confuses both men and women to this day. He advises men to let their women miss them—but not too much, while advising women to make their men jealous at times, to ensure they do not grow lax nor lazy. In the bedroom, Ovid details what form women should take, to not only maximize pleasure for themselves, but also to make it most pleasurable to the man’s gaze. In one sense, he moved away from the notion of women as possession—as they were equal players in the game of love—while on the other hand, reinforcing manipulative tactics to keep one’s lover constantly on their toes.

Though his language never broke into vulgarity, it was quite explicit in its detail, and in a matter of poor timing, resulted in his exile by Augustus, who was still coping with the news of his daughter’s copulations.

1Martial

As with other emotional impulses, shock lies in the space between expectations and reality. Marcus Valerius Martialis, or Martial, was a Roman poet from first century, who was made famous by his 12 books of epigrams. To this day, Martial’s epigrams are shocking due to their obscene, and oftentimes graphic, language. If nothing else, their vulgarity sheds light on the type of work published at the time.

Epigrams 79 and 80 of Book III convey vulgarity in a distinct structure. In these epigrams, insults are initially targeted at the subjects’ character and are then redirected by insulting subjects’ sexual “short-cummings.” In Epigram 79, Martial begins by declaring:

“Sertorius finishes nothing, and starts everything. When he fornicates, I don’t suppose he completes.”

Martial’s sharp words pivot this insult more pointedly at Sertorius’s sexual incapability. Likewise, Epigram 80 introduces its subject with a more general observation followed by a hyper-sexualized observation.

“You talk of nobody, Apicius, speak ill of nobody, yet rumor says you have an evil tongue.”

While the former could pose as a general remark to Apicius’s soft-spoken character, the latter angles the reader to the true central insult: Apicius’s skill at oral sex. Here, “evil” is more likely a term for “wild,” suggesting that Apicius’s tongue causes his sexual partner to lose control and that he is skillful at giving head. The explicit quality of this language indicates the level of tolerance Ancient society had at the time regarding sex.

Emma Marie is a student, photographer, traveler, and certified freediver.

Throughout the ages, different cultures have had vastly different sexual practices, ranging from mundane to bizarre. Like culture itself, sexuality is more than just a means of procreation; it is an expression of the dominant ideas of the time and can tell us a lot about what’s floating around in the collective zeitgeist of a particular society—and ourselves as a species. So it goes without saying that if we peer into the sexual lives of the distant past, we find hints of ourselves, no matter how different they may have been in their expression of this fundamentally universal human activity.

Babylon (or Babylonia) was one of the first civilizations in existence, a region of settlements that is believed to have been initially established around 4000 BC.^[1] Famous for the Code of Hammurabi, Babylon was a society rich with culture, including a detailed writing system, accounting with mathematics, a diverse cuisine, and, of course, sex, with even the wild and lusty Greeks viewing the Babylonians as a sex-obsessed culture. Here is a glance into the world of Babylon, told through the lens of ten facts about sex in the ancient civilization.

10 Sex With Strangers

Greek sources tell us much about the sex lives of the Babylonian people, and needless to say, Babylon had some sexual practices which would make us in modern times raise an eyebrow, with even the Greeks thinking them a vile culture when it came to their sexual norms.

One of these practices was having sex with strangers, as told by the Greek writer Herodotus. He describes a bizarre and unusual practice in which Babylonian women were sent to a temple, once in their lives, to have sex with a complete stranger.^[2] It’s almost as if it could be seen as a rite of passage for women in ancient Babylon, and this was apparently a very widespread practice, accepted and performed by pretty much every single Babylonian woman. Note that some historians have disputed the specifics of Herodotus’s account but do accept that cultic prostitution existed in Babylon. (More on that below.)

9 Temple Prostitution

Temple prostitution was replete throughout the ancient world in and around the Fertile Crescent.^[3] This practice dates all the way back to the ancient Sumerian culture, which began in 4500 BC and from which Babylonian culture sprang up. Babylon is believed to have had dedicated temples set up specifically for prostitution. These divine brothels were more than just a place where people bought sex—this was a truly religious experience for the ancient Babylonians.

The exchange here wasn’t even sex for money; it was a communal, ritualistic practice to give thanks and worship to the gods of ancient Babylon. This was both quite a unique practice for the Babylonians and similar cultures in the ancient Middle East and a staple of their religious lives.

8 The Sin Of Chastity

In an interesting twist from the Judeo-Christian culture we’ve erected since the days of ancient Babylon, in Babylonian culture, it was actually sinful not to have sex.^[4] According to Herodotus’s account of women being sent once in their lives to a temple for sex, the first man to throw a coin into her lap got to have sex with her. Whether he was rich or poor, young or old, she was obliged to indulge him, irrespective of his or her social status. Herodotus also wrote of less formal prostitution outside of the temples, wherein a man would allow someone to have sex with his wife or children, so long as the sex was paid for.

So basically, if anyone wanted sex in ancient Babylon, it was theirs for the taking. While some sources today have referred to this as rape, it was widespread and socially acceptable in Babylonian culture, which had a near-fetish for fertility. This was a deep part of their religious experience, acts of offering and worship to their sex goddess Innana (also known as Ishtar). Just think about that: There was a culture on Earth where it was considered a sin to turn down sex, proving, once again, that if humans can dream it, and it’s sexual, they will do it.

7 Debauched Dinners

Orgies and prostitution were pretty common in the ancient world, and Babylon was no exception. However, free love and open sexuality weren’t restricted to massive annual or semiannual festivals, and sex would take place in common settings. Herodotus tells us of lavish, steamy dinner parties and how they would go down. Essentially, the ancient Babylonians would have orgies that started off as simple dinner parties but, bit by bit, would progress into something that would take on a more sexual nature.

As the dinners would proceed, Herodotus noted that women would undress piece by piece, until they were totally in the nude.^[5] From here, we can only imagine the wild nights that ensued, and Herodotus noted that it was customary for dinner parties to lead to completely socially acceptable prostitution, which even the Greeks thought absolutely bizarre.

6 Consecration

The Code of Hammurabi says much about the sex practices of the day and the laws that concerned them. In ancient Babylon, every marriage needed to be consecrated with sex, and a marriage wasn’t official until the newlyweds actually had intercourse.

Etched into a surviving stone tablet from 1754 BC, Hammurabi’s Code says, “If a man takes a woman to wife, but has no intercourse with her or does not draw up a marriage contract, this woman is no wife to him.”^[6] So if you wanted to take a woman’s hand in marriage, drew up a marriage contract, and handled the whole nine yards, none of it was actually official until some actual sex took place.

5 Sex Everywhere

The Babylonians weren’t bashful or shy when it came to getting down and dirty; they would do it anytime, anywhere, and seemingly with anyone, whenever they wanted. Babylonians would openly have sex in the center of town, go for a midday excursion out in the countryside, or even climb up atop a rooftop and decide to do the nasty overlooking the city.^[7]

It really didn’t matter much, and nobody minded, as they were an extremely sexually open culture. From temples to rooftops, to the good, old-fashioned bedroom, the Babylonians did it everywhere. One can only imagine an entire city of people having sex all over the place, a rather bizarre mental image indeed.

4 Marriage Markets

Marriage markets were another peculiar part of Babylonian culture. Massive markets would be set up, and women of age were sold off to the highest bidder. Herodotus is once again the writer who handed down our knowledge about these markets, describing in detail exactly how they operated.

Apparently, all of the women would sit down, and, not unlike a modern beauty pageant, one woman would be asked to stand and take the center stage, at which point the men in the audience would begin to place their bids on her, until she was sold. This was done in a particular order, too, starting from what was considered the most attractive and working their way down to what was considered least attractive woman.^[8]

Considering everything else we know about Babylonian sex culture, this was most probably a meat market of sorts, where men would buy the wives that they happened to desire. They would soon need to have sex with them to make the marriage official, of course.

3 Eye For An Eye

The Code of Hammurabi remains famous to this day for its general tone of “an eye for an eye,” explicitly stating which punishments were just and right for which transgressions and wrongdoings. Of course, sex was no exception to this . . . and sometimes their idea of what constituted “an eye for an eye,” was unusual, to say the least.

In a similar legal text dating back to the ancient days of Babylon, we’re told of another policy, whereby if a man is the father of an intact virgin, and another man has sex with her, the father of the virgin is then allowed to take and do with that man’s wife as he pleases. He would then be justly entitled to “ravage her.” However, in Hammurabi‘s version of this same situation, if a man had sex with a father’s untouched virgin (who is betrothed to another man), the man would be put to death and the woman would be spared to live.^[9]

2 Adultery

It might surprise you given what’s been covered so far, but adultery carried a high price in Babylon. Such a crime would warrant a punishment of execution, and not exactly a nice method of execution, either: A wife caught cheating on her husband would be forcibly drowned. Hammurabi’s Code tells us what the prescribed punishment should be in quite great detail, saying that if a wife of one man is caught red-handed in the act of cheating, both her and the man she was cheating with should be bound with rope and thrown into the water until they both drowned.

However, supposing the husband of the wife wanted to spare her life, he could opt to not press charges and forgive her, and in this case, the king at the time would reserve the same right to opt to spare the man she was cheating with. If the husband who had been betrayed did not care to save his wife, however, the king was powerless to save either life, and both would be sentenced to die.^[10]

1 Homosexuality

Like most other cultures on Earth before the Judeo-Christian domination which took place after Constantine made Christianity the official religion of ancient Rome, the Babylonians felt no sense of social stigma about homosexuality, and like the ancient Greeks, they practiced it openly and freely. They did, however, have specific homosexual acts which were thought to bring about bad fortune, though others were thought to bring good fortune. It has been noted by scholars that Babylonian men sometimes liked to assume the role of women in sex, but to do so was looked down upon.^[11]

Since anal sex wasn’t off limits, the ancient Babylonians even used heterosexual anal sex as a form of contraception, meaning they understood the processes that led to pregnancy, and it’s also very possible that homosexual sex served as an alternative to this same end; to avoid pregnancy. Nonetheless, the Babylonians were kinky freaks by today’s standards in a lot of ways, and very little was off-limits.

I like to write about dark stuff, history, horror, and murder. Also sex.