This Der Spiegel story about erotic frescoes from Pompeii reveals that prior to being buried in heaps of ash, Pompeiians were totally whoring it up. Link. Shown here, an oral sex tableau. A pity none of this stuff made it into that Discovery Channel / BBC TV special; the program would have been infinitely more watchable.
(Thanks,
Rob). See also this related English-language coverage about the frescoes from 2000 — the year in which they became part of a public display at a newly restored ancient Roman bath: Link. This Lonely Planet documentary also featured them.
Erotic content in ancient art is hardly news, of course — Boing Boing reader esben adds, “In the archaeological museum in Naples is the Gabinetto Segreto – the Secret Room. It’s full of erotic pictures and statues. The phallus was obiously a big thing in ye olden days. The museum site is down, but here’s loads of pictures from the whole collection.” Link
Matthew Krohn says,
Archaeologists have been talking about those frescoes in classes for years… Some of the houses have very well-preserved erotic scenes, as well as some of the villas, in the back rooms. There’s even one fresco with a man with a set of scales weighing his… piece. Link. Plus their gardens are crammed full of phalluses just sticking out of the ground. That particular house is the house of a couple of merchants, and it has plenty of other frescoes.
And BoingBoing reader Jim Walls says,
Regarding your post “Hot hot hot Pompeii action,” a restaurant in Philly (named, appropriately, Pompeii) tried to run an ad in last month’s Philadelphia Magazine featuring one of the frescoes. True to the city’s Quaker heritage, the magazine refused to run it, and it caused a minor controversy. The restaurant capitalized on it, of course, and their website features the offending image: Link.