Page 8 - Pompeii n. 12 - The world of money at Pompeii

English version

Love for sale

CIL IV 1751

Si quis hic sederit

legat hoc ante omnia

Si qui futuere volet

Atticen quaerat A. XVI

Whoever sits here should read this before anything else: if

you feel like making love, ask Attica; she goes for sixteen
asses.

This offer of love for sale was incised at the Marine Gate, near a masonry
seat attached to the city wall.

Comment

To those who came from the port to Pompeii through the steep ramp of Via
Marina, a seat placed next to the gate offered a moment's rest before
entering the city.
It is here that a woman with an exotic Greek name makes her explicit
overtures to wayfarers perhaps just returned from a long voyage: "If you want
me, ask for me and with sixteen asses you will enjoy refined pleasures."

A very great number of Pompeian inscriptions list prices for performing various kinds
of love, ranging from just one to sixteen asses, for meetings with more sophisticated
women, often with names of Oriental origin.
Generally, however, service prices ranged between two and four asses, affordable by
almost everybody and equivalent to about a glass of wine or a loaf of bread.
These "basic necessities" were in fact prices controlled to make them accessible to
the poor, slaves and the common people, so as to keep these social groups quiet.
Naturally, just as for different qualities of food, there were also women who did not
walk the streets, like the "puellae" sung about by the Elegiac Poets, whose fees were
much higher.

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