The prostitution in the Ancient Rome sailed between two waters. On the one hand, it was seen as a lesser evil necessary for young men to vent their baser instincts and leave decent ladies alone; on the other, whores had a terrible reputation and were considered, on paper, as the “infamy” of society. The clearest example is that the bulk of these girls worked in stinking slums under the orders of a pimp who waited, patiently but irately, for the service to end so that the next customer could come by. In practice, a minute lost was one coin less.
Los ‘arches‘ or ‘brothels’ were the buildings where sex with prostitutes used to be practiced. And they were not earthly paradises; rather they corresponded to slums that rose in the busiest neighborhoods. The reason was simple: the owners could obtain a larger clientele there by being closer to their target audience. All advantages… The most popular were in the Subura, between the Quirinal and Viminal hills. The area had the worst reputation in all of Rome, as it was the refuge of thieves, hitmen, lanistas and, in general, prostitutes of the lowest social status.
As Plautus wrote in his chronicles of the time, in the Subura it was possible to “rent the cheapest prostitutes” and fathers could be seen prostituting women and daughters to survive. It wasn’t much better Trastevere, in the very heart of the city. Historians confirm that the worst ‘fornices’ were there, the dirtiest and most stinking. In the poorest neighborhoods there were also small ‘insulae’ in which the prostitutes of the lowest social status and lack of hygiene lived. Their economic capacity was so low and the rents were so exaggerated that they shared a room with so many other companions.
It was very easy to find the brothels in the neighborhoods of Rome, as the owners placed a big stone phallus which they painted in vermilion red. And it is that, in addition to the obvious causes, the erect penis was considered a symbol of good luck. The interior of the brothels was disgusting since, in addition to the bad smell, their walls were decorated with obscene graffiti done by hand by the clients. The prostitutes worked in small ‘cellae’ or rooms where they received clients. On the door of the same, the owner could put the name of the prostitute, which used to be false, and her sexual specialty.
These rooms, like the exterior ones, were painted with obscene scenes to put the clients ‘in tune’. In the lupanares reserved for the common people, the most impoverished, the ‘cellas’ were more like caves or vaulted underground caverns called ‘fornis’. Horacio, a writer of the time, affirms that these rooms gave off a nauseating stench that those who passed through them carried with them a long time later. Time was limited and controlled by a ‘leno‘ or ‘cool’. An example of this is the inscription that can still be read today in a brothel in Pompeii: “I arrived here, fucked, and returned home.”