Love and Luxury

1 Domestic sex scenes (3: 5-6): use these examples from the set texts and other you
encounter during the reading. Why are sex scenes found on wall-paintings in Pompeian houses? Who was the intended audience?
cubiculum or bedroom of a private home most likely not as private as a modern one. stimulant for copulation. image functioned as a visual aid
The scene on the east wall is of Hercules lying down with Cupids while the other two scenes are of couples in erotic poses; the scene from the centre of the south wall is pictured below. small opening oddly positioned in the wall may have been an aperture for voyeurism It has been suggested that one secluded room (numbered 43), which was decorated with explicit scenes of female-male intercourse, functioned as a private "sex club." Guests would have entered the smaller, more private atrium, then passed down a corridor and through a triclinium and antechamber to reach it. few similar rooms in Pompeiian houses suggest that the intention was to create the ambience of a brothel in a home, for parties at which participants played the roles of prostitute or client, or for which actual prostitutes were hired to entertain guests. Nature of isolation and alone for a roman different to today Private? suite of rooms suggests lust
Caecilius Iucundus Fresco of couple on bed, figure in background date AD 62-79 provenance pompeii, house of l. caecilius iucundus, north wall of peristyle The erotic paintings in the House of Caecilius lucundus further demonstrate the public display of erotica within the domestic sphere. On the north wall of the peristyle, between the tricliiiiuiii and the cubiculum, there was an erotic representation of heterosexual sexual intercourse, which is now housed in the Secret Cabinet of the Naples Archaeological Museum (figure 13). The image is rather similar to the other ones that have been surveyed in this thesis (i.e., a man and a woman are engaging in the act of coitus). One oddity in this painting, however, is the presence of a servant in the left background, which adds another dimension to the representation. Clarke explains
the presence of the servant as a matter of course. Often servants would be stationed in the bedroom to attend to the masters' needs, even when the masters were engaging in sexual servant elite tone, such as in older erotic images farnesina villa paintings
Almost certainly, as a banker of modest means, freedman4 On the wall of the peristyle between a cubiculum and triclinium Painting next to biggest room off peristyle Wanted visitors to see it Represents a social life The suite of rooms was for elite high ranking guests
UNLIKE house of vettii Erotic paintings likely to be in slave quarters Owned by wealthy freedman Reward slaves with pictures which are reminiscent of the brothel rather than other houses?
power idealised love inspiration differences in roman attitudes to sexuality than our own why pompei? Copied roman architecture take into account where it was in the house, who patronised it, who was it for
5. What limits might there be on the usefulness of the texts and of the images as evidence for Roman attitudes?
No overarching roman attitudes? Cicero uses the traditions of old Catullus is deliberately anti political?
Catullus cleverness, callimachean style of writing, Gender roles woman seem to be dominant
Was love a luxury in late Republican Rome?
Luxury opposite to Roman political values? Sex luxury Love not luxury
Poetry is it luxury - Catullus is deliberately against politics, uses poetry as medium - love poetry, is it is luxury?
Greek basis in itself luxurious Acte cicero, beach party shows greek is equal to luxury Greek in Catullus
Depictions of sex? Luxury- brothels not attended by high class men sold sex isnt a luxury Meretrix - courtesan Not the same as prostitute Scene of erotic painting shows a luxury that did not exist Tiny cramped rooms
Classics weblearn - Resources new pauly online german encyclopedia of classics
85. Love-Hate
I hate and love. And why, perhaps youll ask. I dont know: but I feel, and Im tormented. 86. True Beauty: to Lesbia
Quintias lovely to many. To me shes white, long, and straight: I acknowledge thats so. But I dont agree thats beauty: theres no charm, theres not a speck of good taste in all of that long body. Lesbias lovely, possessed of all thats most beautiful, besides she alones stolen all charm from all other women. 87. Incomparable: to Lesbia
No woman can say shes been loved so much, as my Lesbia in truths been loved by me. No faith in any tie was ever so great, as has been found, on my part, in love of you. 75. Chained: to Lesbia
My minds reduced to this, by your faults, Lesbia, and has ruined itself so in your service, that now it couldnt wish you well,
were you to become whats best, or stop loving you if you do whats worst.
72. Familiarity: to Lesbia
Once you said you preferred Catullus alone, Lesbia: would not have Jupiter before me. I prized you then not like an ordinary lover, but as a father prizes his children, his family. Now I know you: so, though I burn more fiercely, yet youre worth much less to me, and slighter. How is that, you ask? The pain of such love makes a lover love more, but like less.
51 An Imitation of Sappho: to Lesbia
He seems equal to the gods, to me, that man, if its possible more than just divine, who sitting over against you, endlessly sees you and hears you laughing so sweetly, that with fierce pain Im robbed of all of my senses: because that moment I see you, Lesbia, nothings left of me..... but my tongue is numbed, and through my poor limbs fires are raging, the echo of your voice
rings in both ears, my eyes are covered with the dark of night. Your idleness is loathsome Catullus: you delight in idleness, and too much posturing: idleness ruined the kings and the cities of former times.

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1 Domestic sex scenes (3: 5-6): use these examples from the set texts and other you

Was love a luxury in late Republican Rome?

Classics weblearn - Resources new pauly online german encyclopedia of classics

72. Familiarity: to Lesbia

51 An Imitation of Sappho: to Lesbia

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