T H E
D A I L Y
T R A
V E S T Y
5 April 2000
Vol. 1, Issue 64
Secret Room of Roman
Erotica is Finally Opened
Date: 03/04/00
A collection of
sexually explicit art, locked away nearly 200 years ago
when it shocked a
royal heir, is about to open to the public. Alasdair
Palmer takes a
preview.
It has been described as a "fearsome drama of Pleasure, Sin and
Death"
-- the depiction of a life "so unremittingly
sensual that it fatigued and
revolted us".
It has been locked away for
nearly 200 years, supposedly because it
was too lewd to be seen by anyone except those
possessed of that very
rare combination of great age and extremely strict
morals. But next week,
and despite
vociferous protests from the Roman Catholic Church, the
"secret room" of the
National Archaeological Museum in Naples is finally
opening its doors to the public.
The room houses a collection of erotic objects from
Pompeii and
Herculaneum, the two Roman cities obliterated when Vesuvius
erupted in
AD79.
Ash buried the cities, and when
excavations of the sites began in the 18th
century, streets, houses and shops
were found in near-perfect preservation
-- providing a snapshot of life in
the pagan Roman Empire.
Early archaeologists were surprised to discover
just how drenched in
sexual imagery that life was: statues, paintings,
mosaics, amulets,
bracelets, necklaces, images on shop fronts, in
dining rooms, bedrooms
and gardens -- not to mention the pictures in
brothels.
The material was initially displayed openly, first in the
private collection
of the Bourbon kings and then in the Naples
museum. But in 1819,
Francis, heir to the Neapolitan throne, visited the
museum with his young
daughter. He was shocked by what he
saw. He ordered the offending
material to be taken
out of the public collection and placed in a locked
room. There it has remained ever since, expanding inexorably as further
excavations have added ever more erotic objects to it.
The most commonly depicted
object in the exhibition is the penis. Images
of the organ abound, in various stages of
excitement.
Romans did not consider male genitalia obscene or
pornographic, or even
particularly arousing. Instead, erect penises
were regarded as a good-luck
charm. Painted or sculpted, they stood in
every part of the town, and
measured all possible lengths, from four feet
downwards. They appeared
on shops, factories
and taverns, above the doors of houses, on statues
adorning fountains, gardens and private houses, on
lamps, tripods,
necklaces, bracelets. Several comic
depictions show men -- and, on
occasion, gods
-- with grotesquely enlarged penises. In one case, a
gladiator is
pictured in apparent mortal combat with his own penis.
If erect penises
did not strike the Romans as pornographic, what did? Not
the naked
female form, which was on display almost everywhere, and
certainly not female
genitalia, in which -- in sharp contrast to today's
pornographic magazines -- the Romans appeared to
have had little interest.
Depictions of sexual intercourse were
considered pornographic, but the
extent to which they were thought indecent
is less clear. Among numerous
paintings and sculptures of sex, the
exhibition contains a series of fairly
graphic pictures of couples in various sexual
positions.
Four were found in a brothel, each one on the door of a
different cubicle.
Marinella Lista, who helped prepare the exhibition,
believes that they
indicated the specialities of the resident
prostitutes. Classical authors
refer to sexual positions such as "the racehorse",
with the woman on top --
one of the most expensive -- and the mysterious
"lion on the cheese-grater",
although no one has worked out quite what
that involves.
A collection of four similar paintings was found in
the bedroom of a private
house. Dr Lista believes that they may have
adorned the room in which the
master of the house entertained his mistresses and
concubines. Fidelity
was not viewed as a male virtue. It was
expected that a married man would
have sex with women other than his
wife.
"Courtesans we keep for pleasure, concubines for attending day by
day to
the body, and wives for producing heirs," wrote Apollodorus, who seems
to
have summed up the attitude of most rich Romans before the advent of
Christianity.
Still, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill,
director of the British School in Rome, who
has worked extensively in
Pompeii, insists: "The Roman world wasn't a
sexual free-for-all. They
had their own rules and anxieties. They were just
different to ours."
Erotic paintings
certainly did appear in private houses, but usually in the
rooms reserved for
banquets.
Examples from dining rooms in the exhibition use mythological
themes,
frequently involving gods forcing themselves on young women whom they
are shocked to discover -- at the vital moment --
are hermaphrodites.
Occasionally in the background are more graphic
exhibitions of sex
involving much smaller figures. The gardens
of villas were also frequently
home to depictions of sex. One meticulously
carved example shows the
half-beast god Pan fornicating with a
goat.
"But I don't think that was supposed to be sexually arousing," says
Dr.
Wallace-Hadrill. "It was rather a reminder of the beast in man -- of the
fact
that nature is savage, that man is not an animal,
but is mid-way between
nature and god."
One of the most remarkable
aspects of the exhibition is the extraordinarily
fine quality of most of the
erotic work. Modern pornography is notable for
its extreme
ugliness. Ancient porn artists strived after, and occasionally
achieved, beauty.
Many of the most
distinguished artists of antiquity painted explicitly erotic
pictures. Tiberius had a picture by the great
artist Parrhasius, showing
Atlanta performing fellatio on Meleager. All
of Parrhasius's work has
disappeared, but similar scenes are on display in
this show, almost
certainly modelled on famous works by artists like
him. There appears to
have been no anxiety about the images. No one
seems to have worried
about their effect on children, for
instance.
Christianity put a stop to all that. Early Christians had
extreme -- and, to
pagans, unintelligible -- views about sex. Adultery
was "worse than many
murders", according to Clement of Alexander, who, along
with most of the
Church Fathers, was convinced that a life of total
chastity was best.
Christians were so hostile to sex that some even
castrated themselves.
They believed that sex was radically evil and the
cause of almost all the
ills of the world -- however it was
performed.
That idea was unknown to pagans. It may explain why --
as this exhibition
demonstrates -- it was possible for them to produce images
of sex that are
graphic without being ugly or offensive.
The Secret
Room opens on April 10 at the National Archaeological
Museum,
Naples.
The Sunday Telegraph, London
Story
Picture:
http://www.smh.com.au:80/news/0004/03/graphics/000403_secretroom.jpg
Extraordinary
... (top) a pornographic relief dominates a wall in the Secret
Room; (below) Visitors look at one of the
pornographic frescos during a
preview of the collection. Photos by
AFP.
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A dirty mind is a terrible
thing to waste.
