Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum

Uncommon card · No. 83069

Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum has been both exhibited as art and censored as pornography. The Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum around the bay of Naples were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, thereby preserving their buildings and artefacts until extensive archaeological excavations began in the 18th century. These digs revealed the cities to be rich in erotic artefacts such as statues, frescoes, and household items decorated with sexual themes. The ubiquity of such imagery and items indicates that the treatment of sexual iconography in ancient Rome was more relaxed than in current Western culture. The creation of erotic art in ancient Rome is thought to have occurred over seven centuries from the first century BCE to the fifth or sixth century CE. Much of what might strike modern viewers as erotic imagery, such as oversized phalluses, could arguably be fertility imagery. Depictions of the phallus, for example, could be used in gardens to encourage the...

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