Injusticism In Pompeii's Sex And The City

Sex and the City

The notion of modern eroticism arose from the imagery of Ancient Greece and Rome. Art was most commonly found in the homes of upper-class citizens and usually in the bedroom. This does not necessarily mean that the Romans associated eroticism with privacy. Pompeii provides most useful examples of both public and private art. The reason for this is that the volcano preserved vast amounts of useful evidence. It is most important to consider the social class of either patron or viewer, and the varying intentions of artists when analysing Roman art. Different classes had different attitudes towards erotic images; artists had various agendas. Art could be found not only in the bedrooms of villas or aristocratic dining rooms,
Art in other areas of the houses and in public buildings had differing purposes. The Vetii Brothers for example placed a statue of Priapus in the peristyle of their house (Fig 7). Here again the art acts in a different way: as he spouts water from his phallus he also guards the key passageway into the house and essentially wards away the Evil Eye . The concept here is that laughter is the opposite of evil. Thus humorous erotic imagery combats the Evil Eye. This apotropaic function is particularly common in public art - there were also great quantities of phalluses littered around the baths as this was the most likely arena for the Evil Eye to approach. There are indeed some similarities with private houses in brothels in this respect, such as the imagery of Priapus. In the brothel painting of figure 11 he is portrayed with two phalluses . The idea here is that the brothel is more likely to be a place denigrated by the evil eye, thus two phalluses is quite simply twice as apotropaic. The terracotta statue in Figure C illustrates the power Romans attributed to the phallus in warding off the Evil Eye as it is sawed in