The World of Killing the Hydra - Part II - Prostitution in the Roman Empire

We’re going to a different sort of place in this instalment of The World of Killing the Hydra.

In Part I, we explored the beauty of Leptis Magna which is where the book begins, but which was also the home of Emperor Septimius Severus.

But the Roman Empire was not all about beautiful monuments, lavish banquets, and the adoration of the people for the ruler of the time.

In fact, the Roman Empire had its own maze of back streets and alleyways where life was seedier, and more visceral. It wasn’t all polished marble, but rather slick brick and stinking cells.

WARNING: If you are easily offended, some of the pictures of frescoes in this post might be a bit too saucy for you. Just a word of warning for the innocent-minded.

We’re going to take a very brief look today at prostitutes and brothels in the Roman Empire.

Now, if you’re suddenly hoping that Killing the Hydra is my attempt at historical erotica, well, you’re looking in the wrong place. The book is not an orgy extravaganza. If you want that, check out the film Caligula with Malcolm McDowell in the title role.

However, you can’t really write about the Roman world without touching on the long-standing part that prostitution and brothels had to play in society.

They existed, and they most certainly flourished. People of all classes, mostly men, made it a normal practice to visit their favourite brothel from time to time.

If you liked the HBO show ROME, you might have an image of Titus Pullo whoring his way through the Subura with his jug of wine in hand. Certainly, this sort of behaviour was not uncommon, especially for troops fresh back from the wars and looking for a good time.

The flip side might be the richer, upper class nobility who may have believed visiting prostitutes was fine, as long as it was done in moderation and didn’t cause a scandal.

The prostitution scene in the Empire was as large and varied as the workers and clients who kept it running. There was something for everyone!

But let’s look at things a bit more closely.

Romulus, Remus and
the 'Lupa'

One could say that prostitution has ties to the founding of Rome itself.

You may have read about Romulus and Remus, the brothers who founded Rome and were suckled by the She Wolf, or Lupa.

We have heard of lost children being raised by wolves before, but in the instance of Romulus and Remus, many believe that they were actually raised by a prostitute who found them on the banks of the Tiber. The slang word for prostitute in Latin was lupa.

And the word for brothel was in fact lupanar or lupanarium.

Clients were drawn in by the sexual allure of displayed ‘wares’, sometimes lined up naked on the curbside, and the various experiences to be had within. The latter were sometimes illustrated in frescoes or mosaics on the walls of the lupanar. These were intended to add to the atmosphere, or were a sort of menu of pleasures to be had.

There were of course ‘high-class’ prostitutes who catered to wealthy and powerful patrons, women who were skilled at conversation, music and poetry. These high end lupae provided an escape, or a feast with friends, in lavish surroundings coupled with a sort of blissful oblivion. Some might have been purchased by their wealthy clients to keep for themselves, and if that was the case they might have ‘enjoyed’ a relatively easy life compared to the alternative.

A lupa's 'office' a cement bed
covered with a mattress and pillows

The truth for most, however, was that they were slaves. And slaves in ancient Rome, as we all know, were objects, property to be used and disposed of on a whim.

Prostitutes – women, men, boys, girls, eunuchs etc. – were at the bottom of the social scale, along with actors and gladiators. They could be adored by clients one moment, and shunned the next. And if a lupa was no longer profitable, the leno (pimp), or the lena (madam) might sell them off as a liability, sending them to a life that was possibly even worse.

In ancient Rome prostitution was legal and licensed, and it was normal for men of any social rank to enjoy the range of pleasures that were on offer. Every budget and taste was catered to, and because of Rome’s conquests, and the length and breadth of the Romam Empire in the early 3^rd century, there would have been slaves of every nationality and colour. Clients of the lupanar would have had their choice of Egyptians, Parthians and Numidians, Germans, Britons, slaves from far East and anywhere else, including Italians.

However, even though prostitution was regulated, don’t kid yourselves. This was not a question of morality, or curbing venereal diseases. This was about maximizing profit – prostitution was also taxed!

In Pompeii, prostitution became a sort of tourist trade. On the street pavement you just had to follow the phallus’ to find the nearest brothel! There were something like thirty-five brothels in the town, and that’s not counting the small curbside cells or niches where the cheapest lupae provided quickies to passers-by.

The 'Great Lupanar'

The biggest brothel in Pompeii however, was the ‘Great Lupanar’ located at a crossroads two blocks from the Forum. Many of the frescoes pictured here are from that building which had ten rooms, where most lupanars had just a few.

But we’ve only been looking at prostitution and brothels in Rome and Pompeii. What would they have been like on the fringes of the Empire?

In Killing the Hydra, Lucius finds himself alone and in trouble in the Numidian town of Thugga. This is where he meets one of the secondary characters of the book, Dido.

Dido is a Punic girl who has lost her family and is all alone in the world. She is beautiful, and kind-hearted. But in a world where people were desperate to survive, those who didn’t have protection had few choices. For a young beautiful Punic girl on the North Africa frontier, there would not have been many places that offered a roof, a bed, food and clothing.

The streets of Thugga

Dido is a prostitute in the Thugga brothel known as the ‘House of the Cyclops’, and she spots Lucius, a young, good-looking Roman walking by himself – a sure bet in her eyes, and perhaps better than her usual clientele.

But she doesn’t know Lucius yet. He’s not the average man out for a good time. He has much more pressing issues on his mind as he walks the streets of Thugga.

'House of the Cyclops' in Thugga

When I was doing my research for Killing the Hydra in Thugga (in central Tunisia), Lucius and Dido’s meeting played out in my mind as if they were walking alongside me.

Without giving too much away, Lucius ends up needing this young lupa’s help because he has no one else he can trust.

Can he trust this unknown, Punic girl? Will he go into the lupanar and seek her behind the curtain of her tiny cubiculum?

You have to read the book to find that part out. But, if you are interested in an excerpt, I posted one describing the moment when Lucius and Dido meet in a previous post which you can read HERE.

One might think that the subject of this particular post was rather fun to write, that the images above are titillating. And sure, they are to an extent. I don’t mind a bit of risque material on occasion. Why not?

But then, I can’t help thinking of the lives that these female and male prostitues had to endure. Very few enjoyed the favour of kind wealthy clients, and lived in luxurious surroundings.

Prostitutes were slaves and most were probably pumped and beaten for a bronze coin or two before having to receive their next tormentor. These people were objects to the rest of the world, not human beings. They were people’s daughters and sons, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. In many cases they’d been taken from their homes on the other side of the world. Perhaps they were all that was left of their family?

For most prostitutes in the Roman Empire, life was a living Hades – just something to remember when looking at this aspect of the larger world of Killing the Hydra.

Thank you for reading…

Killing the Hydra has been doing very well in the Ancient History and Historical Fantasy categories on the Kobo and Amazon charts the last couple of weeks, so my sincere thanks to all of you who have gone out and purchased a copy. If you enjoyed it, please do leave a review.

In a few weeks I’ll post the next installment of The World of Killing the Hydra.

If you are interested in learning more about prostitution in the Roman Empire, especially in Pompeii, the video below is an excellent documentary that will give you an inside look at the Lupanare Grande in that ancient city. 

For those reading on mobile, click HERE for the video. 

Caligula – From Little Boots to Maniacal Monster

The BBC posted and interesting piece last week about a documentary on the Emperor Caligula.

Caligula...

The name certainly conjures images, doesn’t it? Oh yes. More so than the full Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.

Caligula definitely has more power, largely due to the stories behind the name.

You might envisage John Hurt in the television drama of Robert Graves’ I Claudius, his mouth bloody after eating the baby which he had put in his sister’s belly, believing himself to be Jove.

Or, perhaps more disturbingly, the image of Malcolm McDowell cavorts into your thoughts amid flashes of naked bodies and the bloody bits and pieces of Caligula’s victims in the infamous, star-clad film originally scripted by Gore Vidal, Caligula.

These are the images that we have of Caligula today. They are built on ancient sources and popular culture that described the reign of this most disturbing of Roman emperors.

Malcolm McDowell as Caligula

But is the portrayal of Caligula as an insane, perverted, and brutal maniac-of-an-emperor accurate? Is it fair?

Caligula had an interesting life as a boy. He was with his father, the Roman hero Germanicus, and the army along the northern frontier camps and it is said that this is where he got his nickname. ‘Caligula’ is a diminutive version of the word for military, hobnailed boots called ‘caligae’. He became ‘Little Boots’ because of the smaller pair of caligae he wore.

Maybe Caligula was a cute little boy? Odd to think after all the rumours.

The Emperor Tiberius was responsible, more or less, for killing Caligula’s family and so, ‘Little Boots’ ended up spending time with his great uncle, Tiberius, on Capri. This island is where the Emperor retreated to in his advanced years and it is rumoured that much depravity took place there, and that Caligula learned that behaviour.

Caligae - hob-nailed boots

But actually, the first six months of Caligula’s reign as emperor were said to be good and moderate. He fell seriously ill around that time however, and afterward the chroniclers speak of a young man who believed himself divine, and who became the most cruel, extravagant and perverse of tyrants.

I’m not an expert on the reign of Caligula and, in fact, it seems that few people are.

Caligula’s reign as Roman emperor is one of the most poorly documented in Roman history.

Since that is the case, it seems understandable that countless generations would cling to the tales told by Suetonius so many years after Caligula’s death: that he had sex with his sister on a regular basis, that he made his horse a consul and that he forced senators’ wives to have sex.

If you can make it up, it probably fits the historical and popular culture bill when it comes to Caligula.  

The other side of the argument says that all of the salacious tales were invented, pure fabrications created by Caligula’s, and the Julio-Claudian’s, enemies.

Villa Jovis, Capri

Perhaps. But must not there be some basis in fact?

Certainly, the senatorial and Praetorian conspirators behind the assassination of Caligula (he was the first emperor to be assassinated) needed to justify their actions.

Some believe that Caligula had tried very hard to increase the power of the Emperor and further minimize the Senate. This would make him a lot of enemies – enemies who would write the history of his reign long after his death.

There is real power in writing after the fact – which is why we must approach any source, modern or historical, with a degree of caution.

Even our views of the most famous and popular (even well-documented) figures of history can be flawed. History is written by the victors, or at the least by the survivors. Everyone, especially emperors, had enemies, even if they were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ rulers.

John Hurt in I Claudius

Popular media, such as film and fiction, can reveal to us certain aspects of historical people but we must take everything with a grain of salt. We have to accept that what we are reading or seeing might be based on subjective sources that had a particular goal in mind.

However, learning how a generation of people viewed a particular person (even though the stories may not be true) can also be useful. Their hatred, love or fear etc. must have come from somewhere!

Was Caligula as mad as they say or as we believe? Perhaps.

His depravity has made some good storytelling over the centuries. I suspect that some of it is true. But, like all good stories, things have been elaborated on for sheer entertainment value, especially when the man himself was safely dead.

I highly recommend Robert Graves’ I Claudius if you have not already read it. It’s a modern classic, as is its television dramatization starring John Hurt and Derek Jacobi.

On the other hand, if you have the stomach and libido for it, the film version of Caligula is a terror-filled, pornographic representation of Caligula that brings all of the most salacious tales of him to life.

We should, however, end with a quote from Suetonius who seems to be one of the main sources of all the tall tales that have been passed down the ages:

“…he (Caligula) could not control his natural cruelty and viciousness, but he was a most eager witness of the tortures and executions of those who suffered punishment, revelling at night in gluttony and adultery, disguised in a wig and a long robe, passionately devoted besides to the theatrical arts of dancing and singing, in which Tiberius very willingly indulged him, in the hope that through these his savage nature might be softened. This last was so clearly evident to the shrewd old man, that he used to say now and then that to allow Gaius to live would prove the ruin of himself and of all men, and that he was rearing a viper for the Roman people and a Phaethon for the world.”

                                               (Caius Suetonius Tranquillus; Lives of the Twelve Caesars)

As I said, history is written by the survivors.

Thank you for reading. 

Oh Behave!

I quote Austin Powers. Yes, Austin ‘Danger’ Powers who is known to have said this occasionally when an erotic comment escaped some vixen’s lips on the silver screen. You’re right, absolutely nothing to do with ancient and medieval history or historical fiction. However, those two words not only denote Austin’s curious interest in the lewd but taken together they can also bring about a question:

When writing historical fiction, how much detail should one put into scenes that contain sex and nudity, be it a loving scene, a highly charged moment or in some cases, a scene of sexual violence? Opinion is divided, certainly in my own writers’ group. But really, where does one draw the line in historical fiction before it becomes more of an historical romance or an erotica moment?

I read an article the other day in one of the writing magazines that talked about the dos and don’ts of writing fiction. One of the don’ts included not underestimating one’s readership, not explaining everything in detail but rather leaving things up to the reader’s imagination. Makes sense but I am sometimes surprised, and not in a good way, by some of the things I read in historical novels; things like detailed rape scenes just don’t do it for me. They feel like the only use is for shock value. We know that rapine was a fact of the ancient and medieval worlds but such a heinous act, and the psychological effects upon the victim, can be related to a reader without going into the minute details of the whole thing. People know what it is and for most, the mere implication of such a thing happening is enough to convey the message.

One time, when I was looking for some new historical fiction, I picked up a novel set in the dark ages and began to read the first page. I had read one good review about this particular author so I thought I would check it out. To my horror, the very first scene was of a young woman being impaled upon a stake and it described in gory, perverted detail how here clothes were lifted and the stake inserted into genitalia as a large group of men looked on. I put the book down and will not pick up anything by that author again.

I may sound a bit preachy here but that does an injustice to historical fiction. I am certainly not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but I do feel that with all the suffering in the world authors have a responsibility to convey messages that will encourage humanity to goodness. Yes, evil is present, bad things happen but spare us the details at times.

On the other hand, someone, a reader or writer, with Mr. Powers’ cheeky view on life might enjoy a bit of randy detail in a scene and why not? They did know how to party it up in the ancient world. A bit of skin shown by flute girls at a banquet could be a bit of all right. Or you could add to the intrigue by having pairs of folks coupling in the wings while the Emperor is distracted. Sexy and dangerous. A bit of fun is good, but do we need to go so far as to see up close and personal things going in and out of other things? Probably not, this is historical fiction, not Penthouse Letters.

What about if two characters are deeply in love and you want to portray that to the reader? Remember the ‘show don’t tell’ rule but also remember not to show it all. The true love between characters will be apparent in how they interact, how they treat each other at all times, how they are when they are apart. If your two love birds are in an intimate moment, set the scene and give them a bit of privacy. The reader’s imagination will do the rest.

Basically, there are many ways to look at it, and many genres in which sexuality and violence are expressed in different ways. Historical fiction has recently garnered the respect it deserves and that momentum should be maintained – we are not writing true crime or erotica, we’re writing and reading well-researched and hopefully well-written historical fiction.

To finish off, I would like to relate an incident that occurred in one of my writing classes several years back. This was an evening class at a community centre. Everyone in the class had writing aspirations and many had short stories or first drafts of novels. The class had about ten to thirteen people in it, mostly women (old and young) apart from myself, twenty at the time, and an older English gentleman, a veteran working on a memoir. Once a week, the teacher would ask one of us to read another person’s work out loud and then everyone would provide input. My work of short fantasy had been read out the previous week so I was off the hook, content to sit back and bask in the positive vibes and constructive comments everyone had given me.

That week the teacher had selected several pages from one of the ladies’ romance novels, something set in the Wild West, complete with cowboys, banditos, covered wagons and women with names like Clementine and Annabelle.

“Adam”, the teacher swivelled her chair to face me, all the heads around the table following suite. “Would you like to read for us today?”

“Sure…” The lady sitting directly across from me was the author. As she sat there, apprehensive, wide-eyed, anticipatory, the teacher slid the sample pages to me. The teacher, I should say, did not like to read the samples ahead of time, preferring to rely on first impressions and initial impact. I accepted the pages, cleared my throat. Everyone except the author was staring at the table or ceiling, waiting for the blank canvas of their minds to be filled.

“Where the Sun Sets,” I read the title and pressed on. The setting was fantastic, romantic. The purples, golds and greens of the plains came alive and we were all drawn in. The characters were likeable, heroic, flawed, human. I tried to read well, to do it justice and glanced up occasionally to see the author brimming with pride and everyone else smiling at some far off place and time of happy memory. People gripped the table edges and chairs when the banditos rode in, grimy and destructive as in a Clint Eastwood movie. The hero, a cowboy, a cool dude with feelings, saved Ms. Annabelle from certain shame and a life of hardship when he rode after her and her captors for two days, tracking them like a wolf.

Ms. Annabelle was in danger, no doubt and we weren’t sure if the hero would reach her in time. But he pressed on. Oh yes, this author had her audience hooked. Even I forgot that I was reading in front of an audience. They didn’t care about me or my voice, they cared about the words, their rhythm, the images they conjured so magically. To make a long story short, the hero dispatched all ten banditos with stealth, skill and shear cohones. Ms. Annabelle was weeping but ever so grateful. The pair were taken care of by a doctor at the closest town. The hero insisted on sleeping outside Ms. Annabelle’s door because he wanted to make sure she was safe from any more suffering. Ms. Annabelle, unable to sleep because of the heat, the sweat and the man outside who had saved her, tossed and turned and finally went to the door.

As I read the words it started to feel warm. Something in the back of my mind said, Should I stop now? Why isn’t the teacher stopping me? I’ve read so much already! I could feel my neck getting warm. The Englishman beside me started to cough. Then, different words started to appear: sweaty, longingly, caresses, kisses and even licking. Intimate parts were being explored in the sweaty sheets of this bed on the south-western frontier. The hero stood above Ms. Annabelle who could not take her eyes off him and scanned his beautiful face, shoulders, torso and hips until her eyes fell upon… Oh, shit, do I have to read this? Really? The author stared at me and, my face red as a Roma tomato, I forced myself to finish, to get it over with.

…until her eyes fell upon his…swollen member.

“Ok Adam. That’s enough. Good reading.” The teacher sat back in her chair and I sank as far as I could go into my turtleneck, the Englishman beside going through a full-on coughing fit now. I wondered if anyone would loosen his ascot for him because was so utterly red, choked by embarrassment. “Well,” the teacher continued, “it sure is hot in here!” Everyone allowed themselves an uncomfortable chuckle. “Feedback?”

Some folks pointed out the beautiful descriptions of the landscape. Others highlighted the build-up between the characters, how they eyed each other along the wagon train but always within the bounds of propriety. The teacher nodded. I said nothing. I’d done my part. When the input from students was done, the teacher leaned on the table and smiled, looked at the author.

“This is a great romance novel, fits the genre archetypes very well but had your own unique style. Very good.” The author relaxed visibly but the rest of us knew it was coming. “However, an author should never, EVER, use the phrase swollen member.” Thank god she said it. “Leave that kind of detail to the reader’s imagination.”