Carrying the concept of masculine dominance out of the Pompeian brothels and into the homes of wealthy individuals in Pompeii, we come to a small golden bracelet left behind on the body of a female victim of the eruption of Vesuvius. In her article On Reading the Material Culture of Ancient Sexual Labor, Baird discusses the significance and some of the potential meanings behind a golden serpent shaped coil bracelet found on a woman’s corpse, presumably that of a slave. Etched on the inside of the bracelet is DOMNUSANCILLAESUAE and is uncommon due to the master’s desire to say not only that she was a slave, but that she was specifically his slave, whilst not explicitly stating who he was (Baird 168). This bracelet having been found on an individual
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With the inclusion of the under-breast chains it appears more likely that the slave-girl was actually hired out as a prostitute, but this does not rule out the possibility of the master then having sex with her, or use of the term dom[i]nus being used in a similar sense to the use of pet names in relationships today (Baird 168). With this likely example of a master renting out his slave, we see a prostitute who would have been legally barred from obtaining money of her own, thus unable to obtain social gain due to the property related society of the …show more content…
Writers of the time claimed that among the professions from which the state was receiving tax payments, prostitutes were one of the most lucrative groups. Each prostitute was charged taxes equal to the cost of one act of sexual intercourse, with the period of collection being in debate between daily and monthly(McGinn 264). With such a large number of prostitutes in Rome, roughly 32,000 in Rome alone (Gruber, Kehler, and Lipozencic 4), this tax would have gathered incredible amounts of revenue for the state coffers, presumably the primary reason for instituting such a tax. It has been argued that by imposing such a tax on prostitution the government was, in effect, establishing the legitimacy of sexual work as a form of business, and whether intentionally or by association also approving of its continued practice (Baird
With the inclusion of the under-breast chains it appears more likely that the slave-girl was actually hired out as a prostitute, but this does not rule out the possibility of the master then having sex with her, or use of the term dom[i]nus being used in a similar sense to the use of pet names in relationships today (Baird 168). With this likely example of a master renting out his slave, we see a prostitute who would have been legally barred from obtaining money of her own, thus unable to obtain social gain due to the property related society of the …show more content…
Writers of the time claimed that among the professions from which the state was receiving tax payments, prostitutes were one of the most lucrative groups. Each prostitute was charged taxes equal to the cost of one act of sexual intercourse, with the period of collection being in debate between daily and monthly(McGinn 264). With such a large number of prostitutes in Rome, roughly 32,000 in Rome alone (Gruber, Kehler, and Lipozencic 4), this tax would have gathered incredible amounts of revenue for the state coffers, presumably the primary reason for instituting such a tax. It has been argued that by imposing such a tax on prostitution the government was, in effect, establishing the legitimacy of sexual work as a form of business, and whether intentionally or by association also approving of its continued practice (Baird