Talk:Lupanar

Todo
I am contributing to this article because of my enrollment in Roman Civilization (Classics 212-0) at Northwestern University. JNB 21:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Modify the Map of Pompeii to indicate the location of the Lupanar and include it directly in this page. (I'll do this if I have time.)

I am also contributing to this article because of my enrollment in Roman Civilization (Classics 212-0) at Northwestern University. User: Sbatra86 21:34, 13 May 2007
 * 1) If possible when describing Lupanar, include anecdotes or a description of any of the more famous men who may have frequented the establishment.
 * 2) * Famous corolates with wealth and the wealthy had slaves, thus they generally skipped the brothels. JNB 22:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Also add a mention of how it was run, or who ran it.
 * 4) If you can find it, add the date of establishment of the brothel.
 * 5) * Did not find an owner or date of establishment JNB 19:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

comment for roman civ
The layout looks really good. The only really areas of possible improvement to me are expanding on the status of brothels or those who use them and more of an explanation of the paintings found (as in do they represent what happened there or is there a deity associated with this place).
 * Brothels were common. Patrons were poor. Paintings like these were common in Pompeii. There was no particular deity, but there were some generic ones (safe passage, etc). I'm not entirely sure how to incorporate all of this into a short Encyclopedic article. I have linked to related articles that talk more about this. I have already included far more than, say, the French or Italian articles on this topic.JNB 19:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

-Jaimee —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jlsromanciv (talk • contribs) 20:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC).

Number of brothels in Pompeii
In 2013, Dr Joanne Berry, of Swansea University, and author of "The Complete Pompeii" said that there was plenty of evidence for prostitution in Pompeii. However, on the actual numbers, she seemed to be very non-committal and said that the identification of establishments as brothels was difficult. Scholars have argued for the existence of between nine and 35 brothels in Pompeii, however, only ONE, known as the Lupinar was purpose built as one. 

The current section dealing with numbers is very messy. In light of this from Dr Berry, it certainly needs to be reworked. Kuitan (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

In The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World: A Study of Social History and the Brothel by Thomas A. J. McGinn (2004), Chapter 7 (pp 182-219) deals with the issue of brothel-identification. McGill argues that the critical waters have been muddied by charges of “Victorianism,” which allegedly amounts to an overeagerness to identify a location as a brothel... It will take a bit of looking at. However, it does add weight to the view that the second paragraph of the @Brothel' Section, needs serious review. Chapter 7 can be found here.Kuitan (talk) 14:56, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

'misogynistic'
Somebody keeps deleting the word 'misogynistic' to describe the connotations of lupa. This does not violate neutrality; it is an informative statement about the usage of a Latin word. The Romans had many words for prostitute; some might be as innocuous or euphemistic as our "tart" or "call girl," but lupa is not. The cited source (McGinn) specifically identifies this terminology as misogynistic. Deleting the word requires that you provide sourcing to outweigh McGinn's authority that states explicitly that the term was not misogynistic or that it's a positive, neutral, or humorous. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:56, 7 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Regarding the use of the word "misogynistic":


 * McGinn does use the word "misogyny", however it is not stated that the Romans understood the term to be a misogynistic one, only that the word conveyed that sense to the author . The point of the passage was not to argue that "Lupa" was misogynistic. The point was that the word provided no useful way of defining brothel in a technical sense.
 * Additionally, the passage in question does not represent any original research by McGinn, it is taken from:
 * Adams, J .N. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. Baltimore, 1982. “Words for ‘Prostitute’ in Latin.” RhM 126 (1983): 321–58.
 * This is cited in McGinn's bibliography. Adams mentions that "lupa" is derived from the latin word for "wolf", that it is indeed intended to stress the predatory character of prostitutes, and that it was generally used to refer to a "low" prostitute. Misogyny is not mentioned.
 * I am deleting the word "misogynistic" from the article. A clearer impression of what the word was intended to communicate is given by simply saying that "lupa" was used as slang for "whore" in a predatory sense.
 * Here are links to McGinn and Adams, for anyone who cares to read them over:
 * Thomas A McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World (University of Michigan Press, 2004)
 * Adams, J .N. “Words for ‘Prostitute’ in Latin.” RhM 126 (1983): 321–58


 * Adams wasn't cited. McGinn was. McGinn has written two book-length treatments of Roman prostitution and sexuality, as well as co-authoring A Casebook on Roman Law. McGinn is actually a better source than Adams on the status of Roman women, particularly prostitutes. Although Adams doesn't label lupa "misogynistic," the harsh connotation he places on the word doesn't contradict McGinn's characterization: Adams certainly doesn't say it was a positive or neutral word. Roman-era literature presents a range of attitudes toward women (including women of varying social status), and as a whole I think the Romans have high regard for women (within their own cultural context, which was patriarchal in the meaningful sense of the word; see paterfamilias). Social inequality is not misogyny, and to say that a single word was misogynistic is not to characterize the Romans as a whole as misogynists. I don't think they were. I don't object to the precision of saying that lupa was slang for "whore" in a predatory sense. But the Romans knew bloody well that they were being pejorative in using the word, because it wasn't something you'd want somebody calling your sister. And we have an impeccable RS that says the word expresses misogyny, while you have no source to support your view that the word lupa was not misogynistic. So you're still just deleting it because you don't want the word 'misogyny' used, and not based on what the cited source says. Cynwolfe (talk) 07:07, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Graffiti
I cannot understand why a better source is needed for the claim of 134 Graffiti in the Lupanar. The source given is a paper by Sara Levin Richardson which has been archived at Stanford University. There is a link to a Word file which gives a complete list of the graffiti. It was a paper presented at the 2005 Stanford Archaeology Center Graduate Student Conference "Seeing the Past: Building Knowledge of the Past and Present through Acts of Seeing" on February 5th of that year. . The paper itself, is available [http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/projects/SeeingThePast/admin/download.html?attachid=120841. here] as a Word File. Kuitan (talk) 16:33, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Rechecking the article, I see that it is not necessarily the source that is the problem, it is the way in which it has been added to the article. I have found a book (The Material Life of Roman Slaves by Sandra R. Joshel, Lauren Hackworth Petersen) which gives the same information. In describing the Lupinar, in Chapter 1, Introduction, it says "Some 134 separate graffiti name sexual activities, the male customers, and the women themselves." (p.1) See the article for the precise citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuitan (talk • contribs) 11:04, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

One out of every five prostitutes was a slave.
Does anyone have a source for this comment? It seems like a bold claim to make. Most ancient literature references prostitutes as slaves, though this obviously doesn't necessarily mean that most prostitutes were in fact slaves it does mean I'm surprised to see a number like "1 in 5 were slaves" put up with no explanation or source. As far as I know there's not really a way that number could be easily estimated and it seems very generous to estimate that most were non-slaves. McGinn says "as in the case of prostitutes, most of the working women attested to in the sources were slaves or freedwomen," which honestly doesnt tell us much. As he is one of the foremost scholars in this area I'd think it would be better to quote him rather than use the 1 in 5 number, unless it is sourced.

Caligulady (talk) Caligulady (talk) 12:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I think I've found one, https://www.academia.edu/download/46504792/MA_Thesis.pdf
 * thanks, Daisytheduck (talk) 02:34, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I have also archived the link it can be found here:Wayback Machine (archive.org) Daisytheduck (talk) 02:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Given the substantial body of peer-reviewed scholarship by career classicists, a thesis is not the best source. Could you give a page number? I searched the word "five" and none of the results have to do with this statistic. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:43, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * So I don't want to claim to have read this thesis for word, but I have been checking passages with keywords, and pages 34–35 actually seem to contradict this statement, indicating that most prostitutes in a brothel were slaves, and others mostly libertae  (which is scholarly consensus, afaik), without giving a precise proportion. The thesis cited makes the standard distinction that brothel workers are more likely to be enslaved because of the investment required to build and operate a facility, which you would have to keep staffed consistently to get ROI—the traffic to the cellae would need to produce profit after you cover operational and labor costs, whether that's wages or the initial investment in the "asset" (the enslaved woman—sorry, but that's capitalism). Amy Richlin has some very clear-eyed things to say about brothels as a way, to put it bluntly, to use up excess enslaved women, since more men were needed in the Roman labor force. Free women, either freeborn women of the working classes or freedwomen who were neglected by or lost their patrons through misfortunes, were more likely to be independent sex workers – from streetwalkers giving blowjobs in alleys (per Catullus) to what we might think of as call girls (puellae) or escorts/entertainers (infames) with a select upper-class clientele – because they might start bartering or seeking fees for sex to supplement their income, just working from home or upstairs at the pub. And the gist of the thesis seems to be how brothels are identified in the archaeological record. It has data and tons of illustrations, but not about the relative proportions of status among the women that I can see. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:12, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * interesting Daisytheduck (talk) 22:58, 12 June 2024 (UTC)