Roman Sex Coins
It’s knowledge I’ve had kicking around in my brain for awhile. There are these Roman-era coin-like objects, called spintria, sprintria, or sprintia. (I’m giving you Google search terms, not trying to tell you which of these is a good Latin word, ‘cos I dunno.) They have graphic sex scenes on them. They aren’t thought to be coins, precisely; coin collectors get huffy if you call them coins. They’re often called “tokens” and one venerable theory, now coming under discredit, is that they were used in brothels in polyglot Roman cities to help communicate about various desired sex acts. Another theory I found in this worthy thread is that they were a military parody of worthless tokens given as official political gifts.
I don’t much care about the numismatic details. Happens, I found some nice images. I’m not saying where, because it’s a trashy link-baity sort of place, so junked up with mendacious ads for buying gold from dodgy ponzi scheme operators that I can’t link you there in good conscience. But the coins are pretty:
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That’s an interesting ethical dilemma. Some would argue that if the pictures are worth using, there’s an obligation to link to the site no matter your opinion of it. On the other hand, some would argue that if the source is garbage, so is the material from it. For me it would depend on whether the pictures came from an article about the history of these coins/tokens/whatnot, implying that the poster had some rights to the pictures, or just a site about collection of coins/tokens/whatnot in general, which likely stole the pictures from another source in the first place. Do you mind if I ask which this was?
Similarly, can you recommend any other articles on these? It’s the first I’ve heard of them, and I’m quite intrigued.
Some years ago I visited a travelling museum exhibit of artifacts from Pompeii with my wife and her mother. We came up to one statue from behine, and the figure had very curly hair and was naked except for a sort of shawl over its shoulders. My mother-in-law asked as we rounded to the front if the figure was male or female. Then she saw that the figure was hung like a Monterey jackass. Her eyes widened, and all she said was “Oh. I see.”
Patrick, the site with the photos was whacked-together linkbait; it had some clearly-plagiarized text where you could still see the places the citations and serial numbers had been filed off. And the advertising there was positively hostile. So, I made the judgment that any ethical obligation of link credit owed to the likely thieves where I found these images is outweighed by the usual duty of care I practice toward my readers, in the good faith efforts I take not to direct them to what Google calls “bad neighborhoods.”
If you follow my “this worthy thread” link, there are several more links there that seem promising, but I have not followed them.
I can’t help wondering what the small figure under the table(?) in the first coin image is doing…
Also, I would like to see these show up in the Met.
I wish I knew the scale on these: the detail is amazing.
That must have been a low budget Roman orgy,,, everybody is boinking on the same table.
Wayyyyy cooler than my hobo nickles
Bruce: The tokens depict Roman beds, not tables.
I’m pondering the same question as Adam P…. from the size of the figure it looks like a child, but that may be due to limited space. Either way, perhaps it’s the Roman version of the vibrating motel bed?? :-P
I don’t think there’s a need to damn the entire content of a site because of how it’s run or created. Bacchus is like an adventurer, going to dangerous and nasty parts of a city to bring back unique works of art and cultural artifacts.
The Romans were known to use glass in their windows. My fantasy is that the small figure in the first image, is a curious young adolescent watching the activity through a thick glass panel, placed on a bed pallet frame specially made for just such purposes…
There is a long history of voyeuristic activities being a mainstay on brothel menus. The young would avail themselves of the educative elements of the practice, and the elderly would pursue it as a way of reliving what they could no longer achieve physically…
Also, being as the placement of the penis looks a wee bit high to be in the vagina, the man may be performing anal sex, while a young child is employed to work her vagina with a long wooden dildo, through a hole made in the mattress. If you look carefully, there seems to be a hint of an object seen midway between the man’s penis and the inside of the woman’s knee. The trajectory would be about right for such a stick, if you note where the boy’s hands appear to be, up above his head…