Sexual Relief In Pompeii
When I was ten or twelve, I read an old-even-then collection of essays and short stories by Arthur C. Clarke that imagined some of the ways in which telecommunications satellites would undermine the power of nations. Of course the one that caught my attention was the speculation about satellite TV, written before there was such a thing, in which Clarke vividly described how some insurgent power might use the new technology to beam subversive erotica into every house in the world. In his description of the programming — and understand that I am operating on a decades-old memory here — he included an imagination of a show, nominally highbrow and educational, that focused on vivid and colorful examples of Roman erotic art of Pompeii. (Visionary though he was, Clarke did not predict the Spice channel.) [Update: false memory; it was not Pompeii.]
Thus began my interest in the classics.
It was to be many years, of course, before I saw what he was talking about:
Image found here.
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well, it looks to me like a classic eruption is just about to take place!!
The story you are remembering is called “I Remember Babylon”, and the pornographic friezes were from an Indian temple, not Pompeii.