Roman Sex Coins
Friday, August 27th, 2010 -- by Bacchus
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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