One of Pompeii’s loveliest—and most erotic—houses has just been reopened, after 20 years of restoration. The House of the Vettii is lined with pornographic frescoes, including a famed one of Priapus, the Greek god of fertility, with his huge member balanced on a scale opposite a bag of money. It’s not alone in showing just how smutty the ancients could be. At a recently excavated thermopolium, or snack bar, in Pompeii, there’s a wonderfully rude graffito:
Nicia Cinaede Cacator.
Nicias, you catamite shitter!
