Possible Roman brothel token found in River Thames

[ParthianBow]

Great stuff. Absolutely fascinating.

See it here.

[Epictetus]

What a great find! But there are questions whether these are really “brothel tokens.”

Geoffrey Fishburn of the University of New South Wales has an interesting paper about them. He says:

1. There is no one-to-one correspondence between scenes and numerals, as would be expected if the numbers signified prices for specific sex acts one could buy in a brothel.
2. There are many similar objects obviously intended for games. Some numerals have been linked, through dies, to another series of tokens bearing portraits of the imperial family.
3. Excavations at Pompeii show that many obverse scenes, far from being unique to spintriae, are copies of Hellenistic scenes.
4. If spintriae had no intrinsic value (unlike a coin), why were they used? They would have had to be exchanged for real money at some point.

Fishburn points out that they could be gaming tokens, admission tokens, or dole / gift tokens.

He offers a compromise idea based upon #4 above. They were used in the prostitution industry, but were not specifically for a means of exchange: a token for sex. Instead, their use was almost like seigniorage. The Roman government made a profit exchanging money for tokens and then tokens for money.

An interpretation which seeks to accommodate these facts is that spintriae are evidence of a short-lived experiment aimed not so much at control as at revenue-raising, this being possible at each stage of the coin-token-coin cycle… with all of this deriving from, or perhaps even under the guise of, the prohibition on the carrying into brothels of coins bearing the emperor’s image.

[ValentinianVictrix]

I think that if this is a brothel coin the person had a taste for what is still an 'illegal act' here in the UK ;-)

Am I right in thinking that in the brothel at Pompey there are images of sexual positions that those going to the brothel could point to to indicate what they required?

[john roberts]

Is it still redeemable?

[Virilis]

Is it still redeemable?

I think so, I would love to see the slot! ;-)

[Robert Vermaat]

Is it still redeemable?

If you can find the original establishment. :wink: