This study of Pompeian brothels offers a foundation to explore more general Roman attitudes towards sexuality, morality, and economic profit from sex work. The first book, Prostitution, sexuality, and the law in ancient Rome , primarily concerned the legal history of Roman prostitution, with a particular focus on the laws and taxes levied on prostitutes by the Roman imperial government.
The second book focuses on archaeological and artistic evidence about Roman prostitution as a source for economic analysis. Though McGinn provides firm support for his arguments about the relatively laissez-faire social attitude towards Roman prostitution, the book is weakened by an incoherent structure and a reliance on scholarship outside his own area of expertise. The various appendixes, which catalog brothels, cribs, and known prostitutes at Pompeii, will be an invaluable resource for future scholarship in this area.
The first and second chapters deal with definitional issues and the basic economics of prostitution in the Roman empire, using comparative evidence from later periods to fill in the large gaps in the existing record. The sixth and seventh chapters address the recent debate regarding the number of prostitutes and brothels in Pompeii and, by extension, Rome.
McGinn offers little new primary evidence but some valid and valuable historical comparisons to other known populations of prostitutes. Chapter 7 offers the first historiographical retrospective of the Pompeian brothel-identification argument. McGinn himself ultimately weighs in on the high side of these estimates, claiming as many as 26 brothels for Pompeii, with an additional 13 cellae meretriciae.
Chapter 9 returns again to the issue of moral zoning, focusing on the city of Rome itself, and dismisses arguments for the segregation of prostitutes in Rome. The main section of the book ends with an odd homage to radical feminism and a brief mention of the exploitation of women involved in Roman prostitution, a coda that seems out of place in the apolitical pages of non-feminist social history which surround them.
