4 ms·

I'm amazed how raunchy and explicit it all is. I guess you can blame Christianity (maybe Catholicism in particular?) and Victorian propriety for pulling it bac

by arfar 10y ago

I'm amazed how raunchy and explicit it all is. I guess you can blame Christianity (maybe Catholicism in particular?) and Victorian propriety for pulling it back the other direction.

openasocket 10y ago
Blame Christianity for what? I don't think there has ever been a time or place in the course of human events where there wasn't vulgar graffiti.
- arfar 10y ago
  With respect to Catholicism, I was getting at the fig leafs that were applied to classic (Roman and Greek) sculptures and paintings that depicted nudity and the general sentiment behind that movement. Personally, I've never seen such explicit graffiti. The worst might have been "Call XXX-YYYYYY for a good time" sort of messages.
sillyquiet 10y ago
From what I understand, I think it was mostly the Protestant revival movements of the 18th and 19th century that are responsible. If you look for the sources that were not curated and censored by those same prudes of the 19th century, the very Catholic people of the Medieval period up until the 18th century were astonishingly earthy and frank about sexual matters.
puzzle 10y ago
You should check out Martial's Epigrams. Some translations are watered down, but some are faithfully explicit, like the original texts.
pjc50 10y ago
It was mostly Bowdlerism. All sorts of classical literature has bawdiness in it; Apuleius' The Golden Ass is probably the most famous. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler , the man who tried to take the sex jokes out of Shakespeare.)
coldtea 10y ago
>I guess you can blame Christianity (maybe Catholicism in particular?) and Victorian propriety for pulling it back the other direction. Puritan christianity in the US and Europe, after the reformation, yes. But talk, customs, and such of christian populations throughout the middle ages were just as, if not more, raunchy. Check, e.g. Procopius for some the vibe of what was going on in the Christian empire of Byzantium.

by arfar 10y ago

I'm amazed how raunchy and explicit it all is. I guess you can blame Christianity (maybe Catholicism in particular?) and Victorian propriety for pulling it back the other direction.

openasocket 10y ago

Blame Christianity for what? I don't think there has ever been a time or place in the course of human events where there wasn't vulgar graffiti.

arfar 10y ago
With respect to Catholicism, I was getting at the fig leafs that were applied to classic (Roman and Greek) sculptures and paintings that depicted nudity and the general sentiment behind that movement. Personally, I've never seen such explicit graffiti. The worst might have been "Call XXX-YYYYYY for a good time" sort of messages.

sillyquiet 10y ago

From what I understand, I think it was mostly the Protestant revival movements of the 18th and 19th century that are responsible. If you look for the sources that were not curated and censored by those same prudes of the 19th century, the very Catholic people of the Medieval period up until the 18th century were astonishingly earthy and frank about sexual matters.

puzzle 10y ago

You should check out Martial's Epigrams. Some translations are watered down, but some are faithfully explicit, like the original texts.

pjc50 10y ago

It was mostly Bowdlerism. All sorts of classical literature has bawdiness in it; Apuleius' The Golden Ass is probably the most famous. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler , the man who tried to take the sex jokes out of Shakespeare.)

coldtea 10y ago

>I guess you can blame Christianity (maybe Catholicism in particular?) and Victorian propriety for pulling it back the other direction. Puritan christianity in the US and Europe, after the reformation, yes. But talk, customs, and such of christian populations throughout the middle ages were just as, if not more, raunchy. Check, e.g. Procopius for some the vibe of what was going on in the Christian empire of Byzantium.