Jan 27, 2012
Ancient coin for buying sex? First-century “brothel token” found in London
From The Museum of London…
The token or spintria, depicts a man and a woman having sex on one face, and has the Roman numerals XIIII (14) on the other….
The item was hit upon by a mudlarker on the Thames foreshore near Putney Bridge, whilst searching with a metal detector….
The object has been dated, by experts at the Museum of London, to the Roman period and approximately the 1st century AD. There is much debate about the precise use of these Roman spintria although they are widely thought to be brothel tokens, which were exchanged for sex.
(via Boing Boing)
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brothel tokens?!?!?! that doesn’t make any cents
BAHAHA
“Hit upon by a mudlarker” also describes much of the action at said brothel.
Bet the poor schmuck who lost his brothel token was bummed pretty badly that day.
So wait… they used XIIII instead of XIV?? Somebody, SOMEwhere lied to us!
IV was reserved for the roman god Jupiter
So wait… ANYWHERE the IIII or IV would be used? I had heard of that for clocks… when 4 is displayed. But are you saying whenever 4, 9, 14, 19, 24, 29, etc. are displayed?
If so… then again I say, “Somebody, SOMEwhere lied to us.”
“Grade school teachers often tell their students that the Romans adopted the so-called subtractive principle, i.e., IV = 5-1 = 4, in order to save themselves the trouble of chiseling extra strokes in the stone. But it turns out the subtractive system was used only sporadically by the ancient Romans and their medieval successors and never in a systematic way. Comb through old documents and inscriptions and you’ll find such erratic usages as LXL, 90; XXCIII, 83; LXXIIX, 78; and even IIIIX, 6. A popular German arithmetic textbook published in 1524 gives 99 as XCIX, but even today you’ll find some people who’ll hold out for IC.”
Source: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1371/what-is-the-proper-way-to-style-roman-numerals-for-the-1990s
“Placing an “I” in front of the “V”; or placing any smaller value in front of any larger value, indicates subtraction. That is, the preceding smaller value is subtracted from the following larger value. So “IV” means 4. The value “IIII” is sometimes used for “4″. “IIII” is used mostly on faces of clocks and for other special uses. The standard Roman Numeral for “4″ is IV. ”
Source: http://www.legionxxiv.org/numerals/
Yes, somebody lied to us, it was the teachers and you should blame them.
Thanks for the info, Sam. Interesting stuff. And after 40 years of being ill-informed… I’ve learned something new for today. :)
*turns and shakes fist in general direction of former teachers*
I HAVE THOUSANDS OF BEFORE 1S
I went to the Sex Museum in Amsterdam earlier this summer… I was shocked at how much filthy art there was to see, from all cultures! Paintings, engravings, sculptures… on coins, plates, cups and canvas! lol Ahh… the days before the internet!