No One Knows Why Romans Had X-Rated Coins
As influential as Roman society unquestionably was, they were definitely into some weird shit: Fighting the underclass to the death for fun, cleaning their teeth and clothes with pee, and apparently, money printed with ... whatever is going on here:
People have been finding these pornographic coins that date back to first-century Rome all over Europe for centuries, but the thing is, no one can tell what they used for. Believe it or not, the official Roman currency didn't bear dicks with wings, although it was coincidentally called "asses," e.g., "This loaf of bread costs three asses," which must have been very confusing to the local sex workers.
It's been theorized that these coins, which depict some kind of sexual scenario on one side and a number on the other, were used in brothels, although not to avoid butt bemusement. Bringing currency bearing the emperor's image into a brothel would have amounted to treason, although calling them "asses" somehow flew fine, and many of the employees were foreign, so people assumed the coins served the dual purpose of a kind of sexy Pictionary: "This act for this much money." You know, like when your phone dies in a foreign country and reducing you to pointing at pictures in restaurant menus.
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However, there are a number of problems with this theory, none the least being what on Earth the dick with wings might represent. (Sex so good you go to the afterlife?) Maybe they were gambling chips. Maybe they were satirical art. No one knows, but what's important is that we need to start manufacturing and distributing our own version of this to confuse future archaeologists.
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Top image: Matthias Kabel/Wikimedia Commons
