Historia Spintriae: The Pleasures of Collecting Ancient Erotica

Ancient erotic art has an unusual place in the history of art, affected variously by changing archaeological practices and the tastes of collectors over many centuries. In the early modern period erotic artifacts were both sought after and avoided because of their risque subject matter, but were still acknowledged as artifacts worthy of scholarly interest to the collector. Even today, comprehensive study of such objects is difficult due to lack of publication and lack of information about their origins, often because they were (or still are) hidden away in museum storerooms, unrecorded on collection inventories. This dissertation seeks to uncover the story of ancient erotica through the examination of a particular type of ancient erotic object: Roman spintriae. These quarter-sized objects, produced during the first century CE and often devoid of archaeological context, feature couples engaged in sexual activity on one side and a legend on the other. How can we learn about spintriae, an object that has been shaped more by its collecting history than its archaeological context? The iconography of spintriae is part of a larger tradition of erotic art, one that draws from earlier and contemporary parallels and ultimately influences the creation of pornography in the early modern period. Not only did the imagery provide a source for new erotica, but the spintriae themselves were reproduced and copied in various media for collectors, functioning simultaneously as scholarly source material and pornography. How do we reconcile the varying roles of erotic art and pornography present in the same object? This dissertation explores this question through a discussion of spintriae within public and private collections, beginning in the Renaissance period. This project provides modern scholars with a new perspective on how these perplexing objects fit within both the Roman and early modern periods.