Latin obscenity is the profane, indecent, or impolite vocabulary of Latin, and its uses. Words deemed obscene were described as obscena, or improba. Documented obscenities occurred rarely in classical
An example of a sōpio (see below), the god Mercury was depicted with an enormous penis on this fresco from Pompeii.
Decorative scene in the baths. Some scholars suggest that this is what was meant by a prōtēlum ('team of three').
Marcus Valerius Martialis was a Roman poet born in Bilbilis, Hispania, best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian,
Latin obscenity
…he alludes to a number of obscene words without actually naming them. Apart from graffiti, the writers who used obscene words most were Catullus and Martial in their shorter poems. Another source is the anonymous Priapeia (see External links below), a collection of 95 epigrams supposedly written to adorn…
Likeness of Martial, supposedly engraved from an ancient gem
15th-century manuscript of the Epigrams
Pereunt et imputantur ("[the hours] pass away and [yet] are accounted for") is commonly inscribed on clocks, as on this one in Palermo.