The Romans of Pompeii had a notion of public and private life very different from what we see in many Western cultures today. Sexual imagery we would keep hidden was out in the open, but many other parts of private life were open too.
[T]he ideal layout of a Roman house [was] devoted almost entirely to public areas. The main part of the house, which would have been open to the street, was called the atrium.
By contrast, bedrooms were often small and windowless. These private areas were obviously not places where people expected to spend any length of time.
“Beware of Dog”
Cultural assumptions are hard to shake.
Architectural assumptions in modern society assume primarily private sanctums that are opened only grudgingly to the public – consider the expression, “A man’s home is his castle,” in comparison to the Roman ideal suggested above, or even more extremely the cultural assumptions of many Amerindian groups which involved homes with no doors at all – such as the Aztecs – who would place a stick in the door to note when someone was not at home.
While Pompeii had disembodied penises as street corner decorations, today we have vases with flowers, or pretty green lawns that have military roots in their unobscured fields of fire.
Top image via Heater09’s Blog.
Via io9 for the full article.