Embracing figures at Pompeii revealed to be men - gay lovers?

If the world were ending there would be a lot of cocksucking and buttfucking going on. Only then would we realize the size of the gay community.

The original Eldergays?

The DLer is the one at the left of the photo, alone.

The top is berating the bottom for draining the pasta

They were trans men of color and your refusal to acknowledge their suffering erases their history and is literal murder.

Vesuvius - the original TERF?

I'm not sure why the article indicates people were surprised to discover they were men.

Will they call Olivia de Havilland to identify the bodies?

Did they write any of this gay graffiti?

The Ancient Gay Graffiti of Pompeii

Gay history was usually erased, but glimpses are preserved on the walls of Pompeii. One of the fascinating things preserved in Pompeii is the graffiti on the city walls where the thoughts of the people remain, uncensored by subsequent history. The walls of Pompeii read like a truck stop bathroom, including some colorful gay comments. As they appeared on August 24, 79 AD:

On the bar-brothel of Innulus and Papilio:

Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!

The guy on the right has womanly hips/ass. Ancestor of Damon?

bullshit like this story is why they hate us

YOU are why we hate YOU, R11

Or they may have been father and son.

No, R13 the DNA tests prove they were not related. They were family, however.

yes, R12, because in the ancient world friendship between two young boys was unheard of. They HAD to be gay!!

One was twenty years older than the other R15.

Wow. So the twink x daddy phenomenon even existed back then.

Ashy, sulphurous bump

Go back and read it again. Once was about 20 and the other was 18.

It's so romantic. Gay lovers fused together for all eternity. Proof that gay love predates Christianity and will be around long after it's gone.

So they weren't gay until they were men. Only women are allowed to be close friends

They're also not allowed to hug even when the world around them is collapsing and they're dying .

There should be a movie made about these gay Pompeiians. Like a gay,Roman version of Titanic.

I wonder what was up with the skeleton guy in the picture? Liked to watch?

Applying a gay male context is insulting to gay men, to women, to gay women, to men, and to the humanity of the dying. People comforting each other at a horrible end is not a gay act. To impose anything on the simplicity of the evidence is nothing but vulgar sentiment and co-opting. We gay men do not need this kind of shit.

And R21 is precisely right. Anyone who knows anything about Roman society would recognize how unnecessary it is to invoke homosexuality. Roman men were a lot of things, but apart from social betters being accused of passive anal roles in sex, latter-day homophobic quirks were not part of the picture.

Yeah, maybe the two men were lovers. But it's too much of a stretch to declare it or to feel like it adds anything to the power of the image.

Touching. And groping.

[quote]Proof that gay love predates Christianity and will be around long after it's gone.

The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius happened in 79 AD.

[quote]People comforting each other at a horrible end is not a gay act.

That was my thought. Embracing in the face of death is more an act of helpless desperation than any indication of gayness.

If I knew I was going to die a horrible death I would probably grab the person closest to me as well.

Are we that desperate for validation that we need to project that desperation on an incredibly ambiguous situation? There are dozens of scenarios that are more likely than "OMG! They're gay!"

Well the homophobes are out tonight.

Father and son, brothers, nothing to see here.

The one with the womanly ass was the bottom.

Could be gay or father and son, I will say that most straight people have no idea how l large the gay population is...since so many don't feel free to come out. It makes me sad.

All that is known is they are two males, when they were presumed to have been two females.

Could be a gay couple, or brothers, or cousins, or temple prostitutes, or wrestlers, or ...

It's not homophobic, r31, to point out that couple-dom is not a given here. Two men dying by suffocation in volcanic ash says nothing pro or con about gay people.

I thought somebody said that DNA proved they were unrelated and 18 and 20.

That's what it says in the article which most of you didn't bother to read.

“What is certain is that the two parties were not relatives, neither brothers, nor a father and son.”

Let's not rule out that it's possible a nephew and favorite uncle in the embrace.

If this were a man and a woman all the "experts" on this thread would just assume they were a couple. Right wingers like to think that homosexuality was invented in the 20th century.

[quote] People comforting each other at a horrible end is not a gay act.

This is what it is. No one is thinking sex, when they are about to die. Plus, the air they breathe was horrible, and I'm sure they huddle together to stop the influx of fumes from suffocating them.

Of course it wasn't about sex. One of these men died protecting another man,possibly someone he loved. Being gay does involve more than dicks and asses.

[quote]One of these men died protecting another man,possibly someone he loved.

That could be true, but it's all a big guess. They could have been friends. They could have been raised as relatives or close friends. Heck, they could have been strangers.

I know I've held a stranger's hand, when I thought I was going to die. I know my mom held a stranger's hand when she was scared to go to surgery.

In this particular case, these men were gagging for air, and the circumstances don't warrant what is typical behavior.

All though Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey, Greece, Italy, men are very touchy feely even today. I'm sure it was more so in the past. Maybe they were gay but could just as easily been two friends bonding in a moment of horror.

Gay men were there when there was no religion, gay men will be there when religion is long gone(that may never happen who knows but gay men will always be there in this world they are never going anywhere. As long as there is heterosexuality there will be homosexuality we can't change that even if we want to

Some here project that they were a gay couple. Others project they were not gay, just terrified. Both are equally valid.

How about both options - terrified lovers.

How about we don't know? What we do know is that they were terrified.

The sky was so black that day.

Scientists have just received word from Madonna, who was good friends with Pliny the Younger, and he assured them that the couple's last words were, "No homo." So no, they weren't gay. Mystery solved!

Graffiti on the house of Poppaeus Sabinus: If you felt the fires of love, mule-driver, you would make more haste to see Venus. I love a charming boy; I ask you, goad the mules; let’s go. Take me to Pompeii, where love is sweet. You are mine…

Weren't two men found in a similar embrace after the 9/11 attacks? Anyway the real story here is the assumption that they were two "maidens" to begin with.

No one has seen fit to mention the sumptuously hunky archaeologist (complete with extended pinky)?!

And it sure looks like a blowjob from this angle.

The two youths have been identified as Tylerius Poseiusm and Dylanus Obrienus, two popular actors of the time in a play called "Lycanthropus Adolescentius," but were just very good friends.

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How can you possibly get DNA evidence from plaster casts of these dead bodies?.

Oh, you can't .

From their teeth,ignoramus. The soft tissue was destroyed but their bones and teeth remained.

From their boners, locked in plaster for eleventy-billion years!

One was obviously XIII stepping the other. Please not the bald fatness.

"Let's discuss your program as it rains sulfer ash all over your sober hot body"

they were non-binary, CUNTS!!

[quote]The top is berating the bottom for draining the pasta

I thought it was because his meatballs fell apart.

How did gay men prepare for anal in Roman times?

It's Ben Hur and Messala.

lol r50

So weird to think they were once people. So sad.

I wonder what was on their iPods?

Oh, Ashly! Ashly!

Those two were falling-down drunk that night Vesuvius exploded.

I grabbed Mrs Patrick Campbell when B. Altman's closed.

[quote]I wonder what was on their iPods?

There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

All I Ash Of You.

He Loved Me Like A Rock.

Some Like It Hot.

Ya got Trouble In Pompeii City.

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Burning Down the House

Two human beings taking their last breath, not wanting to die alone. Both sad and beautiful.

Hot Lava

"Pompeii" by Bastille

Ashes to Ashes

[quote]Two human beings taking their last breath, not wanting to die alone. Both sad and beautiful.

Well, according to latest research, that didn't happen. This whole thread topic didn't happen. Most likely, those death postures . . . about three-quarters of the known Pompeii victims are "frozen in suspended actions" and show evidence of sudden muscle contractions, such as curled toes, the study says.

"Heretofore archaeologists misinterpreted them as people struggling to breathe and believed they died suffocated by ashes," Mastrolorenzo said. "Now we know that couldn't be."

Because of the extreme heat -- 570 degrees, "when the pyroclastic surge hit Pompeii, there was no time to suffocate," he said. "The contorted postures are not the effects of a long agony, but of the cadaveric spasm, a consequence of heat shock on corpses."

No wonder my Christian parents so happily went on (while admiring the ruins - God's work) about how it's justifiably what happens to disobeyers who enrage God with their sin when we visited there. I was a kid and they ruined it from the entrance.

just like most modern gay love stories.... ended in ruins

Maybe they were, maybe they weren't.

The comments after the article at OP's link are telling, hilarious and depressing. A lot of Independent readers are mighty, mighty invested in these two being father and son or brothers or strangers not wanting to doe alone, ANYTHING two male lovers, "Everything is assumed to be gay nowadays, people have such dirty minds," etc.

Several posters on this thread seemed offended by the suggestion this might be a gay couple.

Actually, after the first-stage rain if ash subsided for a bit, many people returned to the city to retrieve belongings. Some had stayed indoors, hoping the eruption would end. All were destroyed by the subsequent pyroclastic flow.

Whatever their connection, these tow men huddled together at their last moment. The rest is silence.

And cue the American baptist clergy explaining that the presence of gay people in Pompeii is why Vesuvius erupted in...3...2...1

Well, R78, since you are being technical, I never said that they died of suffocation. Just that they took their last breath. Which they did.

Ancient Roman DL

No one here is offended by the idea that the two men were homosexual lovers. It's just that anyone with a brain finds it ridiculous that out of all the possibilities of who these two men are, gay men automatically assume that they were homosexuals. It's possible that's true but in all probability they weren't. And we will never know for sure.

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Very unlikely they were. Next we'll hear one of them might have been trans.

R27 - The birth of Christianity was really Constantine I and the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.

Before this, it was just a few scattered cults.

Oh great. This topic is a little sensitive to me, as I live not far from an active volcano that has been 'burping' this past week.

Well, R91, find a hot daddy and hunker down! When plaster casts are made from your remains, we'll be conjecturing about YOUR situation in 2,000 years!

Um R17 It was much more rampant in the roman days, men would hookup with 13-17 year old boys and were considered their wives if they were together for a long time. Brothels had men and women too available for men.

Apparently, no one read that those two men were flash heated on R78) . They died in a second. No time to embrace, unless they were doing that anyway. Maybe, one was consoling the other, because their city was in ruined. The life they knew was no longer. Perhaps, they saw death all around them.

And this:

[quote]No one here is offended by the idea that the two men were homosexual lovers. It's just that anyone with a brain finds it ridiculous that out of all the possibilities of who these two men are, gay men automatically assume that they were homosexuals. It's possible that's true but in all probability they weren't. And we will never know for sure.

....

[quote]As they appeared on August 24, 79 AD:

Wow, exactly 1900 years before [italic]the Facts of Life[/italic] premiered. Is that a coincidence or is that a coincidence?

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE REPUTATION OF TWO FOSSILIZED HUMANS?!?!?!? WHY MUST WE TAR THEM WITH THE BRUSH OF *ʜᴏᴍᴏsᴇxᴜᴀʟɪᴛʏ*? HAVE THEY NO DIGNITY EVEN IN DEATH? *ʜᴏᴍᴏsᴇxᴜᴀʟɪᴛʏ* IS A SIN!

Look, if I were being slowly killed by a natural disaster, I might hug a friend or a even a total stranger who's dying in front of me.

Hug is one thing, playing "hide the pepperoni" is another.

What I don’t like, is that archeologists feel entitled to dig up the dead. It’s wrong. It’s wrong to go dig up someone who died last month. What makes it acceptable to dig anyone else up? Then they grab pieces of someone’s dead relatives and sell them on Pawn Stars. True story. Someone brought in stuff from Egypt. No mention was ever made that laws elsewhere prohibit that.

^ Pron Stars

Is it also in the realm on possibilities that one or both had physical or mental disabilities and they were left behind?

[quote] No, [R13] the DNA tests prove they were not related. They were family, however.

What DNA? They aren't bodies, they are the impressions left by disintegrated bodies and filled with plaster

R38, they THOUGHT that they were father,brother. The wife had had a lover who was the real father. Like in Titanic with Barbara Stanwyck, where Clifton Webb is her husband, but not the real father of their son.

R91, sounds scary! Can I have your stuff?

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.....

There is zero evidence that they were or were not lovers.

At the end of everything, with the noise, explosions, and earth shaking from the volcano, and with fear and screams all around you, I'm pretty sure anyone would be grabbing the closest person to them, irrespective of gender.

It's the Latin version of Joel and his creepy yet tasteful neighbor.

r109 Weren't the two figures of similar age - two teenage boys?

[quote]yes, [R12], because in the ancient world friendship between two young boys was unheard of. They HAD to be gay!!

Friendship, even in the ancient world, does not often involve lying in the same bed.

[quote] Could be a gay couple, or brothers, or cousins, or temple prostitutes, or wrestlers, or ...

You're right for the most part but not when you say they could be brothers or cousins, as DNA analysis confirmed the two were not related. That's why researchers think they may have been a couple - it's not as arbitrary a conclusion as you people make it seem.

[quote] How can you possibly get DNA evidence from plaster casts of these dead bodies?.

Some people here apparently don't know that dinosaur DNA has been studied from fossilized material for over a decade now.

“I'm pretty sure anyone would be grabbing the closest person to them, irrespective of gender.”

I was thinking that tonight in light of the plane crash in Ethiopia. I think if you’re plummeting to the ground you reach out for your seat mate even if you were wearing earphones hoping they wouldn’t make conversation 5 mins before. That’s a basic human instinct I think regardless of gender. Nobody assumed two women embracing were lesbians so why leap to presuming 2 men touching = gay lovers.

[quote]Nobody assumed two women embracing were lesbians so why leap to presuming 2 men touching = gay lovers.

There are two reasons for this: first, male homosexuality was much more common in the Roman world than lesbianism. There is not a single figure in Roman history known to have been a lesbian - not even malicious gossip in that sense exists. On the other hand, the number of male Romans known to have expressed homosexual desire is enormous - too large to count here. I don't think it is bad practice to interpret vestiges left by past civilizations on the basis of our knowledge of it, and according to our knowledge of Roman society today, homosexuality was more common among men than among women, and therefore, the chances of finding a pair of bodies belonging to a male couple should be greater than that of a female couple.

And secondly, it seems that among the Romans, women expressed their friendship with more physical demonstrations than men, as in the present day, with no sexual relationship being implied.

There is a passage in the Roman novel "Satyricon" which depicts two women lying on a divan-like thing during a party. The two are the wives of two men: one is the wife of the host (Trimalchio) and the other is the wife of a guest.

The first time I read this passage, I thought the novel would finally depict a lesbian affair, which had not happened until then. The book brims with sexuality but until then, the only acts depicted or desires voiced were, either between males, or heterosexual.

But nothing too intimate happens among the two women: they just start talking about their jewelry or something like that. Indeed, despite the fact that the book is obsessed with sex, that female desire receives much attention in its pages, and that women (like men) are portrayed as sexually adventurous, sometimes perverted even, there is not a single case of lesbianism in the whole story.

On the other hand, when Trimalchio welcomes one of his male slaves during the party, kissing him several times, this act is immediately seen by the guests and by his wife as sexual, and she responds to what she sees with a fit of jealousy and by throwing an ashtray to his face.

They are not here to defend themselves. Shame on you!

Some people above are rejecting the team's conclusion, saying that two men may well have sought protection in each other's arms at the sound of the blast, even if they were not lovers.

But the evidence we have is that it all happened so fast, that people whose bodies were turned into fossils by the explosion did not know what was about to happen to them.

Look at the image below, of a corpse of a man probably masturbating. Does he look like someone who knew he was about to die in a volcanic apocalypse?

They had bath houses, where lots of homosex happened. The romans were so great a lot grown men fell in love with young teen boys. It was heaven!

They were so lucky. They could be cum dumpsters and not worry about AIDS. Giant Italian penises could explode in their assholes without the fear of dying from hot creamy lava.