Part of the discovery made at Pompeii, the city entombed by ash in 79 AD, a collection of over a hundred objects was found. Many causing offense to common morality of the time, the Cabinet of Lewd Objects – then called more gracefully Cabinet of Reserved Objects – was walled in 1852 so that its memory would be dissipated. 
In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi proclaimed himself Dictator and re-opened the collection for cataloging. 
In 1931, during the triumph of fascism, the Ministry ordered again its closing, after which, in 1972 it was opened for visitors. 
The collection is composed of vases, frescoes and mosaics with erotic scenes, little ithyphallic (figures with erections) statues with fauns, midgets, grotesque caricatures, tintinnabula which are wind chimes that have penises with magic powers against misfortune and evil eye. 
(English translation of Eros in Pompeii: The Town of Venus)
Monthly Archives: June 2017
Trump and the Apparent Decline of Meaning
The New York Times: Trump Appears to Push Aside the Leader of Montenegro. 
This assault on language – and people – appears to be the New Republican way.
Ice Friday: Aesop’s “The Fox and the Lion”
A fox who had never seen a lion one day met one and was so terrified at the sight of him that he was ready to die of fear. After a time, he met him again and was still so frightened but not nearly so much as he had been when he met him first. 
But when he saw him for a third time, he was so far from being afraid that he went up to him and began to talk to him as if he had known him all his life.