The girl lay on a stone bed in the tiny cubicle, awaiting her next customer with weary resignation.
In Londinium, there was no shortage of men wanting a few moments of sexual pleasure: merchants, officials, freed slaves from around the Roman Empire and, of course, soldiers.
Sure enough, the flimsy curtain was drawn back and a Roman legionary entered the room. He handed over a small bronze token.
The girl looked at it. The image on the front depicted the act he required — it showed a woman face down on a couch and a man on top of her.
On the reverse, the number 14 referred to the price he had paid: 14 asses, the equivalent of a day’s pay for a labourer in the first century AD — not that the girl would see any of that money.
For the girl would have been a slave, possibly a native Briton captured in the rebellious north of the country — enslaving women was one Roman way of subjugating and humiliating these savage tribes.
Some ended up in Rome, where their fair skin and blonde hair could fetch a high price.
This slave’s body was now a commodity, part of the flourishing sex trade that helped sustain the Roman Empire.
The soldier’s business over, he probably returned to his camp, stopping to visit a tavern for some wine.
Or he may have preferred the local brew: Roman garrisons are known to have purchased beer from London’s pubs.
Meanwhile, the girl would have handed over the token to the brothel keeper — possibly a freed slave, a Roman or an enterprising Briton.
Somehow it ended up in the mud of the Thames where, 2,000 years later, it has recently been found by amateur archaeologist Regis Cursan with a metal detector.
He has donated it to the Museum of London, where it will now be on display for three months.
Curator Caroline McDonald believes it may be evidence of the seamier side of Roman life: ‘London was a supply base for the army. There would have been merchants going there from all around the empire, and part of the new economy that sprung up may have been the sex trade.’
She says that with so many single men around — legionaries signed up for 25 years and weren’t allowed to marry — brothels sprung up across Britain.
‘They were usually situated near the bath houses, and the army would have allowed soldiers this kind of outlet for their energy,’ says Caroline.
It is not the only evidence of the sex trade in Roman Britain.
Read more: dailymail.co.uk
