Spintria: The Roman-era Sex Tokens

Back with another numismatic trivia from the Roman times! Here's the last one in case you missed it!

So...Spintria or in plural spintriae. This is the name used to describe small bronze or brass Roman tokens with a diameter of about 2 cm. One side featured a number ranging from I to XVI (16) and a unique sex position on the other. And each number appears to be unique for every sex position! Fun!

Here's one with some blowing action

Public Domain

And here's...a more complete set. Gotta catch em all! 😄

Public Domain

As to what their exact use was, that still remains a mystery! Some theories are that they were brothel passes, game pieces of some sort of game like the modern strip poker or perhaps locker rooms tokens. These are just the obvious speculations, with no proof to back them up.

What we do know though is that both sets that have been found as of today were produced in the same location and around the same time period. The first from 22 to 37 AD and the second from 30 to 79 AD.

Coins? Tokens? Or just some short of game piece? Chances are that we will never know and just speculate.

Regardless, an elusive yet fun piece of history.

@silverd510 perhaps is old enough to remember their usecase. Maybe he can shed some light ? 🤔

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Wikipedia has some more info on them if you would like to do more digging but in reality... There's not much else we know about them!!

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