The Story of 2000-Year-Old Masturbating Pompeii Man
Trust me it’s worse than your mom walking in on you.
Photo Credits:
Pompeii Parco Archaeological
Masturbation is a process of sexual pleasure that all adults are familiar with, and it's most likely that they have indulged in it at some point in their life. You have probably heard a million jokes about it, although it exists to service one of the most basic human needs.
According to
Healthline,
“Moderate amounts of masturbation improve mood and have health benefits like reducing the risk of prostate cancer.”
That does not necessarily mean that one should start masturbating whenever one feels like it, it also has a lot of detrimental effects if you do it excessively.
However, we aren’t here to discuss the pros and cons of masturbation. We’re here to take a look at the infamous
Pompeii masturbator, who met his demise doing what he loved the most and became a sculpture carved into eternity. It is a living reminder of the fact that whether we talk about people today or people who might have existed thousands of years ago, our physical needs were basically the same.
The story takes place in 79 CE in Pompeii, one of the most beautiful vistas under the rule of the Roman empire at the time. The eruption of the volcano of
Mount Vesuvius decimated the city, destroying and yet so uniquely preserving the body of the protagonist of our story. According to
BBC UK,
“Of the 1150 bodies recovered by archaeologists at Pompeii, 394 were killed by falling pumice and the debris of collapsing buildings. The remaining 756 victims were killed by a pyroclastic surge.”
The internet had a field day with the image, ranging from jokes stating that, “When someone says evacuate, but you thought they said ejaculate” to “Now I know who I was in my past life.” It is entertaining enough when you try to retrace the thought process of the man. The city is erupting in flames, there is lava flying out of a mountain mouth as if the Greek God
Hades himself was vomiting from the depths of hell, your existence as you know it coming to an end, and you know that you probably have a few minutes left to live. And then you just think “might as well” and masturbate to blissful oblivion as death slowly takes you into its embrace. One can almost imagine that this is not real, but a tragic comedy written by Shakespeare.
The story is too good to be true, and as it sadly turns out, it is probably not true. According to
Dr. Petrone,
“The individual in the photo is an adult man, killed by the hot pyroclastic surge — hot gas and ash cloud which killed most of the population living around Mount Vesuvius — with both arms and legs flexed due to the heat.”
It is most likely that his hand ended up in that morally dubious position due to the heat of the disaster that Pompeii underwent.
Other bodies that were recovered also showed similar awkward positions of the arms and legs, and evidence suggests that it was due to the heat effect after their deaths, that is to say, their bodies changed positions post mortem.
Jokes aside, burning to death is one of the most painful ways to die, and it is sad to imagine how much pain and suffering the people of Pompeii went through in their last moments. It is also humbling and very interesting to see how even though disastrous natural acts exist that can completely destroy the human body, they can also preserve them in a way that even thousands of years later people cans study their remains and elicit something from them.
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