through the main doors leading to the atrium, where the family displayed ancestral images and other trophies of respectability. It has been suggested that these rooms were meant to evoke the ambience of a brothel for the hosting of exclusive sex parties, such as the one described by the historian Valerius Maximus as occurring in 52 BC with a consul and the tribunes of the plebs in attendance: Just as notorious was that party arranged for Metellus Scipio when he was consul and for the people's tribunes—by Gemellus, their tribunicial errand boy. He was a free man by birth, but twisted by his business to play the servant's role. Society gave a collective blush: he established a whorehouse in his own house, and pimped out Mucia and Flavia, each of them notable for her father and husband, along with the aristocratic boy Saturninus. Bodies in shameless submission, ready to come for a game of drunken sex! A banquet not for honoring consul and tribunes, but indicting them! The existence of sex clubs may provide background for Late Republican political smears about public figures whose party guests included prostitutes, and for the notorious Imperial whorehouse Caligula established on the Palatine, where he prostituted married women and freeborn youths. Sex acts and positions Around 90 positions for intercourse are recorded in the ancient world. Both Roman erotic art and Latin literature, most famously a passage from Ovid's Art of Love, depict various forms of copulation (concubitus varii) and sexual positions (figurae veneris). The Latin terms are Ovid's, from his description of how the most aristocratic households displayed erotic paintings among their art collections. According to Suetonius, Tiberius had a vast collection of sex manuals and erotic art, including a painting of the mythological huntress Atalanta performing oral sex on Meleager, a work that the emperor regarded as worth more than a million sesterces. Sexual variety fascinated Romans. Astrology was thought to influence one's preferences and pursuits: people born when the sun, moon, and planets were in certain astrological signs were supposed to be inclined toward secret vice or "unnatural" forms of intercourse, or to becoming pathici. Lucretius observes that sex acts may have different purposes. Prostitutes employ certain movements aimed at giving their customers pleasure and at avoiding pregnancy. Wives wishing to conceive are advised against moving vigorously during intercourse, since such movements "knock the ploughshare from the furrow and misdirect the