Historians taking a closer look at a 2,000-year-old “darning tool” found at a Roman archaeological site in 1992 have determined the object is, in fact, a representation of an erect penis.
If the implement in question is a sex toy and not simply a penis-shaped trinket or pestle, it’s likely the world’s only example of a life-sized Roman dildo.
The object was part of a trove found at the ancient Roman fort of Vindolanda, near the site of Hadrian’s Wall, in the early 1990s. Archaeologists found it in a ditch along with hundreds of other cast-off or broken items, including large quantities of leather scrap and shoes. The phallus’ proximity to “craft waste” may have contributed to its misidentification as a darning tool.
The Vindolanda phallus is part of a trove of objects found in the early 1990s at Vindolanda fort, near Hadrian’s Wall. Illustration: K. Murphy, Newcastle University
But historians working on the object speculate that the original classification could just as easily have been the result of good old-fashioned British prudishness.
“I have to confess,” Newcastle University archaeology senior lecturer Rob Collins told The Guardian, “part of me thinks it’s kind of self-evident that it is a penis. I don’t know who entered it into the catalog. Maybe it was somebody uncomfortable with it or didn’t think the Romans would do such silly things.”
Romans and their phalluses
Phallic representations were common in Roman culture. So common, in fact, that the phallus could have served any one of three purposes, according to Collins and his co-author Rob Sands in their paper Touch wood: luck, protection, power or pleasure? A wooden phallus from Vindolanda Roman fort, published in the journal Antiquity.
The phallus might be a kind of good luck object called a herm. Herms were carved heads or phalluses installed near entryways so as to be touched upon leaving or entering a dwelling.
The object might also be a carved pestle meant for grinding up or mixing ingredients. The wear patterns and rounded, convex shape of the phallus base might indicate that use.
Wear patterns on the object indicate its possible use as a pestle to mix or grind ingredients. Illustration: Rob Sands
Finally, it might have been used as a sexual implement, though not necessarily with pleasure in mind.
“Such implements may have been used in acts that perpetuated power imbalances, such as between an enslaved person and his or her owner, as attested in the recurrence of sexual violence in Roman literature,” the historians noted in their paper.
The benefits of British weather
Phallic objects associated with Roman culture tend to be made of metal or stone. But according to the paper’s authors, that might just be because wooden objects rot over time.
“Wood just doesn’t normally survive…we couldn’t find any parallels [in the archaeological record],” Collins told The Guardian.
In this case, northern England’s famously dismal weather helped out.
“Most wood[en Roman artifacts] probably rotted or [were] burned and hence never entered the ground; that which did typically decays rapidly unless buried in very particular circumstances,” Collins and Sands wrote. “One such example is the wet, anaerobic conditions at the Roman fort of Vindolanda in Northumberland, which has preserved some 2,000 portable wooden objects, primarily dated to later first- and second-century AD contexts.”
Illustration: Rob Sands
Many Roman phallic objects were representative, which is to say smaller or larger than life size. But the Vindolanda phallus is life-sized — about 16cm. And it might have once been a little larger.
“Archaeological wood is prone to shrinkage and warping,” Collins and Sands wrote.
