Ned would undoubtedly have preferred Pollini’s interpretation. He wrote a book titled A Defence of Uranian Love that was published under a pseudonym after his death. In it, he makes an argument for same-sex relationships based on those prevalent in Ancient Greece, in which an older male mentors a younger one and may or may not have sexual relations with him. It is easy to understand how the Warren Cup was his “Holy Grail,” as he called it.
More
IN A CORRIDOR within the British Museum is Cupboard 55, an antique wooden cabinet numbered with a bronze plaque, containing more than 1,100 objects itemized into a registry and sequestered into an archive. It was created in 1865 and known as the Museum Secretum. Until the 1960s, the Secret Museum was a storeroom of erotica from the ancient world, including Asian, Egyptian, Greek, Near Eastern, and Roman artifacts. Many of them were objects of worship, such as pre-Christian fertility gods and goddesses. Also concealed in the cupboard were phallocentric objects, wax votive phalluses from churches in Isernia, Italy, and 8th- and 9th-century animal membrane condoms in original paper wrappers and tied with silk ribbons at the open end.
More
