DURING the 19th century, tourists in the grand museums of Europe often had their own private agenda. What they really wanted to see were those wicked cabinets. The first and most famous of these was the Gabinetto Segreto in Naples, where the raunchy artworks of the ancient Romans, unearthed from the nearby cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, were off-limits to the general public.
Access had been restricted since 1819, when the prudish heir to the Neapolitan throne, the future king Francesco I, dropped by the museum on a visit with his wife and daughter and was horrified to discover a graphic sex show culled from noble Romans’ villas. There were penis-shaped oil lamps and phallic wind chimes. There was a statue of the satyr Pan having his way with a she-goat.
There were hermaphrodites being ravished, virgins deflowered, the god Priapus caressing his enormous member. And there were raunchy frescos from the walls of ancient Roman brothels, where prostitutes advertised their particular carnal skills. Prince Francesco stormed out in disgust, covering the eyes of his blushing daughter.
A hermaphrodite is an organism having both male and female reproductive organs.[1] In many species, hermaphroditism is a common part of the life-cycle, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which partners are not separated into distinct male and female types of individual. Hermaphroditism most commonly occurs in invertebrates, although it is also found in some fish, and to a lesser degree in other vertebrates.
Historically, the term hermaphrodite has also been used to describe ambiguous genitalia and gonadal mosaicism in individuals of gonochoristic species, especially human beings. Famous Hermaphrodites
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