The Economics Of Owning A Brothel

How much did it actually cost to own a brothel in ancient Rome? This video breaks down the real economics of running a Roman lupanar, covering the rent, the enslaved workers, the leno who managed it, Caligula's tax on prostitution, and all the hidden costs that turned this "easy money" into an expensive business. On the surface it looked like free money: buy a building, put a few people to work, and count the coins at the end of the night. But the real economics of a Roman brothel were brutal. We walk through it one cost at a time, starting with the rent on a busy street that you owe whether the place is packed or empty, then the enslaved workers who were the single most expensive thing you bought and still had to be fed and clothed every day. From there we get into why a respectable owner legally could not run the place himself because of a legal disgrace called infamia, so he hired a leno who quietly skimmed the takings, and how the emperor Caligula sent armed guards to collect a tax on every worker. Finally we look at turnover, the profit engine that made the whole thing work through sheer volume at half a sesterce a visit, and then run the actual numbers on a small house of five to see what an owner really kept. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 So You Want To Own A Brothel 1:15 The Ground You Pay For First 3:10 The Household That Eats Every Day 5:30 The Name You Can't Afford To Use 7:40 The Emperor Wants His Cut 9:45 The Asset That Wears Out 11:30 So How Did Anyone Actually Profit? 12:45 Let's Do The Math 14:30 Was It Worth It? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 SOURCES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Suetonius, Life of Caligula, ch. 40 Primary source for Caligula's tax: each prostitute's fee for one act, applied to pimps and former prostitutes with no exemption for marriage, collected by praetorian guardsmen. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Caligula*.html Sarah Levin-Richardson, Th