easier to meet one of them than it is to find a man.”
Quartilla is here smarting under the sting of some former lover’s
impotence. Her remark but gives color to the charge that, owing to the
universal depravity of Rome and the smaller cities, men were so worn out
by repeated vicious indulgences that it was no easy matter for a woman to
obtain satisfaction at their hands.
“Galla, thou hast already led to the nuptial couch six or seven
catamites; thou went seduced by their delicate coiffure and combed
beards. Thou hast tried the loins and the members, resembling soaked
leather, which could not be made to stand by all the efforts of the
wearied hand; the pathic husband and effeminate bed thou desertest, but
still thou fallest into similar couches. Seek out some one rough and
unpolished as the Curii and Fabii, and savage in his uncouth rudeness;
you will find one, but even this puritanical crew has its catamites.
Galla, it is difficult to marry a real man.” Martial, vii, 57.
“No faith is to be placed in appearances. What neighborhood does not
reek with filthy practices’?” Juvenal, Sat. ii, 8.
“While you have a wife such as a lover hardly dare hope for in his
wildest prayers; rich, well born, chaste, you, Bassus, expend your
energies on boys whom you have procured with your wife’s dowry; and thus
does that penis, purchased for so many thousands, return worn out to its
mistress, nor does it stand when she rouses it by soft accents of love,
and delicate fingers. Have some sense of shame or let us go into court.
This penis is not yours, Bassus, you have sold it.” Martial, xii, 99.
“Polytimus is very lecherous on women, Hypnus is slow to admit he is my
Ganymede; Secundus has buttocks fed upon acorns. Didymus is a catamite
but pretends not to be. Amphion would have made a capital girl. My
friend, I would rather have their blandishments, their naughty airs,
their annoying impudence, than a wife with 3,000,000 sesterces.” Martial
xii, 76.
But the crowning piece of infamy is to be found in Martial’s three
epigrams upon his wife. They speak as distinctly as does the famous
passage in Catullus’ Epithalamium of Manilius and Julia, or Vibia, as
later editors have it.
“Wife, away, or conform to my habits. I am no Curius, Numa, or Tatius.
I like to have the hours of night prolonged in luscious cups. You drink
water and are ever for hurrying from the table with a sombre mien; you
like the dark, I like a lamp to witness my pleasures, and to tire my
loins in the light of dawn. Drawers and night gowns and long robes cover
you, but for me no girl can be too naked. For me be kisses like the
cooing doves; your kisses are like those you give your grandmother in
the morning. You do not condescend to assist in the performance by your
movements or your sighs or your hand; (you behave) as if you were taking
the sacrament. The Phrygian slaves masturbated themselves behind the
couch whenever Hector’s wife rode St. George; and, however much Ulysses
snored, the chaste Penelope always had her hand there. You forbid my
sodomising you. Cornelia granted this favor to Gracchus; Julia to
Pompey, Porcia to Brutus. Juno was Jupiter’s Ganymede before the Dardan
boy mixed the luscious cup. If you are so devoted to propriety--be a
Lucretia to your heart’s content all day, I want a Lais at night.” xi,
105.
“Since your husband’s mode of life and his fidelity are known to you, and
no woman usurps your rights, why are you so foolish as to be annoyed by
his boys, (as if they were his mistresses), with whom love is a transient
and fleeting affair? I will prove to you that you gain more by the boys
than your lord: they make your husband keep to one woman. They give what
a wife will not give. ‘I grant that favor,’ you say, ‘sooner than that
my husband’s love should wander from my bed.’ It is not the same thing.
I want the fig of Chios, not a flavorless fig; and in you this Chian fig
is flavorless. A woman of sense and a wife ought to know her place. Let
the boys have what concerns them, and confine yourself to what concerns
you.” xii, 97.
“Wife, you scold me with a harsh voice when I’m caught with a boy, and
inform me that you too have a bottom. How often has Juno said the same
to the lustful Thunderer? And yet he sleeps with the tall Ganymede. The
Tirynthian Hero put down his bow and sodomised Hylas. Do you think that
Megaera had no buttocks? Daphne inspired Phoebus with love as she fled,
but that flame was quenched by the OEbalian boy. However much Briseis
lay with her bottom turned toward him, the son of AEacus found his
beardless friend more congenial to his tastes. Forbear then, to give
masculine names to what you have, and, wife, think that you have two
vaginas.” xi, 44