CHAPTER 116. “You will see a town that resembles the fields in time of

pestilence.”

In tracing this savage caricature, Petronius had in mind not Crotona

alone; he refers to conditions in the capital of the empire. The

descriptions which other authors have set down are equally remarkable for

their powerful coloring, and they leave us with an idea of Rome which is

positively astounding in its unbridled luxury. ‘We will rest content

with offering to our readers the following portrayal, quoted from

Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xiv, chap. 6, and lib. xxviii, chap. 4. will

not presume to attempt any translation after having read Gibbon’s version

of the combination of these two chapters.

“The greatness of Rome was founded on the rare and almost incredible

alliance of virtue and of fortune. The long period of her infancy was

employed in a laborious struggle against the tribes of Italy, the

neighbors and enemies of the rising city. In the strength and ardor of

youth she sustained the storms of war, carried her victorious arms beyond

the seas and the mountains, and brought home triumphal laurels from every

country of the globe. At length, verging towards old age, and sometimes

conquering by the terror only of her name, she sought the blessings of

ease and tranquillity. The venerable city, which had trampled on the

necks of the fiercest nations, and established a system of laws, the

perpetual guardians of justice and freedom, was content, like a wise and

wealthy parent, to devolve on the Caesars, her favorite sons, the care of

governing her ample patrimony. A secure and profound peace, such as had

been once enjoyed in the reign of Numa, succeeded to the tumults of a

republic; while Rome was still adored as the queen of the earth, and the

subject nations still reverenced the name of the people and the majesty

of the senate. But this native splendor is degraded and sullied by the

conduct of some nobles, who, unmindful of their own dignity, and of that

of their country, assume an unbounded license of vice and folly. They

contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames, and

curiously select or invent the most lofty and sonorous appellations

--Reburrus or Fabunius, Pagonius or Tarrasius--which may impress the ears

of the vulgar with astonishment and respect. From a vain ambition of

perpetuating their memory, they affect to multiply their likeness in

statues of bronze and marble; nor are they satisfied unless those statues

are covered with plates of gold, an honorable distinction, first granted

to Achilius the consul, after he had subdued by his arms and counsels the

power of King Antiochus. The ostentation of displaying, of magnifying

perhaps, the rent-roll of the estates which they possess in all the

provinces, from the rising to the setting sun, provokes the just

resentment of every man who recollects that their poor and invincible

ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers by the

delicacy of their food or the splendor of their apparel. But the modern

nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of

their chariots and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long

robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by

art or accident, they occasionally discover the under-garments, the rich

tunics, embroidered with the figures of various animals. Followed by a

train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the

streets with the same impetuous speed as if they travelled with

post-horses, and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the

matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving

round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons

of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume,

on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate

to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman

people. If, in these places of mixed and general resort, they meet any

of the infamous ministers of their pleasures, they express their

affection by a tender embrace, while they proudly decline the

salutations of their fellow-citizens, who are not permitted to aspire

above the honor of kissing their hands or their knees. As soon as they

have indulged themselves in the refreshment of the bath, they resume

their rings and the other ensigns of their dignity, select from their

private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as might suffice for a dozen

persons, the garments the most agreeable to their fancy, and maintain

till their departure the same haughty demeanor which perhaps might have

been excused in the great Marcellus after the conquest of Syracuse.

Sometimes, indeed, these heroes undertake more arduous achievements.

They visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil

of servile hands, the amusements of the chase. If at any time, but more

especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail in their galleys from

the Lucrine lake to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and

the Caieta, they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar

and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of

their gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some

unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable

hardships, and lament in affected language that they were not born in

the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of eternal darkness. In these

journeys into the country the whole body of the household marches with

their master. In the same order as the cavalry and infantry, the heavy

and the light armed troops, the advanced guard and the rear, are

marshalled by the skill of their military leaders, so the domestic

officers, who bear a rod as an ensign of authority, distribute and

arrange the numerous train of slaves and attendants. The baggage and

wardrobe move in the front, and are immediately followed by a multitude

of cooks and inferior ministers employed in the service of the kitchens

and of the table. The main body is composed of a promiscuous crowd of

slaves, increased by the accidental concourse of idle or dependent

plebeians. The rear is closed by the favorite band of eunuchs,

distributed from age to youth, according to the order of seniority.

Their numbers and their deformity excite the horror of the indignant

spectators, who are ready to execrate the memory of Semiramis for the

cruel art which she invented of frustrating the purposes of nature, and

of blasting in the bud the hopes of future generations. In the exercise

of domestic jurisdiction the nobles of Rome express an exquisite

sensibility for any personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for

the rest of the human species. When they have called for warm water, if

a slave has been tardy in his obedience, he is instantly chastised with

three hundred lashes; but should the same slave commit a wilful murder,

the master will mildly observe that he is a worthless fellow, but that,

if he repeats the offense, he shall not escape punishment. Hospitality

was formerly the virtue of the Romans; and every stranger who could

plead either merit or misfortune was relieved or rewarded by their

generosity. At present, if a foreigner, perhaps of no contemptible

rank, is introduced to one of the proud and wealthy senators, he is

welcomed indeed in the first audience with such warm professions and

such kind inquiries that he retires enchanted with the affability of his

illustrious friend, and full of regret that he had so long delayed his

journey to Rome, the native seat of manners as well as of empire.

Secure of a favorable reception, he repeats his visit the ensuing day,

and is mortified by the discovery that his person, his name, and his

country are already forgotten. If he still has resolution to persevere,

he is gradually numbered in the train of dependents, and obtains the

permission to pay his assiduous and unprofitable court to a haughty

patron, incapable of gratitude or friendship, who scarcely deigns to

remark his presence, his departure, or his return. Whenever the rich

prepare a solemn and popular entertainment, whenever they celebrate with

profuse and pernicious luxury their private banquets, the choice of the

guests is the subject of anxious deliberation. The modest, the sober,

and the learned are seldom preferred; and the nomenclators, who are

commonly swayed by interested motives, have the address to insert in the

list of invitations the obscure names of the most worthless of mankind.

But the frequent and familiar companions of the great are those

parasites who practice the most useful of all arts, the art of flattery;

who eagerly applaud each word and every action of their immortal patron,

gaze with rapture on his marble columns and variegated pavements, and

strenuously praise the pomp and elegance which he is taught to consider

as a part of his personal merit. At the Roman tables the birds, the

dormice, or the fish, which appear of an uncommon size, are contemplated

with curious attention; a pair of scales is accurately applied to

ascertain their real weight; and, while the more rational guests are

disgusted by the vain and tedious repetition, notaries are summoned to

attest by an authentic record the truth of such a marvellous event.

Another method of introduction into the houses and society of the great

is derived from the profession of gaming, or, as it is more politely

styled, of play. The confederates are united by a strict and

indissoluble bond of friendship, or rather of conspiracy; a superior

degree of skill in the Tesserarian art is a sure road to wealth and

reputation. A master of that sublime science who in a supper or an

assembly is placed below a magistrate displays in his countenance the

surprise and indignation which Cato might be supposed to feel when he

was refused the praetorship by the votes of a capricious people. The

acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the curiosity of the nobles, who

abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study; and the only

books which they peruse are the Satires of Juvenal and the verbose and

fabulous histories of Marius Maximus. The libraries which they have

inherited from their fathers are secluded, like dreary sepulchres, from

the light of day. But the costly instruments of the theatre-flutes, and

enormous lyres, and hydraulic organs--are constructed for their use; and

the harmony of vocal and instrumental music is incessantly repeated in

the palaces of Rome. In those palaces sound is preferred to sense, and

the care of the body to that of the mind. It is allowed as a salutary

maxim that the light and frivolous suspicion of a contagious malady is

of sufficient weight to excuse the visits of the most intimate friends

and even the servants who are dispatched to make the decent inquiries

are not suffered to return home till they have undergone the ceremony of

a previous ablution. Yet this selfish and unmanly delicacy occasionally

yields to the more imperious passion of avarice. The prospect of gain

will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleto; every sentiment of

arrogance and dignity is subdued by the hopes of an inheritance, or even

of a legacy; and a wealthy childless citizen is the most powerful of the

Romans. The art of obtaining the signature of a favorable testament,

and sometimes of hastening the moment of its execution, is perfectly

understood; and it has happened that in the same house, though in

different apartments, a husband and a wife, with the laudable design of

overreaching each other, have summoned their respective lawyers to

declare at the same time their mutual but contradictory intentions. The

distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury often reduces

the great to the use of the most humiliating expedients. When they

desire to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of the

slave in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they assume

the royal and tragic declamation of the grandsons of Hercules. If the

demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant,

instructed to maintain a charge of poison or magic against the insolent

creditor, who is seldom released from prison till he has signed a

discharge for the whole debt. These vices, which degrade the moral

character of the Romans, are mixed with a puerile superstition that

disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the

predictions of haruspices, who pretend to read in the entrails of

victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and there are many

who do not presume either to bathe or to dine, or to appear in public,

till they have diligently consulted, according to the rules of

astrology, the situation of Mercury and the aspect of the moon. It is

singular enough that this vain credulity may often be discovered among

the profane sceptics who impiously doubt or deny the existence of a

celestial power.”

CHAPTER 116. “They either take in or else they are taken in.”

“Captare” may be defined as to get the upper hand of someone; and

“captari” means to be the dupe of someone, to be the object of interested

flattery; “captator” means a succession of successful undertakings of the

sort referred to above. Martial, lib. VI, 63, addresses the following

verses to a certain Marianus, whose inheritance had excited the avarice

of one of the intriguers:

“You know you’re being influenced,

You know the miser’s mind;

You know the miser, and you sensed

His purpose; still, you’re blind.”

Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, lib. XIV, chap. i, writes in

scathing terms against the infamous practice of paying assiduous court

to old people for the purpose of obtaining a legacy under their wills.

“Later, childlessness conferred advantages in the shape of the greatest

authority and Lower; undue influence became very insidious in its quest

of wealth, and in grasping the joyous things alone, debasing the true

rewards of life; and all the liberal arts operating for the greatest good

were turned to the opposite purpose, and commenced to profit by

sycophantic subservience alone.”

And Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. XVIII, chap. 4, remarks: “Some there are

that grovel before rich men, old men or young, childless or unmarried, or

even wives and children, for the purpose of so influencing their wishes

and them by deft and dextrous finesse.”

That this profession of legacy hunting is not one of the lost arts is

apparent even in our day, for the term “undue influence” is as common in

our courts as Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “husband,” or refined

cruelty, or “injunctions” restraining husbands from disposing of

property, or separate maintenance, or even “heart balm” and the

consequent breach of promise.

CHAPTER 119. The rite of the Persians:

Castration has been practiced from remote antiquity, and is a feature of

the harem life of the Levant to the present day. Semiramis is accused of

having been the first to order the emasculation of a troupe of her boy

slaves.

“Whether the first false likeness of men came to the Assyrians through

the ingenuity of Semiramis; for these wanton wretches with high timbered

voices could not have produced themselves, those smooth cheeks could not

reproduce themselves; she gathered their like about her: or, Parthian

luxury forbade with its knife, the shadow of down to appear, and fostered

long that boyish bloom, compelling art-retarded youth to sink to Venus’

calling,” Claudianus, Eutrop. i, 339 seq.

“And last of all, the multitude of eunuchs, ranging in age, from old men

to boys, pale and hideous from the twisted deformity of their features;

so that, go where one will, seeing groups of mutilated men, he will

detest the memory of Semiramis, that ancient queen who was the first to

emasculate young men of tender age; thwarting the intent of Nature, and

forcing her from her course.” Ammianus Marcellinus, book xiv, chap. vi.

The Old Testament proves that the Hebrew authorities of the time were no

strangers to the abomination, but no mention of eunuchs in Judea itself

is to be found prior to the time of Josiah. Castration was forbidden the

Jews, Deuteronomy, xxiii, 1, but as this book was probably unknown before

the time of Josiah, we can only conjecture as to the attitude of the

patriarchs in regard to this subject; we are safe, however, in inferring

that it was hostile. “Periander, son of Cypselus, had sent three hundred

youths of the noblest young men of the Corcyraeans to Alyattes, at

Sardis; for the purpose of emasculation.” Herodotus, iii, chapter 48.

“Hermotimus, then, was sprung from these Pedasians; and, of all men we

know, revenged himself in the severest manner for an injury he had

received; for, having been captured by an enemy and sold, he was

purchased by one Panionius, a Chian, who gained a livelihood by the most

infamous practices; for whenever he purchased boys remarkable for their

beauty, having castrated them, he used to take them to Sardis and Ephesus

and sell them for large sums; for with the barbarians, eunuchs are more

valued than others, on account of their perfect fidelity. Panionius,

therefore, had castrated many others, as he made his livelihood by this

means, and among them, this man.

“Hermotimus, however, was not in every respect unfortunate, for he went

to Sardis, along with other presents for the king, and in process of time

was the most esteemed by Xerxes of all his eunuchs.

“When the king was preparing to march his Persian army against Athens,

Hermotimus was at Sardis, having gone down at that time, upon some

business or other, to the Mysian territory which the Chians possess, and

is called Atarneus, he there met with Panionius. Having recognized him,

he addressed many friendly words to him, first recounting the many

advantages he had acquired by this means, and secondly, promising him how

many favors he would confer upon him in requital, if he would bring his

family and settle there; so that Panionius joyfully accepted the proposal

and brought his wife and children. But when Hermotimus got him with his

whole family into his power, he addressed him as follows:

“‘O thou, who, of all mankind, hast gained thy living by the most

infamous acts, what harm had either I, or any of mine, done to thee,

or any of thine, that of a man thou hast made me nothing?

“‘Thou didst imagine, surely, that thy machinations would pass unnoticed

by the Gods, who, following righteous laws, have enticed thee, who hath

committed unholy deeds, into my hands, so that thou canst not complain of

the punishment I shall inflict upon thee.’

“When he had thus upbraided him, his sons being brought into his

presence, Panionius was compelled to castrate his own sons, who were four

in number; and, being compelled, he did it; and after he had finished it,

his sons, being compelled, castrated him. Thus did vengeance and

Hermotimus overtake Panionius.” Herodotus, viii, ch. 105-6.

Mention of the Galli, the emasculated priests of Cybebe should be made.

Emasculation was a necessary first condition of service in her worship.

(Catullus, Attys.) The Latin literature of the silver and bronze ages

contains many references to castration. Juvenal and Martial have

lavished bitter scorn upon this form of degradation, and Suetonius and

Statius inform us that Domitian prohibited the practice, but it is in the

“Amoures” attributed to Lucian that we find a passage so closely akin to

the one forming a basis of this note, that it is inserted in extenso:

“Some pushed their cruelty so far as to outrage Nature with the

sacrilegious knife, and, after depriving men of their virility, found in

them the height of pleasure. These miserable and unhappy creatures, that

they may the longer serve the purposes of boys, are stunted in their

manhood, and remain a doubtful riddle of a double sex, neither preserving

that boyhood in which they were born, nor possessing that manhood which

should be theirs. The bloom of their youth withers away in a premature

old age: while yet boys, they suddenly become old, without any interval

of manhood. For impure sensuality, the mistress of every vice, devising

one shameless pleasure after another, insensibly plunges into

unmentionable debauchery, experienced in every form of brutal lust.” The

jealous Roman husband’s furious desire to prevent the consequences of his

wife’s incontinence was by no means well served by the use of such

agents; on the contrary, the women themselves profited by the

arrangement. By means of these eunuchs, they edited the morals of their

maids and hampered the sodomitical hankerings, active or otherwise, of

their husbands: Martial, xii, 54: but when the passions and suspicions of

both heads of the family were mutually aroused, the eunuchs fanned them

into flame and gained the ascendancy in the home. They even went so far

as to marry: Martial, xi, 82, and Juvenal, i, 22.

In the third century a certain Valesius formed a sect which, following

the example set by Origen, acted literally upon the text of Matthew, v,

28, 30, and Matthew, xix, 12. Of this sect, Augustine, De Heres. chap.

37, said: “the Valesians castrate themselves and those who partake of

their hospitality, thinking that after this manner, they ought to serve

God.” That injustice was done upon the wrong member is very evident, yet

in an age so dark, so dominated by austere asceticism, this clean cut

perception of the best interests of suffering humanity, is only to be

rivalled by the French physician in the time of the black plague. He had

observed that sthenic patients, when bled, died: the superstition and

medical usage of the age prescribed bleeding, and when the fat abbots

came to be bled, he bled them freely and with satisfaction. Justinian

decreed that anyone guilty of performing the operation which deprived an

individual of virility should be subjected to a similar operation, and

this crime was later punished with death. In the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries we encounter another and even viler reason for this

practice: that “the voice of such a person” (one castrated in boyhood)

“after arriving at adult age, combines the high range and sweetness of

the female with the power of the male voice,” had long been known, and

Italian singing masters were not slow in putting this hint to practical

use. The poor sometimes sold their children for this purpose, and the

castrati and soprani are terms well known to the musical historian.

These artificial voices disgraced the Italian stage until literally

driven from it by public hostility, and the punishment of death was the

reward of the individual bold enough to perform such an operation. The

papal authority excommunicated those guilty of the crime and those upon

whom such an operation had been performed, but received artificial

voices, which were the result of accident, into the Sistine choir.

This pretext served the church well and, until the year 1878, when

the disgrace was wiped out by Pope Leo XIII, the Sistine choir was an

eloquent commentary upon the attitude of an institution placed, as it

were, “between love and duty.” It should be recorded that this choir, in

its recent visit to the United States, had but one artificial voice, and

its owner was the oldest member of the choir.

Young home-born slaves were bought up by the dealers, castrated, because

of the increased price they brought when in this condition, and sold for

huge sums: Seneca, Controv. x, chap. 4; and kidnapping was frequently

resorted to, just as it is in Africa today.

In Russia there is a sect called the “skoptzi,” whose tenets, in this

respect, are indicated by their name. This sect is first mentioned in

the person of a certain Adrian, a monk, who came to Russia about the

year 1001. In 1041, l090 to 1096, 1138 to 1147, 1326, they are noticed,

and in 1721 to 1724 they are prominent. They call themselves “white

doves” and are divided into smaller congregations which, in their

allegorical terminology, they call “ships”; the leader of each

congregation is called the “pilot” and the female leader, the “pilot’s

mate.” Their tenets provide for two degrees of emasculation: complete

and incomplete, and, in the case of the former, he who submitted to the

operation had the “royal seal” affixed to him, this being their name for

complete emasculation: in the case of the latter, the neophyte had

reached the “Second Degree of Purity.” The operation was performed with

a red-hot knife or a hot iron, and this was known as the “baptism by

fire.”

In the case of female converts, the breasts were amputated, either with a

red-hot knife or a pair of red-hot shears (Kudrin trial, Moscow, 1871;

testimony of physicians and examination of the accused) which served the

double purpose of checking haemorrhage, as would a thermo-cautery, and

avoiding infection. Another method consisted in searing the orifice of

the vagina so that the scar tissue would contract it in such a manner as

to effectually prevent the entrance of the male.

A peculiar attribute of this sect is the character of many of its

members: bankers, civil service officials, navy officers, army officers

and others of the finest professions. Leroy-Beaulieu, in discussing

their methods of obtaining converts says: “they prefer boys and youths,

whom they strive to convince of the necessity of ‘killing the flesh.’

They sometimes succeed so well, that cases are known of boys of fifteen

or so resorting to self-mutilation, to save themselves from the

temptations of early manhood. These apostles of purity do not always

scruple to have recourse to violence or deceit. They ensnare their

victims by equivocal forms of speech, and having thus obtained their

consent virtually upon false pretences, they reveal to the confiding

dupes the real meaning of the engagement they have entered into only at

the last moment, when it is too late for them to escape the murderous

knife. One evening, two men, one of them young and blooming, the other

old, with sallow and unnaturally smooth face, were conversing, while

sipping their tea, in a house in Moscow. ‘Virgins will alone stand

before the throne of the Most High,’ said the elder man. ‘He who looks

on a woman with desire commits adultery in his heart, and adulterers

shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ‘What then should we sinners

doe’ asked the young man. ‘Knowest thou not,’ replied the elder, ‘the

word of the Lord? If thy right eye leadeth thee into temptation, pluck

it out and cast it from thee; if thy right hand leadeth thee into

temptation, cut it off and cast it from thee. What ye must do is to kill

the flesh. Ye must become like unto the disembodied angels, and that may

be attained only, through being made white as snow.’ ‘And how can we be

made thus white?’ further inquired the young man. ‘Come and see,’ said

the old man. ‘He took his companion down many stairs, into a cellar

resplendent with lights. Some fifteen white robed men and women were

gathered there. In a corner was a stove, in which blazed a fire. After

some prayers and dances, very like those in use among the Flagellants,

the old man announced to his companion: ‘now shalt thou learn how sinners

are made white as snow.’ And the young man, before he had time to ask a

single question, was seized and gagged, his eyes were bandaged, he was

stretched out on the ground, and the apostle, with a red-hot knife,

stamped him with the ‘seal of purity.’ This happened to a peasant,

Saltykov by name, and certainly not to him alone. He fainted away under

the operation, and when he came to himself, he heard the voices of his

chaste sponsors give him the choice between secrecy and death.”

Catherine II signed the first edict against this sect in 1772, but

agitation was more or less constant until the Imperial government began

vigorous prosecutions in 1871, and many were sentenced to hard labor in

Siberia. When prosecutions were instituted, large numbers emigrated to

Roumania and there took the name of “Lipovans.” Women, especially one of

the name of Anna Romanovna, have had a great share in the invention and

diffusion of the doctrine. Not infrequently it is the women who, with

their own hands, transform the men to angels.

In 1871 their number was estimated to be about 3000, in 1874 they

numbered 5444, including 1465 women, and in 1847, 515 men and 240 women

were transported to Siberia. The sect still holds its own in Russia.

They are millennarians and the messiah will not come for them until their

sect numbers 144,000.

Antiquity knew three varieties of eunuch:

Castrati: Scrotum and testicles were amputated.

Spadones: Testicles were torn out.

Thlibiae: Testicles were destroyed by crushing.

CHAPTER 127. “Such sweetness permeated her voice as she said this, so

entrancing was the sound upon the listening air that you would have

believed the Sirens’ harmonies were floating in the breeze.”

Many scholars have drawn attention to the ethereal beauty of this

passage. Probably the finest parallel is to be found in Horace’s ode to

Calliope. After the invocation to the muse he thinks he hears her

playing:

“Hark! Or is this but frenzy’s pleasing dream?

Through groves I seem to stray

Of consecrated bay,

Where voices mingle with the babbling stream,

And whispering breezes play.”

Sir Theodore Martin’s version.

Another exquisite and illuminating passage occurs in Catullus, 51, given

in Marchena’s fourth note.

CHAPTER 131. “Then she kneaded dust and spittle and, dipping her middle

finger into the mixture, she crossed my forehead with it.”

Since the Fairy Tale Era of the human race, sputum has been employed to

give potency to charms and to curses. It was anciently used as anathema

and that use is still in force to this day. Let the incredulous critic

spit in some one’s face if he doubts my word.

But sputum had also a place in the Greek and Roman rituals. Trimalchio

spits and throws wine under the table when he hears a cock crowing

unseasonably. This, in the first century. Any Jew in Jerusalem hearing

the name of Titus mentioned, spits: this in 1903. In the ceremony of

naming Roman children spittle had its part to play: it was customary for

the nurse to touch the lips and forehead of the child with spittle. The

Catholic priest’s ritual, which prescribes that the ears and nostrils of

the infant or neophyte, as the case may be, shall be touched with

spittle, comes, in all probability from Mark, vii, 33, 34, viii, 23, and

John, ix, 6, which, in turn are probably derived from a classical

original. It should be added that fishermen spit upon their bait before

casting in their hooks.

CHAPTER 131. Medio sustulit digito:

There is more than a suggestion in the choice of the middle finger, in

this instance. Among the Romans, the middle finger was known as the

“infamous finger.”

Infami digito et lustralibus ante salivis

Expiat, urentes oculos inhibere perita.

Persius, Sat. ii

See also Dio Chrysostom, xxxiii. “Neither,” says Lampridius, Life of

Heliogabalus, “was he given to demand infamies in words when he could

indicate shamelessness with his fingers,” Chapter 10. “With tears in his

eyes, Cestos often complains to me, Mamurianus, of being touched by your

finger. You need not use your finger, merely: take Cestos all to

yourself, if nothing else is wanting in your establishment,”

Martial, i, 93

To touch the posteriors lewdly with the finger, that is, the middle

finger put forth and the two adjoining fingers bent down, so that the

hand might form a sort of Priapus, was an obscene sign to attract

catamites. That this position of the fingers was an indecent symbol is

attested by numerous passages in the classical writers. “He would extend

his hand, bent into an obscene posture, for them to kiss,” Suetonius,

Caligula, 56. It may be added that one of that emperor’s officers

assassinated him for insulting him in that manner. When this finger was

thus applied it signified that the person was ready to sodomise him whom

he touched. The symbol is still used by the lower orders.

“We are informed by our younger companions that gentlemen given to

sodomitical practices are in the habit of frequenting some public place,

such as the Pillars of the County Fire Office, Regent St., and placing

their hands behind them, raising their fingers in a suggestive manner

similar to that mentioned by our epigrammatist. Should any gentleman

place himself near enough to have his person touched by the playful

fingers of the pleasure-seeker, and evince no repugnance, the latter

turns around and, after a short conversation, the bargain is struck. In

this epigram, however, Martial threatens the eye and not the anus.” The

Romans used to point out sodomites and catamites by thus holding out the

middle finger, and so it was used as well in ridicule (or chaff, as we

say) as to denote infamy in the persons who were given to these

practices.

“If anyone calls you a catamite, Sextillus,” says Martial, ii, 28,

“return the compliment and hold out your middle finger to him.”

According to Ramiresius, this custom was still common in the Spain of his

day (1600), and it still persists in Spanish and Italian countries, as

well as in their colonies. This position of the fingers was supposed to

represent the buttocks with a priapus inserted up the fundament; it was

called “Iliga,” by the Spaniards. From this comes the ancient custom of

suspending little priapi from boys’ necks to avert the evil eye.

Aristophanes, in the “Clouds,” says:

SOCRATES: First they will help you to be pleasant in company, and to

know what is meant by OEnoplian rhythm and what by the Dactylic.

STREPSIADES: Of the Dactyl (finger)? I know that quite well.

SOCRATES: What is it then?

STREPSIADES: Why, ‘tis this finger; formerly, when a child, I used this

one.

(Daktulos means, of course, both Dactyl (name of a metrical foot) and

finger. Strepsiades presents his middle finger with the other fingers

and thumb bent under in an indecent gesture meant to suggest the penis

and testicles. It was for this reason that the Romans called this finger

the “unseemly finger.”)

SOCRATES: You are as low minded as you are stupid.

[See also Suetonius: Tiberius, chapter 68.]

CHAPTER 138. “OEnothea brought out a leathern dildo.”

This instrument, made from glass, wax, leather, or other suitable

material such as ivory or the precious metals (Ezekiel xvi, 17), has been

known from primitive times; and the spread of the cult of Priapus was a

potent factor in making the instrument more common in the western world.

Numerous Greek authors make mention of it: Aristophanes, Lucian,

Herondas, Suidas and others. That it was only too familiar to the Romans

is shown by their many references to it: Catullus, Martial, the apostle

Paul, Tertullian, and others.

Aristophanes, Lysistrata: (Lysistrata speaking) “And not so much as

the shadow of a lover! Since the day the Milesians betrayed us, I have

never once caught sight of an eight-inch-long dildo even, to be a

leathern consolation to us poor widows.” Her complaint is based upon the

fact that all the men were constantly absent upon military duty and the

force of the play lies in her strategic control of a commodity in great

demand among the male members of society. Quoting again from the same

play: Calonice: “And why do you summon us, Lysistrata dear? What is it

all about?” Lysistrata: “About a big affair.” Calonice: “And is it

thick, too’?” Lysistrata: “Indeed it is, great and big too.” Calonice:

“And we are not all on the spot!” Lysistrata: “Oh! If it were what you

have in mind, there would never be an absentee. No, no, it concerns a

thing I have turned about and about, this way and that, for many

sleepless nights.” When the plot has been explained, viz.: that the

women refuse intercourse to their husbands until after peace has been

declared--Calonice: “But suppose our poor devils of husbands go away and

leave us”’ Lysistrata: “Then, as Pherecrates says, ‘we must flay a

skinned dog,’ that’s all.”

Lucian, Arnoures, says: “but, if it is becoming for men to have

intercourse with men, for the future let women have intercourse with

women. Come, O new generation, inventor of strange pleasures! as you

have devised new methods to satisfy male lust, grant the same privilege

to women; let them have intercourse with one another like men, girding

themselves with the infamous instruments of lust, an unholy imitation of

a fruitless union.”

Herondas, Mime vi:

KORITTO | Two women friends

METRO |

A Female Domestic.

Time, about 300 B. C.

Scene, Koritto’s sitting room.

KORITTO: (Metro has just come to call) Take a seat, Metro; (to the slave

girl) Get up and get the lady a chair; I have to tell you to do

everything; you’re such a fool you never do a thing of your own accord.

You’re only a stone in the house, you’re not a bit like a slave except

when you count up your daily allowance of bread: you count the crumbs

when you do that, though, and whenever the tiniest bit happens to fall

upon the floor, the very walls get tired of listening to your grumbling

and boiling over with temper, as you do all day long--now, when we want

to use that chair you’ve found time to dust it off and rub up the polish

--you may thank the lady that I don’t give you a taste of my hand.

METRO: You have as hard a time as I do, Koritto, dear--day and night

these low servants make me gnash my teeth and bark like a dog, just like

they do you.--But I came to see you about--(to the slave girl) get out of

here, get out of my sight, you trouble maker, you’re all ears and tongue

and nothing else, all you do is to sit around Koritto--dear, now please

don’t tell me a fib, who stitched that red dildo of yours?

KORITTO: Metro, where did you see that?

METRO: Why Nossis, the daughter of Erinna, had it three days ago. Oh but

it was a beauty!

KORITTO: So Nossis had it, did she? Where did she get it, I wonder?

METRO: I’m afraid you’ll say something if I tell you.

KORITTO: My dear Metro, if anybody hears anything you tell me, from

Koritto’s mouth, I hope I go blind.

METRO: It was given to her by Eubole of Bitas, and she cautioned her not

to let a soul hear of it.

KORITTO: That woman will be my undoing, one of these days; I yielded to

her importunity and gave it to her before I had used it myself, Metro

dear, but to her it was a godsend--, now she takes it and gives it to

some one who ought not to have it. I bid a long farewell to such a

friend as she; let her look out for another friend instead of me. As for

Nossis, Adrasteia forgive me. I don’t want to talk bigger than a lady

should--I wouldn’t give her even a rotten dildo; no, not even if I had a

thousand!

METRO: Please don’t flare up so quickly when you hear something

unpleasant. A good woman must put up with everything. It’s all my fault

for gossiping. My tongue ought to be cut out; honestly it should: but to

get back to the question I asked you a moment ago: who stitched the

dildo? Tell me if you love me! What makes you laugh when you look at

me? What does your coyness mean? Have you never set eyes on me before?

Don’t fib to me now, Koritto, I beg of you.

KORITTO: Why do you press me so? Kerdon stitched it.

METRO: Which Kerdon? Tell me, because there are two Kerdons, one is that

blue-eyed fellow, the neighbor of Myrtaline the daughter of Kylaithis;

but he couldn’t even stitch a plectron to a lyre--the other one, who

lives near the house of Hermodorus, after you have left the street, was

pretty good once, but he’s too old, now; the late lamented Kylaithis--may

her kinsfolk never forget her--used to patronize him.

KORITTO: He’s neither of those you’ve mentioned, Metro; this fellow is

bald headed and short, he comes from Chios or Erythrai, I think--you

would mistake him for another Prexinos, one fig could not look more like

another, but just hear him talk, and you’ll know that he is Kerdon and

not Prexinos. He does business at home, selling his wares on the sly

because everyone is afraid of the tax gatherers. My dear! He does do

such beautiful work! You would think that what you see is the handiwork

of Athena and not that of Kerdon! Do you know that he had two of them

when he came here! And when I got a look at them my eyes nearly burst

from their sockets through desire. Men never get--I hope we are alone

--their tools so stiff; and not only that, but their smoothness was as

sweet as sleep and their little straps were as soft as wool. If you went

looking for one you would never find another ladies’ cobbler cleverer

than he!

METRO: Why didn’t you buy the other one, too?

KORITTO: What didn’t I do, Metro dear’? And what didn’t I do to persuade

him’? I kissed him, I patted his bald head, I poured out some sweet wine

for him to drink, I fondled him, the only thing I didn’t do was to give

him my body.

METRO: But you should have given him that too, if he asked it.

KORITTO: Yes, and I would have, but Bitas slave girl commenced grinding

in the court, just at the wrong moment; she has reduced our hand mill

nearly to powder by grinding day and night for fear she might have four

obols to pay for having her own sharpened.

METRO: But how did he happen to come to your house, Koritto dear? You’ll

tell me the truth won’t you, now?

KORITTO: Artemis the daughter of Kandas directed him to me by pointing

out the roof of the tanner’s house as a landmark.

METRO: That Artemis is always discovering something new to help her make

capital out of her skill as a go-between. But anyhow, when you couldn’t

buy them both you should have asked who ordered the other one.

KORITTO: I begged him to tell me but he swore he wouldn’t, that’s how

much he thought of me, Metro dear.

METRO: You mean that I must go and find Artemis now to learn who the

Kerdon is--good-bye KORITTO. He (my husband) is hungry by now, so it’s

time I was going.

KORITTO: (To the slave girl) Close the doors, there, chicken keeper, and

count the chickens to see if they’re all there; throw them some grain,

too, for the chicken thieves will steal them out of one’s very lap.

THE CORDAX.

A lascivious dance of the old Greek comedy. Any person who performed

this dance except upon the stage was considered drunk or dissolute.

That the dance underwent changes for the worse is manifest from the

representation of it found on a marble tazza in the Vatican (Visconti,

Mus. Pio-Clem. iv, 29), where it is performed by ten figures, five

Finns and five Bacchanals, but their movements, though extremely lively

and energetic, are not marked by any particular indelicacy. Many ancient

authors and scholiasts have commented upon the looseness and sex appeal

of this dance. Meursius, Orchest., article Kordax, has collected the

majority of passages in the classical writers, bearing upon this subject,

but from this disorderly collection it is impossible to arrive at any

definite description of the cordax. The article in Coelius Rhodiginus.

Var. Lect. lib. iv, is conventional. The cordax was probably not

unlike the French “chalhut,” danced in the wayside inns, and it has been

preserved in the Spanish “bolero” and the Neapolitan “tarantella.” When

the Romans adopted the Greek customs, they did not neglect the dances

and it is very likely that the Roman Nuptial Dance, which portrayed the

most secret actions of marriage had its origin in the Greek cordax. The

craze for dancing became so menacing under Tiberius that the Senate was

compelled to run the dancers and dancing masters out of Rome but the evil

had become so deep rooted that the very precautions by which society was

to be safeguarded served to inflame the passion for the dance and

indulgence became so general and so public that great scandal resulted.

Domitian, who was by no means straight laced, found it necessary to expel

from the Senate those members who danced in public. The people imitated

the nobles, and, as fast as the dancers were expelled, others from the

highest and lowest ranks of society took their places, and there soon

came to be no distinction, in this matter, between the noblest names of

the patricians and the vilest rabble from the Suburra. There is no

comparison between the age of Cicero and that of Domitian. “One could do

a man no graver injury than to call him a dancer,” says Cicero, Pro

Murena, and adds: “a man cannot dance unless he is drunk or insane.”

Probably the most realistic description of the cordax, conventional, of

course, is to be found in Merejkovski’s “Death of the Gods.” The passage

occurs in chapter vi. I have permitted myself the liberty of supplying

the omissions and euphemisms in Trench’s otherwise excellent and spirited

version of the novel. “At this moment hoarse sounds like the roarings of

some subterranean monster came from the market square. They were the

notes, now plaintive, now lively, of a hydraulic organ. At the entrance

to a showman’s travelling booth, a blind Christian slave, for four obols

a day, was pumping up the water which produced this extraordinary

harmony. Agamemnon dragged his companions into the booth, a great tent

with blue awnings sprinkled with silver stars. A lantern lighted a

black-board on which the order of the program was chalked up in Syriac

and Greek. It was stifling within, redolent of garlic and lamp oil soot.

In addition to the organ, there struck up the wailing of two harsh

flutes, and an Ethopian, rolling the whites of his eyes, thrummed upon an

Arab drum. A dancer was skipping and throwing somersaults on a

tightrope, clapping his hands to the time of the music, and singing a

popular song:

Hue, huc, convenite nunc

Spatalocinaedi!

Pedem tendite

Cursum addite

“This starveling snub-nosed dancer was old, repulsive, and nastily gay.

Drops of sweat mixed with paint were trickling from his shaven forehead;

his wrinkles, plastered with white lead, looked like the cracks in some

wall when rain has washed away the lime. The flutes and organ ceased

when he withdrew, and a fifteen-year-old girl ran out upon the stage.

She was to perform the celebrated cordax, so passionately adored by the

mob. The Fathers of the Church called down anathema upon it, the Roman

laws prohibited it, but all in vain. The cordax was danced everywhere,

by rich and poor, by senators’ wives and by street dancers, just as it

had been before.

“‘What a beautiful girl,’ whispered Agamemnon enthusiastically. Thanks

to the fists of his companions, he had reached a place in the front rank

of spectators. The slender bronze body of the Nubian was draped only

about the hips with an almost airy colorless scarf. Her hair was wound

on the top of her head, in close fine curls like those of Nubian woven.

Her face was of the severest Egyptian type, recalling that of the Sphinx.

“She began to dance languidly, carelessly, as if already weary. Above

her head she swung copper bells, castanets or ‘crotals,’--swung them

lazily, so that they tinkled very faintly. Gradually her movements

became more emphatic, and suddenly under their long lashes, yellow eyes

shone out, clear and bright as the eyes of a leopardess. She drew her

body up to her full height and the copper castanets began to tinkle with

such challenge in their piercing sound that the whole crowd trembled with

emotion. Vivid, slender, supple as a serpent, the damsel whirled

rapidly, her nostrils dilated, and a strange cry came crooning from her

throat. With each impetuous movement, two dark little breasts held tight

by a green silk net, trembled like two ripe fruits in the wind, and their

sharp, thickly painted nipples were like rubies, as they protruded from

the net.

“The crowd was beside itself with passion. Agamemnon, nearly mad, was

held back by his companions. Suddenly the girl stopped as if exhausted.

A slight shudder ran through her, from her head down the dark limbs to

her feet. Deep silence prevailed. The head of the Nubian was thrown

back as if in a rigid swoon but above it the crotals still tinkled with

an extraordinary languor, a dying vibration, quick and soft as the wing

flutterings of a captured butterfly. Her eyes grew dim but in their

inner depths glittered two sparks; the face remained severe, impersonal,

but upon the sensuous red lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile

trembled, faint as the dying sound of the crotals.”

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

Double capacity of masseurs and prostitutes

Empress Theodora belonged to this class

High fortune may rather master us, than we master it

Legislation has never proved a success in repressing vice

One could do a man no graver injury than to call him a dancer

Russia there is a sect called the skoptzi

She is chaste whom no man has solicited--Ovid

Tax on bachelors

While we live, let us live

SIX NOTES BY MARCHENA.

TO THE ARMY OF THE RHINE.

The conquests of the French have resulted, during this war, in a boon to

knowledge and to letters. Egypt has furnished us with monuments of its

aboriginal inhabitants, which the ignorance and superstition of the Copts

and Mussulmans kept concealed from civilized countries. The libraries of

the convents of the various countries have been ransacked by savants and

precious manuscripts have been brought to light.

By no means the least interesting of the acquisitions is a fragment of

Petronius, which we offer to the public, taken from an ancient manuscript

which our soldiers, in conquering St. Gall, have sent to us for

examination. We have made an important discovery in reading a parchment

which contains the work of St. Gennadius on the Duties of Priests, and

which, judging from the form of the letters employed, we should say was

written in the eleventh century. A most careful examination led us to

perceive that the work by this saint had been written on pages containing

written letters, which had been almost effaced. We know that in the dark

ages it was customary to write ecclesiastical works on the manuscripts

containing the best authors of Latinity.

At a cost of much labor we have been able to decipher a morsel which we

give to the public: and of the authenticity of which there can be no

doubt. We render homage to the brave French army to which we owe this

acquisition.

It is easy to notice that there is a lacuna in that passage of Petronius

in which Encolpius is left with Quartilla, looking through a chink in the

door, at the actions of Giton and little Pannychis. A few lines below,

it relates, in effect, that he was fatigued by the voluptuous enjoyment

of Quartilla, and in that which remains to us, there is no mention of the

preliminaries to this enjoyment. The style of the Latin so closely

resembles the original of Petronius that it is impossible to believe that

the fragment was forged.

For the benefit of those who have not read the author, it is well to

state that this Quartilla was a priestess of Priapus, at whose house they

celebrated the mysteries of that god. Pannychis is a young girl of seven

years who had been handed over to Giton to be deflowered. This Giton is

the “good friend” of Encolpius, who is supposed to relate the scene.

Encolpius, who had drunk an aphrodisiacal beverage, is occupied with

Quartilla in peeping through the door to see in what manner Giton was

acquitting himself in his role. At that moment a soldier enters the

house.

Finally an old woman, about whom there is some question in the fragment,

is the same as the one who had unexpectedly conducted Encolpius to the

house of the public women and of whom mention is made in the beginning of

the work.

Ipsa Venus magico religatum brachia nodo

Perdocuit, multis non sine verberibus.

Tibullus viii, 5.

I.

Vous verrez que vous avez affaire a un homme.

You will learn that you have to deal with a man.

Fighting men have in all times been distinguished on account of the

beauty of their women. The charming fable of the loves of Venus and

Mars, described by the most ancient of poets, expresses allegorically,

this truth. All the demi-gods had their amorous adventures; the most

valiant were always the most passionate and the happiest. Hercules took

the maidenheads of fifty girls, in a single night. Thesus loved a

thousand beauties, and slept with them. Jason abandoned Hypsipyle for

Medea, and her, for Creusa. Achilles, the swift of foot, forgot the

tender Deidamia in the arms of his Briseis.

It has been remarked that the lovers did not have very scrupulous tastes

in their methods of attaining satisfaction from the women they loved.

The most common method was abduction and the women always submitted to

this without a murmur of any sort. Helen was carried off by Theseus,

after having also been abducted by Paris. The wife of Atreus was

abducted by Thyestus, and from that arose the implacable hatred between

the two families. Rape was no less common. Goddesses themselves and the

favorites of the Gods were at the risk of falling prey to strong mortals.

Pirithous, aided by Theseus, even attempted to snatch Proserpina from the

God of the under-world. Juno herself was compelled to painful submission

to the pursuit of Ixion, and Thetis succumbed despite herself, to the

assaults of Peleus. The gift of foretelling the future, with which

Apollo endowed Cassandra, did not insure her against the brutal caresses

of Ajax, son of Oileus.

In the infancy of society, there was never known any other distinction

except between the weak and the strong: the strong commanded and the weak

obeyed. For that reason, women were regarded in the light of beings

destined by nature, to serve the pleasures and even the caprices of men.

Never did her suitors express a tender thought for Penelope, and, instead

of making love to her, they squandered her property, slept with her

slaves, and took charge of things in her house.

Circe gave herself to Ulysses who desired to slay her, and Calypso, full

blown goddess as she was, was obliged to make his advances for him. The

fine sentiments that Virgil puts into the mouth of the shade of Creusa,

content with having died while serving against the Greeks, “she was a

Trojan, and she wedded the son of Venus”; the confession with which

Andromache, confronted by the murderer of her first husband, responds to

the question of AEneas; these ideas, I say, and these sentiments,

appertained to the polished century of Augustus and not to the epoch or,

scene of the Trojan War. Virgil, in his AEneid, had never subscribed to

the precepts of Horace, and of common sense:

Aut famam sequere, aut sibi convenientia finge

Horace Ars Poet. 119.

From this manner of dealing with women arose another reason for the

possession of beauty by the valiant. One coveted a woman much as one

would covet a fine flock of sheep, and, in the absence of laws, the one

in possession of either the one or the other of these desirable objects

would soon be dispossessed of them if he was not courageous enough to

guard them against theft. Wars were as much enterprises for ravishing

women as they were for taking other property, and one should remember

that Agamemnon promised to retire from before Troy if the Trojans would

restore Helen and his riches to Menelaus; things which Paris had

despoiled him of.

Also, there was never any of that thing we call “conjugal honor” among

the Greeks; that idea was far too refined; it was a matter too complex

ever to have entered the heads of these semi-barbarous people. This is

exemplified in the fact that, after the taking of Troy, Helen, who had,

of her own free will, belonged successively to Paris, and to Deiphobus,

afterwards returned to Menelaus, who never offered her any reproach.

That conduct of Menelaus was so natural that Telemachus, who, in his trip

to Sparta found Helen again with Menelaus, just as she was before her

abduction, did not show the least astonishment.

The books which bear the most remarkable resemblance to each other are

the Bible and Homer, because the people they describe and the men about

whom they speak are forerunners of civilization in pretty much the same

degree. Sarah was twice snatched from the bosom of Abraham and he was

never displeased with his wife and continued to live on good terms with

her. David, a newcomer on the throne, hastened to have Michol brought to

him although she had already married another man.

The best proof that, during the time of the Romans the women preferred

soldiers to other men is in the claims to successful enterprises by the

bragging soldier of Plautus. Pyrgopolinices thought it was only

necessary to pose as a great warrior, to have all the women chasing after

him; therefore, his parasite and his slave spoke of nothing but the

passions be inspired in women. Tradition has it that among the Samnites,

the bravest men had the choice of the fairest women, and to this custom

is attributed one of the reasons these people were so warlike.

In the times of chivalry the greatest exploits were achieved for the

pleasure of one’s Lady-Love, and there were even such valiant knights, as

Don Quixote, who went about the world proving by force of arms that their

ladies had no peer. The poverty-stricken troubadours singing

harmoniously about their beautiful women found them flying away in the

arms of knights who had broken lances at tournaments, or had performed

the greatest feats of arms. In fine, all the peoples of the world have

said with Dryden:

“None but the brave deserves the fair.”

II.

Ses camarades se saisissent de moi et de Quartilla.

His comrades seized hold of Quartilla and me.

The profession of Quartilla corresponded to that which is followed by

our ladies of the Palace Royal. This Palace Royal is a sort of Babylon,

with this difference; that the former prostitute themselves all the year

round, and that they are not quite so attractive as the Chaldean

beauties. For the rest, one of the incontestable facts of ancient

history is this prostitution of the women of Babylon in honor of Venus,

and I cannot understand why Voltaire refused to believe it, since

religions have always been responsible for the most abominable actions,

and because religious wars, the horrors of intolerance, the impostures of

priests, the despotism of kings, the degradation and stupidity of the

people, have been the direct fatal effects of religions; and seeing that

the blind fanaticism of martyrs and the brutal cruelty of tyrants is a

hundred times more deplorable than a sacrifice equally agreeable to the

victim and to the one who officiates at the sacrifice; and seeing that

the enjoyment and giving of life is no less holy than the maceration and

caging of innocent animals.

The origin of courtesans is lost in the deepest antiquity. It appears

that it was one of the patriarchal customs to enjoy them, for Judah slept

with Thamar, widow of his two sons, and who, to seduce him, disguised

herself as a courtesan. Another courtesan, Rahab, played a great role in

the first wars of the people of the Lord: it was this same Rahab who

married Solomon, father of Boaz, fourth forefather of David, and

thirty-second forefather of Jesus Christ, our divine Savior. Yet the

eternal sagacity of man has failed to take notice of this profession and

to resent the injustice done it by the scorn of men. The elected kings

of the people, the man who adopts the word father according to the

flesh, are descendants of a courtesan.

For the rest, it must be admitted that many who follow this noble

profession are unworthy of it and only too well justify the ignominy

which is levelled against the entire class. You see these miserable

creatures with livid complexions and haggard eyes, with voices of

Stentor, breathing out at the same time the poisons which circulate in

their veins and the liquors with which they are intoxicated; you see on

their blemished and emaciated bodies, the marks of beings more hideous

than they (twenty come to satisfy their brutal passions for every one of

them); you listen to their vile language, you hear their oaths and

revolting expressions: to go to these Megeres is often to encounter

brigands and assassins: what a spectacle! It is the deformity of vice

in the rags of indigence.

Ah! But these are not courtesans, they are the dregs of cities. A

courtesan worthy of the name is a beautiful woman, gracious and amiable,

at whose home gather men of letters and men of the world; the first

magistrates, the greatest captains: and who keeps men of all professions

in a happy state of mind because she is pleasing to them, she inspires in

them a desire for reciprocal pleasure: such an one was Aspasia who, after

having charmed the cultured people of Athens was for a long time the good

companion of Pericles, and contributed much, perhaps, towards making his

century what it was, the age of taste in arts and letters. Such an

one also was Phryne, Lais, Glycera, and their names will always be

celebrated; such, also, was Ninon d’Enclos, one of the ornaments of

the century of Louis XIV, and Clairon, the first who realized all the

grandeur of her art; such an one art thou, C-----, French Thalia, who

commands attentions, I do not say this by way of apology but to share the

opinion of Alceste.

A courtesan such as I have in mind may have all the public and private

virtues. One knows the severe probity of Ninon, her generosity, her

taste for the arts, her attachment to her friends. Epicharis, the soul

of the conspiracy of Piso against the execrable Nero, was a courtesan,

and the severe Tacitus, who cannot be taxed with a partiality for

gallantry, has borne witness to the constancy with which she resisted the

most seductive promises and endured the most terrible tortures, without

revealing any of the details of the conspiracy or any of the names of the

conspirators.

These facts should be recognized above that ascetic moral idea which

consists of the sovereign virtue of abstinence in defiance of nature’s

commands and which places weakness in these matters along with the most

odious crimes. Can one see without indignation Suetonius’ reproach of

Caesar for his gallantries with Servilia, with Tertia, and other Roman

ladies, as a thing equal to his extortions and his measureless ambitions,

and praising his warlike ardor against peoples who had never furnished

room for complaint to Rome? The source of these errors was the theory of

emanations. The first dreamers, who were called philosophers imagined

that matter and light were co-eternal; they supposed that was all one

unformed and tenebrous mass; and from the former they established the

principle of evil and of all imperfection, while they regarded the latter

as sovereign perfection. Creation, or, one might better say

co-ordination, was only the emanation of light which penetrated chaos,

but the mixture of light and matter was the cause of all the inevitable

imperfections of the universe. The soul of man was part and parcel of

divinity or of increased light; it would never attain happiness until it

was re-united to the source of all light; but for it, we would be free

from all things we call gross and material, and we would be taken into

the ethereal regions by contemplation and by abstinence from the

pleasures of the flesh. When these absurdities were adopted for the

regulation of conduct, they necessarily resulted in a fierce morality,

inimical to all the pleasures of life, such, in a word, as that of the

Gymnosophists or, in a lesser measure, of the Trappists.

But despite the gloomy nonsense of certain atrabilious dreamers, the

wonderful era of the Greeks was that of the reign of the courtesans.

It was about the houses of these that revolved the sands of Pactolus,

their fame exceeded that of the first men of Greece. The rich offerings

that decorated the temples of the Gods were the gifts of these women,

and it must be remembered that most of them were foreigners, originating,

for the most part, in Asia Minor. It happened that an Athenian

financier, who resembled the rest of his tribe as much as two drops of

water, proposed once to levy an impost upon the courtesans. As he spoke

eloquently of the incalculable advantages which would accrue to the

Government by this tax, a certain person asked him by whom the courtesans

were paid. “By the Athenians,” replied our orator, after deliberation.

“Then it would be the Athenians who would pay the impost,” replied the

questioner, and the people of Athens, who had a little more sense than

certain legislative assemblies, hooted the orator down, and there was

never any more question about a tax upon courtesans.

Corinth was famous for the number and beauty of its courtesans, from

which comes the proverb: “It is not given to every man to go to Corinth”;

there they ran the risk of losing their money and ruining their health.

The cause of this great vogue of courtesans in Greece was not the

supposed ugliness of the sex, as the savant Paw imagined, and

contradicted by the unanimous evidence of ancient authors and of modern

travellers; but rather, the retired and solitary life which the women of

the country led. They lived in separate apartments and never had any

communication with the streets or with the residences of men “the inner

part of the house which was called the women’s apartments,” said

Cornelius Nepos (preface). Strangers never visited them; they rarely

visited their nearest relations. This was why marriage between brothers

and sisters was authorized by law and encouraged by usage; the sisters

were exposed to the attacks of their brothers because they lived

separated from them.

With the Romans, as with us, the virtuous women corrupted somewhat the

profession of the courtesans. The absolute seclusion of women was never

the fashion at Rome and the stories we have on the authority of Valerius

Maximus on the chastity and modesty of the first Roman matrons merit the

same degree of belief as the legend of Romulus and Remus being brought up

by a wolf, the rape of Lucretia or the tragic death of Virginia. On the

contrary, in Livy, a great admirer of the customs of the early days of

Rome, we find that in those times a great number of Roman women of the

noblest families were convicted of having poisoned their husbands and

condemned to death for this hideous crime: that, by no means shows a very

exquisite and tender conjugal sentiment. During the period of the second

Punic War with what energy they went about the city seeking the repeal of

the law which took out of their hands the custody of jewels and precious

stones! A repeal which they obtained despite the opposition of Cato the

Censor. It appears that the profession of the courtesan was generally

practised by the freed-women; their manner necessarily showed the results

of their education. But the young sparks of Rome never paid much

attention to them, they preferred to have love affairs with the wives of

their friends. For one Sallust who ruined himself with freedwomen, there

were five Cupienniuses; “Cupiennius, that admirer of the pudenda garbed

in white,” Hor. Sat. I, ii, 36. Delia, Lesbia, Ipsythillia, Corinna,

Nemesis, Neeria, Cynthia, Sulpitia, Lycimnia, and almost all the women to

whom, under real or assumed names, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid,

Horace, and others, addressed their erotic compositions, were Roman

married women. Horace is the only one who celebrated a freedwoman in

some of his odes. This is due, however, to his taste for variety and

perhaps also, to his birth, for he himself was the son of a freedwoman.

Ovid’s Art of Love and the Satires of Juvenal reveal the extent to which

gallantry was the fashion at Rome and Cato would never have praised the

conduct of that young man who had recourse to a public house if that had

been an ordinary course of procedure.

In Europe of the middle ages, the priests and abbots helped to some

extent in reviving the profession of the courtesans. Long before, Saint

Paul had stated in his Epistles that it was permitted to the apostles

of the Lord to take with them everywhere a sister for charity. The

deaconesses date from the first century of the church. But the celibacy

of the clergy was not universally and solidly established until about the

eleventh century, under the pontificate of Gregory VII. During the

preceding century, the celebrated Marozie and Theodore had put their

lovers successively upon the chair of St. Peter, and their sons and

grandsons, as well. But after the priests had submitted to celibacy they

ostensibly took the concubines of which, alas! our housekeepers of today

are but feeble vestiges. The Spanish codes of the middle ages were often

concerned with the rights of the concubines of priests (mancebas de los

clerigos) and these chosen ones of the chosen ones of the Lord invariably

appeared worthy of envy. Finally the courtesans appeared in all their

magnificence in the Holy City, and modern Rome atoned for the rebuffs and

indignities these women had been compelled to endure in ancient Rome.

The princes of the church showered them with gifts, they threw at their

feet the price of redemption from sin, paid by the faithful, and the age

of Leo X was for Rome a wonderful epoch of fine arts, belles lettres, and

beautiful women. But a fanatical monk from Lower Germany fell upon this

calm of the church and this happy era of the harlots; since then the

revenues of the sacred college have continued to decrease, the beautiful

courtesans have abandoned the capital of the Christian world, and their

pleasures have fled with them. And can anyone longer believe in the

perfection of the human race, since the best, the most holy of human

institutions has so visibly degenerated!

III.

Le Soldat ordonne a embasicetas de m’accabler de ses impurs baisers.

The soldier ordered the catamite to beslaver me with his stinking

kisses.

One of the reasons which caused the learned and paradoxical Hardouin to

assert that all the works which have been attributed to the ancients,

with the exception of the Georgics and the Natural History of Pliny, were

the compositions of monks, was doubtless the very frequent repetition of

scenes of love for boys, which one notices in most of these writings:

this savant was a Jesuit. But this taste is not peculiar to convents; it

is to be found among all peoples and in all climates; its origin is lost

in the night of the centuries; it is common in the most polished nations

and it is common among savage tribes. Profound philosophers have argued

in favor of it; poets have sung the objects of this sort of love in their

tender and passionate compositions, and these compositions have always

been the delight of posterity. What stupid or unfeeling reader can read

without emotion that beautiful eclogue of Virgil where Corydon sighs his

hopeless love for the beautiful Alexis? The most passionate ode of

Horace is that one in which he complains of the harshness of Ligurinus.

The tender Tibullus, deceived by his Marathus, brings tears to all who

have hearts. The delicate Anacreon, praising his Bathylle, and the

valiant Alceus giving himself up after his labors in war to sing of the

dark eyes and black hair of Lycus . . . “with dark eyes and black hair

beautiful.” It is not to over-civilized refinements of society which,

according to certain misanthropists, degrade nature and corrupt it, that

this taste is due; it is found among the south sea islanders, and the

evidence of the first Spaniards attests that it was common among the

hordes of American Indians before the discovery of the new world. Paw

had attempted to explain this as resulting from defects in the formation

of the organs of pleasure among the natives; but a peculiar cause is not

sufficient explanation for a universal effect.

At the time of the Patriarchs, Greek love was so general that in the four

cities, Sodom, Gomorrah, Adama, and Seboim, it was impossible to find ten

men exempt from the contagion; that number would have sufficed, said the

Lord, to withhold the punishment which he inflicted upon those cities.

It should be noted here that most of the assertions about the morals of

the Israelites which are to be found in the Erotica Biblon of Mirabeau

are either false or pure guesswork. It is a bizarre method of judging

the morals of a people, that of taking their legal code and inferring

that the people were accustomed to break all the laws which are forbidden

by that code. Nevertheless, that is the method which the author of the

Erotica Biblon adopts for portraying the morals of the Jewish people.

Again, he has not even understood this code; he has believed that the law

against giving one’s seed to the idol Moloch meant giving the human

semen; and he is ignorant of the fact that this seed, as spoken of in the

Bible, means the children and descendants. Thus it is that the land of

Canaan is promised to the seed of Abraham, and the perpetuity of the

reign on Sion to that of David. Moloch was a Phoenician deity, the same

one to which, in Carthage, they sacrificed children; the Romans believed

him to be a reincarnation of their Saturn, but Saturn was an Etruscan

divinity who could never have had any connection with the Gods of

Phoenicia. He (Mirabeau) has translated “those who polluted the temple”

as meaning those who were guilty of some obscenity in the temple; and he

does not know that the temple was “polluted” by a thousand acts, declared

impure by law, and which were not obscene. The entrance of a woman into

a sacred place, less than forty days after her accouchement, or the

entrance of a man who had touched an impure animal, constituted a

pollution of the House of the Lord. When one wishes to make a parade of

erudition he should make some attempt to understand the things which he

pretends to make clear to others. Or is it that this Mirabeau was merely

careless?

The love of boys was so thoroughly the fashion in Greece that we have

today given it the name “Greek Love.” Orestes was regarded as the “good

friend” of Pylades and Patroclus as the lover of Achilles. In this

taste, the Gods set the example for mortals, and the abduction of

Ganymede for the service of the master of thunder, was not the least

cause for annoyance given the chaste but over-prudish Juno. Lastly,

Hercules was not content with the loves of Omphale and Dejanira, he also

loved the beautiful Hylas, who was brought up by the nymphs.

The Greeks boasted, without blushing, of this love, which they considered

the only passion worthy of men, and they did blush at loving a woman,

intimacy with whom, they said, only rendered her adorers soft and

effeminate. In the Dialogue of Plato, entitled “The Banquet,” which is

concerned entirely with discussions of the various forms of love, they

dismiss love for women as unworthy of occupying the attention of sensible

men. One of the speakers, I believe it was Aristophanes, explaining the

cause of this fire which we kindle in the bosoms of our loved ones,

affirms that the first men were doubles which multiplied their force and

their power. This, they abused and, as punishment, Jupiter struck them

with lightning and separated them. By their love for each other they

came together again to regain their primitive state. But the effeminates

sought out only the women because they were only half men, half women;

while those whose tastes were masculine and courageous wanted to become

double men again.

Phedre has put into the mouth of AEsop an explanation of that love which

would certainly not have been relished by the Greeks. He says that while

Prometheus was occupied with modelling his man and woman, he was invited

to a feast given by Jupiter, to the Gods; he came back intoxicated and,

by mistake, applied the sexual parts of one to the body of the other.

For the rest, the Greeks were all in accord in their profound contempt

for women. The theatrical writers, especially, who studied more

particularly the general opinions and catered to them in order to obtain

the applause of the public, were distinguished by their bitterness

against the sex. Euripides maintained that Prometheus deserved to be

chained to Mount Caucasus with the vulture gnawing at his entrails,

because he had fashioned a being so pernicious and hateful as woman. The

shade of Agamemnon, in the Odyssey advised Ulysses not to put any faith

in Penelope and did not stop talking until he had enumerated the entire

list of the vices of the sex. The first Latin authors imitated the

Greeks in their invectives against women; the comedies of Plautus,

especially, teem with virulent attacks upon them.

At Rome, however, the great freedom permitted to women, soon brought

about other opinions in regard to them; they often played an important

role in public and private affairs, and the men convinced themselves

that, like men, women were capable of the greatest crimes and of the most

heroic virtues. The noble stoicism of Arria is not the only example of

courageous virtue displayed by the Roman women at a time when crowned

monsters governed the empire. The young Paulina opened her veins with

her husband, the philosopher, Seneca; Mallonia preferred to die in

torments rather than give herself up to the odious he-goat of Capri.

Who does not admire the noble independence, the conjugal love, and the

matronly virtues of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus?

Moreover, men began to avow their love for women, and we have here

occasion to observe the rapid progress of gallantry among the Romans.

However, the love for boys was no less universally in vogue in Rome, and

Cicero charges, in his letters to Atticus, that the judges who had so

scandalously white-washed Clodius of the accusation of having profaned

the mysteries of the “Good Goddess,” had been publicly promised the

favors of the most illustrious women and the finest young men of the

first families. Caesar himself, in his early youth had yielded to the

embraces of Nicomedes, King of Bithynia; moreover, after his triumph over

the Gauls, on the solemn occasion when it was customary to twit the

victor with all his faults, the soldiers sang: “Caesar subdued the Gauls,

Nicomedes subdued Caesar. But Caesar who subdued the Gauls, triumphed,

and Nicomedes, who subdued Caesar did not.” Cato said of him that he was

loved by the King, in his youth and that, when he was older, he loved the

queen and, one day, in the senate, while he was dwelling on I know not

what request of the daughter of Nicomedes, and recounting the benefits

which Rome owed to that monarch, Cicero silenced him by replying: “We

know very well what he has given, and what thou hast given him!” At

last, during the time when the first triumvirate divided all the power,

a bad joker remarked to Pompey: “I salute thee, O King,” and, addressing

Caesar, “I salute thee, O Queen!” His enemies maintained that he was the

husband of all the women and the wife of all the husbands. Catullus, who

detested him, always called him “the bald catamite,” in his epigrams: he

set forth that his friendship with Mamurra was not at all honorable; he

called this Mamurra “pathicus,” a name which they bestowed upon those who

looked for favors among mature men or among men who had passed the stage

of adolescence.

The masters of the empire never showed any hesitancy in trying and even

in overdoing the pleasures which all their subjects permitted themselves.

Alas! A crown is such a weighty burden! The road of domination is

strewn with so many briars that one would never be able to pass down it

if he did not take care that they were pressed down under the roses. The

Roman emperors adopted that plan; they longed for pleasures and they took

the pleasures which offered themselves without delay and in a spirit of

competition. Caligula was so little accustomed to waiting that, while

occupied in offering a sacrifice to the Gods, and the figure of a priest

having pleased him, he did not take time to finish the sacred ceremonies

before taking his pleasure of him.

A remarkable thing is that among almost all peoples, the baths are the

places where the prostitution of men by their own sex is the most common.

We see in Catullus that the “cinaedi” (catamites), a noun which my chaste

pen refuses to translate into French, haunted the baths incessantly to

carry out their practices. Among the Orientals, of all modern peoples

who have retained this taste most generally, this same fact holds good.

It was at the bath that Tiberius, impotent through old age and

debauchery, was made young again by the touch little children applied to

his breasts; these children he called “‘little fishes,” they sucked his

withered breasts, his infected mouth, his livid lips, and finally his

virile parts. Hideous spectacle of a tyrant disgraced by nature and

struggling against her maledictions! But in vain did he invent new

pleasures, in vain did he take part in these scenes in which groups of

young men by threes and fours assumed all sorts of lascivious postures,

and were at the same time active and passive; the sight of these

indulgences of the “sprintriae” (for that is the name which was given

there) did not enable him to resuscitate his vigor any more than the

glamor of the throne or the servile submission of the senate served to

mitigate his remorse.

But of all the emperors, the ones who carried their taste for young boys

to the greatest lengths were, Nero, Domitian and Hadrian. The first

publicly wedded the young eunuch Sporus, whom he had had operated upon so

that he might serve him like a young woman. He paid court to the boy as

he would to a woman and another of his favorites dressed himself up in a

veil and imitated the lamentations which women were accustomed to utter

on nuptial nights. The second consecrated the month of September to his

favorite and the third loved Antinous passionately and caused him to be

deified after death.

The most ample proof of the universality of the taste for young boys

among the Romans is found in the Epithalamium of Manilius and Julia, by

Catullus, and it might be cause for surprise that this has escaped all

the philologists, were it not a constant thing that men frequently

reading about these centuries fail to perceive the most palpable facts

in their authors, just as they pass over the most striking phenomena of

nature without observing them. It appears, from this epithalamium, that

young men, before their marriage, had a favorite selected from among

their slaves and that this favorite was charged with the distribution of

nuts among his comrades, on the day, they in turn, treated him with

contempt and hooted him. Here follows an exact translation of this

curious bit. The favorite could not refuse the nuts to the slaves when

by giving them it appeared that he owned that his master had put away his

love for hire.

“Lest longer mute tongue stays that

In festal jest, from Fescennine,

Nor yet deny their nuts to boys,

He-Concubine! who learns in fine

His lordling’s love is fled.

Throw nuts to boys thou idle all

He-Concubine! wast fain full long

With nuts to play: now pleased as thrall

Be thou to swell Talasios’ throng

He-Concubine throw nuts.

Wont thou as peasant-girls to jape

He-whore! Thy Lord’s delight the while:

Now shall hair-curling chattel scrape

Thy cheeks: poor wretch, ah’ poor and vile:--

He-Concubine, throw nuts.”

and further on, addressing the husband:

“‘Tis said from smooth-faced ingle train

(Anointed bridegroom!) hardly fain

Hast e’er refrained; now do refrain!

O Hymen Hymenaeus io,

O Hymen Hymenaeus!

We know that naught save licit rites

Be known to thee, but wedded wights

No more deem lawful such delights.

O Hymen Hymenaeus io,

O Hymen Hymenaeus.”

(LXI. Burton, tr.)

The Christian religion strongly prohibits this love; the theologians put

it among the sins which directly offend against the Holy Ghost. I have

not the honor of knowing just why this thing arouses his anger so much

more than anything else; doubtless there are reasons. But the wrath of

this honest person has not prevented the Christians from having their

“pathici,” just as they have in countries where they are authorized by

the reigning deities. We have even noticed that they are the priests of

the Lord and especially the monks who practice this profession most

generally amongst us. The children of Loyola have acquired well-merited

renown in this matter: when they painted “Pleasure” they never failed to

represent him wearing trousers. Those disciples of Joseph Calasanz who

took their places in the education of children, followed their footsteps

with zeal and fervor. Lastly, the cardinals, who have a close

acquaintance with the Holy Ghost, are so prejudiced in favor of Greek

love that they have made it the fashion in the Holy City of Rome; this

leads me to wonder whether the Holy Ghost has changed His mind in regard

to this matter and is no longer shocked by it; or whether the theologians

were not mistaken in assuming an aversion against sodomy which He never

had. The cardinals who are on such familiar terms with him would know

better than to give all their days over to this pleasure if He really

objected to it.

I shall terminate this over-long note with an extract from a violent

diatribe against this love which Lucian puts into the mouth of Charicles.

He is addressing Callicratidas, a passionate lover of young boys, with

whom he had gone to visit the temple of Venus at Cnidus.

“O Venus, my queen! to thee I call; lend me your aid while I plead your

cause. For everything over which you deign to shed, be it ever so

little, the persuasion of your charms, reaches absolute perfection, above

all, erotic discourses need your presence, for you are their lawful

mother. In your womanhood, defend the cause of woman, and grant to men

to remain men as they have been born. At the beginning of my discourse,

I call as witness to the truth of my arguments the first mother of all

created things, the source of all generation, the holy Nature of this

universe, who, gathering into one and uniting the elements of the

world--earth, air, fire and water--and mingling them together, gave life

to everything that breathes. Knowing that we are a compound of

perishable matter, and that the span of life assigned to each of us was

short, she contrived that the death of one should be the birth of

another, and meted out to the dying, by way of compensation, the coming

into being of others, that by mutual succession we might live forever.

But, as it was impossible for anything to be born from a single thing

alone, she created two different sexes, and bestowed upon the male the

power of emitting semen, making the female the receptacle of generation.

Having inspired both with mutual desires, she joined them together,

ordaining, as a sacred law of necessity, that each sex should remain

faithful to its own nature--that the female should not play the male

unnaturally, nor the male degrade himself by usurping the functions of

the female. Thus intercourse of men with women has preserved the human

race by never-ending succession: no man can boast of having been created

by man alone; two venerable names are held in equal honor, and men

revere their mother equally with their father. At first, when men were

filled with heroic thoughts, they reverenced those virtues which bring

us nearer to the Gods, obeyed the laws of Nature, and, united to women

of suitable age, became the sires of noble offspring. But, by degrees,

human life, degenerating from that nobility of sentiment, sank to the

lowest depths of pleasure, and began to carve out strange and corrupt

ways in the search after enjoyment. Then sensuality, daring all,

violated the laws of Nature herself. Who was it who first looked upon

the male as female, violating him by force or villainous persuasion?

One sex entered one bed, and men had the shamelessness to look at one

another without a blush for what they did or for what they submitted to,

and, sowing seed, as it were, upon barren rocks, they enjoyed a

short-lived pleasure at the cost of undying shame.

“Some pushed their cruelty so far as to outrage Nature with the

sacrilegious knife, and, after depriving men of their virility, found in

them the height of pleasure. These miserable and unhappy creatures, that

they may the longer serve the purposes of boys, are stunted in their

manhood, and remain a doubtful riddle of a double sex, neither preserving

that boyhood in which they were born, nor possessing that manhood which

should be theirs. The bloom of their youth withers away in a premature

old age: while yet boys they suddenly become old, without any interval of

manhood. For impure sensuality, the mistress of every vice, devising one

shameless pleasure after another, insensibly plunges into unmentionable

debauchery, experienced in every form of brutal lust. Whereas, if each

would abide by the laws prescribed by Providence, we should be satisfied

with intercourse with women, and our lives would be undefiled by shameful

practices. Consider the animals, which cannot corrupt by innate

viciousness, how they observe the law of Nature in all its purity.

He-lions do not lust after he-lions, but, in due season, passion excites

them towards the females of their species: the bull that rules the herd

mounts cows, and the ram fills the whole flock of ewes with the seed of

generation. Again, boars mate with sows, he-wolves with shewolves,

neither the birds that fly through the air, nor the fish that inhabit the

deep, or any living creatures upon earth desire male intercourse, but

amongst them the laws of Nature remain unbroken. But you men, who boast

idly of your wisdom, but are in reality worthless brutes, what strange

disease provokes you to outrage one another unnaturally? What blind

folly fills your minds, that you commit the two-fold error of avoiding

what you should pursue, and pursuing what you should avoid? If each and

all were to pursue such evil courses, the race of human beings would

become extinct on earth. And here comes in that wonderful Socratic

argument, whereby the minds of boys, as yet unable to reason clearly, are

deceived, for a ripe intellect could not be misled. These followers of

Socrates pretend to love the soul alone, and, being ashamed to profess

love for the person, call themselves lovers of virtue, whereat I have

often been moved to laughter. How comes it, O grave philosophers, that

you hold in such slight regard a man who, during a long life, has given

proofs of merit, and of that virtue which old age and white hairs become?

How is it that the affections of the philosophers are all in a flutter

after the young; who cannot yet make up their minds which path of life to

take? Is there a law, then, that all ugliness is to be condemned as

vice, and that everything that is beautiful is to be extolled without

further examination? But, according to Homer, the great interpreter of

truth--‘One man is meaner than another in looks, but God crowns his words

with beauty, and his hearers gaze upon him with delight, while he speaks

unfalteringly with winning modesty, and is conspicuous amongst the

assembled folk, who look upon him as a God when he walks through the

city.’ And again he says: ‘Your beauteous form is destitute of

intelligence; the wise Ulysses is praised more highly than the handsome

Nireus.’ How then comes it that the love of wisdom, justice, and the

other virtues, which are the heritage of the full-grown man, possess no

attraction for you, while the beauty of boys excites the most vehement

passion! What! should one love Phoedrus, remembering Lysias, whom he

betrayed? Could one love the beauty of Alcibiades, who mutilated the

statues of the Gods, and, in the midst of a debauch, betrayed the

mysteries of the rites of Eleusis? Who would venture to declare himself

his admirer, after Athens was abandoned, and Decelea fortified by the

enemy--the admirer of one whose sole aim in life was tyranny? But, as

the divine Plato says, as long as his chin was beardless, he was beloved

by all; but, when he passed from boyhood to manhood, when his imperfect

intelligence had reached its maturity, he was hated by all. Why, then,

giving modest names to immodest sentiments, do men call personal beauty

virtue, being in reality lovers of youth rather than lovers of wisdom?

However, it is not my intention to speak evil of distinguished men. But,

to descend from graver topics to the mere question of enjoyment, I will

prove that connection with women is far more enjoyable than connection

with boys. In the first place, the longer enjoyment lasts, the more

delight it affords; too rapid pleasure passes quickly away, and it is

over before it is thoroughly appreciated; but, if it lasts, it is thereby

enhanced. Would to heaven that grudging Destiny had allotted us a longer

lease of life, and that we could enjoy perpetual health without any

sorrow to spoil our pleasure; then would our life be one continual feast.

But, since jealous Fortune has grudged us greater blessings, those

enjoyments that last the longest are the sweetest. Again, a woman, from

puberty to middle age, until the last wrinkles furrow her face, is worth

embracing and fit for intercourse; and, even though the prime of her

beauty be past, her experience can speak more eloquently than the love of

boys.

“I should consider anyone who attempted to have intercourse with a youth

of twenty years to be the slave of unnatural lust. The limbs of such,

like those of a man, are hard and coarse; their chins, formerly so

smooth, are rough and bristly, and their well-grown thighs are disfigured

with hairs. As for their other parts, I leave those of you who have

experience to decide. On the other hand, a woman’s charms are always

enhanced by an attractive complexion, flowing locks, dark as hyacinths,

stream down her back and adorn her shoulders, or fall over her ears and

temples, more luxuriant than the parsley in the fields. The rest of her

person, without a hair upon it, shines more brilliantly than amber or

Sidonian crystal. Why should we not pursue those pleasures which are

mutual, which cause equal enjoyment to those who receive and to those who

afford them? For we are not, like animals, fond of solitary lives, but,

united in social relations, we consider these pleasures sweeter, and

those pains easier to bear, which we share with others. Hence, a common

table was instituted, the mediator of friendship. When we minister to

the wants of the belly, we do not drink Thasian wine, or consume costly

food by ourselves alone, but in company: for our pleasures and enjoyments

are increased when shared with others. In like manner, the intercourse

of men with women causes enjoyment to each in turn, and both are alike

delighted; unless we accept the judgment of Tiresias, who declared that

the woman’s pleasure was twice as great as the man’s. I think that those

who are not selfish should not consider how they may best secure the

whole enjoyment for themselves, but should share what they have with

others. Now, in the case of boys, no one would be mad enough to assert

that this is the case; for, while he who enjoys their person reaches the

height of pleasure--at least, according to his way of thinking--the

object of his passion at first feels pain, even to tears, but when, by

repetition, the pain becomes less keen, while he no longer hurts him, he

will feel no pleasure himself. To mention something still more curious

--as is fitting within the precincts of Venus--you may make the same use

of a woman as of a boy, and thereby open a double avenue to enjoyment;

but the male can never afford the same enjoyment as the female.

“Therefore, if you are convinced by my arguments, let us, men and women,

keep ourselves apart, as if a wall divided us; but, if it is becoming for

men to have intercourse with men, for the future let women have

intercourse with women. Come, O new generation, inventor of strange

pleasures! As you have devised new methods to satisfy male lust, grant

the same privilege to women; let them have intercourse with one another

like men, girding themselves with the infamous instruments of lust, an

unholy imitation of a fruitless union; in a word, let our wanton Tribads

reign unchecked, and let our women’s chambers be disgraced by

hermaphrodites. Far better that a woman, in the madness of her lust,

should usurp the nature of a man, than that man’s noble nature should be

so degraded as to play the woman!”

IV.

Embasicetas fut bientot au comble de ses voeux.

The Catamite soon reached the height of his passion.

The theologians class this species of lascivious feeling with pollution

which is complete when it produces a result. The Holy Scripture tells us

of Onan, son of Judas, grandson of Jacob, and husband of Thamar, who was

slain by the Lord because he spilled his semen, “he poured his semen upon

the ground.” We may be reproached, perhaps, for citing the Holy Bible

too frequently, but that book contains the knowledge of salvation, and

those who wish to be saved should not fail to study it with assiduity.

That this study has occupied a good part of our life, we admit, and we

have always found that study profitable. To vigorous minds that

admission may seem ridiculous, but we are writing only for pious souls,

and they will willingly applaud this courageous profession of our piety.

The theologians have also classified onanism and pollution among the sins

against the Holy Ghost, and this being the case, there is no being in the

world who has been sinned against so often. A medium indulgence in this

sin furnished the pleasure of a queen, the severity of one Lucretia does

not repel a thousand Tarquins. Men with vivid imaginations create for

themselves a paradise peopled with the most beautiful houris, more

seductive than those of Mahomet; Lycoris had a beautiful body but it was

unfeeling; the imagination of her lover pictured her as falling before

his caresses, he led her by the hand over pressed flowers, through a

thick grove and along limpid streams; in that sweet reverie his life

slipped by.

Here icy cold fountains, here flower covered meadows, Lycoris;

Here shady groves; life itself here would I dream out with thee.

Virgil Bucol. Ecl. X, 41.

In the minds of the theologians pollution is synonymous with all

pleasures with persons of the opposite or the same sex, which result in a

waste of the elixir of life. In this sense, love between woman and woman

is pollution and Sappho is a sinner against the Holy Ghost.

(Notwithstanding), however (these caprices of the third person of the

trinity) I cannot see why pleasure should be regulated, or why a woman

who has surveyed all the charms of a young girl of eighteen years should

give herself up to the rude embraces of a man. What comparisons can be

made between those red lips, that mouth which breathes pleasure for the

first time, those snowy and purplous cheeks whose velvet smoothness is

like the Venus flower, half in bloom, that new-born flesh which

palpitates softly with desire and voluptuousness, that hand which you

press so delicately, those round thighs, those plastic buttocks, that

voice sweet and touching,--what comparison can be made between all this

and pronounced features, rough beard, hard breast, hairy body, and the

strong disagreeable voice of man? Juvenal has wonderfully expended all

his bile in depicting, as hideous scenes, these mysteries of the Bona

Dea, where the young and beautiful Roman women, far from the eyes of men,

give themselves up to mutual caresses. Juvenal has painted the eyes of

the Graces with colors which are proper to the Furies; his tableau,

moreover, revolts one instead of doing good.

The only work of Sappho’s which remains to us is an ode written to one of

her loved ones and from it we may judge whether the poetess merited her

reputation. It has been translated into all languages; Catullus put it

into Latin and Boileau into French. Here follows an imitation of that of

Catullus:

Peer of a God meseemeth he,

Nay passing Gods (and that can be!)

Who all the while sits facing thee

Sees thee and hears

Thy low sweet laughs which (ah me!) daze

Mine every sense, and as I gaze

Upon thee (Lesbia!) o’er me strays

My tongue is dulled, limbs adown

Flows subtle flame; with sound its own

Rings either ear, and o’er are strown

Mine eyes with night.

(LI. Burton, tr.)

After that we should never again exhort the ministers and moralists to

inveigh against love of women for women; never was the interest of men

found to be so fully in accord with the precepts of divine law.

Here I should like to speak of the brides of the Lord; but I remember

“The Nun” of Diderot, and my pen falls from my hand. Oh, who would dare

to touch a subject handled by Diderot?

V.

Giton venait de la deflorer, et de remporter une victoire sanglante.

Giton the victor had won a not bloodless victory.

All people have regarded virginity as something sacred, and God has so

honored it that he willed that his son be born of a virgin, fecundated,

however, by the Holy Ghost. Still, it appears problematical whether the

Virgin Mary, complete virgin that she was, did not have the same pleasure

as those who are not virgins, when she received the divine annunciation.

Father Sanchez has discussed the question very fully “whether the Virgin

Mary ‘spent’ in copulation with the Holy-Ghost,” unhappily, he decided in

the negative, and I have too much veneration for Father Sanchez not to

submit to his decision; but because of it, I am vexed with the Virgin

Mary and the Holy Ghost.

Notwithstanding this, the daughters of the people of the Lord were not

content to remain virgins; a state of being which, at bottom has not much

to recommend it. The daughter of Jephtha before being immolated for the

sake of the Lord, demanded of her father a reprieve of two months in

which to weep for her virginity upon the mountains of Gelboe; it seems it

should not have taken so long had she had nothing to regret. Ruth had

recourse to the quickest method when she wished to cease being a virgin;

she simply went and lay down upon the bed with Boaz. The spirit of God

has deemed it worth while to transmit this story to us, for the

instruction of virgins from century to century.

The pagan Gods thought highly of maidenheads, they often took them and

always, they set aside the virgins for themselves. The Phtyian, from

whose organ Apollo was foreordained to come, proved to be only a virgin;

the spirit of God did not communicate itself to anyone who had ever been

sullied by contact with a mortal. It was to virgins that the sacred

fires of Vesta were entrusted, and the violation of their virginity was a

capital crime which all Rome regarded as a scourge from wrathful heaven.

The Sybils lived and died virgins; in addressing the Cumaean Sybil,

AEneas never failed to bestow that title upon her.

Most of the immortals have preserved their virginity, Diana, Minerva, et

cet. But what is the most astonishing is that the companions of Venus

and Amor, the most lovable of all divinities, the Graces, were also

virgins. Juno became a virgin again every year, by bathing in the waters

of a magic fountain; that must have rendered Jupiter’s duties rather

onerous.

There are some reasons for this passion of mankind for maidenheads. It

is so wonderful to give the first lessons of voluptuousness to a pure and

innocent heart, to feel under one’s hand the first palpitations of the

virginal breasts which arouses unknown delights, to dry the first tears

of tenderness, to inspire that first mixture of fear and hope, of vague

desires and expectant inquietude; whoever has never had that satisfaction

has missed the most pleasurable of all the delights of love. But taken

in that sense, virginity is rather a moral inclination, as Buffon says,

than a physical matter, and nothing can justify the barbarous precautions

against amorous theft which were taken by unnatural fathers and jealous

husbands.

In those unhappy countries which are bent under oppression, in those

countries where heaven shows its heat in the beauty of the sex, and

where beauty is only an object of speculation for avid parents; in such

countries, I say, they resort to the most odious methods for preserving

the virginity of the young and beautiful daughters who are destined to be

sold like common cattle. They put a lock over the organ of pleasure and

never permit it to be opened except when it is strictly necessary for

carrying out those animal functions for which nature destined them.

The locks of chastity were long known in Europe; the Italians are accused

with this terrible invention. Nevertheless, it is certain that they were

used upon men, at least, in the time of the first Roman emperors.

Juvenal, in his satire against women, VI, says: “If the singers please

them there is no need for locks of chastity for those who have sold their

voices to the praetors, who keep them.”

Si gaudet cantu, nullius fibula durat

Vocem vendentis praetoribus.

Sat. VI, 379.

If pleased by the song of the singer employed by the praetor

No fibula long will hold out, free, the actor will greet her.

Christianity, most spiritual, most mystical of ancient religions,

attempts to make out a great case for celibacy. Its founder never

married, although the Pharisees reproached him for frequenting gay women,

and had, perhaps, some reason for so doing. Jesus showed a particular

affection for Mary Magdalen, to the point of exciting the jealousy of

Martha, who complained that her sister passed her time in conversation

with Jesus and left her with all the housework to do. “Mary has chosen

the better part,” said the Savior. A good Christian must not doubt that

the colloquies were always spiritual.

St. Paul counseled virginity and most of the apostolic fathers practiced

it. Among others, St. Jerome lived his whole life among women and never

lost his purity. He answered his enemies who reproached him with his

very great intimacy with the Saintly Sisters, that the irrefutable proof

of his chastity was that he stank. That stinking of St. Jerome, which is

not a veritable article of faith in the Church, is, however, an object of

pious belief; and my readers will very gladly assent to it.

When the Christian clergy wishes to form a body of doctrines to be

submitted to by all the common people it thinks that by separating its

interests and those of the common people as far as possible it must

tighten those ropes by which it binds its fellow citizens. Also the Pope

who was the most jealous of ecclesiastical power and the one who abused

it most, Hildebrand, rigorously prohibited the marriage of priests and

enunciated the most terrible warnings against those who did not retain

their celibacy. However, although neither priests nor monks were

permitted to marry, the epithet “virgins” cannot be justly applied to all

priests and all monks without exception. Nor shall I repeat here the

naughty pleasantries of Erasmus, of Boccaccio, and all the others,

against the monks; without doubt maliciousness has developed more

“satyrical” traits that they have brought out; beyond that, I have

nothing to say.

VI.

Alors une vielle. . . .

Finally an old woman . . .

The question here has to do with a procurers or go-between. That

profession has gradually fallen into discredit by I know not what

fatality, which befalls the most worthy things. Cervantes the only

philosophic author Spain has produced, wanted that calling to be

venerated in cities above all others. And truly, when one thinks how

much finesse is necessary to pursue that profession with success, when

one considers that those who practice that truly liberal art are the

repositories of the most important as well as the most sacred secrets,

one would never fail to have the greatest respect for them. The

tranquillity of homes, the civil state of persons they hold at their

discretion, and still, though they drink in insults, though they endure

abuse, very rarely do these beings, true stoics, compromise those who

have confided in them.

In their Mercury, the ancients realized their beau ideal or archetype

of go-between which they called; in vulgar language “pimp”. That God,

as go-between for Jupiter, was often involved in the most hazardous

enterprises, such as abducting Io, who was guarded by Argus of the

hundred eyes; Mercury I say, was the God of concord, or eloquence,

and of mystery. Except to inspire them with friendly feeling and kind

affections, Mercury never went among mortals. Touched by his wand,

venomous serpents closely embraced him. Listening to him, Achilles

forgot his pride, extended hospitality to Priam and permitted him to take

away the body of Hector. The ferocious Carthaginians were softened

through the influence of this God of peace, and received the Trojans in

friendship. Mercury it was who gathered men into society and substituted

social customs for barbarism. He invented the lyre and was the master of

Amphion, who opened the walls of Thebes by the charm of his singing.

Mercury or Hermes gave the first man knowledge; but it was enveloped in a

mysterious veil which it was never permitted the profane to penetrate,

which signifies that all that he learned from God, concerning amorous

adventures, should be wrapped in profound silence. How beautiful all

these allegories are! And how true! How insipid life would be without

these mysterious liaisons, by which Nature carries out her designs,

eluding the social ties, without breaking them! Disciples of Mercury, I

salute you, whatever be your sex; to your discretion, to your persuasive

arts are confided our dearest interests, the peace of mind of husbands,

the happiness of lovers, the reputation of women, the legitimacy of

children. Without you, this desolated earth would prove to be, in

reality, a vale of tears; the young and beautiful wife united to decrepit

husband, would languish and grow weak, like the lonely flower which the

sun’s rays never touch. Thus did Mexence bind in thine indissoluble

bands the living and the dead.

Fate, however, has often avenged the go-betweens on account of the

misunderstandings from which they suffer at the hands of the vulgar.

Otho opened the way to the empire of the world by his services as a

go-between for Nero. And the go-betweens of princes, and even of

princesses, are always found in the finest situations. Even Otho did not

lose all his rights; Nero exiled him with a commission of honor, “because

he was caught in adultery with his own wife, Poppaea.” “Uxoris moechus

coeperate esse suae” (Suet. Otho, chap. 111), said malicious gossip at

Rome.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

To the scholar contemplating an exhaustive study of Petronius, the

masterly bibliography compiled by Gaselee is indispensable, and those

of my readers who desire to pursue the subject are referred to it.

The following is a list of editions, translations, criticisms and

miscellaneous publications and authors from which I have derived benefit

in the long and pleasant hours devoted to Petronius.

EDITIONS, Opera Omnia.

Frellon Lyons 1615.

Hadrianides Amsterdam 1669.

Bourdelot Paris 1677.

Boschius Amsterdam 1677.

Burmann Utrecht 1709.

Anton Leipzig 1781.

Buecheler Berlin 1862.

Herxus (Buecheler) Berlin 1911.

TRAU FRAGMENT.

Amsterdam 1670.

(Containing Frambotti’s

corrections.)

Gaselee Cambridge 1915.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS, Vol. VII.

Cardinals prejudiced in favor of Greek love

Fierce morality, inimical to all the pleasures of life

Hardouin on homosexuality in priests

Religions responsible for the most abominable actions

Remarkable resemblance to each other are the Bible and Homer

Stinking of St. Jerome

Wars were as much enterprises for ravishing women

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE “SATYRICON”

Affairs start to go wrong, your friends will stand from under

Believes, on the spot, every tale

Boys play in the schools, the young men are laughed at

Cardinals prejudiced in favor of Greek love

Death is never far from those who seek him

Death levels caste and sufferers unites

Deferred pleasures are a long time coming

Desire no possession unless the world envies me for possessing

Doctor’s not good for anything except for a consolation

Double capacity of masseurs and prostitutes

Egyptians “commercialized” that incomparable art

Either ‘take-in,’ or else they are ‘taken-in’

Empress Theodora belonged to this class

Errors committed in the name of religion

Esteeming nothing except what is rare

Everybody’s business is nobody’s business

Everything including the children, is devoted to ambition

Face, rouged and covered with cosmetics

Fierce morality, inimical to all the pleasures of life

For one hour of nausea you promise it a plethora of good things

Hardouin on homosexuality in priests

He can teach you more than he knows himself

High fortune may rather master us, than we master it

In the arrogance of success, had put on the manner of the master

Laughed ourselves out of a most disgraceful quarrel

Learning’s a fine thing, and a trade won’t starve

Legislation has never proved a success in repressing vice

Live coals are more readily held in men’s mouths than a secret

Love or art never yet made anyone rich

Man is hated when he declares himself an enemy to all vice

Men are lions at home and foxes abroad

No one will confess the errors he was taught in his school days

No one can show a dead man a good time

One could do a man no graver injury than to call him a dancer

Platitudes by which anguished minds are recalled to sanity

Priests, animated by an hypocritical mania for prophecy

Propensity of pouring one’s personal troubles into another’s ear

Putting as good a face upon the matter as I could

Religions responsible for the most abominable actions

Remarkable resemblance to each other are the Bible and Homer

Rumor but grows in the telling and strives to embellish

Russia there is a sect called the skoptzi

See or hear nothing at all of the affairs of every-day life

She is chaste whom no man has solicited--Ovid

Something in the way of hope at which to nibble

Stained by the lifeblood of the God of Wine

Stinking of St. Jerome

Tax on bachelors

The loser’s always the winner in arguments

The teachers, who must gibber with lunatics

They secure their ends, save by setting snares for the ears

They seize what they dread to lose most

To follow all paths; but a road can discover by none

Too many doctors did away with him

Wars were as much enterprises for ravishing women

We know that you’re only a fool with a lot of learning

Whatever we have, we despise

Whatever you talk of at home will fly forth in an instant

Whenever you learn a thing, it’s yours

While we live, let us live

You can spot a louse on someone else