Effects of Prohibition.--Required Change of Policy.--
Governmental Obligations.--Prostitution augmented by
Seclusion.--Impossibility of benevolent Assistance.--
Necessity of sanitary Regulations.--Yellow Fever.--Effect of
remedial Measures in Paris.--Syphilitic Infection not a local
Question.--Present Measures to check Syphilis.--ISLAND
HOSPITAL, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.--Mode of Admission.--Vagrancy
Commitment "on Confession," and its Action on Blackwell's
Island.--Pecuniary Results.--Moral Effects.--Perpetuation of
Disease.--Inadequacy of Present Arrangements.--Discharges.--
Writs of _Habeas Corpus_ and _Certiorari_, how obtained, and
their Effects.--Public Responsibility.--Proposed medical and
police Surveillance.--Requirements.--_Hospital Arrangements
to be entirely separated from punitive Institutions._--
Medical Visitation.--Power to place diseased Women under
Treatment and _detain them till cured_.--Refutation of
Objections.--Quack Advertisers.--Constitution of Medical
Bureau.--Duties of Examiners.--License System.--Probable
Effects of Surveillance.--Expenses of the proposed Plan.--
Agitation in England.--The London _Times_ on Prostitution.--
Objections considered.--Report from MEDICAL BOARD OF BELLEVUE
HOSPITAL on Prostitution and Syphilis.--Report from RESIDENT
PHYSICIAN, RANDALL'S ISLAND, on Constitutional Syphilis.--
Reliability of Statistics.--Resumé of substantiated Facts. 627
THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.
INTRODUCTION.
Arguments are unnecessary to prove the existence of prostitution. The evil
is so notorious that none can possibly gainsay it. But when its extent,
its causes, or its effects are questioned, a remarkable degree of
ignorance or carelessness is manifested. Few care to know the secret
springs from which prostitution emanates; few are anxious to know how wide
the stream extends; few have any desire to know the devastation it causes.
Society has formally laid a prohibition on the subject, and he who
presumes to argue that what affects one may injure all; he who believes
that the malady in his neighbor's family to-day may visit his own
to-morrow; he who dares to intimate that a vice which has blighted the
happiness of one parent, and ruined the character of one daughter, may
produce, must inevitably produce, the same sad results in another circle;
in short, he who dares allude to the subject of prostitution in any other
than a mysterious and whispered manner, must prepare to meet the frowns
and censure of society.
Keen was the knowledge of human nature, acute the perception of worldly
sentiment in the breast of an accomplished woman lately deceased, when she
wrote, "To such grievances as society can not readily cure, it usually
forbids utterance on pain of its scorn; this scorn being only a sort of
tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness." How true the idea, many a man
who has attempted to unveil a hidden crime, or probe a secret sorrow, but
too well knows.
Not then to prove that prostitution exists, for that is so glaringly
palpable that all must perforce concede it, but to ascertain its origin,
progress, and end, is the object of these pages. The finger of scorn may
be pointed at the labor; the self-righteous world may wrap itself in a
mantle of prudery, and close its ears against sickening details; the
complacent public may demur at an approach to sin and misery; the
self-satisfied community may object to view wretchedness drawn from the
obscurity of its hiding-place to the full light of investigation:
nevertheless, there is now existing a moral pestilence which creeps
insidiously into the privacy of the domestic circle, and draws thence the
myriads of its victims, and which saps the foundation of that holy
confidence, the first, the most beautiful attraction of home. There is an
ever-present physical danger, so fatally destructive that the world would
recoil, as from the spring of a serpent, could they but appreciate its
malignity; a malignity which is daily and hourly threatening every man,
woman, and child in the community; which for hundreds of years has been
slowly but steadily making its way onward, leaving a track marked with
broken hopes, ruined frames, and sad recollections of stricken friends;
and which now, in the full force of an impetus acquired and aggravated by
concealment, almost defies opposition. There is a social wrong which
forces upon the community vast expenditures for an object of which they
are ignorant; which swells the public taxes and increases individual
outlay for a vice which has hitherto been studiously kept in concealment.
These reasons were sufficiently powerful to induce the necessary
researches for the accomplishment of this work, and they are considered
sufficient to justify its publication.
An unseen evil, of which only the effects are visible, is more frightful
than one whose dimensions are apparent. No statesman would grapple with a
political question until he knew its "form and pressure;" no
philanthropist can satisfactorily encounter an unknown misery. Both may
judge, to some slight extent, of the evil they can not see, but the one
can not venture to remove it, nor the other to modify its woes until its
power is fully known. This has so far been the case with prostitution. The
world has studiously drawn a screen before it, and when the sufferings of
its victims became so apparent that the vice was palpable, an additional
mystery was thrown around it, and the people of the nineteenth century
know it but as a sin with which they can not interfere. It has all the
imagined force of a monster, because of its obscurity; all the virulence
of an avenging fiend, because its true powers are hidden; and even those
who suffered from its poison have been led to believe that its mysteries
were so inscrutable as to defy all approach.
Hitherto reticence has been the policy. This position has been held too
long, for it is false in principle and injurious in tendency. The day has
arrived when the shroud must be removed; when the public safety
imperiously demands an investigation into the matter; when those who
regard it as a small wrong may have their attention directed to its real
proportions; and when those who have viewed it as an unmanageable giant
may be alike undeceived.
A small matter it decidedly is not: the eternal ruin of one misguided
woman would effectually preclude such an opinion; the physical ruin of an
impetuous man would prohibit such an estimate, and both these are among
those daily consequences which call for an investigation. There is
scarcely a person in the community who can not recall some circumstance he
has known to support this assertion; for so wide-spread has been the
baneful influence of prostitution, that there are comparatively few but
have suffered, through friends or relatives, if not in their own persons.
Nor is it unmanageable, except when concealed. Stripped of the veil of
secrecy which has enveloped it, there appears a vice arising from an
inextinguishable natural impulse on the part of one sex, fostered by
confiding weakness in the other; from social disabilities on one side, and
social oppression on the other; from the wiles of the deceiver working
upon unsuspecting credulity; and, finally, _from the stern necessity to
live_.
It is a mere absurdity to assert that prostitution can ever be eradicated.
Strenuous and well-directed efforts for this purpose have been made at
different times. The whole power of the Church, where it possessed not
merely a spiritual, but an actual secular arm, has been in vain directed
against it. Nature defied the mandates of the clergy, and the threatened
punishments of an after-life were futile to deter men from seeking, and
women from granting, sinful pleasures in this world. Monarchs victorious
in the field and unsurpassed in the council-chamber have bent all their
energies of will, and brought all the aids of power to crush it out, but
before these vice has not quailed. The guilty women have been banished,
scourged, branded, executed; their partners have been subjected to the
same punishment; held up to public opinion as immoral; denuded of their
civil rights; have seen their offenses visited upon their families; have
been led to the stake, the gibbet, and the block, and still prostitution
exists. The teachings of morality and virtue have been powerless here. In
some cases they restrain individuals; upon the aggregate they are
inoperative. The researches of science have been unheeded. They have
traced the physical results of vice, and have foreshadowed its course.
They have demonstrated that the suffering parents of this generation will
bequeath to their posterity a heritage of ruined powers; that the malady
which illicit pleasure communicates is destructive to the hopes of man;
that the human frame is perceptibly and regularly depreciating by the
operation of this poison, and have shown that even the desire for health
and long life, one of the most powerful motives that ever influences a
human being, has been of no avail to stem the torrent.
But if history proves that prostitution can not be suppressed, it also
demonstrates that it can be regulated, and directed into channels where
its most injurious results can be encountered, and its dangerous
tendencies either entirely arrested or materially weakened. This is the
policy to which civilized communities are tending, and to aid the movement
it is needful that the subject be examined, even at the risk of the
world's contumely.
In some of the countries of Continental Europe the examination has been
made, and the natural consequences of a searching and philosophical
investigation are there seen in legislation, which aims not to dam a wild
torrent, but to lead it where its rage may be harmlessly spent. When a
mighty river overflows its banks, the uncontrollable flood works
wide-spread ruin and devastation along its course; but the same river,
confined to its natural channel, may be of immense service in carrying off
a vast amount of filth and _debris_ that otherwise would cause pestilence
and death. In this Western hemisphere, and in the mother-country,
Anglo-Saxon prudery has stood aloof from inquiring into a vice which every
one admits to be offensive to the moral sense of the people, and has
submitted to an accumulation of evils rather than seek to abate them,
until the suffering and the wrong have become so boldly defined that they
force themselves upon the public eye.
Assuredly it is high time to inaugurate a new line of action; to cast
aside as unworthy those puerile doubts of propriety and expediency which
have stood in the way of an onward progress. The very meaning of the word
"propriety" supplies an argument in favor of the proposed course.
Conventionally, it has been construed to mean an indefinite something
which every person has moulded to suit his own predilections. Upon the
same principle that a man who makes his living dishonestly would consider
it a glaring impropriety to examine the laws of fraud, has the world
decided it an outrage against propriety to inquire into a vice which many
secretly practice, but all publicly condemn. Reasoning like this has been
too often applied, and with too great an effect. Can there possibly be an
impropriety in investigating a vice which threatens the purity and peace
of the community, because in so doing unpleasant facts will be disclosed?
Is there not a far more striking inconsistency in supinely allowing the
same vice to exist and increase, without hinderance or examination?
Again: it must be conceded that the demands of propriety are universal.
They are not restricted to any person or place, but press with equal force
upon every member of the community in every possible situation. The common
welfare is involved in their general application, and he well merits the
good opinion of his fellow-men who points them to a case where propriety
is outraged, and asks their aid to apply the remedy. In a word,
_propriety_ demands an exposure of all acts of _impropriety_, and the
application of the needful cure.
Then the question arises, In what form shall the exposure be made? Truth
admits of but one reply. It must be so explicit as to leave no doubt of
its meaning; it must be so guarded as not to offend in its application. If
the first of these rules is not observed, any disclosure will be
worthless; if the remarks are vague, indefinite, or generalized, no good
result can accrue. Take a simple illustration. It conveys no determinate
idea to a benevolent man to say, "There is distress in a certain city;"
but point him to the particular locality, and give him the precise
circumstances, and his sympathy is at once aroused and effectively
exerted. The same rule is equally applicable to a monster vice and to an
individual hardship, and upon this principle have the disclosures of the
following pages been based. The idea has been to particularize
sufficiently to draw attention, but not enough to gratify a prurient
inclination; to exhibit the evil in a truthful aspect, but not in a
fascinating form. None can doubt the truth of Pope's well-known lines:
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."
The endeavor should be to fulfill the imperative demands of propriety,
without disturbing the conventional prejudices implied by the same word.
Then, as to expediency, or the fitness to effect some good end. It must be
admitted that the mere fact of proving prostitution capable of control is
a good object, and it is apparent that such proof can not be afforded
while the vice remains a myth. Something must be known of its haunts and
its customs ere any one can decide in what shape a supervisory power can
be best applied. This knowledge must be obtained in defiance of
deep-rooted prejudices. Commonplace objections about the danger of
touching impure objects are best met by the remark that to the pure all
things are pure. Though benevolence may at times lead its devotees through
scenes where moral purity is shocked, and to neighborhoods where filth and
obscenity vitiate the very air they breathe, there is no contamination to
those whose motives are good. Inexpediency has been urged as often and as
falsely as impropriety. In their application to this subject, both are
perverted from their legitimate meaning; both are made subservient to a
false taste, or a mawkish sensibility which fears to encounter an
imaginary danger.
The safety of the community, so far as its sanitary condition is
concerned, imperatively demands an inquiry like this. It is no longer
necessary to prove that syphilitic taint is propagated by the direct
agency of prostitution. That fact has been demonstrated years ago, and,
reasoning from it, we rightly infer that the ravages of that poison can be
checked by compelling abandoned women to certain judicious observances.
One thing is absolutely certain, that the public health can not be
endangered by the interference, and there is a moral certainty that it may
be materially benefited. The value of this investigation, so far as
relates to purely physical questions, consists in not merely pointing out
where the evil is, but in showing to what extent it exists, and then
contrasting the state of venereal disease, its rapid increase and
augmenting virulence in this country, with its condition in those nations
where similar investigations have resulted in practical measures.
Public safety imperatively demands this investigation as a means of
tracing the habitual resorts of criminals. It is not necessary to inform
any man conversant with city life that houses of ill fame are the common
resort of the most abandoned of the male part of the community. There the
assassin, against whose hand no life is secure, has a safe retreat. The
burglar, who commits his depredations under cover of the shade of night;
the swindler, who defrauds the honest trader by false representations;
the counterfeiter, who earns a precarious living by his unholy
trade--these hold there high carnival. There they meet to recount their
exploits and divide the spoils; to devise new schemes of wickedness, or
lay plans by which simple youths may be allured to vilest practices.
There is another phase of public safety which demands this investigation,
namely, the preservation of female honor. Those who frequent these haunts
of vice are forever employed in casting about snares to entrap the young,
the unwary, or the friendless woman. They tempt her to minister to their
libidinous desires, and swell the already overcrowded ranks of frailty.
While these resorts are secret, there is every facility for such infamous
conduct, with but slight probability of its detection, and still slighter
opportunities for prevention. Thither, too, young men, and even boys, are
inveigled by those who have grown old in vice, and there are they taught
the horrid mysteries of unhallowed passion. Many a promising youth has
left such haunts as these not only with a ruined constitution, but with
loss of character and honor; many whose names swell the criminal records
of the day date their first step in crime from the hour they entered a
common brothel.
Again: Public safety demands this investigation because of the superior
opportunities it will afford to reformatory measures. Start not at the
supposition of reforming courtesans. There is hope even for them, for they
are human beings, though depraved. Their hearts throb with the same
sympathies that move the more favored of their sex. Their minds are
susceptible to the same emotions as those of other females. Few of them
become vile from natural instincts: poor victims of circumstances, many of
them would gladly amend if the proper means were used at the proper time.
"There is in every human heart
Some not entirely barren part,
Where flowers of richest scent may blow,
And fruit in glorious sunlight grow."
This consummation can be achieved only when the pseudo-virtue of the world
shall yield to true benevolence, and charity be in deed what it professes
in name.
If public safety is thus urgent, private interest also has arguments in
favor of investigating prostitution. No one need be told that public aid
is required to give medical treatment to the unfortunate men and women
tainted by this vice; nor need any one be assured that such aid,
administered with every regard to economy, requires yearly a large portion
of the taxes paid by individuals. It would be sheer folly to assert that
any measures which can follow this inquiry will be efficacious in
eradicating syphilis, but experience proves that an effective supervision
would materially abate its influence, render it curable in a much shorter
space of time, and reduce the expenses for each patient in a corresponding
ratio.
Another large claim upon the public funds arises from the necessity of
employing an extensive judicial and police organization to deal with the
crime and the criminals generated and fostered in houses of ill fame.
Nests of vice as they are now in their darkness and seclusion, it would be
impossible to suppose a more fitting nursery for crime, or one whence more
criminals would emanate. As with disease, so with crime. It can not be
suppressed by placing its retreats under public notice, but it can be
watched, and, once brought to the light of day, half its dangers and
difficulties become surmountable.
Finally, private interest demands this investigation on mere private
grounds--the individual and personal expenses caused by diseases
contracted by debauchery. There is the money a working man must pay for
his cure: this is his share of the loss. There is the unproductive time,
and the loss of profits upon his labor: this is his employer's sacrifice.
There is the deprivation of comforts and necessaries experienced by his
family and dependents: this is their penalty. Society is thus involved in
a general loss on account of an act of folly, or passion, or crime (call
it which you please), committed in a concealed and secret haunt, and such
loss could be saved by the intervention of proper means.
Common sense asks for a full investigation of all the evils attending
prostitution. In the every-day affairs of life, any man who feels the
pressure of a particular evil looks at once for its cause. He may be
neither a philosopher nor a logician, and may never have heard of or read
any of the luminous treatises which professedly simplify science, yet he
knows very well that for every effect there must be some adequate cause,
and for this he generally searches diligently till he can find and remove
it. But here, in the city of New York, is a population who claim to be as
intelligent as any on the Western continent, who have been for years
suffering from the effects of a vice in purse and person; who have paid
and are paying every year large sums of money on account of it; who
witness every day some broken constitution or ruined character resulting
from it, and who yet have never thought of seeking out the cause! Is it
now too late to enlist your sympathies in the undertaking?
Hence we conclude that propriety, expediency, public safety, private
interest, and common sense demand an investigation like this now submitted
to the reader. And what is the argument brought forward to oppose it? The
world's scorn--"this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its
deformed weakness." But is not this scorn powerless against the array of
favoring motives? Will it stand the test of comparison with any one of
them, much less of all? Is not its influence lost when its real character
is known? The reckless carelessness which has suffered a growing vice to
increase and multiply, which has permitted a deadly Upas-tree to take root
and blossom in the community until its poisonous exhalations threaten
universal infection; which has, by its actual indifference, fostered vice,
promoted seduction, perpetuated disease, and entailed death; shall this
deformed weakness now raise its trembling hands, and exhibit its tottering
frame, and lift its puny voice to forbid an examination into the sources
of the danger? Has not the finger of this scorn too long forbid the search
for truth? Has not the hour arrived when truth will speak trumpet-tongued,
and when her voice must be heard?
Now the question will arise, Has the world's indifference produced these
evils? Undoubtedly it has, and in the following manner: Laws have been
placed upon the statute-book declaring prostitutes, and houses of
prostitution, and all who live by such means, illegal and immoral. There
the law yet stands. At uncertain intervals some poor and friendless woman
is arrested as a vagrant, and, to appease the offended majesty of law, she
is sent to prison, a scapegoat for five thousand of her class. It also
sometimes happens that another woman equally guilty, but with money or
influence, is arrested at the same time and for the same offense, and
before she reaches the prison walls a legal quibble has been raised and
she is free. Is there no culpable indifference in this? Houses of
prostitution are proscribed by law. How many of them are ever indicted,
or, if indicted, how many are suppressed? This, too, is owing to criminal
neglect, and it is aggravated by the injurious effects arising from the
mere circumstance of allowing a law to exist, and making no efforts to
enforce it. The character of a people is judged, not by the laws that are
made, but by the strictness with which those that do exist are enforced
and observed. In regard to the first, there may be exhibited an acute
perception of an existing evil, and a desire to reform it by legislation;
but a second glance may reveal no wish to make this legislation effective.
In the special matter of prostitution, the opinion is expressed elsewhere
that prohibitory laws are worse than useless, and in the experience of New
York City there is nothing to shake that opinion, notwithstanding the fact
that the efforts made to enforce them are so "few and far between." Had
existing laws been more vigorously enforced, their inefficiency would long
since have been much better understood than it now is, and people would
not have rested under the delusion that every thing necessary has been
done.
There are yet other cases of culpable indifference. These same proscribed
houses of prostitution are suffered to exist uncontrolled, and to spread
disease and increase crime and vagrancy in all parts of the city. It has
been generally conceded that they can not be suppressed. What effort has
been made to hold in check their baneful influence? None--literally none.
The statesman has looked on appalled at an evil of whose magnitude he
could form no correct idea; the clergyman has hesitated to encounter those
who he judged would not respectfully receive his admonitions; the masses
of society have shrunk from considering a subject which was repugnant and
distasteful. Is there no guilty indifference in this? There can be but one
answer to this query; but one opinion as to the share this general apathy
has had in fostering the evil.
To substitute for this apathy a healthy action is the object of this
investigation. It is but the means to an end. In themselves, as mere
matters of information, the facts and deductions presented in the
following pages can do nothing but demonstrate the necessity of exertion;
but of this necessity they do afford overwhelming demonstration.
Thus much for the general arguments as to the necessity of a work of this
nature. There are other special and local causes which led to its
accomplishment in the present form.
"The Governors of the Alms-House of the City and County of New York," or,
as they are more generally known, "The Ten Governors," is a body called
into existence by an act of the State Legislature passed April 6, 1849,
specially to take charge of the vagrant and pauper institutions of the
city. The present members of the Board are the following well-known
citizens:[1]
C. GODFREY GUNTHER, Esq., _President_.
ISAAC J. OLIVER, Esq., _Secretary_.
Washington Smith, Esq.[2]
Anthony Dugro, Esq.[3]
Cornelius V. Anderson, Esq.
Isaac Townsend, Esq.
Daniel F. Tiemann, Esq.
Joseph S. Taylor, Esq.
P. G. Moloney, Esq.
Benjamin F. Pinckney, Esq.
At the time these investigations commenced two other prominent men were
also members of the organization, Hon. Edward C. West (now Surrogate of
the city) and Simeon Draper, Esq. Both of these gentlemen had served as
President of the Board of Governors with honor to themselves and
satisfaction to their colleagues and the public; both took a lively
interest in the projected inquiry, and to both am I indebted for much
valuable assistance.
The act establishing the Board of Governors assigned to them, with their
other duties, _the medical care of all persons who had contracted
infectious diseases in the practice of debauchery, and who required
charitable aid to restore them to health_. The result was that a very
large number of persons, both male and female, chargeable to the citizens
of New York through the medium of the institutions on Blackwell's Island,
came under their cognizance, and they became convinced that some measures
were necessary in connection therewith.
Individual members had held this opinion for some time before any official
action was taken, and foremost among such was Governor Isaac Townsend.
This gentleman was one of the originally appointed Governors, and has been
connected with the Board by re-election ever since--a circumstance which
made him perfectly acquainted with all the workings of the present system,
and to him the public is indebted for the conception of this undertaking.
For years has he labored to bring about this result, with an indomitable
energy and perseverance equaled only by his known benevolence and honesty
of purpose. He frequently made the practicability of such a measure the
subject of conversation with the gentleman who preceded me as Resident
Physician of Blackwell's Island, and, on my appointment (1853), the
subject was again urged by him; nor could I be unaware of its importance.
No official action was taken until the commencement of the year 1855. At
that time Mr. Townsend was President of the Board, and one of his first
acts in that capacity was to submit a list of interrogatories on the
subject, which were adopted and transmitted to me. I transcribe them from
the Minutes of the Board:
"At a meeting of the Board of Governors of the Alms-House, held
January 23, 1855, the following interrogatories were presented by the
President:
"1. What proportion of the inmates of the institutions on Blackwell's
Island under your medical charge are, in your opinion, directly or
indirectly suffering from syphilis?
"2. Are, or are not, the number of such inmates steadily on the
increase?
"3. Do not patients in the different institutions, particularly in the
Penitentiary Hospital, often leave before the disease is cured, so
that they are liable to infect other persons after their departure?
"4. Are not the offspring of parents affected with constitutional
syphilis subject to many diseases of like character, which cause them
to become a charge upon the city for long periods of time, and often
for life?
"5. What are your views in reference to the best means of checking and
decreasing this disease, and what plan, in your opinion, could be
adopted to relieve New York City of the enormous amount of misery and
expense caused by syphilis?
"6. You will reply in full to the above queries at the earliest
possible date.
"_Resolved_, That a copy of the above be sent to the Resident
Physician, Blackwell's Island."
To reply to these questions, especially to the fifth, I discovered that it
would be requisite to extend my investigations beyond the limits of the
institutions on Blackwell's Island. This idea was communicated to
President Townsend, who joined me in appreciating the necessity of such a
movement. He also was the means of interesting Mayor Wood and other
officers of the city in the investigation as subsequently carried on,
while his continued exertions and earnest support aided me generally in
the prosecution of the labor, and merit my most sincere and grateful
acknowledgments.
The steps thus taken are fully detailed in the following letter to the
Board of Governors, that letter, or preliminary report, having been called
for in connection with the reports from the Medical Board of Bellevue
Hospital, and from the Resident Physician of Randall's Island, which will
be found, _in extenso_, in Chapter XXXVII. of this work:[4]
"ISAAC TOWNSEND, Esq., _President of the Board of Governors_.
"DEAR SIR,--In reply to your letter asking for answers to certain
interrogatories on the subject of prostitution and its diseases, I
have to state that I am not prepared to report, nor can I do so for
some considerable length of time to come.
"Had I confined myself to simply answering the queries propounded as
regards the institutions under my medical charge, simply given you the
gross numbers, with the percentages of those who have suffered or are
now suffering from venereal disease, such reply could have been sent
to you long ago. A report of this kind from this department would have
been looked upon by the public at large as containing the history of
nearly all the prostitution in the city, and particularly would a
majority of the public have believed that nineteen twentieths of the
disease resulting from prostitution found its home here. Such is not
the fact. Great as is the number of prostitutes annually sent here,
and enormous as is the number of cases of venereal disease yearly
treated here, yet these compose but a small fraction of the sum total
actually existing in this city. There are but few more prostitutes on
the island than are to be found on the same number of acres in certain
portions of the city; and as for the venereal disease, why, gentlemen,
the island has the advantage. It is the least dangerous locality.
"Believing these to be facts, I could not bring myself to think that
any practical good would be accomplished by giving you the statistics
of these institutions alone. It would have been merely doing what has
been done before, and would have yielded no additional information for
your guidance. But it appeared to me that the time had come when your
attention might be solicited to the various facts attending the
aggregate prostitution of the city; for, despite all our prohibitory
laws, it is a fact which can not be questioned or denied that this
vice is attaining a position and extent in this community which can
not be viewed without alarm. It has more than kept pace with the
growth of our city. Unlike the vice of a few years since, it no longer
confines itself to secrecy and darkness, but boldly strides through
our most thronged and elegant thoroughfares, and there, in the broad
light of the sun, it jostles the pure, the virtuous, and the good. It
is in your gay streets, and in your quiet, home-like streets; it is
in your squares, and in your suburban retreats and summer resorts; it
is in your theatres, your opera, your hotels; nay, it is even
intruding itself into the private circles, and slowly but steadily
extending its poison, known but to few, and entirely unsuspected by
the majority of our citizens. The whole machinery of the law has been
turned against these females without success; its only result having
been a resolve, on their part, to confront society with the charge of
harsh, cruel, and unjust treatment.
"From these considerations, I felt it my duty to obtain all the facts
which could possibly be collected having any relation to the vice in
question, assured that you were desirous of taking a comprehensive
view of it; and hence the resolve, if possible, to trace to the
fountain-head prostitution and its attendant diseases, so as to be
enabled to bring the subject before you in a form which should exhibit
it in its proper colors and dimensions.
"The first step in this investigation was to obtain ample and reliable
information of the extent of the vice as it exists outside of these
departments--a step which would have been beyond my power alone. From
the bold and reformatory stand which his honor Mayor Wood had taken in
regard to many matters connected with our city government, it was
believed that he would render his assistance if convinced of the
propriety and prospective usefulness of the investigation, and the
result of an application by President Isaac Townsend to his honor
fully justified the correctness of this supposition. He was found not
only willing to aid in this great work, but fully alive to its
necessity and importance. The plan adopted to forward the inquiry was
to take a census of the city, so far as regards prostitution,
including the number of houses of prostitution; the number of
prostitutes; the causes which led them to become such; their ages,
habits, birth-places, early history, education, religious instruction,
occupation, etc., and which census is now being taken by the Chief of
Police, George W. Matsell, Esq., and the Captains of Police.
"Simultaneously with this, inquiries are also being prosecuted
concerning the extent of venereal disease in New York, which will
afford interesting information. This, of course, will be done without
individual exposure, nor will the report, when completed, assume the
form of a guide-book by which persons can find houses of ill fame. I
am desirous of obtaining the aggregate facts of the vice, and shall be
cautious to take no steps toward gratifying a prurient curiosity or
lacerating a rankling wound.
"When these facts are before you, they will be their own argument for
the necessity of action.
"I do not trouble you on this occasion with any remarks upon the
deadly nature of the venereal poison, but when you are informed as to
the facilities for its diffusion will be the proper time to do so.
Neither would it be consistent with this stage of the inquiry to enter
into any discussion as to the plans that could be adopted in
mitigation of the vice; for although prohibitory measures have failed
to suppress, or even check it, yet, until its full extent is known, I
do not imagine that you would deem it prudent to attempt to grapple a
monster whose strength was not fully ascertained.
"You perceive that to obtain all the information necessary on this
matter will be a work requiring both time and labor, and I
respectfully ask your forbearance, with the assurance that I will lay
the result of my inquiries before you at the earliest possible
opportunity, and with the hope that the magnitude and importance of
the subject will be an apology for the time to which it is necessarily
protracted.
"I am, sir, yours, very respectfully,
"WILLIAM W. SANGER, _Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island_."
To aid the police officers in the duty of taking the census alluded to
above, a schedule of questions was prepared.[5] This was submitted to the
Board of Governors by Governor Townsend, and a resolution was adopted at
their meeting of October 23d, 1855, sanctioning the plan adopted, and
authorizing him to have a sufficient number of copies printed. The mayor,
the district attorney, the chief of police, and the captains of the
several districts, willingly and zealously co-operated with Governor
Townsend and myself, and every possible exertion was used to obtain
accurate and extensive information. It became my duty to assist the
officers in the execution of their task, and I am thus enabled to speak
with certainty as to the authenticity of the statistics given, which were
mainly collected _under my own observation_.
I gladly avail myself of the present opportunity to record my obligations
for services rendered by his honor Fernando Wood, Mayor of the city of New
York; George W. Matsell, Esq., Chief of Police; and to the Captains of
Police in the different wards of the city, namely,
Capt. Michael Halpin, 1st ward.
" James Leonard, 2d "
" James A. P. Hopkins, 3d "
" J. Murray Ditchett, 4th "
" Daniel Carpenter, 5th "
" Joseph Dowling, 6th "
" Edward Letts, 7th "
" Charles S. Turnbull, 8th "
" Abraham Ackerman, 9th "
" George W. Norris, 10th "
" Peter Squires, 11th "
" Galen T. Porter, 12th "
" John E. Russel, 13th "
" David Kissner, 14th "
" George W. Dilks, 15th "
" John D. M'Kee, 16th "
" J. W. Hartt, 17th "
" George W. Walling, 18th "
" Francis J. Twomey, 19th "
" Thomas Hannegan, 20th "
" Francis C. Speight, 21st "
" Daniel Witter, 22d "
To Captains Halpin, Hopkins, Ditchett, Carpenter, Dowling, Letts,
Turnbull, Kissner, and Dilks, in whose wards is found the greatest amount
of prostitution, and upon whom fell the largest share of labor, I am more
particularly indebted.
The necessary particulars were finally obtained, and are embodied in
Chapters XXXII. to XXXVII. of this work, but there was still an important
point to determine, namely, what had been done elsewhere, and what was the
result of such action, to check prostitution and diminish the ravages of
venereal disease. The Continent of Europe presented a field for this
inquiry, and to it I turned for the information required, which is given
in the various chapters devoted to the several countries in such a form as
to show the measures which have been taken, the effect, and the causes
which led to legislative interference, contrasted with those other parts
of the world where, as yet, no remedial plans have been tried,
notwithstanding the necessity which calls for them.
The reader is now in possession of the facts which led to this inquiry. Is
it too much to ask his attention to the analysis and exhibition of
prostitution as it is at the present time, he being well assured that no
assertions will be made that are not supported by good authority, nor any
conclusions drawn from doubtful premises?
So far as New York alone is concerned, the evil is known to a large
portion of her citizens, although its ramifications are but very
imperfectly understood; and the endeavor will be to present all possible
information on the matter, and to give a truthful, unexaggerated picture
of the depravity. Disagreeable as this must be from the nature of the
task, it is hopeful from a belief that the result will tend to public
good.
One of the most painfully interesting branches of the inquiry is that
relating to the ages of the unfortunate women. Their number includes many
who are but mere children; who but recently knelt at a mother's side, and
in infantile accents breathed a prayer to the Almighty; who but recently
sprang with eager, joyous bound to the returning footsteps of a father;
who, in a happy and innocent home, have but recently given promise of a
bright and virtuous life. Therein are also included many who were deprived
by death of their natural protectors, and who, thus left unwatched and
uncared for, have fallen before the destroyer ere yet the age of womanhood
was reached.
The places of their birth form an interesting subject for consideration.
In this land the frigid North and sunny South, the busy East and fertile
West have each contributed their quota, while foreign countries have sent
large numbers to swell the mournful aggregate.
The most useful portion of the subject will be found, it is imagined, in
replies to the question, "What was the cause of your becoming a
prostitute?" These tend to expose the concealed vices of mankind, and to
prove that many of the unfortunate victims are "more sinned against than
sinning." Among the reasons assigned for a deviation from the paths of
virtue are some which tell of man's deceit; others, where the machinations
employed to effect the purpose raise a blush for humanity; others, where a
wife was sacrificed by the man who had sworn before God and in the
presence of men to protect her through life; others, where parents have
urged or commanded this course, and are now living on the proceeds of
their children's shame, or where an abuse of parental authority has
produced the same effect; and others still, where women, already depraved,
have been the means of leading their fellow-women to disgrace. A bare
allusion to these wrongs is sickening; but, while the gangrene of
prostitution is rapidly extending through society, it becomes an
imperative duty to examine its causes completely and impartially.
Another prolific source of female depravity will be exhibited by the
several tables showing the description of employment pursued, and the
wages received by women previous to their fall, and it will be a question
for the political economist to decide how far mere business considerations
should be an apology on the part of employers for a reduction in their
rates of remuneration, and whether the saving of a small percentage on
wages is not more than counterbalanced by the enormous amount of taxation
enforced on the public at large to defray the expenses incurred on account
of a system of vice which is the direct result, in many cases, of
insufficient compensation for honest labor.
In conclusion, it must not be assumed that the information collected from
two thousand women in New York City relates to _all_ the prostitutes
therein. The many difficulties surrounding the investigation, and
especially the secrecy to which prohibitory laws have driven this class of
persons, rendered the task impossible; but, from the best information that
could be obtained of those whose knowledge of the vice was derived from
actual experience, it is imagined that the replies represent about two
fifths of the total number.[6] They are presented with full confidence in
their general authenticity, and may be very reasonably concluded to offer
a fair average of the whole. They unquestionably exhibit an appalling
amount of depravity and consequent wretchedness, with but very few
redeeming features, and present mournful subjects for reflection to all
classes, with forcible arguments for remedial measures. Without this end
in prospect it would have been scarcely justifiable, at least in a moral
point of view, to institute this inquiry or make these disclosures; but it
certainly may be reasonably inferred that many will feel sufficient
interest in the advance of virtue to aid in the mitigation of this
enormous vice which threatens all social relations; which has already
introduced physical suffering into so many families; and the influence of
which, increasing in a direct ratio to its existence, will very probably
extend its malignant poison, mental and bodily, into all ranks and classes
of the community. The necessity for action is apparent, but its successful
consummation must rest with the public at large, who have the bane
exhibited before them in its actual power, and the necessity of an
antidote demonstrated from positive facts, and not deduced from a mere
arbitrary theory.
If some antidote be applied, even though a partial one, it will be a
satisfaction to reflect that the investigations have not been profitless,
nor the labor in vain.
HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.
[If the reader has not already perused the Introduction to this
volume, he is advised to do so at once, as therein are stated the
reasons which have called it forth, and extended it to the present
dimensions.]
CHAPTER I.
THE JEWS.
Prostitution coeval with Society.--Prostitutes in the Eighteenth
Century B.C.--Tamar and Judah.--Legislation of Moses.--Syrian
Women.--Rites of Moloch.--Groves.--Social Condition of Jewish
Harlots.--Description by Solomon.--The Jews of Babylon.
Our earliest acquaintance with the human race discloses some sort of
society established. It also reveals the existence of a marriage tie,
varying in stringency and incidental effects according to climate, morals,
religion, or accident, but every where essentially subversive of a system
of promiscuous intercourse. No nation, it is believed, has ever been
reported by a trustworthy traveler, on sufficient evidence, to have held
its women generally in common. Still there appear to have been in every
age men who did not avail themselves of the marriage covenant, or who
could not be bound by its stipulations, and their appetites created a
demand for illegitimate pleasures, which female weakness supplied. This
may be assumed to be the real origin of prostitution throughout the world,
though in particular localities this first cause has been assisted by
female avarice or passion, religious superstition, or a mistaken sense of
hospitality.
Accordingly, prostitution is coeval with society. It stains the earliest
mythological records. It is constantly assumed as an existing fact in
Biblical history. We can trace it from the earliest twilight in which
history dawns to the clear daylight of to-day, without a pause or a moment
of obscurity.
Our most ancient historical record is believed to be the Books of Moses.
According to them, it must be admitted that prostitutes were common among
the Jews in the eighteenth century before Christ. When Tamar, the
daughter-in-law of Judah, desired to defeat the cruel Jewish custom, and
to bear children, notwithstanding her widowhood, she "put her widow's
garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself,
and sat in an open place.... When Judah saw her he thought her a harlot,
for she had covered her face."[7] The Genesiacal account thus shows that
prostitutes, with covered faces, must have been common at the time. It is
the more valuable, as it furnishes the particulars of the transaction. To
keep up her disguise, Tamar demands a kid as her recompense. Judah agrees,
and leaves his "signet, and his bracelets, and his staff" as a pledge for
the kid. It appears to have been regarded as no dishonor to have commerce
with a prostitute, for Judah sends his friend the Adullamite, a man of
standing, to deliver the kid; but to defraud the unfortunate woman of her
ill-gotten gain must have been considered shameful, for, when Judah learns
that she has disappeared, he expresses alarm "lest we be shamed" for not
having paid the stipulated price. It may also be noticed, as an
illustration of the connection between prostitution and pure domestic
morals, that when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he
instantly orders her to be burned for having "played the harlot."
Four centuries afterward it fell to the lot of Moses to legislate on the
Jewish morals, no doubt sadly corrupted by their sojourn in Egypt. His
command is formal and emphatic: "Do not prostitute thy daughter, lest the
land fall to whoredom.... There shall be no whore of the daughters of
Israel."[8] He was equally decided in his condemnation of worse practices,
to which it would appear the Jews were much addicted.[9] He laid penalties
on uncleanness of every kind, and on fornication; but it would appear that
he rather confirmed than abrogated the customary right of a Jewish father
to sell his daughter as a concubine.[10] With the practical view of
improving the physical condition of the race, Moses guarded, by elaborate
laws, against improper and corrupt unions. Adultery and rape he punished
with death. The bride was bound, under pain of death by stoning, to prove
to the satisfaction not only of her husband, but of the tribe, that she
had been chaste to the day of her marriage.[11] A long list of relatives
were specified among whom it was illegal to intermarry. Furthermore, Moses
endeavored, with marked zeal, to check the progress of disease among both
sexes. Whether the maladies mentioned in Leviticus[12] were syphilitic in
their nature, it were difficult to say. Modern medical science admits
that, in hot climates, want of cleanliness and frequent amorous indulgence
will generate phenomena similar to the "issue" so frequently mentioned by
Moses. However this be, it is certain that both Jews and Jewesses were
subject to diseases apparently similar to the common gonorrhoea; that
these diseases were infectious; and that Moses, in reiterated injunctions,
forbade all sexual intercourse, and almost all association, with persons
thus afflicted. So earnest was his desire to eradicate the evil from the
people, that he extended his prohibition to women during the period of
their menstrual visitation.
Having done this much for the Jews, Moses appears to have connived at the
intercourse of their young men with foreign prostitutes. He took an
Ethiopian concubine himself. Syrian women, Moabites, Midianites, and other
neighbors of the Jews--many of them, as it appears, young and lovely, but
with debauched and vicious principles--established themselves as
prostitutes in the land of Israel. For many years, until the time of
Solomon, they were excluded from Jerusalem and the large cities. Driven to
the highways for refuge, they lived in booths and tents, where they
combined the trade of a peddler with the calling of a harlot. Unlike
Tamar, they did not veil the face. Reclining within the tent, with no more
clothing than the heat of the climate suggested, these dissolute girls
invited the complaisance of passengers who stopped to refresh their thirst
or replenish their wardrobe at their booth. So long as their practices
violated no law of nature, the prudent legislator pursued a tolerant
policy. Before long, however, abominable rites in honor of Moloch, Baal,
or Belphegor, were formally established by the "strange women" and their
male accomplices. Moloch, whose disgusting exactions we find in Phoenicia,
and at Carthage also, demanded male worship. The belly of the god's statue
was a furnace, in which a fierce fire was kindled and fed with animal
sacrifice; around it the priests and their proselytes danced to the sound
of music, sang wild songs, and debased themselves by practices of a
disgusting and unnatural character. Nor was the worship of Baal less
revolting. He too had his statues, in forms eminently calculated to excite
the animal passions, and surrounded by cool groves in which the most
shameless prostitution was carried on by all who would deposit an
offering on the altars of the idol. It would even seem, from several
passages in the Bible,[13] that the participators in these infamies were
not invariably human beings. Against such enormities the wrath of Moses
and his successors was aroused, on hygienic as well as moral and religious
grounds. Participation in the rites of Moloch was punished with death.[14]
Aaron's grandson did not hesitate to commit a double homicide to mark the
Divine abhorrence of the daughters of Midian; and Moses himself, warned by
the frightful progress of disease among the male Jews, struck at its roots
by exterminating every female Midianite among his captives, save the
virgins only.
An express command forbade the establishment of groves near the Jewish
temples, evidently on account of the convenience such shady retreats
afforded to prostitutes. Yet on various occasions in the history of Israel
we find accounts of the destruction of such groves, and of the statues of
the gods in whose honor human nature was defiled.[15] Solomon, whose
wisdom was singularly alloyed with sensuality, not only set the example of
inordinate lust, keeping, it is said, seven hundred wives and three
hundred concubines, but repealed the wise restrictions of his predecessors
in regard to prostitutes, allowing them to exercise their calling within
the city of Jerusalem. They multiplied so fast that the prophets speak of
them wandering on all the hills, and prostituting themselves under every
tree, and at a later date they even invaded the Temple, and established
their hideous rites in its courts. That noble edifice had become, in the
time of Maccabees, a mere brothel _plenum scortantium cum
meretricibus_.[16]
It is, however, apparent, notwithstanding the severe ordinances of the
Jewish legislators, that prostitutes were a recognized class, laboring
under no hopeless ban. Jephtha, the son of a prostitute, became none the
less chief of Israel; and some commentators have contended that the
retreat to which he condemned his daughter was simply the calling of her
grandmother. Joshua's spies slept openly in the house of the harlot Rahab,
whose service to Israel was faithfully requited by the amnesty granted to
her family, and the honorable residence allotted to her in Judæa. Samson
chose the house of a harlot to be his residence at Gaza; his fatal
acquaintance with another harlot, Delilah, is the leading trait of his
story. Even Solomon did not disdain to hear the rival wranglings of a
pair of harlots, and to adjudicate between them. Prostitution was in fact
legally domiciled in Judæa at a very early period, and never lost the
foothold it had gained. Of the manner in which it was carried on, an idea
may be formed from the very vivid picture in Proverbs:[17]
"For at the window of my house,
I looked through my casement,
And beheld among the simple ones,
I discerned among the youths,
A young man void of understanding,
Passing through the streets near her (the strange woman's) corner;
And he went the way to her house,
In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night;
And, behold, there met him a woman
With the attire of a harlot, and subtile of heart.
She is loud and stubborn;
Her feet abide not in her house:
Now she is without, now in the streets,
And lieth in wait at every corner.
So she caught him, and kissed him,
And with an impudent face said unto him,
I have peace-offerings with me;
This day have I paid my vows.
Therefore came I forth to meet thee,
Diligently to seek thy face,
And I have found thee.
I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry,
With carved works, with linen of Egypt.
I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
Aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning:
Let us solace ourselves with loves. * * *
With her much fair speech she caused him to yield,
With the flattering of her lips she forced him.
He goeth after her straightway,
As an ox goeth to the slaughter,
Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks."
That prostitution continued to be practiced generally and openly until the
destruction of the old Jewish nation, the language of the Biblical
prophets does not permit us to doubt. It may be questioned whether it
ever assumed more revoltingly public forms in any other country. The
Babylonish conquest must have changed the parts, without altering the
performance. At Babylon, the Jewish maidens, whose large, expressive eyes,
voluptuous mouth, slender and graceful figure, with well-developed bust
and limbs, were frequently the theme of ancient poets, peopled the houses
of prostitution, and ministered to the lusts of the nobles. Nor even after
the return to Jerusalem was the evil extirpated. It was to a prostitute
that Christ uttered the memorable sentence, "Her sins are forgiven because
she loved much."
CHAPTER II.
EGYPT, SYRIA, AND ASIA MINOR.
Egyptian Courtesans.--Festival of Bubastis.--Morals in Egypt.--
Religious Prostitution in Chaldæa.--Babylonian Banquets.--
Compulsory Prostitution in Phoenicia.--Persian Banquets.
Before passing to the subject of prostitution in Greece, a glance at
Egypt, and those nations of Asia which seem to have preceded Greece in
civilization, may not be out of place.
Egypt was famous for her courtesans before the time of Herodotus. Egyptian
blood runs warm; girls are nubile at ten. Under the Pharaohs, if ancient
writers are to be believed, there existed a general laxity of moral
principle, especially among young females.[18] Their religion was only too
suggestive. The deities Isis and Osiris were the types of the sexes. A
statue of the latter, a male image, made of gold, was carried by the
maidens at festivals, and worshiped by the whole people. Nor were the
rites of Isis more modest. "At the festival at Bubastis," says Herodotus,
"men and women go thither in boats on the Nile, and when the boats
approach a city they are run close to the shore. A frantic contest then
begins between the women of the city and those in the boats, each abusing
the other in the most opprobrious language, and the women in the boats
conclude the performance by lascivious dances, in the most undisguised
manner, in sight of the people, and to the sound of flutes and other
musical instruments."[19] There is little reason to doubt that the
temples, like those of Baal, were houses of prostitution on an extensive
scale. Herodotus remarks significantly that a law in Egypt forbade sexual
intercourse within the walls of a temple, and exacted of both sexes that
intercourse should be followed by ablution before the temple was
entered.[20]
Where piety required such sacrifices, it is not surprising that public
morals were loose. It was not considered wholly shameful for an Egyptian
to make his living by the hire of his daughter's person, and a king is
mentioned who resorted to this plan in order to discover a thief. Such was
the astonishing appetite of the men, that young and beautiful women were
never delivered to the embalmer until they had been dead some days, a
miserable wretch having been detected in the act of defiling a
recently-deceased virgin![21] Of course, in such a society, there was no
disgrace in being a prostitute. The city of Naucratis owed its wealth and
fame to the beauty of its courtesans, whose reputation spread throughout
Europe, and was much celebrated in Greece. Rhadopis, a Thracian by birth,
led the life of a prostitute in Egypt with such success, that she not only
bought her own freedom from the slave-dealer who had taken her there on
speculation, but, if the Egyptians are to be believed, built a pyramid
with her savings. A large portion of her story is doubtless mythical, but
enough remains to warrant the opinion that she was, though a prostitute, a
wealthy and highly considered person.
In Chaldæa, too, religion at first connived at, and then commanded
prostitution. Every Babylonian female was obliged by law to prostitute
herself once in her life in the temple of the Chaldæan Venus, whose name
was Mylitta.[22] Herodotus appears to have seen the park and grounds in
which this singular sacrifice was made. They were constantly filled with
women with strings bound round their hair. Once inside the place, no woman
could leave it until she had paid her debt, and had deposited on the altar
of the goddess the fee received from her lover. Some, who were plain,
remained there as long as three years; but, as the grounds were always
filled with a troop of voluptuaries in search of pleasure, the young, the
beautiful, the high-born seldom needed to remain over a few minutes. This
strange custom is mentioned by the prophet Baruch, who introduces one of
the women reproaching her neighbor that she had not been deemed worthy of
having her girdle of cord burst asunder by any man.[23] Similar statements
are made by Strabo and other ancient writers. At the time of Alexander
the Great the demoralization had reached a climax. Babylonian banquets
were scenes of unheard-of infamies. When the meal began, the women sat
modestly enough in presence of their fathers and husbands; but, as the
wine went round, they lost all restraint, threw off one garment after
another, and enacted scenes of glaring immodesty. And these were the
ladies of the best families.[24]
The Mylitta of Chaldæa became Astarte in Phoenicia, at Carthage, and in
Syria. Nothing was changed but the name; the voluptuous rites were
identical. In addition to the forced prostitution in the temples, however,
the Phoenicians and most of their colonies maintained for many years the
practice of requiring their maidens to bestow their favors on any
strangers who visited the country. Commercial interest, no doubt, had some
share in promoting so scandalous a custom. On the high shores of
Phoenicia, as at Carthage and in the island of Cyprus, the traveler
sailing past in his boat could see beautiful girls, arrayed in light
garments, stretching inviting arms to him.
Originally the sum paid by the lover was offered to the goddess, but
latterly the girls kept it, and it served to enhance their value in the
matrimonial market. In some places the girl was free if she chose to
abandon her hair to the goddess, but Lucian notes that this was an
uncommonly rare occurrence.
Very similar were the customs of the Lydians and their successors in
empire, the early Persians. Their Venus was named Mithra, in honor of whom
festivals were given at which human nature was horribly outraged. Fathers
and daughters, sons and mothers, husbands and wives sat together at the
table, while voluptuous dances and music inflamed their senses, and when
the wine had done its work, a promiscuous combat of sensuality began which
lasted all night. Details of such scenes must be left to other works, and
veiled in a learned tongue.[25]
CHAPTER III.
GREECE.
Mythology.--Solonian Legislation.--Dicteria.--Pisistratidæ.--Lycurgus
and Sparta.--Laws on Prostitution.--Case of Phryne.--Classes of
Prostitutes.--Pornikon Telos.--Dress.--Hair of Prostitutes.--The
Dicteriades of Athens.--Abode and Manners.--Appearance of Dicteria.--
Laws regulating Dicteria.--Schools of Prostitution.--Loose
Prostitutes.--Old Prostitutes.--Auletrides, or Flute-players.--
Origin.--How hired.--Performances.--Anecdote of Arcadians.--Price of
Flute-players.--Festival of Venus Periboa.--Venus Callipyge.--Lesbian
Love.--Lamia.--Hetairæ.--Social Standing.--Venus and her Temples.--
Charms of Hetairæ.--Thargelia.--Aspasia.--Hipparchia.--Bacchis.--
Guathena and Guathenion.--Lais.--Phryne.--Pythionice.--Glycera.--
Leontium.--Other Hetairæ.--Biographers of Prostitutes.--Philtres.
The Greek mythology supposes obviously a relaxed state of public morals.
What period in the history of the nation it may be assumed to reflect is,
however, by no means certain. It is not reasonable to suppose that the
Homeric poems were composed for immodest audiences, and it would perhaps
be fairer to lay the blame of the mythological indecencies at the door of
the age which polished and improved upon them, rather than of that which
is entitled to the credit of their conception in the rough.
Our first reliable information regarding the morals of the Greek women,
passing over, for the present, the legislation ascribed to Lycurgus, is
found in the ordinances of Solon. Draco is supposed to have affixed the
penalty of death indiscriminately to rape, seduction, and adultery. It has
been conjectured that the safety-valve used at that time, ordinary
prostitution being unknown, was a system of religious prostitution in the
temples, borrowed from and analogous to the plan already described. This,
however, is mere conjecture. Solon, while softening the rigors of the
Draconian code, by law formally established houses of prostitution at
Athens, and filled them with female slaves. They were called _Dicteria_,
and the female tenants _Dicteriades_. Bought with the public money, and
bound by law to satisfy the demands of all who visited them, they were in
fact public servants, and their wretched gains were a legitimate source of
revenue to the state. Prostitution became a state monopoly, and so
profitable that, even in Solon's lifetime, a superb temple, dedicated to
Venus the courtesan, was built out of the fund accruing from this source.
The fee charged, however, appears to have been small.[26] In Solon's time,
the Dicteriades were kept widely apart from the Athenian women of repute.
They were not allowed to mix in religious ceremonies or to enter the
temples. When they appeared in the streets they were obliged to wear a
particular costume as a badge of infamy. They forfeited what rights of
citizenship they may have possessed in virtue of their birth. A procurer
or procuress who had been instrumental in introducing a free-born Athenian
girl to the Dicterion incurred the penalty of death. Nor was the law
content with branding with infamy prostitutes and their accomplices alone.
Their children were bastards; that is to say, they could not inherit
property, they could not associate with other youths, they could not
acquire the right of citizenship without performing some signal act of
bravery, they could not address the people in the public assemblies.
Finally, to complete their ignominy, they were exempt from the sacred duty
of maintaining their parents in old age.[27]
These regulations, for which Solon obtained the praise of Athenian
philosophers,[28] were not long maintained in force. Tradition imputed to
the profligacy of the Pisistratidæ a relaxation of the laws concerning
prostitutes. It was believed that the sons of Pisistratus not only gave to
the Dicteriades the freedom of the city, but allotted to them seats at
banquets beside the most respectable matrons, and, on certain days each
year, turned them into their father's beautiful gardens, and let loose
upon them the whole petulance of the Athenian youth.[29] The law against
procuresses was modified, a fine being substituted for death. "About the
same time," says the scandalous Greek chronicle, "the death-penalty for
adultery was also commuted for scourging."
Still, notwithstanding this falling off, it would appear that Athens was
more moral than her neighbors, Corinth and Sparta. The former, then the
most flourishing sea-port of Greece, was filled with a very low class of
prostitutes. No laws regulated the subject. Any female who chose could
open house for the accommodation of travelers and seamen, and, though
Corinth was yet far from the proverbial celebrity it afterward obtained
for its prostitutes, there is no doubt they bore a fearful proportion to
the aggregate population of the port. At Sparta the case was different. In
the system of legislation which bears the name of Lycurgus, the individual
was sacrificed to the state; the female to the male. Women were educated
for the sole purpose of bearing robust children. Virgins were allowed to
wrestle publicly with men. Girls were habited in a robe open at the
skirts, which only partially concealed the person in walking, whence the
Spartan women acquired an uncomplimentary name.[30] A Spartan husband was
authorized to lend his wife to any handsome man for the purpose of
begetting children. That these laws, the skillfully contrived appeals to
the sensual appetites, and the constant spectacle of nude charms, must
have led to a general profligacy among the female sex, is quite obvious.
Aristotle affirms positively that the Spartan women openly committed the
grossest acts of debauchery.[31] Hence it may be inferred that prostitutes
by profession were unnecessary at Sparta, at all events until a late
period of its history.
After the Persian wars, the subject of Athenian prostitution is revealed
in a clearer light. As a reaction from the looseness of the age of the
Pisistratidæ, the Solonian laws were reaffirmed and their severity
heightened. It has been imagined, from certain obscure passages in Greek
authors, that the courtesans formed several corporations, each of which
was responsible for the acts of all its members. They were liable to
vexatious prosecutions for such acts as inciting men to commit crime,
ruining thoughtless youths, fomenting treason against the state, or
committing impiety. Against such charges it was rarely possible to
establish a sound defense. If the accuser was positive, the Areopagus,
notoriously biased against courtesans, unhesitatingly condemned the
culprit to death, or imposed on her corporation a heavy fine. In this way,
says an old author, the state frequently contrived to get back from these
women the money they obtained from their lovers. Before the famous case of
Phryne, they were wholly at the mercy of their profligate associates. A
man only needed to threaten an accusation of impiety or the like to obtain
a receipt in full. Phryne, so long the favorite of the Athenians, was thus
accused of various vague offenses by a common informer named Euthias. Her
friend Bacchis fortunately persuaded Hyperides, the orator, to undertake
her case, and he softened the judges by exhibiting her marvelous beauty
in a moment of affected passion. "Henceforth," says the hetaira Bacchis to
Myrrhina, "our profits are secured by law."[32]
At this time, that is to say, at the height of Athenian prosperity, there
were four classes of women who led dissolute lives at Athens. The highest
in rank and repute were the _Hetairæ_, or kept women, who lived in the
best part of the city, and exercised no small influence over the manners
and even the politics of the state. Next came the _Auletrides_, or
flute-players, who were dancers as well. They were usually foreigners,
bearing some resemblance to the opera-dancers of the last century, and
they combined the most unblushing debauchery with their special calling.
The lowest class of prostitutes were the _Dicteriades_, already mentioned.
They were originally bound to reside at the Piræus, the sea-port of
Athens, some four miles from the city, and were forbidden to walk out by
day, or to offend the eyes of the public by open indecency. Lastly came
the _Concubines_, who were slaves owned by rich men with the knowledge and
consent of their wives, serving equally the passions of their master and
the caprices of their mistress. These all paid a tax to the state, called
_Pornikon Telos_, which was farmed out to speculators, who levied it with
proverbial harshness upon the unfortunate women. In the time of Pericles
the revenue from this source was large.
All classes, too, wore garments of many colors. The law originally
specified "flowered robes" as the costume of courtesans; but this leading
to difficulties, a farther enactment prohibited prostitutes from wearing
precious stuffs, such as scarlet or purple, or jewels. Thenceforth the
custom, which appears to have been general throughout the Greek cities and
colonies, prescribed cheap robes, with flowers or stripes of many colors
embroidered or painted on them. To this a part of the women added garlands
of roses. It was lawful in some cities for courtesans to wear light,
transparent garments; but at Sparta, as may be imagined, the reverse was
the rule, semi-nudity being the badge of virtuous women.[33]
Perhaps the most singular of the marks by which a Greek courtesan was
known was her hair. It is said that no law prescribed the habit; if so, it
must have been a sort of _esprit de corps_ which led all courtesans to
dye their hair of a flaxen or blonde color. Allusions to this custom
abound in the light literature of Greece. Frequently a flaxen wig was
substituted for the dyed locks. At a very late period in the history of
Greece, modest women followed the fashion of sporting golden hair. This
forms one of the subjects of reprimand addressed to the women of Greece by
the early Christian preachers.[34]
THE DICTERIADES, OR COMMON PROSTITUTES OF ATHENS.
This class approaches more nearly than any other to the prostitutes of our
day, the main difference being that the former were bound by law to
prostitute themselves when required to do so, on the payment of the fixed
sum, and that they were not allowed to leave the state. Their home, as
mentioned already, was properly at the port of Piræus. An open square in
front of the citadel was their usual haunt. It was surrounded with booths,
where petty trade or gambling was carried on by day. At nightfall the
prostitutes swarmed into the square. Some were noisy and obscene; others
quiet, and armed with affected modesty. When a man passed on his way from
the port to the city, the troop assailed him. If he resisted, coarse abuse
was lavished on him. If he yielded, there was the temple of Venus the
Courtesan close by, and there was the wall of Themistocles, under the
friendly shelter of either of which the bargain could be consummated. Were
the customer nice, the great dicterion was not far distant, and a score or
more of smaller rivals were even nearer at hand, as a well-known sign was
there to testify.
The Dicteria were under the control of the municipal police. The door was
open night and day, a bright curtain protecting the inmates from the eye
of the passer-by; and in the better class of establishments, a fierce dog,
chained in the vestibule, served as sentinel. At the curtain sat an old
woman, often a Thessalian and a pretended witch, who received the money
before admitting visitors. Originally the fee was an obolus[35]--about
three cents; but this attempt to regulate the value of a variable
merchandise was soon abandoned. Within, at night, the sounds of music,
revelry, and dancing might be constantly heard. The visitor was not kept
in suspense. The curtain passed, he was in full view of the dicteriades,
standing, sitting, or lying about the room; some engaged in smoothing
their blonde hair, some in conversation, some anointing themselves with
perfumery. The legal principle with regard to the dicteriades appears to
have been that they should conceal nothing; no doubt in contrast to the
irregular prostitutes, of whom something will be said presently. There was
no rule, however, forbidding the wearing of garments in the dicterion, but
the common practice appears to have been to dispense with them, or to wear
a light scarf thrown over the person. This custom was observed by day as
well as by night, and a visitor has described the girls in a large
dicterion as standing in a row, in broad daylight, without any robes or
covering.[36]
It seems that in later times any speculator had a right to set up a
dicterion on paying the tax to the state. An Athenian forfeited his right
of citizenship by so doing; but, as a popular establishment was very
lucrative, avaricious men frequently embarked in the business under an
assumed name. Comic writers have lashed these wretches severely. On paying
the tax to the state regularly, the _pornobosceion_, or master of the
house, acquired certain rights. The dicterion was an inviolable asylum, no
husband being allowed to pursue his wife, or the wife her husband, or the
creditor his debtor, within its walls. Public decency requires, says
Demosthenes, that men shall not be exposed in houses of prostitution.[37]
It was not, however, considered wholly shameful to frequent such places.
There appear to have been attached to these dicteria schools of
prostitution, where young women were initiated into the most disgusting
practices by females who had themselves acquired them in the same manner.
Alexis vigorously describes the frauds taught in these places,[38] while
there is a shocking significance in an expression of Athenæus--"You will
be well satisfied with the performance of the women in the dicteria."[39]
Besides these regular dicteriades, there were at Athens, as there have
been in every large city, a number of women who exercised the calling of
prostitutes, without properly belonging to any of the recognized classes.
They were sometimes called free dicteriades, sometimes she-wolves, and
also cheap hetairæ. Some were native Athenians who had been seduced and
abandoned, and who, led by stings of conscience and idleness to pursue
their career, had still an invincible repugnance to adopt the flowered
robe and yellow hair of the regular courtesan. They roamed the Piræus, and
even the streets of Athens, after dark, eking out a miserable subsistence
by the hardest of trades, and haunting the dark recesses of old houses or
the shade of trees. Others, again, were old hetairæ whose charms had
faded, and who sought a scanty subsistence where they were not known, and
shrank from encountering the eye of a lover where the friendly shade of
night would not hide the ravages of time. Others were the servants of
hotels and taverns, who were always expected to serve the caprices of
visitors.
All of these led a most miserable life. Now and then we hear of one or two
of them meeting a rich and inexperienced traveler, after which the heroine
of the exploit naturally ascended to the rank of hetaira; but, in general,
their customers were the lowest of the port people--sailors, fishermen,
farm-servants. Their price was a meal, a fish, a handful of fruit, or a
bottle of wine. One poor creature, who belonged to no class in particular,
but acquired some celebrity by being kept by the orator Ithatocles, was
named Didrachma because she offered her favors to the public generally for
two drachmas, about thirty-five cents.[40]
Perhaps the most curious fact in reference to these prostitutes is the
singular predominance of old women among them. It appears to have been
adopted as an invariable rule for this sort of courtesans to paint their
faces with a thick ointment, and it is even said that the great painters
of Greece did not disdain to beguile their leisure hours by thus improving
upon nature.[41] Of course, under this disguise, it was impossible to
distinguish a young face from an old one. An aged prostitute thus
bedizened would place herself at an open window with a sprig of myrtle in
her hand, with which she would beckon to people in the street. When a
customer was found, a servant would open the door and conduct him in
silence to the chamber of her mistress. Before entering he paid the sum
demanded, when he found himself in a room lighted only by a feeble glimmer
passing through the curtain, which now hung down over the window. In such
a twilight the most venerable old woman could not be distinguished from a
Venus.[42]
THE AULETRIDES, OR FLUTE-PLAYERS.
Female flute-players were a common accompaniment to an Athenian banquet.
The flute, which in modern times is played by men, was rarely seen in male
hands in Greece. Though the fable ascribed its invention to the god Pan,
and its development to the mythical king Midas, it was monopolized at a
very early period by women, who consoled themselves for the ravages it
wrought in their beauty by the power of fascination it imparted among a
people intensely musical. Flute-playing soon became an essential rite in
the service of certain deities. Ceres was invariably worshiped to the
sound of the flute. And when the Athenians had once tried the experiment
of listening to flute-players after dinner, they never would dine in
company without them.
Thebes appears to have been the native city of the earliest famous
flute-players,[43] but before long the superior beauty of the Asiatic
girls--Ionians and Phrygians--drove their Theban rivals out of the field.
Dancing was combined with flute-playing, and in this art the Asiatics bore
the palm from the world. During the golden days of Greece, numbers of
beautiful girls were every year imported into Athens from Miletus and the
other Ionic ports in Asia Minor, just as in more modern times a similar
trade was carried on between Trebizond and Constantinople.
An Athenian hired his flute-players as a modern European noble hires his
band. They charged so much for their musical performances, reserving the
right of accepting presents in the course of the evening. Some were
singers as well as performers. At each course a new air was played,
increasing in tenderness and expression as the wine circulated. It is
stated that the sounds of a good flute-concert excited people to such a
state of phrensy that they would take off their rings and jeweled
ornaments to throw them to the performers: those who have witnessed a
triumphant operatic soirée can readily believe the statement. But the fair
artists did not wholly rely on their music for their success. The
performer danced while she played, accompanying every note with a
harmonious movement of the body. There is no doubt these dances were in
the highest degree immoral and lascivious. Athenæus tells a story of an
embassy from Arcadia waiting upon King Antigonus, and being invited to
dinner. After the hunger of the venerable guests was appeased, Phrygian
flute-players were introduced. They were draped in semi-transparent veils,
arranged with much coquetry. At the given signal they began to play and
dance, balancing themselves alternately on each foot, and gradually
increasing the rapidity of their movements. As the performance went on,
the dancers uncovered their heads, then their busts; lastly, they threw
the veils aside altogether, and stood before the wondering embassadors
with only a short tunic around the loins. In this state they danced so
indecently that the aged Arcadians, excited beyond control, forgot where
they were, and rushed upon them. The king laughed; the courtiers were
shocked at such ill-breeding, but the dancers discharged the sacred duty
of hospitality.[44]
A flute-player who had achieved a success of this kind was enabled to
conclude a lucrative bargain for other performances. We find allusions to
fees as high as two talents (say $2500) and fifty pieces of gold,[45]
though these were evidently unusual charges. Many of the most fashionable
flute-players were slaves who had been brought to Greece by speculators.
They were commonly sold by auction at the dinner-table, when their owner
judged that the enthusiasm of the guests had attained the highest point.
An anecdote is told of one of the most esteemed names in Greek philosophy
in reference to this strange custom. He was dining with a party of young
men, when a youthful flute-player was introduced. She crept to the
philosopher's feet, and seemed to shelter herself from insult under the
shadow of his venerable beard; but he, a disciple of Zeno, spurned her,
and burst forth into a strain of moralizing. Piqued by the affront, the
girl rose, and played and danced with inimitable grace and pruriency. At
the close of the performance her owner put her up to auction, and one of
the first bidders was the philosopher. She was adjudged to another,
however, and the white-haired sage so far forgot his principles as to
engage in a fierce conflict with the victor for the possession of the
prize.[46] Hand to hand battles on these occasions were common in the best
society at Athens, and a flute-player in fashion made a boast of the riots
she had caused.[47] Of the fortunes realized by successful artists in this
line, an idea may be formed from the gorgeous presents made to the
Delphian oracle by flute-players, and from the fact that the finest houses
at Alexandria were inscribed with the names of famous Greek
auletrides.[48]
As might be inferred from the character of their dances, the auletrides
were capable of every infamy. Constantly breathing an atmosphere of
debauchery, and accustomed to the daily spectacle of nudities, they
naturally attained a pitch of amorous exaltation of which we, at the
present day, can hardly form an idea. They kept a cherished festival in
honor of Venus Peribasia, which was originally established by Cypselus of
Corinth. At that ceremony all the great flute-players of Greece assembled
to celebrate their calling. Men were not usually allowed to be present, a
regulation prompted perhaps by modesty, as the judgment of Paris was
renewed at the festival, and prizes were awarded for every description of
beauty. The ceremony was often mentioned as the Callipygian games; and a
sketch of a scene which took place at one of these reunions, contained in
a letter from a famous flute-player, justifies the appellation. The
banquet lasted from dark till dawn, with wines, perfumes, delicate viands,
songs, and music. An after-scene was a dispute between two of the guests
as to their respective beauty. A trial was demanded by the company, and a
long and graphic account is given of the exhibition, but modern tastes
will not allow us to transcribe the details.[49]
A knowledge of these scandalous scenes, it may be briefly observed, would
be worse than useless, were it not that they illustrate the life of Greek
courtesans; and, being performed under the sanction of religion and the
law, they throw no inconsiderable light on the real character of Greek
society. Their value may be best apprehended by trying to realize what the
effect would be if similar scenes occurred annually in some public edifice
in our large cities, under the auspices of the police, with the approval
of the clergy, and with the full knowledge of the best female society.
It has been suggested that these festivals were originated by, or gave
rise to, those enormous aberrations of the Greek female mind known to the
ancients as Lesbian love. There is, no doubt, grave reason to believe
something of the kind. Indeed, Lucian affirms that, while avarice prompted
common pleasures, taste and feeling inclined the flute-payers toward their
own sex. On so repulsive a theme it is unnecessary to enlarge.
Many flute-players seem to have been susceptible of lasting affections. In
the remains we have of the erotic works of the Greeks, several names are
mentioned as those of successful flute-players whose gains were consumed
by exacting lovers. It does not appear that they often, or ever, married.
The most famous of all the flute-players was Lamia, who, after being the
delight of Alexandria and of King Ptolemy for some fifteen or twenty
years, was taken with the city by Demetrius of Macedon, and raised to the
rank of his mistress. She was forty years of age at this time, yet her
skill was such that she ruled despotically her dissolute lover, and left a
memorable name in Greek history. The ancients asserted that she owed her
name, Lamia, which means a sort of vampire or bloodsucker, to the most
loathsome depravities. Her power was so great that, when Demetrius levied
a tax of some $250,000 on the city of Athens, he gave the whole to her, to
buy her soap, as he said. The Athenians revenged themselves by saying that
Lamia's person must be very dirty, since she needed so much soap to wash
it. But they soon found it to their interest to build a temple in her
honor, and deify her under the name of Venus Lamia.[50]
THE HETAIRÆ, OR KEPT WOMEN.
The Hetairæ were by far the most important class of women in Greece. They
filled so large a place in society that virtuous females were entirely
thrown into the shade, and it must have been quite possible for a chaste
Athenian girl, endowed with ambition, to look up to them, and covet their
splendid infamy. An Athenian matron was expected to live at home. She was
not allowed to be present at the games or the theatres; she was bound,
when she appeared in public, to be veiled, and to hasten whither she was
going without delay; she received no education, and could not share the
elevated thoughts or ideas of her husband; she had no right to claim any
warmth of affection from him, though he possessed entire control over
her.[51]
Now, to judge of the position into which this social system thrust the
female sex, one must glance at the mythology, or, to speak more correctly,
at the religious faith of the Greek people. It has been conjectured that
they derived their idea of Venus from the East. However this be, Venus was
certainly one of the earliest goddesses to whom their homage was paid.
Solon erected opposite his dicterion a temple to Venus Pandemos, or the
public Venus. In that temple were two statues: one of the goddess, the
other of a nymph, Pitho, who presided over persuasion; and the attitudes
and execution of the statues were such that they explained the character
without inscription. At this temple a festival was held on the fourth of
each month, to which all the men of Athens were invited. But Venus
Pandemos soon made way for newer and more barefaced rivals. Twenty temples
were raised in various cities of Greece to Venus the Courtesan. In one
author we find allusion made to Venus Mucheia, or the Venus of houses of
ill-fame. Another celebrates Venus Castnia, or the goddess of indecency.
Others honor Venus Scotia, the patroness of darkness; and Venus Derceto,
the guardian deity of street-walkers. More famous still was Venus
Divaricatrix, whose surname, derived, it is said by a father of the
Church, _a divaricatis cruribus_,[52] must be left in a learned tongue.
And still more renowned was Venus Callipyge, whose statue is at this day
one of the choice ornaments of one of the best European collections of
antiquities. It owed its charm to the marvelous beauty of the limbs, and
was understood to have been designed from two Syracusan sisters, whose
extraordinary symmetry in this particular had been noticed by a countryman
who surprised them while bathing. All these Venuses had temples, and
sacrifices, and priestesses. Their worship was naturally analogous to
their name, and consistent with their history. Their devotees were every
man in Greece. Yet it was in this society, trained to such spectacles, and
nurtured in such a creed, that matrons and maidens were taught to lead a
life of purity, seclusion, and self-sacrifice.
The consequence was obvious. While ignorance and forcible restraint
prevented the women from generally breaking loose, the men grew more and
more addicted to the society of hetairæ, and more liable to regard their
wives as mere articles of furniture. Nor was the anomaly without effect
upon the kept women. They alone of their sex saw the plays of Alexander
and Aristophanes; they alone had the _entrée_ of the studio of Phidias and
Apelles; they alone heard Socrates reason, and discussed politics with
Pericles; they alone shared in the intellectual movement of Greece. No
women but hetairæ drove through the streets with uncovered face and
gorgeous apparel. None but they mingled in the assemblages of great men
at the Pnyx or the Stoa. None but they could gather round them of an
evening the choicest spirits of the day, and elicit, in the freedom of
unrestrained intercourse, wit and wisdom, flashing fancy and burning
eloquence. What wonder that the Hetairæ should have filled so prominent a
part in Greek society! And how small a compensation to virtuous women to
know that their rivals could not stand by the altar when sacrifice was
offered; could not give birth to a citizen!
There are many reasons besides these why the contest was unequal.
Tradition reported several occasions on which hetairæ had rendered signal
service to the state. Leæna, for instance, the mistress of Harmodius, had
bitten off her tongue rather than reveal the names of her
fellow-conspirators. Recollections like these more than nullified the
nominal brand of the law. Again, every wise legislator saw the necessity
of encouraging any form of rational intercourse, in order to arrest the
startling progress which the most degrading of enormities was making in
Greece. When Alcibiades was openly courted by the first philosophers and
statesmen, it was virtue to applaud Aspasia. And besides, it can not be
questioned, in view of the Greek memoirs we possess, that many of the
leading hetairæ were women of remarkable mind, as well as unusual
attractions. Indeed, the leading trait in their history is their
intellectuality, as contrasted with other classes of dissolute women in
antiquity.[53] That trait can be best illustrated by referring to the
lives of a few of the more celebrated hetairæ.
A Milesian prostitute, named Thargelia, accompanied Xerxes on his invasion
of Greece. Some idea may be formed of the position in society occupied by
prostitutes from the fact that Xerxes employed this woman as negotiator
with the court of Thessaly, just as in later times modern ministers have
used duchesses. Thargelia married the King of Thessaly.
Fired by her success, another Milesian girl, named Aspasia, established
herself at Athens. She set up a house of prostitution, and peopled it with
the most lovely girls of the Ionic cities. But wherein she differed from
her rivals and predecessors was the prominence she gave to intellect in
her establishment. She lectured publicly, among her girls and their
visitors, on rhetoric and philosophy, and with such marked ability that
she counted among her patrons and lovers the first men of Greece,
including Socrates, Alcibiades, and Pericles. The last divorced his wife
in order to marry her, and was accused of allowing her to govern Athens,
then at the height of its power and prosperity. She is said to have
incited the war against Samos; and the principal cause of that against
Megara was believed to have been the rape, by citizens of Megara, of two
of Aspasia's girls. What a wonderful light these facts throw on Greek
society!
Enraged beyond control at her success, the virtuous women of Athens rose
against her. She was publicly insulted at the theatre; was attacked in the
street; and, as a last resort, was accused of impiety before the
Areopagus. Pericles, then in the decline of his power, and unable to save
his friends Phidias and Anaxagoras, appeared as her advocate. But on such
an occasion his eloquence failed him. He could only seize his beloved wife
in his arms, press her to his breast, and burst into tears in presence of
the court. The appeal succeeded; possibly the judges made allowance for
popular prejudice; at all events, Aspasia was acquitted and restored to
society. She lived to be the delight of a flour merchant, under whose roof
her lectures on philosophy were continued with undiminished success to the
day of her death.[54]
Her friend, and the inheritor of her mantle, Hipparchia, led an equally
remarkable life. She was an Athenian by birth, and of good family, but,
having heard the Cynic Crates speak, she declared to her parents that
nothing would restrain her from yielding herself to him. She kept her
word, and became the philosopher's mistress, in spite of his dirt, his
poverty, and his grossness. She is reported to have acquired great
reputation as a practical professor of the cynic philosophy. Having
engaged one day in a fierce discussion with a somewhat brutal philosopher
of a rival sect, the latter, by way of answer to a question she put,
violently exposed her person before the whole assembly. "Well," said she,
coolly, "what does that prove?" This woman was one of the most voluminous
and esteemed authors of her day.[55]
Bacchis, the mistress of the orator Hyperides, illustrates the character
of the Athenian kept woman from another point of view. She was extremely
beautiful, and gifted with a sweet disposition. One of her early admirers
had presented her with a necklace of enormous value. The first ladies of
Athens, and even foreign women of rank, coveted the precious trinket in
vain. She was in the height of her fame and charms when she heard the
orator Hyperides plead. Smitten on the spot, she became his mistress, and
observed a fidelity toward him which was neither usual with her class, nor
reciprocated by her lover. On one occasion, a rival announced that the
price of her complaisance would be the possession of the necklace of
Bacchis. The lover had the meanness to ask for it, and Bacchis gave it
without a word. Again: when all Athens knew that she was the mistress of
Hyperides, an officious friend came to tell her that her lover was at that
moment making love to another woman. Bacchis received the announcement
tranquilly. "What do you intend to do?" asked her visitor, with
impetuosity. "To wait for him," was the meek answer. She died very young,
and her lover partially atoned for his ill treatment by pronouncing a
splendid oration over her remains. Very few passages in Greek literature
are marked by such eloquent tenderness and genuine feeling as this
fragment of Hyperides.[56]
Gnathena, and her heir and successor, Gnathenion, were famous in their day
as wits; the biography of the first was written in verse by the poet
Machon.[57] She began life as the mistress of the comic poet Dyphiles, but
soon abandoned him to keep a sort of _table d'hôte_ for the wit and
fashion of Athens. The "best society" gathered around her board, and at
the close of the meal she sold herself by auction. Athenæus has chronicled
a number of her witty and sarcastic sayings, adding that the grace of her
elocution imparted a singular charm to every thing she said. Her protegée,
Gnathenion, grew up in time to receive the mantle which age was wresting
from the shoulders of Gnathena. An anecdote is preserved which throws some
light upon the profits of the calling of hetairæ. At the temple of Venus,
Gnathena and her protegée met an old Persian satrap, richly clothed in
purple, who was struck with the beauty of the latter, and demanded her
price. Gnathena answered, a thousand drachmas (about two hundred dollars).
The satrap exclaimed at such extortion, and offered five hundred,
observing that he would return again. "At your age," maliciously retorted
Gnathena, "once is too much," and turned on her heel. In her old age it
appears that Gnathena was reduced to the disgraceful calling which the
Greeks termed _hippopornos_.[58]
But the fame of these hetairæ is eclipsed by that of the only two kept
women who can rank with Aspasia--Lais and Phryne.
Lais was a Sicilian by birth. Like the Empress Catharine of Russia, she
was taken prisoner when her native city was captured, and sold as a slave.
The painter Apelles saw her carrying water from a well, and, struck with
the beauty of her figure, he bought her, and trained her in his own house.
This, again, is a striking picture. Fancy a leading modern painter
deliberately training a prostitute! It is to be presumed that Apelles
gathered round him the best society in Greece. Lais, when her education
was complete, was as remarkable for wit and information as for her
matchless figure and lovely face. Her master freed her, and established
her at Corinth, then in the height of its prosperity, and the largest
commercial emporium of Greece.
Corinth and the Corinthian prostitutes deserve particular notice. It
appears that almost every house in the place was, in fact, a house of
prostitution. There were regular schools where the art of debauchery was
taught, and frequent importations of young girls from Lesbos, Phoenicia,
and the Ægean Islands supplied them with pupils. Ancient erotic writers
are full of allusions to the danger of visiting Corinth; the proverb, _Non
cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum_, which most moderns have
erroneously conceived to refer to Lais alone, was, in fact, an adage
justified by the experience of merchants and sailors. It would be
incorrect, however, to compare Corinth with modern sea-ports, where the
natural demands of sailors require a cheap supply of women. The
first-class hetairæ of Corinth charged as high as a talent (say $1000) for
a single night's company, and $200 appears to have been no unusual fee.
For the common sailors, the commercial shrewdness of the Corinthians had
established a temple to Venus, containing a thousand young slaves, who
were obliged to prostitute themselves for a single obolus (a cent).[59]
It was in this metropolis of prostitution that Lais commenced business.
She soon rose to the first rank in her trade. Her capriciousness gave
additional value to her charms. Even money could not purchase her when it
was her whim not to yield. She refused $2000 from the orator Demosthenes,
who had actually turned his property into money to lay it at her feet; but
she yielded gratuitously to the muddy, ragged cynic Diogenes, and
graciously shared the patrimony of the philosopher Aristippus. To the
latter, who occupied no mean rank in Greek society, a remark was made to
the effect that he ought to debar his mistress from promiscuous
intercourse for his own sake. He replied phlegmatically, "Would you object
to live in a house or sail in a ship because others had just preceded you
in the one or the other?" Xenocrates, the disciple of Plato, resisted Lais
successfully. She had made a wager that she would overcome his stoical
coldness. Rushing into his house one evening in affected terror, she
besought an asylum, as she said thieves had chased her. The philosopher
sternly bade her fear nothing. She sat silent till Xenocrates went to bed;
then, throwing off her dress, and revealing all her wonderful beauty, she
placed herself at his side. He gruffly submitted to this encroachment.
Growing bolder, she threw her arms round him, caressed him, and exhausted
her arts of fascination, but Xenocrates remained unmoved. "I wagered," she
cried, "to rouse a man, not a statue;" and, springing from the couch, she
resumed her dress and disappeared.
The people of Corinth desired to possess her statue, and, having spent her
money in embellishing the city, perhaps she was entitled to this mark of
respect. Myron, the sculptor, was deputed to model her charms. He was old
and gray; but so fascinating was her beauty, that at his second visit he
laid at her feet all the savings of his life. The haughty courtesan
spurned him. He went away, placed himself in the hands of a skillful
perfumer, had his hair and beard dyed, and his appearance rejuvenated.
Then he renewed his suit. "My poor friend," said Lais, with a bitter
smile, "you are asking what I refused yesterday to your father."
In old age Lais had leisure to repent of her caprices. She had spent her
money as fast as she made it, and she retained her calling long after her
charms had vanished. Epicrates has drawn a melancholy picture of a drunken
old woman wandering over the quay at Corinth, and seeking to sell for
three cents what had once been considered cheap at a thousand dollars.
Such was the end of Lais.[60]
Phryne was more fortunate. She husbanded her attractions with judgment,
and to the close of her long life retained her rank and her value. Her
wealth was such that, when Alexander destroyed Thebes, she offered to
rebuild the city at her own expense, provided the Thebans would
commemorate the fact by an inscription. They refused. She had counted
among her lovers the most famous men of the day, among whom were the
orator Hyperides, whose successful defense of his mistress has already
been mentioned; the painter Apelles, and the sculptor Praxiteles. It was
to her that the latter gave his crowning work--his Cupid. He and Apelles
were both privileged to admire and reproduce her nude charms, a privilege
rigorously denied even to the most opulent of her lovers.
Phryne was a prodigious favorite with the Athenian people. She played a
conspicuous part in the festival of Neptune and Venus. At a certain point
in the ceremony she appeared on the steps of the temple at the sea-side in
her usual dress, and slowly disrobed herself in the presence of the crowd.
She next advanced to the water-side, plunged into the waves, and offered
sacrifice to Neptune. Returning like a sea-nymph, drying her hair from
which the water dripped over her exquisite limbs, she paused for a moment
before the crowd, which shouted in a phrensy of enthusiasm as the fair
priestess vanished into a cell in the temple.[61]
Other famous hetairæ achieved political and literary distinction. When
Alexander the Great undertook his Asiatic expedition, his treasurer,
Harpalus, a sort of Croesus in his way, accompanied him, surrounded by the
most lovely women the court of Macedon could afford. Rewarded for his
fidelity by the governorship of Babylon, and still farther enriched by the
spoils of that lucrative office, Harpalus sent to Athens for the most
skillful and lovely hetairæ of the day. Pythionice was sent him. She was
not in the bloom of youth. Some years before she had been the familiar of
young Athenians of fashion; she was now the staid mistress of two
brothers, sons of an opulent corn-merchant. But her talents were
undeniable. She arrived at Babylon, and was installed in the palace; began
to rule over the province, and governed Harpalus, it is said, with
sternness and vigor. In the midst of her glory she suddenly died;
poisoned, no doubt, by some one of the hundred fair ones whom she had
supplanted in the governor's affections. Harpalus, inconsolable for her
loss, expended a large portion of the contents of his treasury in burying
her and commemorating her fame. No queen of Babylon was ever consigned to
the grave with the pomp, or the show, or the ostentatious affliction
which did honor to the memory of the Athenian prostitute. Her tomb cost
$50,000; and historians, admiring, in after ages, its splendor and its
size, inquired, with mock wonder, whether the bones of a Miltiades, or a
Cimon, or a Pericles lay under the pile!
Harpalus found consolation in the arms of a Greek garland-weaver named
Glycera, for aught we know the poisoner of Pythionice. She, too, became
Queen of Babylon, issued her decrees, held her court, submitted to be
worshiped, and saw her statue of bronze, as large as life, erected in the
Babylonian temples. She was a woman of a masculine mind in a feminine
body. When Alexander returned from the East, breathing vengeance against
faithless servants, she compelled her lover to fly with her to Attica,
where she raised, by her eloquence, her money, and her address, an army of
six thousand men to oppose the hero of Macedon. It is said that she
purchased, at what price we know not, the silence of Demosthenes; she
certainly bribed the Athenian people with large donations of corn. But she
could not bribe or persuade her wretched lover to be sensible; his folly
soon roused the Athenians against him, and he was exiled with his
mistress. In this exile, one of his attendants cut the throat of the
venerable lover, and Glycera, left a widow, returned to Athens to pursue
her calling as a hetaira. She was no longer young, and needed the aid of
the dealer in cosmetics; but her prestige as the ex-mistress of Babylon
procured her a certain celebrity, and she soon obtained a position in the
society of Athens. Out of a crowd of admirers who attached themselves to
her court, she chose two to be, as the French would say, her _amants de
coeur_. One was the painter Pausias; the other the comic poet Menander.
The former achieved one of his most brilliant triumphs by painting the
portrait of his mistress. But, whether his temper was not congenial to
hers, or his rival inspired an exclusive affection, Glycera soon discarded
Pausias, and became the mistress of the poet alone. Menander, we are led
to believe, was a man of a harsh, crabbed disposition; the haughty Glycera
was the only one whom his _boutades_ never irritated, who bore with all
his ill temper. When he was successful, she heightened his joy; when his
plays were ill received, and he returned from the theatre in low spirits,
she consoled him, and endured the keenest affronts without murmuring. Her
amiability had its reward. From being one of the most dissolute men of
Athens, Menander became solidly attached and faithful to Glycera, and, so
soon was her Babylonish career forgotten, she descended to posterity in
the Athenian heart inseparably coupled with the dearest of their comic
writers.[62]
Another famous hetaira was Leontium, who succeeded her mistress Philenis
in the affections of the philosopher Epicurus. She is said to have borne
him a daughter, who was born in the shade of a grove in his garden; but,
whether she put her own construction upon the Epicurean philosophy, or did
not really love the gray-headed teacher, she was far from practicing the
fidelity which was due to so distinguished a lover. She figures in the
letters of Alciphron as the tender friend of several younger fashionables;
and she has been accused, with what truth it is hard to say, of attempting
a compromise between the doctrines of Epicurus and those of Diogenes.
However this be, Leontium was undoubtedly a woman of rare ability and
remarkable taste. She composed several works; among others, one against
Theophrastus, which excited the wonder and admiration of so good a judge
as Cicero. She survived her old protector, and died in obscurity.[63]
Something more might be said of Archeanassa, to whose wrinkles Plato did
not disdain to compose an amorous epigram; of Theoris, a beautiful girl,
who preferred the glorious old age of Sophocles to the ardent youth of
Demosthenes, and whom the vindictive orator punished by having her
condemned to death; of Archippa, the last mistress and sole heir of
Sophocles; of Theodote, the disciple of Socrates, under whose counsels she
carried on her business as a courtesan, and whose death may be ascribed,
in some part, to the spite caused by Theodote's rejection of Aristophanes;
and of others who figure largely in every reliable history of intellectual
Greece. But we must stop.
In most of the nations to which reference must be made in the ensuing
pages of this volume, prostitutes have figured as pariahs; in Greece they
were an aristocracy, exercising a palpable influence over the national
policy and social life, and mingling conspicuously in the great march of
the Greek intellect. No less than eleven authors of repute have employed
their talents as historiographers of courtesans at Athens. Their works
have not reached us entire, having fallen victims to the chaste scruples
of the clergy of the Middle Ages; but enough remains in the quotations of
Athenæus, Alciphron's Letters, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Aristophanes,
Aristænetus, and others, to enable us to form a far more accurate idea of
the Athenian hetairæ than we can obtain of the prostitutes of the last
generation.
Into the arts practiced by the graduates of the Corinthian academies it is
hardly possible to enter, at least in a modern tongue. Even the Greeks
were obliged to invent verbs to designate the monstrosities practiced by
the Lesbian and Phoenician women. Demosthenes, pleading successfully
against the courtesan Neæra, describes her as having seven young girls in
her house, whom she knew well how to train for their calling, as was
proved by the repeated sales of their virginity. One may form an idea of
the shocking depravity of the reigning taste from the sneers which were
lavished upon Phryne and Bacchis, who steadily adhered to natural
pleasures.
The use of philtres, or charms (of which more will be said in the ensuing
chapter on Roman prostitution), was common in Greece. Retired courtesans
often combined the manufacture of these supposed charms with the business
of a midwife. They made potions which excited love and potions which
destroyed it; charms to turn love into hate, and others to convert hate
into love. That the efficacy of the latter must have been a matter of pure
faith need not be demonstrated, though the belief in them was general and
profound. The former are well known in the pharmacopoeia, and from the
accounts given of their effects, there is no reason to doubt that they
were successfully employed in Greece, as well by jealous husbands and
suspicious fathers as by ardent lovers. A case is mentioned by no less an
authority than Aristotle, of a woman who contrived to administer an
amorous potion to her lover, who died of it. The woman was tried for
murder; but, it being satisfactorily proved that her intention was not to
cause death, but to revive an extinct love, she was acquitted. Other cases
are mentioned in which the philtres produced madness instead of love.
Similar accidents have attended the exhibition of cantharides in modern
times.
CHAPTER IV.
ROME.
Laws governing Prostitution.--Floralian Games.--Registration of
Prostitutes.--Purity of Morals.--Julian Law.--Ædiles.--Classes of
Prostitutes.--Loose Prostitutes.--Various Classes of lewd Women.--
Meretrices.--Dancing Girls.--Bawds.--Male Prostitutes.--Houses of
Prostitution.--Lupanaria.--Cells of Prostitutes.--Houses of
Assignation.--Fornices.--Circus.--Baths.--Taverns.--Bakers'
Shops.--Squares and Thoroughfares.--Habits and Manners of
Prostitutes.--Social standing.--Dress.--Rate of Hire.--Virgins in
Roman Brothels.--Kept Women.--Roman Poets.--Ovid.--Martial.--Roman
Society.--Social Corruption.--Conversation.--Pictures and
Sculptures.--Theatricals.--Baths.--Religious Indecencies.--Marriage
Feasts.--Emperors.--Secret Diseases.--Celsus.--Roman Faculty.--
Archiatii.
LAWS GOVERNING PROSTITUTION.
Our earliest acquaintance with the Roman laws governing prostitution dates
from the reign of the Emperor Augustus, but there is abundant evidence to
show that prostitutes were common in the city of Rome at the time when
authentic history begins.
It does not appear that religious prostitution was ever domiciled in
Italy, though in later times the festivals in honor of certain deities
were scandalously loose, and, to judge from the Etruscan paintings, the
morals of the indigenous Italians must have been disgustingly depraved.
In the comedies of Plautus, which are among the oldest works of Roman
literature which have reached us, the prostitute (_meretrix_) and the bawd
(_leno_) figure conspicuously. They were thus, evidently, in the third
century before Christ, well-known characters in Roman society. When the
Floralian Games were instituted we have no means of knowing (no credit
whatever must be placed in the puerile stories of Lactantius about the
courtesans Acca Laurentia and Flora[64]); but it is certain that the chief
attraction of these infamous celebrations was the appearance of
prostitutes on the stage in a state of nudity, and their lascivious dances
in the presence of the people;[65] and there is evidence, in the story
that the performance was suspended during the presence of the stern
moralist Cato, that they had been long practiced before his time.[66]
Indeed, it would not be presuming too far to decide, without other
evidence, that prostitution must have become a fixed fact at Rome very
shortly after the Romans began to mix freely with the Greek colonists at
Tarentum and the other Greek cities in Italy, that is to say, about the
beginning of the third century before Christ.
We learn from Tacitus[67] that from time immemorial prostitutes had been
required to register themselves in the office of the ædile. The ceremony
appears to have been very similar to that now imposed by law on French
prostitutes. The woman designing to become a prostitute presented herself
before the ædile, gave her age, place of birth, and real name, with the
one she assumed if she adopted a pseudonyme.[68] The public officer, if
she was young or apparently respectable, did his best to combat her
resolution. Failing in this, he issued to her a license--_licentia
stupri_, ascertained the sum which she was to demand from her customers,
and entered her name in his roll. It might be inferred from a law of
Justinian[69] that a prostitute was bound to take an oath, on obtaining
her license, to discharge the duties of her calling to the end of her
life; for the law in question very properly decided that an oath so
obviously at war with good morals was not binding. However this was, the
prostitute once inscribed incurred the taint of infamy which nothing could
wipe off. Repentance was impossible, even when she married and became the
mother of legitimate children; the fatal inscription was still there to
bear witness of her infamy.[70] In Rome, as in so many other countries,
the principle of the law was to close the door to reform, and to render
vice hopeless.
There is every reason to suppose that these regulations were in force at a
very early period of the Republic. Of the further rules established under
the imperial regime we shall speak presently. Meanwhile, it may be
observed that there is ground for hoping that, at the best age of the
Republic, the public morals were not generally corrupt. The old stories of
Lucretia and Virginia would have had no point among a demoralized people.
All who are familiar with Roman history will remember the fierce contest
waged by Cato the Censor against the jewels, fine dresses, and carriages
of the Roman ladies,[71] an indication that graver delinquencies did not
call for official interference. This same Cato, after the death of his
first wife, cohabited with a female slave; but, though concubinage was
recognized by the Roman law, and would seem to have involved no disgrace
at a later period, the intrigue no sooner became known than the old censor
married a second wife to avoid scandal.[72] A similar inference may be
drawn from the strange story told by Livy of the Bacchanalian mysteries
introduced into Rome by foreigners about the beginning of the second
century before Christ. It is not easy, at this late day, to discover what
is true and what false in the statement he gives; but there is no
reasonable doubt that young persons of both sexes, under the impulse of
sensuality, had established societies for the purpose, among others, of
satisfying depraved instincts. To what extent the mania had extended it is
not possible to judge; the numbers given by the Latin writers are not very
trustworthy. But we may learn how strong was the moral sentiment of the
Roman people from the very stringent decree which the senate issued on
motion of the Consul Postumius, and from the indiscriminate executions of
parties implicated in the mysterious rites.[73]
Other evidences of the purity of Roman morals might be found, if they were
wanting, in the remarkable fidelity with which the Vestals observed their
oaths; in the tone of the speeches of the statesmen of the time; in the
high character sustained by such matrons as the mother of the Gracchi;
and, finally, in the legislation of Augustus, which professed rather to
affirm and improve the old laws than to introduce new principles.
As we approach the Christian era the picture gradually darkens. Civil wars
are usually fatal to private virtue: it is not to be doubted that the age
of Sylla and Clodius was by no means a moral one. Sylla, the dictator,
openly led a life of scandalous debauchery; Clodius, the all-powerful
tribune, is accused by Cicero of having seduced his three sisters.[74]
Soldiers who had made a campaign in profligate Greece or voluptuous Asia
naturally brought home with them a taste for the pleasures they had
learned to enjoy abroad. Scipio's baths were dark: through narrow
apertures just light enough was admitted to spare the modesty of the
bathers; but into the baths which were erected in the later years of the
Republic the light shone as into a chamber.[75] Even Sylla, debauched as
he was, did not think it safe to abdicate power without legislative
effort to purify the morals he had so largely contributed to corrupt by
his example.[76]
Of the Augustan age, and the two or three centuries which followed, we are
enabled to form a close and comprehensive idea. Our information ceases to
be meagre; on some points, indeed, it is only too abundant.
The object of the Julian laws was to preserve the Roman blood from
corruption, and still farther to degrade prostitutes. These aims were
partially attained by prohibiting the intermarriage of citizens with the
relatives or descendants of prostitutes; by exposing adulterers to severe
penalties, and declaring the tolerant husband an accomplice; by laying
penalties on bachelors and married men without children; by prohibiting
the daughters of equestrians from becoming prostitutes.[77] Tiberius, from
his infamous retreat at Capreæ, sanctioned a decree of the senate which
enhanced the severity of the laws against adultery. By this decree it was
made a penal offense for a matron of any class to play the harlot, and her
lover, the owner of the house where they met, and all persons who connived
at the adultery, were declared equally culpable. It seems to have been not
uncommon for certain married women to inscribe themselves on the ædile's
list as prostitutes, and to occupy a room at the houses of ill fame. This
was pronounced a penal offense; and every encouragement was held out, both
to husbands and to common informers, to prosecute.[78]
In other respects the republican legislation is believed to have been
unaltered by the emperors. The formality of inscription, its accompanying
infamy, the consequences of the act remained the same. Prostitutes carried
on their trade under the ædile's eye. He patrolled the streets, and
entered the houses of ill fame at all hours of the day and night. He saw
that they were closed between daybreak and three in the afternoon. In case
of brawls, he arrested and punished the disturbers of the peace. He
punished by fine and scourging the omission of a brothel-keeper to
inscribe every female in his house. He insisted on prostitutes wearing the
garments prescribed by law, and dyeing their hair blue or yellow. On the
other hand, he could not break into a house without being habited in the
insignia of his office, and being accompanied by his lictors. When the
ædile Hostilius attempted to break open the door of the prostitute
Mamilia, on his return from a gay dinner, the latter drove him off with
stones, and was sustained by the courts.[79] The ædile was bound also, on
complaint laid by a prostitute, to sentence any customer of hers to pay
the sum due to her according to law.[80]
CLASSES OF PROSTITUTES.
It was the duty of the ædile to arrest, punish, and drive out of the city
all loose prostitutes who were not inscribed on his book. This regulation
was practically a dead letter. At no time in the history of the empire did
there cease to be a large and well-known class of prostitutes who were not
recorded. They were distinguished from the registered prostitutes
(_meretrices_) by the name of _prostibulæ_.[81] They paid no tax to the
state, while their registered rivals contributed largely to the municipal
treasury; and, if they ran greater risks, and incurred more nominal infamy
than the latter, they more frequently contrived to rise from their unhappy
condition.
We have no means of judging of the number of prostitutes exercising their
calling at Rome, Capua, and the other Italian cities during the first
years of the Christian era. During Trajan's reign the police were enabled
to count thirty-two thousand in Rome alone, but this number obviously fell
short of the truth. One is appalled at the great variety of classes into
which the _prostibulæ_, or unregistered prostitutes were divided. Such
were the _Delicatæ_, corresponding to the kept-women, or French
_lorettes_, whose charms enabled them to exact large sums from their
visitors;[82] the _Famosæ_, who belonged to respectable families, and took
to evil courses through lust or avarice;[83] the _Doris_, who were
remarkable for their beauty of form, and disdained the use of
clothing;[84] the _Lupæ_, or she-wolves, who haunted the groves and
commons, and were distinguished by a particular cry in imitation of a
wolf;[85] the _Ælicariæ_, or bakers' girls, who sold small cakes for
sacrifice to Venus and Priapus, in the form of the male and female organs
of generation;[86] the _Bustuariæ_, whose home was the burial-ground, and
who occasionally officiated as mourners at funerals;[87] the _Copæ_,
servant-girls at inns and taverns, who were invariably prostitutes;[88]
the _Noctiluæ_, or night-walkers; the _Blitidæ_, a very low class of
women, who derived the name from _blitum_, a cheap and unwholesome
beverage drunk in the lowest holes;[89] the _Diobolares_, wretched
outcasts, whose price was two oboli (say two cents);[90] the _Forariæ_,
country girls who lurked about country roads; the _Gallinæ_, who were
thieves as well as prostitutes; the _Quadrantariæ_, seemingly the lowest
class of all, whose fee was less than any copper coin now current.[91] In
contradistinction to these, the _meretrices_ assumed an air of
respectability, and were often called _bonæ meretrices_.[92]
Another and a distinct class of prostitutes were the female dancers, who
were eagerly sought after, and more numerous than at Athens. They were
Ionians, Lesbians, Syrians, Egyptians, Nubians (negresses), Indians, but
the most famous were Spaniards. Their dances were of the same character as
those of the Greek flute-players; the erotic poets of Rome have not shrunk
from celebrating the astonishing depravity of their performances.[93]
Horace faintly deplored the progress which the Ionic dances--_Ionice
motus_--were making even among the Roman virgins.[94] These prostitutes
carried on their calling in defiance of law. If detected, they were liable
to be whipped and driven out of the city;[95] but as their customers
belonged to the wealthier classes, they rarely suffered the penalty of
their conduct.
Apart, again, from all these was the large class of persons who traded in
prostitutes. The proper name for these wretches was _Leno_ (bawd), which
was of both sexes, though usually represented on the stage as a beardless
man with shaven head. Under this name quite a number of varieties were
included, such as the _Lupanarii_, or keepers of regular houses of ill
fame; the _Adductores_ and _Perductores_, pimps; _Conciliatrices_ and
_Ancillulæ_, women who negotiated immoral transactions, and others. Then,
as almost every baker, tavern-keeper, bath-house-keeper, barber, and
perfumer combined the _lenocinium_, or trade in prostitutes, with his
other calling, their various names, _tonsor_, _unguentarius_,
_balnearius_, &c., became synonymous with _leno_. This miserable class was
regarded with the greatest loathing at Rome.[96]
This hasty classification of the Roman prostitutes would be incomplete
without some notice, however brief, of male prostitutes. Fortunately, the
progress of good morals has divested this repulsive theme of its
importance; the object of this work can be obtained without entering into
details on a branch of the subject which in this country is not likely to
require fresh legislative notice. But the reader would form an imperfect
idea of the state of morals at Rome were he left in ignorance of the fact
that the number of male prostitutes was probably full as large as that of
females; that, as in Greece, the degrading phenomenon involved very little
disgrace; that all the Roman authors allude to it as a matter of course;
that the leading men of the empire were known to be addicted to such
habits; that the ædile abstained from interference, save where a Roman
youth suffered violence; and that, to judge from the language of the
writers of the first, second, and third centuries of the Christian era,
the Romans, like some Asiatic races, appeared to give the preference to
unnatural lusts.[97]
HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION.
Having examined the laws which governed prostitution at Rome, and the
classes into which prostitutes were divided, it is now requisite to glance
at the establishments in which prostitution was carried on.
M. Dufour and others have followed Publius Victor and Sextus Rufus in
supposing that during the Augustine age there were forty-six first-class
houses of ill fame at Rome, and a much larger number of establishments
where prostitution was carried on without the supervision of the ædile. As
it is now generally admitted that the works bearing the name of Publius
Victor and Sextus Rufus are forgeries of comparatively recent date, the
statement loses all claim to credit, and we are left without statistical
information as to the number of houses of prostitution at Rome.[98]
Registered prostitutes were to be found in the establishments called
Lupanaria. These differed from the Greek Dicteria in being of various
classes, from the well-provided house of the Peace ward to the filthy dens
of the Esquiline and Suburran wards; and farther, in the wide range of
prices exacted by the keepers of the various houses. It is inferred from
the results of the excavations at Pompeii, and some meagre hints thrown
out by Latin authors, that the lupanaria at Rome were small in size. The
most prosperous were built like good Roman houses, with a square
court-yard, sometimes with a fountain playing in the middle. Upon this
yard opened the cells of the prostitutes. In smaller establishments the
cells opened upon a hall or porch, which seemingly was used as a
reception-room. The cells were dark closets, illuminated at night by a
small bronze lamp. Sometimes they contained a bed, but as often a few
cushions, or a mere mat, with a dirty counterpane, constituted their whole
furniture. Over the door of each cell hung a tablet, with the name of the
prostitute who occupied it, and the price she set on her favors; on the
other side with the word _occupata_. When a prostitute received a visitor
in her cell, she turned the tablet round to warn intruders that she was
engaged.[99] Over the door of the house a suggestive image was either
painted, or represented in stone or marble: one of these signs may be seen
to this day in Pompeii. Within, similar indecent sculptures abounded.
Bronze ornaments of this style hung round the necks of the courtesans; the
lamps were in the same shape, and so were a variety of other utensils. The
walls were covered with appropriate frescoes. In the best-ordered
establishments, it is understood that scenes from the mythology were the
usual subjects of these artistic decorations; but we have evidence enough
at Pompeii to show that gross indecency, not poetical effect, was the main
object sought by painters in these works.
Regular houses of prostitution, _lupanaria_, were of two kinds:
establishments owned and managed by a bawd, who supplied the cells with
slaves or hired prostitutes, and establishments where the bawd merely let
his cells to prostitutes for a given sum. In the former case the bawd was
the principal, in the latter the women. There is reason to suppose that
the former were the more respectable. Petronius alludes to a house where
so much was paid for the use of a cell, and the sum was an _as_, less than
two cents.[100] Messalina evidently betook herself to one of these
establishments, which, for clearness' sake, we may call assignation
houses; and as it appears she was paid in copper (_æra poposcit_), it is
safe to infer that the house was of slender respectability.
The best houses were abundantly supplied with servants and luxuries. A
swarm of pimps and runners sought custom for them in every part of the
city. Women--_ancillæ ornatrices_--were in readiness to repair with skill
the ravages which amorous conflicts caused in the toilets of the
prostitutes. Boys--_bacariones_--attended at the door of the cell with
water for ablution. Servants, who bore the inconsistent title of
_aquarii_, were ready to supply wine and other refreshments to customers.
And not a few of the lupinaria kept a cashier, called _villicus_, whose
business it was to discuss bargains with visitors, and to receive the
money before turning the tablet.
Under many public and some of the best private houses at Rome were arches,
the tops of which were only a few feet above the level of the street.
These arches, dark and deserted, became a refuge for prostitutes. Their
name, _fornices_, at last became synonymous with _lupanar_, and we have
borrowed from it our generic word fornication.[101] There is reason to
believe that there were several score of arches of this character, and
used for this purpose, under the great circus and other theatres at
Rome,[102] besides those under dwelling-houses and stores. The want of
fresh air was severely felt in these vile abodes. Frequent allusions to
the stench exhaled from the mouth of a fornix are made in the Roman
authors.[103]
Establishments of a lower character still were the _pergulæ_, in which the
girls occupied a balcony above the street; the _stabula_, where no cells
were used, and promiscuous intercourse took place openly;[104] the
_turturilla_, or pigeon-houses;[105] the _casauria_, or suburb houses of
the very lowest stamp.
The clearest picture of a Roman house of ill fame is that given in the
famous passage of Juvenal, which may be allowed to remain in the original.
The female, it need hardly be added, was Messalina:
"Dormire virum quum senserat uxor,
Ausa Palatino tegetem præferre cubili,
Sumere nocturnas meretrix Augusta cucullos,
Linquebat comite ancilla non amplius una,
Sed _nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero_,
Intravit calidum veteri centone lupanar,
Et _cellam vacuam_ atque suam. Tune nuda capillis
Constitit auratis, titulum mentita Lyciscæ,
_Ostendit que tuum_, generose Britannice, ventrem.
Excepit blanda intrantes, atque _æra poposcit_,
Et resupina jacens multorum absorbuit ictus.
_Mox lenone suas jam dimittente puellas_,
Tristris abit, et quod potuit, tamen ultima cellam
Clausit, adhuc ardens rigidæ tentigine vulvæ,
Et lassata viris necdum satiata recessit;
Obscurrisque genis turpis fumoque lucernæ
Foeda lupanaris tulit ad pulvinar adorem."[106]
The passages in italics contain useful information; we shall allude to
some of them hereafter. Meanwhile, it is evident from the line _mox
lenone_, etc., that, at a certain hour of the night, the keepers of houses
of ill fame were in the habit of closing their establishments and sending
their girls home. The law required them to close at daybreak, but probably
a much earlier hour may have suited their interest.
Allusion has already been made to the fornices under the circus. It is
well understood that prostitutes were great frequenters of the spectacles,
and that in the arched fornices underneath the seats and the stage they
were always ready to satisfy the passions which the comedies and
pantomimes only too frequently aroused.[107] This was one formidable rival
to the regular lupinaria.