Part 4 (1/2)
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 wors.h.i.+ped, 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 fas.h.i.+onables; 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 Archeana.s.sa, 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, prost.i.tutes 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 Athenaeus, Alciphron's Letters, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Aristophanes, Aristaenetus, and others, to enable us to form a far more accurate idea of the Athenian hetairae than we can obtain of the prost.i.tutes 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 Neaera, 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 prost.i.tution), 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 Prost.i.tution.--Floralian Games.--Registration of Prost.i.tutes.--Purity of Morals.--Julian Law.--aediles.--Cla.s.ses of Prost.i.tutes.--Loose Prost.i.tutes.--Various Cla.s.ses of lewd Women.-- Meretrices.--Dancing Girls.--Bawds.--Male Prost.i.tutes.--Houses of Prost.i.tution.--Lupanaria.--Cells of Prost.i.tutes.--Houses of a.s.signation.--Fornices.--Circus.--Baths.--Taverns.--Bakers'
Shops.--Squares and Thoroughfares.--Habits and Manners of Prost.i.tutes.--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 PROSt.i.tUTION.
Our earliest acquaintance with the Roman laws governing prost.i.tution dates from the reign of the Emperor Augustus, but there is abundant evidence to show that prost.i.tutes were common in the city of Rome at the time when authentic history begins.
It does not appear that religious prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tute (_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 inst.i.tuted 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tutes had been required to register themselves in the office of the aedile. The ceremony appears to have been very similar to that now imposed by law on French prost.i.tutes. The woman designing to become a prost.i.tute presented herself before the aedile, gave her age, place of birth, and real name, with the one she a.s.sumed 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 prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tute 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 Baccha.n.a.lian 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 s.e.xes, 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 prost.i.tutes. These aims were partially attained by prohibiting the intermarriage of citizens with the relatives or descendants of prost.i.tutes; 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 prost.i.tutes.[77] Tiberius, from his infamous retreat at Capreae, 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 cla.s.s 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 aedile's list as prost.i.tutes, and to occupy a room at the houses of ill fame. This was p.r.o.nounced 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. Prost.i.tutes carried on their trade under the aedile'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 prost.i.tutes 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 aedile Hostilius attempted to break open the door of the prost.i.tute Mamilia, on his return from a gay dinner, the latter drove him off with stones, and was sustained by the courts.[79] The aedile was bound also, on complaint laid by a prost.i.tute, to sentence any customer of hers to pay the sum due to her according to law.[80]
CLa.s.sES OF PROSt.i.tUTES.