Part 5 (1/2)
Taverns or houses of entertainment were also in some measure brothels. The law regarded all servants waiting upon travelers at inns or taverns as prost.i.tutes.[113] It would appear, also, that butchers', bakers', and barbers' shops were open to a suspicion of being used for purposes of prost.i.tution. The plebeian aediles constantly made it their business to visit these in search of unregistered prost.i.tutes, though, as might be expected from the number of delinquents and the very incomplete munic.i.p.al police system of Rome, with very little success. The bakers'
establishments, which generally included a flour-mill, were haunted by a low cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes to whom allusion has already been made. In the cellar where the mill stood cells were often constructed, and the aediles knew well that all who entered there did not go to buy bread.[114]
Finally, prost.i.tution to a very large extent was carried on in the open air. The shades of certain statues and temples, such as those of Marsyas, Pan, Priapus, Venus, etc., were common resorts for prost.i.tutes. It is said that Julia, the daughter of the Emperor Augustus, prost.i.tuted herself under the shade of a statue of Marsyas. Similar haunts of abandoned women were the arches of aqueducts, the porticoes of temples, the cavities in walls, etc. Even the streets in the poorer wards of the city appear to have been infested by the very lowest cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes, whose natural favors had long ceased to be merchantable.[115] It must be borne in mind that the streets of Rome were not lighted, and that profound darkness reigned when the moon was clouded over.
HABITS AND MANNERS OF PROSt.i.tUTES.
A grand distinction between Roman and Greek prost.i.tution lies in the manner in which commerce with prost.i.tutes was viewed in the two communities. At Athens there was nothing disgraceful in frequenting the dicterion or keeping an hetaira. At Rome, on the contrary, a married man who visited a house of ill fame was an _adulter_, and liable to the penalties of adultery. An habitual frequenter of such places was a _moechus_ or _scortator_, both of which were terms of scathing reproach.
When Cicero wishes to overwhelm Catiline, he says his followers are _scortatores_.[116] Until the lowest age of Roman degradation, moreover, no man of any character entered a house of ill fame without hiding his face with the skirt of his dress. Even Caligula and Heliogabalus concealed their faces when they visited the women of the town.[117]
The law prescribed with care the dress of Roman prost.i.tutes, on the principle that they were to be distinguished in all things from honest women. Thus they were not allowed to wear the chaste _stola_ which concealed the form, or the _vitta_ or fillet with which Roman ladies bound their hair, or to wear shoes (_soccus_), or jewels, or purple robes. These were the insignia of virtue. Prost.i.tutes wore the _toga_ like men; their hair, dyed yellow or red, or filled with golden spangles, was dressed in some Asiatic fas.h.i.+on. They wore sandals with gilt thongs tying over the instep, and their dress was directed to be of flowered material. In practice, however, these rules were not strictly observed. Courtesans wore jewels and purple robes,[118] and not a few boldly concealed their profligacy under the _stola_. Others, seeking rather to avoid than to court misapprehension as to their calling, wore the green toga proudly, and over it the sort of jacket called _amiculum_, which, like the white sheet of baronial times, was the badge of adultery. Others, again, preferred the silk and gauze dresses of the East (_sericae vestes_), which, according to the expression of a cla.s.sical writer, ”seemed invented to exhibit more conspicuously what they were intended to hide.”[119] Robes of Tyre were likewise in use, whose texture may be inferred from the name of ”textile vapor” (_ventus textilis_) which they received.
The law strictly prohibited the use of vehicles of any kind to courtesans.
This also was frequently infringed. Under several emperors prost.i.tutes were seen in open litters in the most public parts of Rome, and others in litters which closed with curtains, and served the purpose of a bed-chamber.[120] A law of Domitian imposed heavy penalties on a courtesan who was seen in a litter.
In the lupanar, of course, rules regarding costume were unheeded.
Prost.i.tutes retained their hair black, but as to the rest of their person they were governed by their own taste. Nudity appears to have been quite common, if not the rule. Petronius describes his hero walking in the street, and seeing from thence naked prost.i.tutes at the doors of the lupanaria.[121] Some covered their busts with golden stuffs, others veiled their faces.
It has already been mentioned that the rate of remuneration exacted by the prost.i.tutes was fixed by themselves, though apparently announced to the aedile. It is impossible to form any idea of the average amount of this charge. The lowest cla.s.ses, as has been mentioned, sold their miserable favors for about two tenths of a cent; another large cla.s.s were satisfied with two cents. The only direct light that is thrown on this branch of the subject flows from an obscure pa.s.sage in the strange romance ent.i.tled ”Apollonius of Tyre,” which is supposed to have been written by a Christian named Symposius. In that work the capture of a virgin named Tarsia by a bawd is described. The bawd orders a sign or advertis.e.m.e.nt to be hung out, inscribed, ”He who deflours Tarsia shall pay half a pound, afterward she shall be at the public service for a gold piece.” The half pound has been a.s.sumed by commentators to mean half a Roman pound of silver, and to have been worth $30; the gold piece, according to the best computation, was about equivalent to $4. But whether these figures can be regarded as an average admits of doubt, even supposing our estimate of the value of the sums mentioned in the ancient work to be accurate.
The allusion to Tarsia suggests some notice of the practice of the Roman bawds when they had secured a virgin. It will be found faithfully described in that old English play, ”Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” which is sometimes bound up with Shakspeare's works. When a bawd had purchased a virgin as a slave, or when, as sometimes happened under the later emperors, a virgin was handed to him to be prost.i.tuted as a punishment for crime, the door of his house was adorned with twigs of laurel; a lamp of unusual size was hung out at night, and a tablet exhibited somewhat similar to the one quoted above, stating that a virgin had been received, and enumerating her charms with cruel grossness.[122] When a purchaser had been found and a bargain struck, the unfortunate girl, often a mere child, was surrendered to his brutality, and the wretch issued from the cell afterward, to be himself crowned with laurel by the slaves of the establishment.
Thus far of common prost.i.tutes. Though the Romans had no loose women who could compare in point of standing, influence, or intellect with the Greek hetairae, their highest cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes, the _famosae_ or _delicatae_, were very far above the unfortunate creatures just described. They were not inscribed in the aedile's rolls; they haunted no lupanar, or tavern, or baker's stall; they were not seen lurking about shady spots at night; they wore no distinguis.h.i.+ng costume. It was in broad daylight, at the theatre, in the streets, in the Via Sacra, which was the favorite resort of fas.h.i.+onable Rome, that they were to be found, and there they were only to be distinguished from virtuous matrons by the superior elegance of their dress, and the swarm of admirers by whom they were surrounded. Indeed, under the later emperors, the distinction, outward or inward, between these prost.i.tutes and the Roman matrons appears to have been very slight indeed.[123] They were surrounded or followed by slaves of either s.e.x, a favorite waiting-maid being the most usual attendant.[124] Their meaning glances are frequently the subject of caustic allusions in the Roman poets.[125] Many of them were foreigners, and expressed themselves by signs from ignorance of the Latin tongue.
These women were usually the mistresses of rich men, though not necessarily faithful to their lovers. We possess no such biographies of them as we have of the Greek hetairae, nor is there any reason to suppose that their lives ever formed the theme of serious works, though the Roman erotic library was rich. What little we know of them we glean mostly from the verses of Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, Propertius, Catullus, Martial, and from such works as the Satyricon of Petronius, and the novel of Apuleius, and that little is hardly worth the knowing.
The first five poets mentioned--Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and Tibullus--devoted no small portion of their time and talent to the celebration of their mistresses. But beyond their names, Lydia, Chloe, Lalage, Lesbia, Cynthia, Delia, Neaera, Corinna, &c., we are taught nothing about them but what might have been taken for granted, that they were occasionally beautiful, lascivious, extravagant, often faithless and heartless. From pa.s.sages in Ovid, and also in one or two of the others, it may be inferred that it was not uncommon for these great prost.i.tutes to have a nominal husband, who undertook the duty of negotiating their immoral bargains (_leno maritus_).
The only really useful information we derive from these erotic effusions relates to the poets themselves. All the five we have mentioned moved in the best society at Rome. Some of them, like Horace, saw their fame culminate during their lifetime; others filled important stations under government. Ovid was intimate with the Emperor Augustus, and his exile is supposed to have been caused by some improper discoveries he made with regard to the emperor's relations with his daughter. Yet it is quite evident that all these persons habitually lived with prost.i.tutes, felt no shame on that account, and recorded unblus.h.i.+ngly the charms and exploits of their mistresses in verses intended to be read indiscriminately by the Roman youths.
Between Ovid and Martial the distance is immense. Half a century divided them in point of time; whole ages in tone. During the Augustan era, the language of poets, though much freer than would be tolerated to-day, was not invariably coa.r.s.e. No gross expressions are used by the poets of that day in addressing their mistresses, and even common prost.i.tutes are addressed with epithets which a modern lover might apply to his betrothed.
But Martial knows no decency. It may safely be said that his epigrams ought never again to be translated into a modern tongue. Expressions designating the most loathsome depravities, and which, happily, have no equivalent, and need none, in our language, abound in his pages. Pictures of the most revolting pruriency succeed each other rapidly. In a word, such language is used and such scenes depicted as would involve the expulsion of their utterer from any house of ill fame in modern times. Yet Martial enjoyed high favor under government. He was enabled to procure the naturalization of many of his Spanish friends. He possessed a country and a town house, both probably gifts from the emperor. His works, even in his lifetime, were carefully sought after, not only in Rome, but in Gaul, Spain, and the other provinces. Upon the character and life of courtesans in his day he throws but little light. The women whose hideous depravity he celebrates must have been well known at Rome; their names must have been familiar to the ears of Roman society. But this feature of Roman civilization, the notoriety of prost.i.tutes and of their vile arts, properly belongs to another division of the subject.
ROMAN SOCIETY.
It was often said by the ancients that the more prost.i.tutes there were, the safer would be virtuous women. ”Well done,” said the moralist to a youth entering a house of ill fame; ”so shalt thou spare matrons and maidens.” As this idea rests upon a slender substratum of plausibility, it may be as well to expose its fallacy, which can be done very completely by a glance at Roman society under the emperors.
Even allowing for poetical exaggeration, it may safely be said that there is no modern society, perhaps there has never existed any since the fall of Rome, to which Juvenal's famous satire on women can be applied.[126]
Independently of the unnatural l.u.s.ts which were so unblus.h.i.+ngly avowed, the picture drawn by the Roman surpa.s.ses modern credibility. That it was faithful to nature and fact, there is, unhappily, too much reason to believe. The causes must be sought in various directions.
Two marked distinctions between modern and ancient society may at once be noticed. In no modern civilized society is it allowable to present immodest images to the eye, or to utter immodest words in the ear of females or youth. At Rome the contrary was the rule. The walls of respectable houses were covered with paintings, of which one hardly dares in our times to mention the subjects. Lascivious frescoes and lewd sculptures, such as would be seized in any modern country by the police, filled the halls of the most virtuous Roman citizens and n.o.bles.[127]
Ingenuity had been taxed to the utmost to reproduce certain indecent objects under new forms.[128] Nor was common indecency adequate to supply the depraved taste of the Romans. Such groups as satyrs and nymphs, Leda and the swan, Pasiphae and the bull, satyrs and she-goats, were abundant.
Some of them have been found, and exhibit a wonderful artistic skill. All of these were daily exposed to the eyes of children and young girls, who, as Propertius says, were not allowed to remain novices in any infamy.
Again, though a Horace would use polite expressions in addressing Tyndaris or Lalage, the Latin tongue was much freer than any modern one. There is not a Latin author of the best age in whose writings the coa.r.s.est words can not be found. The comedies were frightfully obscene, both in ideas and expressions. A youth or a maiden could not begin to acquire instruction without meeting words of the grossest meaning. The convenient adage, _Charta non erubescit_, was invented to hide the pruriency of authors, and one of the worst puts in the wretched plea that, ”though his page is lewd, his life is pure.” It is quite certain that, whatever might have been the effect on the poet, his readers could not but be demoralized by the lewdness of his verses.