The History of Prostitution

ces.-Dancing Girls.-Bawds.-Male Prostitutes.-Houses of Prostitution.-Lupanaria.-Cells of Prostitutes.-Houses of Assignation.-Fornices.-Circus.-Baths.-Taverns.-Bakers' Shops.-Squares and Thorough

ligious Indecencies.-Marriage Feasts.-Emperors.-

RNING PRO

he reign of the Emperor Augustus, but there is abundant evidence to show that pro

mes the festivals in honor of certain deities were scandalously loose, and, to judge from the

e 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 moral

ently 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 oat

n 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 tru

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 Gra

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 mode

e are enabled to form a close and comprehensive idea. Our information

arried men without children; by prohibiting the daughters of equestrians from becoming prostitutes.[77] Tiberius, from his infamous retreat at Capre?, 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 me

eak 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

OF PRO

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 prostibul?.[81] They paid no tax to the state, while

e 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 Lup?, or she-wolves, who haunted the groves and commons, and were distinguished by a particular cry in imitation of a wolf;[85] the ?licari?, 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 Bustuari?, whose home was the burial-ground, and who occasionally officiated as mourners at funerals;[87] the Cop?, servant-girls at inns and taverns, who were invariab

onians, Lesbians, Syrians, Egyptians, Nubians (negresses), Indians, but the most famous were Spaniards. Their dances were of the same character a

se prostitutes carried on their calling in defiance of law. If detected, they were liable to be whipped and driven out of

er of varieties were included, such as the Lupanarii, or keepers of regular houses of ill fame; the Adductores and Perductores, pimps; Conciliatrices and Ancillul?, women who negotiated immoral transactions, and others. Then, as almost every baker, tavern-keeper, bath-

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

OF PROS

e classes into which prostitutes were divided, it is now requisite t

mber of establishments where prostitution was carried on without the supervision of the ?dile. As it is now generally admitted that the works bearing the name of Publius Victor and Sextus Ruf

ls 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

e 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.

avages 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 su

t 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 o

ove the street; the stabula, where no cells were used, and promiscuous intercourse took place openly

n the famous passage of Juvenal, which may be allowed to remain i

rum quum se

o tegetem pr

as meretrix Au

ite ancilla n

vo crinem absc

dum veteri ce

m atque suam. T

tis, titulum m

m, generose Brit

intrantes, atqu

cens multorum

as jam dimitt

t quod potuit, t

ardens rigid? t

ris necdum sa

genis turpis

tulit ad pulvin

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

of the spectacles, and that in the arched fornices underneath the seats and the stage they were always ready to satisfy the pas

roximity that contact could hardly be avoided. Such an assemblage would obviously be a place of resort for dealers in prostitutes in search of merchandise. At a later period, cells were attached to the bath-houses, and young men and women kept on the premises, partly as bath attendants and partly as prostitutes. After the bath, the bathers, male and female, were rubbed down, kneaded, and anointed by these attendants. It would appear that women submitted to have this indecent service performed for them by men, and

of prostitution. The plebeian ?diles constantly made it their business to visit these in search of unregistered prostitutes, though, as might be expected from the number of delinquents and the very incomplete municipal police system of Rome, with very little success. The bakers' e

mperor Augustus, prostituted 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

MANNERS OF

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 m?chus or scortator, both of which were terms of scathing reproach. When Cicero wishes to overwhelm Catiline, he says his followers are

en spangles, was dressed in some Asiatic fashion. 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

erors prostitutes were seen in open litters in the most public parts of Rome, and others in litters which closed with curtains,

ere governed by their own taste. Nudity appears to have been quite common, if not the rule. Petronius describes his hero walking in the street, an

is thrown on this branch of the subject flows from an obscure passage in the strange romance entitled "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 advertisement to be hung out, inscribed, "He who deflours Tarsia shall pay half a pound, afterward she shall b

s sometimes happened under the later emperors, a virgin was handed to him to be prostituted 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 b

s at night; they wore no distinguishing costume. It was in broad daylight, at the theatre, in the streets, in the Via Sacra, which was the favorite resort of fashionable 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, out

here 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 ver

Cynthia, Delia, Ne?ra, 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 passages

e; 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

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

N SO

st 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

h Juvenal's famous satire on women can be applied.[126] Independently of the unnatural lusts which were so unblushingly avowed, the picture drawn by the Roman surp

r 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 nobles.[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 dep

s 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 au

f the loves of Venus, read the shameful epigrams of Martial, or the burning love-songs of Catullus, go to the baths and see the nudity of scores of men and women, be touched herself by a hundred lewd hands, as

eristic, presented themselves to view, often surrounded by pious matrons in quest of favor from the god. Once a year, at the Lupercalia, she saw young men running naked through the streets, armed with thongs with which they struck every woman they saw; and she noticed that matrons courted this flagellation as a means of becoming proli

o deeply rooted among the Romans that, when Augustus destroyed the temple of Mutinus in the Velian ward in consequence of the immoralities to which it gave rise, a dozen others soon rose to take its place. On the marriage night, statuettes of the deities Subiq

nus both appeared before the guests. Habinus amused them by seizing his host's wife by the feet and throwing her forward so that her dress flew up and exposed her knees, and Trimalchio himself did not blush to show his preference for a giton in the presence of the company, and to throw a cup at his wife's head when her jealousy led her to remonstrate.[132] The voyage of the hero of the Satyricon furnishes other pictures of the intensely depraved feeling which perva

he dishes which have puzzled modern gastronomists; for them that the rare old wines of Italy were stowed away in cellars; for them that Egyptian and Ionian dancing-girls stripped themselves, or

sale.[136] The amours of Tiberius in his retreat at Capre? can not be described. It will suffice to say there was no invention of infamy which he did not patronise; that no young person of any charms was safe from his lust. More than one senator felt that safety required he should remove his handsome wife or pretty daughter from Rome, for Tiberius was ever ready to avenge obstacles with death. The sad fate of the beautiful Mallonia, who stabbed herself during a lawsuit which the emperor had instituted against her because she refused to comply with his beastly deman

utes. He founded, on the shore of the Gulf of Naples, houses of prostitution, and filled them with females, whose dissolute habits were their recommendation to his notice. The

s converted the palace into a house of prostitution. He kept in his pay three hundred girls of great beauty, and as many youths, and revived his dull senses by the sight of pleasures he could no longer share. Like Nero, he violated his sisters; like him, he assumed the dress and functions of a female, and gratified the court with the spectacle of his marriage to one of his freedmen. Fi

eprove, but a Martial-and he was, no doubt, a better exponent of public and social life than the stern historian-would only laugh, and copy the model before him. It may safe

ISEASES

hem from America, where the sailors of Columbus had first contracted them. This opinion does not appear to rest on any solid basis, and is now generally rejected. The fact is, that the venereal dis

sting disease, which appears to bear resemblance to venereal disease. Epigrams of Martial hint at something of the same kind. Celsus de

matters so delicate; but he feels that he ought not to allow his country to lose the benefit of his experience, and he conceives it to be

en supposed that the Elephantiasis, which he describes at length, was also of a syphilitic character; and the symptoms detailed by Aretous, who wrote in the latter ha

e. The Greek term for this herb being Bonbornion, which the Romans converted into Bubonium, that word came to be applied to the disease for which it was given, whether i

which were all secret diseases of a type, if not syphilitic, strongly resembling it. It must be admitted, ho

fidence of the family, and to whom such delicate secrets would naturally be confided. But the mass of the people were restrained by shame from communicating their misfortunes; as was the case among the Jews, the unhappy p

e, where he classes them with the lowest outcasts of Roman society.[142] The enchanters (sag?) made philtres to produce or impede the sensual appetite. They were execrated, and even so amorous a poet as Ovid felt boun

emperor, a Greek named Andromachus was appointed archiater, or court physician, and archiatii populares were soon afterward appointed for the people. They were allowed to receive money from the rich, but they were bound, in consideration of various privileges bestowed on their office, to treat the poor gratuitously. Th

of Rome under the empire can doubt but the archiatii filled no sinecure, and that a