In Greece the chastity of an unmarried girl was anxiously guarded.[64] According to Athenian law, the relatives of a maiden who had lost her virtue could with impunity kill the seducer on the spot.[65] Virginity was an object of worship. Chastity was the pre-eminent attribute of sanctity ascribed to Athene and Artemis, and the Parthenon, or virgin’s temple, was the noblest religious edifice of Athens.[66] It is true that a certain class of courtesans occupied a remarkably high position in the social life of Greece, being admired and sought after even by the principal men. But they did so on account of their extraordinary beauty or their intellectual superiority; to the Greek mind the moral standard was by no means the only standard of excellence. The Romans, on the other hand, regarded the courtesan class with much contempt.[67] In A.D. 19 the profligacy of women was checked by stringent enactments, and it was provided that no woman whose grandfather, father, or husband had been a Roman knight should get money by prostitution. [68] The names of prostitutes had to be published on the aedile’s list, as Tacitus says, “according to a recognised custom of our ancestors, who considered it a sufficient punishment on unchaste women to have to profess their shame.”[69] But both in Rome and Greece pre-nuptial unchastity in men, when it was not excessive[70] or did not take some especially offensive form, was hardly censured by public opinion.[71] The elder Cato expressly justified it.[72] Cicero says:—“If there be any one who thinks that youth is to be wholly interdicted from amours with courtesans, he certainly is very strict indeed. I cannot deny what he says; but still he is at variance not only with the licence of the present age, but even with the habits of our ancestors, and with what they used to consider allowable. For when was the time that men were not used to act in this manner? When was such conduct found fault with? When was it not permitted? When, in short, was the time when that which is lawful was not lawful?”[73] Epictetus only went a little step further. He said to his disciples:—“Concerning sexual pleasures, it is right to be pure before marriage, as much as in you lies. But if you indulge in them, let it be according to what is lawful. But do not in any case make yourself disagreeable to those who use such pleasures, nor be fond of reproving them, nor of putting yourself forward as not using them.”[74] Here chastity in men is at all events recognised as an ideal. But even in pagan antiquity there were a few who enjoined it as a duty.[75] Musonius Rufus emphatically asserted that no union of the sexes other than marriage was permissible,[76] and Dio Chrysostom desired prostitution to be suppressed by law.[77] Similar opinions grew up in connection with the Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean philosophies, and may be traced back to the ancient masters themselves. We are told that Pythagoras inculcated the virtue of chastity so successfully that when ten of his disciples, being attacked, might have escaped by crossing a bean-field, they died to a man rather than tread down the beans, which were supposed to have a mystic affinity with the seat of impure desires.[78] Plato, again, is in favour of a law to the effect that “no one shall venture to touch any person of the freeborn or noble class except his wedded wife, or sow the unconsecrated and bastard seed among harlots, or in barren and unnatural lusts.” Our citizens, he says, ought not to be worse than birds and beasts, which live without intercourse, pure and chaste, until the age for procreation, and afterwards, when they have arrived at that period and the male has paired with the female and the female with the male, “live the rest of their lives in holiness and innocence, abiding firmly in their original compact.”[79]
[64] See Denis, Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité, i. 69 sq.
[65] Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 193.
[66] See Lecky, History of European Morals, i. 105.
[67] Ibid. ii. 300.
[68] Tacitus, Annales, ii. 85.
[69] Tacitus, Annales, ii. 85.
[70] Valerius Maximus (Facta dictaque memorabilia, ii. 5. 6) praises “frugalitas” as “immoderato Veneris usu aversa.”
[71] Lecky, op. cit. ii. 314.
[72] Horace, Satiræ, i. 2. 31 sq.