Another person, for a bet, put a tumbler up his bottom; and two children, the brother five years old and the sister seven, were caught one day putting spoons, carrots, and potatoes up each other's bottoms; and he mentions that the anus of the little girl was so dilated that it was nearly confounded with her vagina.
These facts give us some idea of the enlargement of the anus that may arise from sodomy, and help to explain some of Martial's epigrams.
There have also been some interesting remarks privately published by a recent traveller through the realms of the King of Bokhara.
He speaks of that monarch having two wings to his harem, one for boys and one for girls. When the King would have connexion with one of his boys, the latter is well purged and brought to the King fasting, scents and oil being injected up his bottom. Then the boy has his dinner to give him courage and spirits to amuse the King, after which his Majesty has the boy in the presence generally of two or three of the royal wives. This traveller speaks of the salacious ways of these boys, the enlargement of their bottom-holes, and growths around the orifice, which made it appear very like the private parts of a woman.
Tardieu speaks of this growth too, but he also speaks of other developments, as well as the consequences of passive sodomy, such as piles and various disagreeable matters. We think, too, that the King of Bokhara's habit of purging his boys before having connexion with them corroborates Tardieu's statement and the observations of many others, that the effect of being continually buggered (and Tardieu suggests as well the use of laxative ointments), is to so relax the sphincter ani that it will not retain the faeces.
In the most civilized places of the present day sodomy with males is rarely practised—with females it is practised oftener; but in Rome it was the habit, the recognized habit, and it only became hateful when the man always received the attention and never gave. In those days men loved a lusty fellow as much as women do now, and the lusty fellow could give as much pleasure to a man as he could to a woman, and be thought none the worse for it.
The vice was so general and fashionable that the chastest of the Cæsars, Augustus, was charged by many mouths with practising it; but Suetonius says, excepting his weakness for deflowering little girls, all the charges brought against him were calumnies.
Tiberius revelled in sodomy, and was surrounded by lusty Catamites, and rendered his name imperishable by indelibly connecting it with the Spintriæ. At this chaste court Vitellus was apprenticed, and soon acquired the name of Spintria, raising his family by his prostitution, and showing when he in his time came to the throne, what a long train of evil one bad man in power can lay.
Caligula's mutual prostitutions with his pantomimic friend were well known, as was also his connexion with certain hostages; and the state of Roman decency may be presumed when we are told that V. Catullus, a young man of consular family, bawled out publicly that he had been having the Emperor until his back ached.
Cladius stuck to women, although he saw no harm in boys being debauched. Even his own son-in-law (to show the prevalence of the vice), we may observe, was stabbed and murdered while in the act of having his favourite boy.