Then again consider the widely different character of the Peoples and their Languages. The flowery Asiatic and Hindoo was, to begin with, far enough removed from the spirit of Satire, and on all occasions preferred to have recourse to images that to us may well seem more than obscure. The Greek writers of Iambi (Satiric verses in the Iambic metre) are all but completely lost to us, while of the Comedians we possess only Aristophanes, in the interpretation of whom we are certainly not yet far enough advanced to make all his allusions plain to us. Above all, those who pronounce so dogmatically as to the existence of the Disease on the evidence of hints, appear to have hardly a notion of the condition in which the Lexicography of both Greek and Latin is,—a condition still in many respects deplorable.
Besides this the Greeks, and for a time to an almost greater degree the Romans,[5] were above all things reticent in speech. The Roman still preserved intact through all the frivolity of his later days certain shrines, that were never broken open until the period of the utter corruption of morals; and then no doubt afforded all the richer booty. But in Satire it was not the fact that became matter of derision, but the habits of the voluptuary merely as affecting morality, as for instance is clearly seen from a perusal of the passages of Juvenal[6] read in their mutual connection. Moreover the following account will sufficiently prove that even among the Romans affections of thee genitals were never ascribed to natural, only to unnatural coition, Paederastia and the like; and that it was the vice that was derided, and not properly speaking its consequences.
After the Satirists come the Epigrammatic poets, near akin to them. Whether in this province the Greeks will afford much material, later investigations must decide; how abundantly the Roman Martial has rewarded our repeated perusals, the reader will soon be enabled to convince himself.
From the Erotic poets who composed their lays under the inspiration of Aphrodité surrounded by the Graces or of the roguish Eros, no one will expect to gain anything towards our object. The fact that the lascivious Erotic writers of Antiquity have for the most part been lost can only be deplored by the Historian of the Venereal disease; for undoubtedly such works were in existence in considerable profusion, only as in our own day they were carefully kept concealed from the eyes of the uninitiated. That the Greeks were not poor in such-like productions Cynulcus teaches us, who says to a Sophist[7]: “Thou lyest in the tavern, not in company with friends, but with harlots, hast a throng of panders round thee, and carriest always with thee the works of Aristophanes, Apollodorus, Ammonius, Antiphanes and the Athenian Gorgias, who all of them have written of the Athenian Hetaerae. One may fitly call thee a Pornograph, like the painters Aristides, Pausanias and Nicophanes.” Writings of the same character were still extant in Martial’s[8] time, for the lascivious epigrams on the walls of the grottos, temples and statues of Priapus[9], on garden-walls, and so forth, afforded an inexhaustible mine for collecting amateurs, to whom we owe the Priapeia that have come down to the present day. Had they all been preserved to posterity, we should doubtless have had no need to bewail the lack of clear information as to the Venereal disease among the Ancients.
Connected with the poems are the myths and legends of Antiquity. These however being difficult to understand when studied for their own sake owing to the confusion that still reigns in all the interpretations and discussions of them, hardly admit of being used for our purpose with advantage.
Finally we have yet to mention the Fathers as authorities for the history of the Venereal disease, for their “Orationes contra Gentes” (Denunciations of the Gentiles) especially afford much valuable material towards a knowledge of the moral condition of the nations of Antiquity. True it is very likely these only too willingly allow exaggerations at the cost of Paganism, and attribute to an earlier time as already existing then, what really belongs to their own day. Still these drawbacks lose much of their importance in so far as the question for the present is only,—whether previously to the end of the XVth. Century the Venereal Disease existed or no.
The difficulties that arise in the systematic study and manipulation of all these authorities require no further discussion here, being sufficiently well known to every investigator of Antiquity—be he physician or layman.