(Presently when time is up and the brothel-keeper dismisses his girls, sadly she takes her departure,—but she was the last to shut her chamber).
[198] III. 65., et ad circum iussas prostare puellas (and girls bidden stand for hire at the Circus).
[199] Of Heliogabalus Lampridius, (Vita Heliog. ch. 26.) relates: Omnes de circo, de theatro, de stadio—meretrices collegit. (He collected all the harlots,—from circus, theatre and stadium—race-course). An old poem (Priapeia, carm. 26,) says:
Deliciae populi, magno notissima circo
Quintia.
(The darling of the people, Quintia, so well known in the Great Circus). Comp. Buleng. De Circo ch. 56. Supposing this view to be correct, we might read in the passage of Juvenal, III. 136., as several Critics do, “alta Chionem deducere cella” (to lead Chione down from her lofty “chamber”).
[200] Already in Livy, II. 18., we read the account: Eo anno Romae, cum per ludos ab Sabinorum iuventute per lasciviam scorta raperentur, etc. (That year at Rome, when during the games harlots were carried off in their wantonness by the youth of the Sabines, etc.) Plautus, Casin. Prolog., 82-86.; this passage is repeatedly cited in this connection, but really has only a remote bearing on the matter. But in confirmation Isidore, XVIII. 42., says: Idem vero theatrum idem et prostibulum, eo quod post ludos exactos meretrices ibi prosternerentur. (But theatre and brothel were identical, for after the games were over, harlots used to prostitute themselves there). Comp. Buleng. De Theatro I. 16. and 49. Lipsius, Elect., I. 11. Of course these statements may refer equally well to the Floralia or, as Isidore lived so much later, to the lascivious representations of brothel-life of which Tertullian tells us. The latter writes, De Spectaculis ch. 17., Ipsa etiam prostibula, publicae libidinis hostiae, in scena proferantur, plus miserae in praesentia feminarum, quibus solis latebant: perque omnis aetatis, omnis dignitatis ora transducuntur, locus, stipes, elogium, etiam quibus opus est, praedicatur. (Nay, the very harlots, victims of the public lust, are brought forward on the stage, more wretched still in the presence of women, who alone used to be ignorant of such things; and they are discussed by the lips of every age and every condition, and place, origin, merits, even what should never be mentioned, are freely spoken of). In 1791 in a public theatre in Paris just such things were represented as Juvenal in his Sixth Satire speaks of as being acted at Rome. Gynaeology Pt. III. p. 423. That whores were to be found in the Theatre as well as in the Circus is shown by Lampridius, Vita Heliogab., ch. 32., fertur et una die ad omnes circi et theatri et amphitheatri et omnium urbis locorum meretrices ingressus. (And access is given on one day to all the harlots of circus, theatre and amphitheatre and all the places of the city). Comp. ch. 26., and Abram. on Cicero’s Speech for Milo ch. 24. p. 177. Perhaps at all these spots “chambers” (cellae) were put up, to which the word locorum (places) above may very well refer.
[201] Horace, Epist. I. 14. 21.,
Fornix tibi et uncta popina
Incutiunt urbis desiderium, video; et quod