Ad fontem, quaeso, dic mihi qua sit iter?
Vade per has vites, quarum si carpseris uvas
Quas aliter sumas, hospes, habebis aquas—
(Standing in threatening attitude with my bristling pruning-knife and your better part, Priapus, I enquire: “Pri’thee tell me, which is my way to the fountain?” “Go through yonder vines, but if you dare to pluck the grapes, you will find, stranger, water you must take elsewhere”). Clearly this is to be taken as meaning paederastia or irrumation looked upon as punishments inflicted for the theft contemplated; and shows us at the same time it was not without a “double entendre” that Priapus was set up as a direction-post to fountains, a point that Lomeier[255] has already brought out with perfect correctness. Again the fellator after his work used to cleanse the mouth with water, as we learn from several passages in Martial; thus amongst other places we read in one, of Lesbia,[256]
Quod fellas et aquam potes, nil Lesbia peccas,
Qua tibi parte opus est, Lesbia, sumis aquam.
(You fellate and then drink water; you do no wrong in this, Lesbia; where lies your work, there Lesbia you take water).
If we further add to this scrupulous cleanliness the quiet life led by the women of Antiquity, who spent most of their time, as women still do in the East, reclining, it is evident that in spite of the predisposing influence of Climate, injurious secretions from the vagina and uterus, or indeed ulcerations of these parts, must—speaking generally, and in proportion—have occurred but rarely. Moreover such maladies of the sort as were contracted were quickly got rid of again spontaneously, for very often even at the present day rest and cleanliness suffice by themselves for the removal of primary affections of the genitals. On the other hand it cannot be denied that a careless non-observance of these primeval laws of cleanliness must have then avenged itself all the more severely on the offending individual, and given occasion for the setting up of incurable diseases.
But great as the counteracting effect of the frequent use of baths in Antiquity was on the rise of diseases in general, and of those resulting from sexual excesses in particular, none the less in other ways did these same baths, directly or indirectly, give occasion for their rise and spread. As to their direct effect in this direction,—we certainly find but scanty evidence of any in the authorities, and even such as are forthcoming may very possibly be referred to the head of general want of cleanliness[257]. Still in view of the fact that at the present day the cellar baths of the Jews contribute to some degree to the spread of disease, and especially of skin-disease of different types, as did baths generally in the Middle Ages, the conjecture is surely justified that similar results followed in Antiquity, especially at Rome under the Emperors.
Indirectly maladies consequent upon sexual excesses were helped on by the mere fact that the ancient Baths afforded manifold opportunities for such excesses. The bath-attendants, or aquarioli (water-boys), who fetched the water for bathing, not only carried on vicious practices with the women frequenting the place themselves, but also made a business of procuration, as already pointed out just above, p. 214. The lascivious Roman Ladies took their own slaves with them to the Baths, that they might attend upon their mistresses.[258] At first the same bathing Establishments were used equally by both sexes, but not at the same time; and according to Dio Cassius,[259] Agrippa would appear to have first, 721 A. U. C., established the public Baths at Rome for men and women, from which place later on Baths open to both sexes were introduced into Greece, as Plutarch[260] states. The Greeks called these Establishments ἀνδρόγυνα λούτρα (men-women, male-female, baths), and used to set up an image of Hermaphroditus in front of them.[261] In the Imperial period, when all shame was laid aside and Heliogabalus himself in balneis semper cum mulieribus fuit (always visited the Baths in company of the women) (Lampridius ch. 2), the use of the Baths both by men and women, and this at the same time, had become an established custom, as may be seen from several passages of Martial;[262] and it was in vain the Emperors Hadrian,[263] Marcus Antoninus[264] and Alexander Severus[265] endeavoured to restrain the abuse by enactments. These were just as unavailing as were the invectives of the Fathers of the Church.[266]