The Bathing Apartments, from which antique Roman modesty had excluded almost every glimmer of external light, were now patent to the eyes of the passer-by. Fitted up with every device of the most refined luxury,[267] they were transformed into regular brothels;[268] and accordingly were not allowed to open their doors earlier than one hour before the ordinary establishments of this nature.
The same opportunities which the Baths gave for vice with women, they afforded no less for vice between men,—for paederastia. There it was that amateurs looked about for bene vasatos and καλλιπύγους, (men with fine instruments, men with handsome buttocks), and this among the Greeks as well as among the Romans,[269] though the latter in this as in other things beat the record of all other nations.
[THIRD SECTION.]
Relation of the Physician to Diseases consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs.
§ 38.
In the preceding Sections we have become acquainted with the various influences capable of favouring or counteracting the rise of diseases consequent upon the use or misuse of the genitals in Antiquity. At the same time we have shown how a multitude of affections of the most different kinds attacked, as a result of the unnatural gratification of sexual desire, those parts which under these circumstances had to undertake the rôle of the genital organs of the one or the other sex. Thirdly we have brought forward in the course of the enquiry at any rate some examples, proving beyond a doubt that the sexual parts themselves too under favourable external conditions sometimes became diseased as the consequence of indulgence in sexual intercourse. Still these results were for the most part based on the evidence of non-medical Writers, for of set purpose we abstained as much as possible from calling the professional Writers into Court on these points, so as to be able to treat in their proper mutual connexion whatever statements these latter have left us as to the maladies in question. This course appeared to us all the more necessary, as it is precisely the medical evidence which the opponents of the existence of Venereal disease in Antiquity believe themselves able to utilize in justification of their opinions.
But before we proceed to the detailed examination of the actual statements, it would seem expedient to get an answer to the following question: whether indeed the Physicians of Antiquity generally were in a position to acquire an adequate knowledge of the bodily consequences of vicious living? In fact on the correct answer to this question obviously depends the correct appreciation of the medical Writings as sources for the History of Venereal disease. Only under the condition that this question may be answered in the affirmative, can the evidence supplied by the Physicians be regarded as satisfactory for their own period. That it cannot of course be so for all periods, has been pointed out already in our examination of the authorities for Antiquity generally. Indeed for long periods of time Physicians had no special locus standi, inasmuch as each individual in the case of the most usual maladies endeavoured to help himself, and if the family recipes left him stranded, then betook himself with prayers for assistance to the Gods and their intermediaries on earth, the Priests. This still continued, even after the Physicians had won their recognition as a special profession, and we find accordingly throughout Antiquity popular, sacerdotal, and professional or medical medicine, if we may be allowed the expression, continuing to exist simultaneously side by side, and not a trace anywhere of the ridiculous limitation according to which no man has a right to be well without the help of a doctor.
Now having made it clear by what we have said, that in order to gain knowledge of a disease in Antiquity it is by no means enough to go to the Physicians only, even when such existed, that the latter should never be regarded as sole possessors of whatever was known from the point of view of pathology and therapeutics, we are bound to apply the same rule in the case of diseases consequent upon vicious habits. Of this the foregoing Sections contain amply sufficient proofs. It has there been shown how the genital organs were under the protection of special deities. Diseases affecting them were ascribed to the vengeance of the said deities, as at Athens to Dionysus, at Lampsacus to Priapus. To them sufferers had recourse to win by their prayers the removal of the divine anger, as well as its consequences; and all this happened not only in times when Physicians did not as yet exist, but no less when they did and in defiance of them, as the poems of the Priapeia sufficiently prove.[270] How long these ideas lived on is shown by the pictures Philo (p. 315) and Palladius (p. 318) draw of their times, while the XVth. and XVIth. Centuries reproduced the same scenes.
The most obvious reason for this no doubt was the enigma presented by the origin of diseases of the genitals, particularly for any one unacquainted with the existence of contagions and their modes of activity. The man who with a healthy penis had accomplished coition, observed some days afterwards, though without resenting the fact, a mucous discharge to have been set up, or an ulcer, pustule, or what not, to have appeared. The cause of these affections he sought for in vain, for of course the mere act of coition was the very last thing he was likely to regard as such. Rather accustomed, wherever the cause of any phænomenon was unknown to him, to ascribe it to the intervention of the deity, he saw in his complaint likewise the Θεῖον (divine) as eventual cause. Naturally therefore it was divine assistance, and not human, that would avail to relieve him of his pain. Long after this time moreover, when men had ceased to refer all diseases to the vengeance of the gods, and now discovered natural causes for maladies of the genitals, as for other diseases, anything rather than just the act of coition was looked upon as cause of the observed effects, as indeed is the case to this day among the Turks,[271] and as the earliest Writers on Venereal disease abundantly show to have been so in their time. That the Physicians were no exceptions to this rule, we shall show on a later page.
A much more weighty reason however why the patient attacked by some affection of the genitals turned not to men (Physicians) for help, but to the Gods, and the Priests who represented them, was the feeling of shame. Since first Adam and Eve had recourse to the fig-leaf, it has ever been a habit among all peoples of the ancient as of the modern world to withdraw the procreative parts from the view of others by covering them. But above all did the Ancients regard the exposure of these parts[272] one of the severest trials to which modesty could be exposed; and rightly enough therefore designate them by the name of pudenda, αἰδοῖα, the parts of shame. Neither the wide extension of Phallic worship, nor yet the compulsory exposure of the Ephebi[273] and the naked exercises of maidens and youths at Sparta[274], can fairly be cited in this connexion as proofs to the contrary.