Money, the nurse of debauchery, was the first that introduced foreign manners, and enervating riches sapped the sinews of the age with foul luxury. For what cares Venus in her cups? All difference of head or tail is alike to her who at very midnight devours huge oysters, when unguents mixed with neat Falernian foam, when she drains the conch,[260] when from her dizziness the roof seems to reel, and the table to rise up with the lights doubled in number.[261] Go then, and knowing all this, doubt, if you can, with what a snort of scorn Tullia snuffs up the air when she passes the ancient altar of Chastity; or what Collatia says to her accomplice Maura. Here they set down their litters at night, and bedew the very image of the goddess with copious irrigations, while the chaste moon witnesses their abominations,[262] over which, when morn returns, you pass on your way to visit your great friends.
The secrets of Bona Dea are well known. When the pipe excites them, and inflamed alike with the horn and wine, these Mænads of Priapus rush wildly round, and whirl their locks and howl! Then, as their passions rise, how burning is their lust, how frantic their words, when all power of restraining their desires is lost! A prize is proposed, and Saufeia[263] challenges the vilest of her sex, and bears off the prize. In these games nothing is counterfeit, all is acted to the life; so that even the aged Priam, effete from years, or Nestor himself, might be inflamed at the sight. Then their lust admits of no delay. Then the woman appears in all her native depravity; and by all alike is the shout re-echoed from the whole den—"Now is the proper time. Let in the men!" But the adulterer still sleeps; so she bids the youth put on a female hood, and speed to the spot. If none can be found, they have recourse to slaves. If there is no hope of slaves, they will hire some water-carrier to come. If this fails too, and no men can be found, she would not hesitate to descend still lower in the scale of creation. Oh, would that our ancient rites and public worship could at least be celebrated, uncontaminated by such pollutions as these! But even the Moors and Indians know what singing wench produced his wares equal in bulk to Cæsar's two Anticatos, in a place whence even a mouse, conscious of his sex, would flee, and every picture is veiled over that represents the other sex. Yet, even in those days, what man despised the deity? or who had dared to ridicule Numa's earthen bowl and black dish, and the brittle vessels from Mount Vatican. But now what altars are there that a Clodius does not assail?
I hear the advice that my good friends of ancient days would give—"Put on a lock! keep her in confinement!" But who is to guard the guards themselves? Your wife is as cunning as you, and begins with them. And, in our days, the highest and the lowest are fired with the same lust. Nor is she that wears out the black pavement with her feet, better than she who is borne on the shoulders of her tall Syrian slaves.
Ogulnia, in order that she may go in due state to the games, hires a dress, and attendants, and a sedan, and pillow, and female friends; and a nurse, and yellow-haired girl[264] to whom she may issue her commands. Yet all that remains of her family plate, and even the very last remnants of it,[265] she gives to well-oiled Athletes. Many women are in straitened circumstances at home; yet none of them has the modest selfrestraint that should accompany poverty, or limits herself within that measure which her poverty has allotted and assigned to her. Yet men do sometimes look forward to what may be to their interest hereafter, and, with the ant for their instructress, some have at last felt a dread of cold and hunger. Yet woman, in her prodigality, perceives not that her fortune is fast coming to naught; and as though money, with vegetative power, would bloom afresh[266] from the drained chest, and the heap from which she takes would be ever full, she never reflects how great a sum her pleasures cost her. Some women ever take delight in unwarlike eunuchs, and soft kisses, and the loss of all hope of beard, that precludes the necessity of abortives. Yet the summit of their pleasure is when this operation has been performed in the heat and prime of manhood, and the only loss sustained is that the surgeon Heliodorus cheats the barber of his fees. Such is his mistress' will: and, conspicuous from afar, and attracting the eyes of all, he enters the baths, and vies even with the god that guards our vines and gardens. Let him sleep with his mistress! But, Postumus, suffer not the youthful Bromius to enter the lists with him.
If she takes delight in singing, the fibula of none of these fellows that sells his voice to the prætor holds out: the instruments are forever in her hands; the whole lyre sparkles with the jewels thickly set. She runs over the strings with the vibrating quill,[267] with which the soft Hedymeles performed: this she holds in her hands; with this she consoles herself, and lavishes kisses on the plectrum, dear for its owner's sake. One of the clan of the Lamiæ,[268] a lady of lofty rank, inquired with meal-cake and wine of Janus and Vesta, whether Pollio might venture to hope for the oaken crown at the Capitoline games,[269] and promise it to his lyre. What more could she do were her husband sick? What, if the physicians had despaired of her infant son? She stood before the altar, and thought no shame to veil her head for a harper: and went through in due form the words prescribed,[270] and grew pale as the lamb was opened. Tell me now, I pray, tell me, thou ancientest of gods, father Janus! dost thou return answer to these? Great must be indeed the leisure[271] of heaven! There can be no business there, as far as I see, stirring among you. One woman consults you about comic actors; another would fain commend a tragedian to your notice: the soothsayer will become varicose.[272]
But let her rather be musical than fly through the whole city, with bold bearing; and encounter the assemblies of men, and in her husband's presence herself converse with generals in their scarlet cloaks,[273] with unabashed face and breasts exposed. She too knows all that is going on in the whole world—what the Seres[274] or Thracians are engaged in—the secrets of the step-mother and her son—what adulterer is in love, or is in great request. She will tell you who made the widow pregnant—in what month it was—in what language and manner each act of love takes place. She is the first[275] to see the comet that menaces the Armenian and Parthian king; and she intercepts[276] at the gates the reports and freshest news. Some she invents as well. That Niphates[277] has overwhelmed whole nations, and that the whole country is there laid under water by a great deluge; that cities are tottering, the earth sinking down—this she tells in every place of resort to every one she meets.
And yet that vice is not more intolerable, than that, though earnestly entreated,[278] she will seize upon her poor neighbors, and have them cut in two with lashes. For if her sound slumbers are disturbed by the barking of a dog, "Bring the clubs[279] here at once!" she cries: and orders the owner first to be beaten with them, and then the dog. Terrible to encounter, most awful in visage, she enters the baths by night—by night she orders her bathing vessels and camp to be set in motion. She delights in perspiring with great tumult; when her arms have sunk down wearied with the heavy dumb-bells; and the sly anointer has omitted to rub down no part of her body. Her poor wretches of guests meanwhile are overcome with drowsiness and hunger. At last the lady comes; flushed, and thirsty enough for a whole flagon,[280] which is placed at her feet and filled from a huge pitcher: of which a second pint is drained before she tastes food, to make her appetite[281] quite ravenous. Then having rinsed out her stomach, the wine returns in a cascade on the floor—rivers gush over the marble pavement,[282] or the broad vessel reeks of Falernian—for thus, just as when a long snake has glided into a deep cask, she drinks and vomits. Therefore her husband turns sick; and with eyes closed smothers his rising bile.
And yet that woman is more offensive still, who, as soon as she has taken her place at table, praises Virgil, and excuses the suicide of Dido: matches and compares poets together: in one scale weighs Maro in the balance, and Homer in the other. The grammarians yield; rhetoricians are confuted; the whole company is silenced; neither lawyer nor crier[283] can put in a word, nor even another woman. Such a torrent of words pours forth, you would say so many basins or bells were all being struck at once. Henceforth let no one trouble trumpets or brazen vessels; she will be able singly to relieve the moon when suffering[284] an eclipse. The philosopher sets a limit even to those things which are good in themselves. For she that desires to appear too learned and eloquent, ought to wear a tunic reaching only to the middle of the leg, to sacrifice a pig to Sylvanus,[285] and bathe for a quadrans. Let not the matron that shares your marriage-bed possess a set style of eloquence, or hurl in well-rounded sentence the enthymeme curtailed[286] of its premiss; nor be acquainted with all histories. But let there be some things in books which she does not understand. I hate her who is forever poring over and studying Palæmon's[287] treatise; who never violates the rules and principles of grammar; and skilled in antiquarian lore, quotes verses I never knew; and corrects the phrases of her friend as old-fashioned,[288] which men would never heed. A husband should have the privilege of committing a solecism.
There is nothing a woman will not allow herself, nothing she holds disgraceful, when she has encircled her neck with emeralds, and inserted earrings of great size in her ears, stretched with their weight. Nothing is more unbearable than a rich woman!