Young girls liked to stroll through the shady colonnades of the temples and through the groves, that surrounded them. Here they met their beaus, who in the art of flirt were just as cunning as are the Lotharios of to-day. The ladies of the aristocrats or patricians enjoyed to be carried about in sedan-chairs, as in these comfortable means of transportation they had full chance to show themselves to the public richly dressed and in graceful positions. As these sedan-chairs were always provided with costly canopies and curtains, and shouldered by fine-looking Syrian slaves, clad in red and gold, such a sight could not fail to attract general attention and to become the talk of the town.
That this mode of shopping and paying calls became a real fashion may be concluded from a remark of Seneca, who grumbles that those husbands, who forbid their wives to be carried about and exhibit themselves in such manner are considered as unpolished and contemptible boors.
As appears from the works of Juvenal, Sueton, Plutarch, Martial and others the growing passion for emancipation, notoriety and excitement, combined with the rage for gossip was responsible for the production of many unwomanly characters. We hear the complaint that scores of women boldly intrude into the meetings of men and often compete with them, in their drinking bouts. These authors also condemn that such females eagerly mix with officers and soldiers, to discuss with them the details and events of the war, while others try to spy out all domestic secrets, only to blab them out again in the street.
Ovid too expresses his disappointment about the changes going on in the life of the fair sex. “Disdaining matronly seclusion, our ladies patronize circus, theatre and arena, eager to see and to be seen. Like an army of ants or like a swarm of bees they hurry in elaborate attires to the beloved plays, often in such crowds that I am utterly unable to guess their numbers.”
This inordinate greediness for enjoyments grew in time into a real intoxication of the senses. Nothing indicates this more than the concentration of all thoughts, of the patricians as well as of the plebejans, of the men as well as of the women, of the free as well as of the slaves on the questions which party would win in the public games, how many hundred gladiators would fight each other, or how many thousands of wild beasts would be set loose in the arena.
When we read that such public shows sometimes lasted for weeks and months, and that all regions of the known world were ransacked in order to secure some new and more cruel feature, that would set people wild with excitement, it will be clear that the susceptible mind of women must have suffered most. And indeed with the increasing degeneration of social life the female sex became more and more demoralized. As among the foreign slaves as well as among the freed and enfranchised were many fine-looking and accomplished persons, unfaithfulness and adultery increased. Especially among the ladies of the upper classes the “nicely curled procurator,” who managed the property of such women, served only too often as a “Cicisbeo,” in which role he figures in many satires and comedies. Men and women met in the public bath houses as well as in watering-places like Bajae, an ill-reputed resort, where libertinism and dissipation flourished, and from which it was said, that no virgin, who went there, ever returned as a virgin.
Bajae and Rome were also the places where the mysterious rites of the Bachanalia found the greatest number of devotees. Originally a festival in honor of Dionysos, the Greek god of spring and wine, it degenerated into wild orgies after its introduction to Rome. This is what Livy writes about it: “The mysterious rites were at first imparted to a few, but were afterwards communicated to great numbers, both men and women. To their religious performances were added the pleasures of wine and feasting, to allure a greater number of proselytes. When wine, lascivious discourse, night, and the mingling of the sexes had extinguished every sentiment of modesty, then debaucheries of every kind were practiced, as every person found at hand that sort of enjoyment to which he was disposed by the passion most prevalent in his nature. Nor were they confined to one species of vice, the promiscuous intercourse of freeborn men and women. From this storehouse of villainy proceeded false witnesses, counterfeit seals, false evidences, and pretended discoveries. In the same place, too, were perpetrated secret murders and other unmentionable infamies. To consider nothing unlawful was the grand maxim of their religion.”
STREET LIFE IN ROME.
After a painting by L. Boulanger.
It was in Bajae where Marcellus, the son-in-law of Emperor Augustus, was poisoned by intriguing Livia; and here Agrippina, the mother of Nero, was clubbed to death after an attempt by her son to shipwreck and drown her during a cruise in a magnificent gondola had failed.