[6] “That this eagerness after virginity is not an original lust, I must, indeed, prove from the opinion of a certain remote people, who esteem the taking of a maidenhead as a laborious and illiberal practice, which they delegate to men hired for that purpose, ere themselves condescend to lie with their wives; who are returned with disgrace to their friends, if it be discovered that they have brought their virginity with them.”—The Battles of Venus: The Hague, 1760, quoted by Pisanus Fraxi in his Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Vide also post in this Study.
[7] “Now as to these vows of virginity, Heliogabalus did promulgate a law to the effect that no Roman maid, not even a Vestal Virgin, was bound to perpetuate virginity, saying how that the female sex was over weak for women to be bound to a pact they could never be sure of keeping.” (Brantôme: Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies.) The author of this edict was not without a knowledge of sexual psychology, for we have ample evidence that some of the Vestals failed in their duty, which was, nominally, to guard the sacred fire and the Holy Things of Rome. “Far up by Porta Pia,” says F. Marion Crawford (Ave Roma Immortalis: London, 1903), “over against the new Treasury, under a modern street, lie the bones of guilty Vestals, buried living, each in a little vault two fathoms deep, with the small dish and crust and the earthen lamp that soon flickered out in the close, damp air.” Vestal Virgins had many privileges denied to other Roman women; they were free for life; they had a right to be present at the Emperor’s games; and they were treated with marked respect by the highest in the land. That the privileges of virginity did not necessarily make for the owner’s happiness is instanced by Brantôme’s grim story. “Maids and virgins,” he writes (Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies), “would seem in old days at Rome to have been highly honoured and privileged, so much so that the law had no jurisdiction over them to sentence them to death. Hence the story we read of a Roman Senator in the time of the Triumvirate, which was condemned to die among other victims of the Proscription, and not he alone, but all the offspring of his loins. So when a daughter of his house did appear on the scaffold, a very fair and lovely girl, but of unripe years and yet a virgin, ‘twas needful for the executioner to deflower her himself and take her maidenhead on the scaffold, and only then when she was so polluted, could he ply his knife upon her. The Emperor Tiberius did delight in having fair virgins thus publicly deflowered, and then put to death,—a right villainous piece of cruelty, pardy!”
[8] C.f. Herodotus, who tells us that in the fifth century before Christ every woman, once in her life, had to come to the temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, and yield herself to the first stranger who threw a coin in her lap, in worship of the goddess. The money could not be refused, however small the amount, but it was given as an offertory to the temple, and the woman, having followed the man and thus made oblation to Mylitta, returned home and lived chastely ever afterwards. (Havelock Ellis: Studies in the Psychology of Sex: vol. 6: Sex in Relation to Society.) Havelock Ellis has quoted Herodotus in relation to prostitution, holding that its origin is to be found primarily in religious custom. In our opinion, the practice also merits inclusion in a catalogue of virginal folk-lore, and we are further justified in our view by the statement that the woman who so yielded herself lived chastely ever afterwards.
[9] “In old times we read of a custom in the isle of Cyprus, which ‘tis said the kindly goddess Venus, the patroness of that land, did introduce. This was that the maids of that island should go forth and wander along the banks, shores and cliffs of the sea, for to earn their marriage portions by the generous giving of their bodies to mariners, sailors and seafarers along that coast. These would put in to shore on purpose, very often indeed turning from their straight course by compass to land there; and so taking their pleasant refreshment with them, would pay handsomely, and presently hie them away again to sea, for their part only too sorry to leave such good entertainment behind. Thus would these fair maids win their marriage dowers, some more, some less, some high, some low, some grand, some lowly, according to the beauty, gifts and carnal attractions of each damsel.” (Brantôme: Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies.)
[10] “I am not surprised if the Phœnicians, according to St. Athanasius, obliged their daughters, by severe laws, to suffer themselves before marriage to be deflowered by valets, or also that the Armenians, as Strabo relates, sacrificed their daughters in the temple of the Goddess Anaitis, with the object of being eased of their maidenheads, so as to be able afterwards to find advantageous marriages suited to their condition; for one cannot describe what exhaustion and what sufferings a man has to undergo in his first action, at all events if the girl be narrow.... It is far sweeter to have connection with a woman accustomed to the pleasures of love than to caress one who has not yet known a man; for as we ask a locksmith to ease the wards of a new lock he brings us, to save us the trouble we might have the first day, so had the nations of whom we spoke good reason for establishing such laws.” (Nicolas Venette: La Génération de L’Homme, ou Tableau de L’Amour Conjugal: Paris, 1751.)
[11] “According to Festus, Mutinus is a god differing wholly from Priapus, having a public sanctuary at Rome, where the statue was placed sitting with penis erect. Newly mated girls were placed in his lap, before being led away to their husbands, so that the deity might appear to have foretasted their virginity, this being supposed to render the bride fruitful.” (Priapeia: Cosmopoli, 1890.) Schurig (Gynæcologia: op. cit. sup.) instances the Indian custom of deflowering young brides by means of an enormous priapus in the temples.
[12] i.e., a legalised defilement or ravishing. Blondeau, in his Dictionnaire érotique latin-français (Liseux: Paris, 1885), translates stupratio as “a combat in which one forces a beauty to yield to one’s passion ... to take possession of the honour of some pretty woman ... the struggle in which women succumb with pleasure.” Stupro, the verb; stuprator, the noun; and stupratus, the adjective have kindred meanings.
[13] An old established practice whereby newly married women are deflowered by others than their husbands, whether by priest, lord, or stranger. To discuss this relic of feudalism would be beyond the scope of a note; it is summed up briefly in the idea that the lord of a domain was entitled to exact tribute from his subjects in the form of intercourse with every bride on the first night of her marriage. Our readers are referred to Dr. Karl Schmidt’s Jus Primæ Noctis (The Law of the First Night), the most comprehensive treatise on the subject.
[14] Brantôme, of course, has some pertinent remarks on the subject. In his Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies, he devotes the seventh Discourse to the following topic: Concerning married women, widows and maids,—to wit, which of these same be better than other to love. “One day,” writes the genial philosopher, “when I was at the Court of Spain at Madrid, and conversing with a very honourable lady, ... she did chance to ask me this question following:—’Which of the three had the greater heat of love: widow, wife or maid?’ After myself had told her mine opinion she did in turn give me hers in some such terms as these: ‘That albeit maids, with all that heat of blood that is theirs, be right well disposed to love, yet do they not love so well as wives and widows. This is because of the great experience of the business the latter have, and the obvious fact that supposing a man born blind, ... he can never desire the gift of sight so strongly as he that has sweetly enjoyed the same a while and then been deprived of it.’” Later, quoting Boccaccio, Brantôme also says:—“The widow is more painstaking of the pleasure of love an hundred fold than the virgin, seeing the latter is all for dearly guarding her precious virginity and maidenhead. Further, virgins be naturally timid, and above all in this matter, awkward and inept to find the sweet artifices and pretty complaisances required under divers circumstances in such encounters. But this is not so with the widow, who is already well practised, bold and ready in this art, having long ago bestowed and given away what the virgin doth make so much ado about giving.... Beside all this, the maid doth dread this first assault of her virginity, ... whereas widows have no such fear, but do submit themselves very sweetly and gently, even when the assailant be of the roughest.”
[15] We can supplement these remarks by a further quotation from that curious work already noticed, The Battles of Venus, wherein we read: “This lust, then, after the untouched morsel, I take not to be an original dictate of nature; but consequently to result from much experience with women, which has been demonstrated to lead to novelty of wishes from fastidious impotence.... Yet, in truth, I esteem the fruition of a virgin to be, with respect both to the mind and body of the enjoyer, the highest aggravation of sensual delight. In the first place, his fancy is heated with the prospect of enjoying a woman, after whom he has perhaps long sighed and has been in pursuit, who he thinks has never before been in bed with a man, (in whose arms never before has man laid), and in triumphing in the first sight of her virgin charms. This precious operation, then, of fancy, has been shown in the highest degree to prepare the body for enjoyment. Secondly, his body perceives, in that of a virgin, the cause of the greatest aggravation of delight. I mean not only in the coyness and resistance which she makes to his efforts, but when he is on the point of accomplishing them: when arrived, as the poet sings, ‘on the brink of giddy rapture,’ when in pity to a tender virgin’s sufferings, he is intreated not to break fiercely in, but to spare ‘fierce dilaceration and dire pangs.’ The resistance which the small, and as yet unopened, mouth of bliss makes to his eager endeavours, serves only, and that on a physical principle, to strengthen the instrument of his attack, and concurs, with the instigation of his ardent fancy, to reinforce his efforts, to unite all the co-operative powers of enjoyment, and to produce an emission copious, rapid, and transporting.... ‘In this case, part of the delight arises from considering that ... you feel the convulsive wrigglings of the chaste nymph you have so long adored....’” Our acknowledgements are again due to Pisanus Fraxi, from whose Index Librorum Prohibitorum our extract is taken. The author of The Battles of Venus, it need hardly be said, is in no sense an authority; his work, indeed, is pornographic rather than artistic; at the same time, it is impossible to ignore his flashes of insight into a question which has exercised the minds of the greatest psychologists.