Laws governing Prostitution.—Floralian Games.—Registration of Prostitutes.—Purity of Morals.—Julian Law.—Ædiles.—Classes of Prostitutes.—Loose Prostitutes.—Various Classes of lewd Women.—Meretrices.—Dancing Girls.—Bawds.—Male Prostitutes.—Houses of Prostitution.—Lupanaria.—Cells of Prostitutes.—Houses of Assignation.—Fornices.—Circus.—Baths.—Taverns.—Bakers’ Shops.—Squares and Thoroughfares.—Habits and Manners of Prostitutes.—Social standing.—Dress.—Rate of Hire.—Virgins in Roman Brothels.—Kept Women.—Roman Poets.—Ovid.—Martial.—Roman Society.—Social Corruption.—Conversation.—Pictures and Sculptures.—Theatricals.—Baths.—Religious Indecencies.—Marriage Feasts.—Emperors.—Secret Diseases.—Celsus.—Roman Faculty.—Archiatii.
LAWS GOVERNING PROSTITUTION.
Our earliest acquaintance with the Roman laws governing prostitution dates from the reign of the Emperor Augustus, but there is abundant evidence to show that prostitutes were common in the city of Rome at the time when authentic history begins.
It does not appear that religious prostitution was ever domiciled in Italy, though in later times the festivals in honor of certain deities were scandalously loose, and, to judge from the Etruscan paintings, the morals of the indigenous Italians must have been disgustingly depraved.
In the comedies of Plautus, which are among the oldest works of Roman literature which have reached us, the prostitute (meretrix) and the bawd (leno) figure conspicuously. They were thus, evidently, in the third century before Christ, well-known characters in Roman society. When the Floralian Games were instituted we have no means of knowing (no credit whatever must be placed in the puerile stories of Lactantius about the courtesans Acca Laurentia and Flora[64]); but it is certain that the chief attraction of these infamous celebrations was the appearance of prostitutes on the stage in a state of nudity, and their lascivious dances in the presence of the people;[65] and there is evidence, in the story that the performance was suspended during the presence of the stern moralist Cato, that they had been long practiced before his time.[66] Indeed, it would not be presuming too far to decide, without other evidence, that prostitution must have become a fixed fact at Rome very shortly after the Romans began to mix freely with the Greek colonists at Tarentum and the other Greek cities in Italy, that is to say, about the beginning of the third century before Christ.
We learn from Tacitus[67] that from time immemorial prostitutes had been required to register themselves in the office of the ædile. The ceremony appears to have been very similar to that now imposed by law on French prostitutes. The woman designing to become a prostitute presented herself before the ædile, gave her age, place of birth, and real name, with the one she assumed if she adopted a pseudonyme.[68] The public officer, if she was young or apparently respectable, did his best to combat her resolution. Failing in this, he issued to her a license—licentia stupri, ascertained the sum which she was to demand from her customers, and entered her name in his roll. It might be inferred from a law of Justinian[69] that a prostitute was bound to take an oath, on obtaining her license, to discharge the duties of her calling to the end of her life; for the law in question very properly decided that an oath so obviously at war with good morals was not binding. However this was, the prostitute once inscribed incurred the taint of infamy which nothing could wipe off. Repentance was impossible, even when she married and became the mother of legitimate children; the fatal inscription was still there to bear witness of her infamy.[70] In Rome, as in so many other countries, the principle of the law was to close the door to reform, and to render vice hopeless.
There is every reason to suppose that these regulations were in force at a very early period of the Republic. Of the further rules established under the imperial regime we shall speak presently. Meanwhile, it may be observed that there is ground for hoping that, at the best age of the Republic, the public morals were not generally corrupt. The old stories of Lucretia and Virginia would have had no point among a demoralized people. All who are familiar with Roman history will remember the fierce contest waged by Cato the Censor against the jewels, fine dresses, and carriages of the Roman ladies,[71] an indication that graver delinquencies did not call for official interference. This same Cato, after the death of his first wife, cohabited with a female slave; but, though concubinage was recognized by the Roman law, and would seem to have involved no disgrace at a later period, the intrigue no sooner became known than the old censor married a second wife to avoid scandal.[72] A similar inference may be drawn from the strange story told by Livy of the Bacchanalian mysteries introduced into Rome by foreigners about the beginning of the second century before Christ. It is not easy, at this late day, to discover what is true and what false in the statement he gives; but there is no reasonable doubt that young persons of both sexes, under the impulse of sensuality, had established societies for the purpose, among others, of satisfying depraved instincts. To what extent the mania had extended it is not possible to judge; the numbers given by the Latin writers are not very trustworthy. But we may learn how strong was the moral sentiment of the Roman people from the very stringent decree which the senate issued on motion of the Consul Postumius, and from the indiscriminate executions of parties implicated in the mysterious rites.[73]
Other evidences of the purity of Roman morals might be found, if they were wanting, in the remarkable fidelity with which the Vestals observed their oaths; in the tone of the speeches of the statesmen of the time; in the high character sustained by such matrons as the mother of the Gracchi; and, finally, in the legislation of Augustus, which professed rather to affirm and improve the old laws than to introduce new principles.
As we approach the Christian era the picture gradually darkens. Civil wars are usually fatal to private virtue: it is not to be doubted that the age of Sylla and Clodius was by no means a moral one. Sylla, the dictator, openly led a life of scandalous debauchery; Clodius, the all-powerful tribune, is accused by Cicero of having seduced his three sisters.[74] Soldiers who had made a campaign in profligate Greece or voluptuous Asia naturally brought home with them a taste for the pleasures they had learned to enjoy abroad. Scipio’s baths were dark: through narrow apertures just light enough was admitted to spare the modesty of the bathers; but into the baths which were erected in the later years of the Republic the light shone as into a chamber.[75] Even Sylla, debauched as he was, did not think it safe to abdicate power without legislative effort to purify the morals he had so largely contributed to corrupt by his example.[76]
Of the Augustan age, and the two or three centuries which followed, we are enabled to form a close and comprehensive idea. Our information ceases to be meagre; on some points, indeed, it is only too abundant.