Allusion has already been made to the fornices under the circus. It is well understood that prostitutes were great frequenters of the spectacles, and that in the arched fornices underneath the seats and the stage they were always ready to satisfy the passions which the comedies and pantomimes only too frequently aroused.[107] This was one formidable rival to the regular lupinaria.
The baths were another. In the early Roman baths, darkness, or, at best, a faint twilight reigned; and, besides, not only were the sexes separated, but old and young men were not allowed to bathe together.[108] But after Sylla’s wars, though there were separate sudaria and tepidaria for the sexes, they could meet freely in the corridors and chambers, and any immorality short of actual prostitution could take place.[109] Men and women, girls and boys, mixed together in a state of perfect nudity, and in such close proximity that contact could hardly be avoided. Such an assemblage would obviously be a place of resort for dealers in prostitutes in search of merchandise. At a later period, cells were attached to the bath-houses, and young men and women kept on the premises, partly as bath attendants and partly as prostitutes. After the bath, the bathers, male and female, were rubbed down, kneaded, and anointed by these attendants. It would appear that women submitted to have this indecent service performed for them by men, and that health was not always the object sought, even by the Roman matrons.[110] Several emperors endeavored to remedy these frightful immoralities. Hadrian forbade the intermixture of men and women in the public baths.[111] Similar enactments were made by Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus; but Heliogabalus is said to have delighted in uniting the sexes, even in the wash-room. As early as the Augustan era, however, the baths were regarded as little better than houses of prostitution under a respectable name.[112]
Taverns or houses of entertainment were also in some measure brothels. The law regarded all servants waiting upon travelers at inns or taverns as prostitutes.[113] It would appear, also, that butchers’, bakers’, and barbers’ shops were open to a suspicion of being used for purposes of prostitution. The plebeian ædiles constantly made it their business to visit these in search of unregistered prostitutes, though, as might be expected from the number of delinquents and the very incomplete municipal police system of Rome, with very little success. The bakers’ establishments, which generally included a flour-mill, were haunted by a low class of prostitutes to whom allusion has already been made. In the cellar where the mill stood cells were often constructed, and the ædiles knew well that all who entered there did not go to buy bread.[114]
Finally, prostitution to a very large extent was carried on in the open air. The shades of certain statues and temples, such as those of Marsyas, Pan, Priapus, Venus, etc., were common resorts for prostitutes. It is said that Julia, the daughter of the Emperor Augustus, prostituted herself under the shade of a statue of Marsyas. Similar haunts of abandoned women were the arches of aqueducts, the porticoes of temples, the cavities in walls, etc. Even the streets in the poorer wards of the city appear to have been infested by the very lowest class of prostitutes, whose natural favors had long ceased to be merchantable.[115] It must be borne in mind that the streets of Rome were not lighted, and that profound darkness reigned when the moon was clouded over.
HABITS AND MANNERS OF PROSTITUTES.
A grand distinction between Roman and Greek prostitution lies in the manner in which commerce with prostitutes was viewed in the two communities. At Athens there was nothing disgraceful in frequenting the dicterion or keeping an hetaira. At Rome, on the contrary, a married man who visited a house of ill fame was an adulter, and liable to the penalties of adultery. An habitual frequenter of such places was a mœchus or scortator, both of which were terms of scathing reproach. When Cicero wishes to overwhelm Catiline, he says his followers are scortatores.[116] Until the lowest age of Roman degradation, moreover, no man of any character entered a house of ill fame without hiding his face with the skirt of his dress. Even Caligula and Heliogabalus concealed their faces when they visited the women of the town.[117]
The law prescribed with care the dress of Roman prostitutes, on the principle that they were to be distinguished in all things from honest women. Thus they were not allowed to wear the chaste stola which concealed the form, or the vitta or fillet with which Roman ladies bound their hair, or to wear shoes (soccus), or jewels, or purple robes. These were the insignia of virtue. Prostitutes wore the toga like men; their hair, dyed yellow or red, or filled with golden spangles, was dressed in some Asiatic fashion. They wore sandals with gilt thongs tying over the instep, and their dress was directed to be of flowered material. In practice, however, these rules were not strictly observed. Courtesans wore jewels and purple robes,[118] and not a few boldly concealed their profligacy under the stola. Others, seeking rather to avoid than to court misapprehension as to their calling, wore the green toga proudly, and over it the sort of jacket called amiculum, which, like the white sheet of baronial times, was the badge of adultery. Others, again, preferred the silk and gauze dresses of the East (sericæ vestes), which, according to the expression of a classical writer, “seemed invented to exhibit more conspicuously what they were intended to hide.”[119] Robes of Tyre were likewise in use, whose texture may be inferred from the name of “textile vapor” (ventus textilis) which they received.
The law strictly prohibited the use of vehicles of any kind to courtesans. This also was frequently infringed. Under several emperors prostitutes were seen in open litters in the most public parts of Rome, and others in litters which closed with curtains, and served the purpose of a bed-chamber.[120] A law of Domitian imposed heavy penalties on a courtesan who was seen in a litter.
In the lupanar, of course, rules regarding costume were unheeded. Prostitutes retained their hair black, but as to the rest of their person they were governed by their own taste. Nudity appears to have been quite common, if not the rule. Petronius describes his hero walking in the street, and seeing from thence naked prostitutes at the doors of the lupanaria.[121] Some covered their busts with golden stuffs, others veiled their faces.
It has already been mentioned that the rate of remuneration exacted by the prostitutes was fixed by themselves, though apparently announced to the ædile. It is impossible to form any idea of the average amount of this charge. The lowest classes, as has been mentioned, sold their miserable favors for about two tenths of a cent; another large class were satisfied with two cents. The only direct light that is thrown on this branch of the subject flows from an obscure passage in the strange romance entitled “Apollonius of Tyre,” which is supposed to have been written by a Christian named Symposius. In that work the capture of a virgin named Tarsia by a bawd is described. The bawd orders a sign or advertisement to be hung out, inscribed, “He who deflours Tarsia shall pay half a pound, afterward she shall be at the public service for a gold piece.” The half pound has been assumed by commentators to mean half a Roman pound of silver, and to have been worth $30; the gold piece, according to the best computation, was about equivalent to $4. But whether these figures can be regarded as an average admits of doubt, even supposing our estimate of the value of the sums mentioned in the ancient work to be accurate.