The allusion to Tarsia suggests some notice of the practice of the Roman bawds when they had secured a virgin. It will be found faithfully described in that old English play, “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” which is sometimes bound up with Shakspeare’s works. When a bawd had purchased a virgin as a slave, or when, as sometimes happened under the later emperors, a virgin was handed to him to be prostituted as a punishment for crime, the door of his house was adorned with twigs of laurel; a lamp of unusual size was hung out at night, and a tablet exhibited somewhat similar to the one quoted above, stating that a virgin had been received, and enumerating her charms with cruel grossness.[122] When a purchaser had been found and a bargain struck, the unfortunate girl, often a mere child, was surrendered to his brutality, and the wretch issued from the cell afterward, to be himself crowned with laurel by the slaves of the establishment.
Thus far of common prostitutes. Though the Romans had no loose women who could compare in point of standing, influence, or intellect with the Greek hetairæ, their highest class of prostitutes, the famosæ or delicatæ, were very far above the unfortunate creatures just described. They were not inscribed in the ædile’s rolls; they haunted no lupanar, or tavern, or baker’s stall; they were not seen lurking about shady spots at night; they wore no distinguishing costume. It was in broad daylight, at the theatre, in the streets, in the Via Sacra, which was the favorite resort of fashionable Rome, that they were to be found, and there they were only to be distinguished from virtuous matrons by the superior elegance of their dress, and the swarm of admirers by whom they were surrounded. Indeed, under the later emperors, the distinction, outward or inward, between these prostitutes and the Roman matrons appears to have been very slight indeed.[123] They were surrounded or followed by slaves of either sex, a favorite waiting-maid being the most usual attendant.[124] Their meaning glances are frequently the subject of caustic allusions in the Roman poets.[125] Many of them were foreigners, and expressed themselves by signs from ignorance of the Latin tongue.
These women were usually the mistresses of rich men, though not necessarily faithful to their lovers. We possess no such biographies of them as we have of the Greek hetairæ, nor is there any reason to suppose that their lives ever formed the theme of serious works, though the Roman erotic library was rich. What little we know of them we glean mostly from the verses of Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, Propertius, Catullus, Martial, and from such works as the Satyricon of Petronius, and the novel of Apuleius, and that little is hardly worth the knowing.
The first five poets mentioned—Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and Tibullus—devoted no small portion of their time and talent to the celebration of their mistresses. But beyond their names, Lydia, Chloe, Lalage, Lesbia, Cynthia, Delia, Neæra, Corinna, &c., we are taught nothing about them but what might have been taken for granted, that they were occasionally beautiful, lascivious, extravagant, often faithless and heartless. From passages in Ovid, and also in one or two of the others, it may be inferred that it was not uncommon for these great prostitutes to have a nominal husband, who undertook the duty of negotiating their immoral bargains (leno maritus).
The only really useful information we derive from these erotic effusions relates to the poets themselves. All the five we have mentioned moved in the best society at Rome. Some of them, like Horace, saw their fame culminate during their lifetime; others filled important stations under government. Ovid was intimate with the Emperor Augustus, and his exile is supposed to have been caused by some improper discoveries he made with regard to the emperor’s relations with his daughter. Yet it is quite evident that all these persons habitually lived with prostitutes, felt no shame on that account, and recorded unblushingly the charms and exploits of their mistresses in verses intended to be read indiscriminately by the Roman youths.
Between Ovid and Martial the distance is immense. Half a century divided them in point of time; whole ages in tone. During the Augustan era, the language of poets, though much freer than would be tolerated to-day, was not invariably coarse. No gross expressions are used by the poets of that day in addressing their mistresses, and even common prostitutes are addressed with epithets which a modern lover might apply to his betrothed. But Martial knows no decency. It may safely be said that his epigrams ought never again to be translated into a modern tongue. Expressions designating the most loathsome depravities, and which, happily, have no equivalent, and need none, in our language, abound in his pages. Pictures of the most revolting pruriency succeed each other rapidly. In a word, such language is used and such scenes depicted as would involve the expulsion of their utterer from any house of ill fame in modern times. Yet Martial enjoyed high favor under government. He was enabled to procure the naturalization of many of his Spanish friends. He possessed a country and a town house, both probably gifts from the emperor. His works, even in his lifetime, were carefully sought after, not only in Rome, but in Gaul, Spain, and the other provinces. Upon the character and life of courtesans in his day he throws but little light. The women whose hideous depravity he celebrates must have been well known at Rome; their names must have been familiar to the ears of Roman society. But this feature of Roman civilization, the notoriety of prostitutes and of their vile arts, properly belongs to another division of the subject.
ROMAN SOCIETY.
It was often said by the ancients that the more prostitutes there were, the safer would be virtuous women. “Well done,” said the moralist to a youth entering a house of ill fame; “so shalt thou spare matrons and maidens.” As this idea rests upon a slender substratum of plausibility, it may be as well to expose its fallacy, which can be done very completely by a glance at Roman society under the emperors.
Even allowing for poetical exaggeration, it may safely be said that there is no modern society, perhaps there has never existed any since the fall of Rome, to which Juvenal’s famous satire on women can be applied.[126] Independently of the unnatural lusts which were so unblushingly avowed, the picture drawn by the Roman surpasses modern credibility. That it was faithful to nature and fact, there is, unhappily, too much reason to believe. The causes must be sought in various directions.
Two marked distinctions between modern and ancient society may at once be noticed. In no modern civilized society is it allowable to present immodest images to the eye, or to utter immodest words in the ear of females or youth. At Rome the contrary was the rule. The walls of respectable houses were covered with paintings, of which one hardly dares in our times to mention the subjects. Lascivious frescoes and lewd sculptures, such as would be seized in any modern country by the police, filled the halls of the most virtuous Roman citizens and nobles.[127] Ingenuity had been taxed to the utmost to reproduce certain indecent objects under new forms.[128] Nor was common indecency adequate to supply the depraved taste of the Romans. Such groups as satyrs and nymphs, Leda and the swan, Pasiphæ and the bull, satyrs and she-goats, were abundant. Some of them have been found, and exhibit a wonderful artistic skill. All of these were daily exposed to the eyes of children and young girls, who, as Propertius says, were not allowed to remain novices in any infamy.