The History of Prostitution Part 4

Harpalus found consolation in the arms of a Greek garland-weaver named Glycera, for aught we know the poisoner of Pythionice. She, too, became Queen of Babylon, issued her decrees, held her court, submitted to be wors.h.i.+ped, and saw her statue of bronze, as large as life, erected in the Babylonian temples. She was a woman of a masculine mind in a feminine body. When Alexander returned from the East, breathing vengeance against faithless servants, she compelled her lover to fly with her to Attica, where she raised, by her eloquence, her money, and her address, an army of six thousand men to oppose the hero of Macedon. It is said that she purchased, at what price we know not, the silence of Demosthenes; she certainly bribed the Athenian people with large donations of corn. But she could not bribe or persuade her wretched lover to be sensible; his folly soon roused the Athenians against him, and he was exiled with his mistress. In this exile, one of his attendants cut the throat of the venerable lover, and Glycera, left a widow, returned to Athens to pursue her calling as a hetaira. She was no longer young, and needed the aid of the dealer in cosmetics; but her prestige as the ex-mistress of Babylon procured her a certain celebrity, and she soon obtained a position in the society of Athens. Out of a crowd of admirers who attached themselves to her court, she chose two to be, as the French would say, her _amants de coeur_. One was the painter Pausias; the other the comic poet Menander.

The former achieved one of his most brilliant triumphs by painting the portrait of his mistress. But, whether his temper was not congenial to hers, or his rival inspired an exclusive affection, Glycera soon discarded Pausias, and became the mistress of the poet alone. Menander, we are led to believe, was a man of a harsh, crabbed disposition; the haughty Glycera was the only one whom his _boutades_ never irritated, who bore with all his ill temper. When he was successful, she heightened his joy; when his plays were ill received, and he returned from the theatre in low spirits, she consoled him, and endured the keenest affronts without murmuring. Her amiability had its reward. From being one of the most dissolute men of Athens, Menander became solidly attached and faithful to Glycera, and, so soon was her Babylonish career forgotten, she descended to posterity in the Athenian heart inseparably coupled with the dearest of their comic writers.[62]

Another famous hetaira was Leontium, who succeeded her mistress Philenis in the affections of the philosopher Epicurus. She is said to have borne him a daughter, who was born in the shade of a grove in his garden; but, whether she put her own construction upon the Epicurean philosophy, or did not really love the gray-headed teacher, she was far from practicing the fidelity which was due to so distinguished a lover. She figures in the letters of Alciphron as the tender friend of several younger fas.h.i.+onables; and she has been accused, with what truth it is hard to say, of attempting a compromise between the doctrines of Epicurus and those of Diogenes.

However this be, Leontium was undoubtedly a woman of rare ability and remarkable taste. She composed several works; among others, one against Theophrastus, which excited the wonder and admiration of so good a judge as Cicero. She survived her old protector, and died in obscurity.[63]

Something more might be said of Archeana.s.sa, to whose wrinkles Plato did not disdain to compose an amorous epigram; of Theoris, a beautiful girl, who preferred the glorious old age of Sophocles to the ardent youth of Demosthenes, and whom the vindictive orator punished by having her condemned to death; of Archippa, the last mistress and sole heir of Sophocles; of Theodote, the disciple of Socrates, under whose counsels she carried on her business as a courtesan, and whose death may be ascribed, in some part, to the spite caused by Theodote's rejection of Aristophanes; and of others who figure largely in every reliable history of intellectual Greece. But we must stop.

In most of the nations to which reference must be made in the ensuing pages of this volume, prost.i.tutes have figured as pariahs; in Greece they were an aristocracy, exercising a palpable influence over the national policy and social life, and mingling conspicuously in the great march of the Greek intellect. No less than eleven authors of repute have employed their talents as historiographers of courtesans at Athens. Their works have not reached us entire, having fallen victims to the chaste scruples of the clergy of the Middle Ages; but enough remains in the quotations of Athenaeus, Alciphron's Letters, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Aristophanes, Aristaenetus, and others, to enable us to form a far more accurate idea of the Athenian hetairae than we can obtain of the prost.i.tutes of the last generation.

Into the arts practiced by the graduates of the Corinthian academies it is hardly possible to enter, at least in a modern tongue. Even the Greeks were obliged to invent verbs to designate the monstrosities practiced by the Lesbian and Phoenician women. Demosthenes, pleading successfully against the courtesan Neaera, describes her as having seven young girls in her house, whom she knew well how to train for their calling, as was proved by the repeated sales of their virginity. One may form an idea of the shocking depravity of the reigning taste from the sneers which were lavished upon Phryne and Bacchis, who steadily adhered to natural pleasures.

The use of philtres, or charms (of which more will be said in the ensuing chapter on Roman prost.i.tution), was common in Greece. Retired courtesans often combined the manufacture of these supposed charms with the business of a midwife. They made potions which excited love and potions which destroyed it; charms to turn love into hate, and others to convert hate into love. That the efficacy of the latter must have been a matter of pure faith need not be demonstrated, though the belief in them was general and profound. The former are well known in the pharmacopoeia, and from the accounts given of their effects, there is no reason to doubt that they were successfully employed in Greece, as well by jealous husbands and suspicious fathers as by ardent lovers. A case is mentioned by no less an authority than Aristotle, of a woman who contrived to administer an amorous potion to her lover, who died of it. The woman was tried for murder; but, it being satisfactorily proved that her intention was not to cause death, but to revive an extinct love, she was acquitted. Other cases are mentioned in which the philtres produced madness instead of love.

Similar accidents have attended the exhibition of cantharides in modern times.

CHAPTER IV.

ROME.

Laws governing Prost.i.tution.--Floralian Games.--Registration of Prost.i.tutes.--Purity of Morals.--Julian Law.--aediles.--Cla.s.ses of Prost.i.tutes.--Loose Prost.i.tutes.--Various Cla.s.ses of lewd Women.-- Meretrices.--Dancing Girls.--Bawds.--Male Prost.i.tutes.--Houses of Prost.i.tution.--Lupanaria.--Cells of Prost.i.tutes.--Houses of a.s.signation.--Fornices.--Circus.--Baths.--Taverns.--Bakers'

Shops.--Squares and Thoroughfares.--Habits and Manners of Prost.i.tutes.--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 PROSt.i.tUTION.

Our earliest acquaintance with the Roman laws governing prost.i.tution dates from the reign of the Emperor Augustus, but there is abundant evidence to show that prost.i.tutes were common in the city of Rome at the time when authentic history begins.

It does not appear that religious prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tute (_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 inst.i.tuted 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tutes had been required to register themselves in the office of the aedile. The ceremony appears to have been very similar to that now imposed by law on French prost.i.tutes. The woman designing to become a prost.i.tute presented herself before the aedile, gave her age, place of birth, and real name, with the one she a.s.sumed 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 prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tute 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 Baccha.n.a.lian 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 s.e.xes, 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.

The object of the Julian laws was to preserve the Roman blood from corruption, and still farther to degrade prost.i.tutes. These aims were partially attained by prohibiting the intermarriage of citizens with the relatives or descendants of prost.i.tutes; by exposing adulterers to severe penalties, and declaring the tolerant husband an accomplice; by laying penalties on bachelors and married men without children; by prohibiting the daughters of equestrians from becoming prost.i.tutes.[77] Tiberius, from his infamous retreat at Capreae, sanctioned a decree of the senate which enhanced the severity of the laws against adultery. By this decree it was made a penal offense for a matron of any cla.s.s to play the harlot, and her lover, the owner of the house where they met, and all persons who connived at the adultery, were declared equally culpable. It seems to have been not uncommon for certain married women to inscribe themselves on the aedile's list as prost.i.tutes, and to occupy a room at the houses of ill fame. This was p.r.o.nounced a penal offense; and every encouragement was held out, both to husbands and to common informers, to prosecute.[78]

In other respects the republican legislation is believed to have been unaltered by the emperors. The formality of inscription, its accompanying infamy, the consequences of the act remained the same. Prost.i.tutes carried on their trade under the aedile's eye. He patrolled the streets, and entered the houses of ill fame at all hours of the day and night. He saw that they were closed between daybreak and three in the afternoon. In case of brawls, he arrested and punished the disturbers of the peace. He punished by fine and scourging the omission of a brothel-keeper to inscribe every female in his house. He insisted on prost.i.tutes wearing the garments prescribed by law, and dyeing their hair blue or yellow. On the other hand, he could not break into a house without being habited in the insignia of his office, and being accompanied by his lictors. When the aedile Hostilius attempted to break open the door of the prost.i.tute Mamilia, on his return from a gay dinner, the latter drove him off with stones, and was sustained by the courts.[79] The aedile was bound also, on complaint laid by a prost.i.tute, to sentence any customer of hers to pay the sum due to her according to law.[80]

CLa.s.sES OF PROSt.i.tUTES.

It was the duty of the aedile to arrest, punish, and drive out of the city all loose prost.i.tutes who were not inscribed on his book. This regulation was practically a dead letter. At no time in the history of the empire did there cease to be a large and well-known cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes who were not recorded. They were distinguished from the registered prost.i.tutes (_meretrices_) by the name of _prostibulae_.[81] They paid no tax to the state, while their registered rivals contributed largely to the munic.i.p.al treasury; and, if they ran greater risks, and incurred more nominal infamy than the latter, they more frequently contrived to rise from their unhappy condition.

We have no means of judging of the number of prost.i.tutes exercising their calling at Rome, Capua, and the other Italian cities during the first years of the Christian era. During Trajan's reign the police were enabled to count thirty-two thousand in Rome alone, but this number obviously fell short of the truth. One is appalled at the great variety of cla.s.ses into which the _prostibulae_, or unregistered prost.i.tutes were divided. Such were the _Delicatae_, corresponding to the kept-women, or French _lorettes_, whose charms enabled them to exact large sums from their visitors;[82] the _Famosae_, who belonged to respectable families, and took to evil courses through l.u.s.t or avarice;[83] the _Doris_, who were remarkable for their beauty of form, and disdained the use of clothing;[84] the _Lupae_, or she-wolves, who haunted the groves and commons, and were distinguished by a particular cry in imitation of a wolf;[85] the _aelicariae_, or bakers' girls, who sold small cakes for sacrifice to Venus and Priapus, in the form of the male and female organs of generation;[86] the _Bustuariae_, whose home was the burial-ground, and who occasionally officiated as mourners at funerals;[87] the _Copae_, servant-girls at inns and taverns, who were invariably prost.i.tutes;[88]

the _Noctiluae_, or night-walkers; the _Blitidae_, a very low cla.s.s of women, who derived the name from _blitum_, a cheap and unwholesome beverage drunk in the lowest holes;[89] the _Diobolares_, wretched outcasts, whose price was two oboli (say two cents);[90] the _Forariae_, country girls who lurked about country roads; the _Gallinae_, who were thieves as well as prost.i.tutes; the _Quadrantariae_, seemingly the lowest cla.s.s of all, whose fee was less than any copper coin now current.[91] In contradistinction to these, the _meretrices_ a.s.sumed an air of respectability, and were often called _bonae meretrices_.[92]

Another and a distinct cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes were the female dancers, who were eagerly sought after, and more numerous than at Athens. They were Ionians, Lesbians, Syrians, Egyptians, Nubians (negresses), Indians, but the most famous were Spaniards. Their dances were of the same character as those of the Greek flute-players; the erotic poets of Rome have not shrunk from celebrating the astonis.h.i.+ng depravity of their performances.[93]

Horace faintly deplored the progress which the Ionic dances--_Ionice motus_--were making even among the Roman virgins.[94] These prost.i.tutes carried on their calling in defiance of law. If detected, they were liable to be whipped and driven out of the city;[95] but as their customers belonged to the wealthier cla.s.ses, they rarely suffered the penalty of their conduct.

Apart, again, from all these was the large cla.s.s of persons who traded in prost.i.tutes. The proper name for these wretches was _Leno_ (bawd), which was of both s.e.xes, though usually represented on the stage as a beardless man with shaven head. Under this name quite a number of varieties were included, such as the _Lupanarii_, or keepers of regular houses of ill fame; the _Adductores_ and _Perductores_, pimps; _Conciliatrices_ and _Ancillulae_, women who negotiated immoral transactions, and others. Then, as almost every baker, tavern-keeper, bath-house-keeper, barber, and perfumer combined the _lenocinium_, or trade in prost.i.tutes, with his other calling, their various names, _tonsor_, _unguentarius_, _balnearius_, &c., became synonymous with _leno_. This miserable cla.s.s was regarded with the greatest loathing at Rome.[96]

This hasty cla.s.sification of the Roman prost.i.tutes would be incomplete without some notice, however brief, of male prost.i.tutes. Fortunately, the progress of good morals has divested this repulsive theme of its importance; the object of this work can be obtained without entering into details on a branch of the subject which in this country is not likely to require fresh legislative notice. But the reader would form an imperfect idea of the state of morals at Rome were he left in ignorance of the fact that the number of male prost.i.tutes was probably full as large as that of females; that, as in Greece, the degrading phenomenon involved very little disgrace; that all the Roman authors allude to it as a matter of course; that the leading men of the empire were known to be addicted to such habits; that the aedile abstained from interference, save where a Roman youth suffered violence; and that, to judge from the language of the writers of the first, second, and third centuries of the Christian era, the Romans, like some Asiatic races, appeared to give the preference to unnatural l.u.s.ts.[97]

HOUSES OF PROSt.i.tUTION.

Having examined the laws which governed prost.i.tution at Rome, and the cla.s.ses into which prost.i.tutes were divided, it is now requisite to glance at the establishments in which prost.i.tution was carried on.

M. Dufour and others have followed Publius Victor and s.e.xtus Rufus in supposing that during the Augustine age there were forty-six first-cla.s.s houses of ill fame at Rome, and a much larger number of establishments where prost.i.tution was carried on without the supervision of the aedile. As it is now generally admitted that the works bearing the name of Publius Victor and s.e.xtus Rufus are forgeries of comparatively recent date, the statement loses all claim to credit, and we are left without statistical information as to the number of houses of prost.i.tution at Rome.[98]

Registered prost.i.tutes were to be found in the establishments called Lupanaria. These differed from the Greek Dicteria in being of various cla.s.ses, from the well-provided house of the Peace ward to the filthy dens of the Esquiline and Suburran wards; and farther, in the wide range of prices exacted by the keepers of the various houses. It is inferred from the results of the excavations at Pompeii, and some meagre hints thrown out by Latin authors, that the lupanaria at Rome were small in size. The most prosperous were built like good Roman houses, with a square court-yard, sometimes with a fountain playing in the middle. Upon this yard opened the cells of the prost.i.tutes. In smaller establishments the cells opened upon a hall or porch, which seemingly was used as a reception-room. The cells were dark closets, illuminated at night by a small bronze lamp. Sometimes they contained a bed, but as often a few cus.h.i.+ons, or a mere mat, with a dirty counterpane, const.i.tuted their whole furniture. Over the door of each cell hung a tablet, with the name of the prost.i.tute who occupied it, and the price she set on her favors; on the other side with the word _occupata_. When a prost.i.tute received a visitor in her cell, she turned the tablet round to warn intruders that she was engaged.[99] Over the door of the house a suggestive image was either painted, or represented in stone or marble: one of these signs may be seen to this day in Pompeii. Within, similar indecent sculptures abounded.

Bronze ornaments of this style hung round the necks of the courtesans; the lamps were in the same shape, and so were a variety of other utensils. The walls were covered with appropriate frescoes. In the best-ordered establishments, it is understood that scenes from the mythology were the usual subjects of these artistic decorations; but we have evidence enough at Pompeii to show that gross indecency, not poetical effect, was the main object sought by painters in these works.

Regular houses of prost.i.tution, _lupanaria_, were of two kinds: establishments owned and managed by a bawd, who supplied the cells with slaves or hired prost.i.tutes, and establishments where the bawd merely let his cells to prost.i.tutes for a given sum. In the former case the bawd was the princ.i.p.al, in the latter the women. There is reason to suppose that the former were the more respectable. Petronius alludes to a house where so much was paid for the use of a cell, and the sum was an _as_, less than two cents.[100] Messalina evidently betook herself to one of these establishments, which, for clearness' sake, we may call a.s.signation houses; and as it appears she was paid in copper (_aera poposcit_), it is safe to infer that the house was of slender respectability.

The best houses were abundantly supplied with servants and luxuries. A swarm of pimps and runners sought custom for them in every part of the city. Women--_ancillae ornatrices_--were in readiness to repair with skill the ravages which amorous conflicts caused in the toilets of the prost.i.tutes. Boys--_bacariones_--attended at the door of the cell with water for ablution. Servants, who bore the inconsistent t.i.tle of _aquarii_, were ready to supply wine and other refreshments to customers.

And not a few of the lupinaria kept a cas.h.i.+er, called _villicus_, whose business it was to discuss bargains with visitors, and to receive the money before turning the tablet.

Under many public and some of the best private houses at Rome were arches, the tops of which were only a few feet above the level of the street.

These arches, dark and deserted, became a refuge for prost.i.tutes. Their name, _fornices_, at last became synonymous with _lupanar_, and we have borrowed from it our generic word fornication.[101] There is reason to believe that there were several score of arches of this character, and used for this purpose, under the great circus and other theatres at Rome,[102] besides those under dwelling-houses and stores. The want of fresh air was severely felt in these vile abodes. Frequent allusions to the stench exhaled from the mouth of a fornix are made in the Roman authors.[103]

Establishments of a lower character still were the _pergulae_, in which the girls occupied a balcony above the street; the _stabula_, where no cells were used, and promiscuous intercourse took place openly;[104] the _turturilla_, or pigeon-houses;[105] the _casauria_, or suburb houses of the very lowest stamp.

The clearest picture of a Roman house of ill fame is that given in the famous pa.s.sage of Juvenal, which may be allowed to remain in the original.

The female, it need hardly be added, was Messalina:

"Dormire virum quum senserat uxor, Ausa Palatino tegetem praeferre cubili, Sumere nocturnas meretrix Augusta cucullos, Linquebat comite ancilla non amplius una, Sed _nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero_, Intravit calidum veteri centone lupanar, Et _cellam vacuam_ atque suam. Tune nuda capillis Const.i.tit auratis, t.i.tulum ment.i.ta Lyciscae, _Ostendit que tuum_, generose Britannice, ventrem.

Excepit blanda intrantes, atque _aera poposcit_, Et resupina jacens multorum absorbuit ictus.

_Mox lenone suas jam dimittente puellas_, Tristris abit, et quod potuit, tamen ultima cellam Clausit, adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine v.u.l.v.ae, Et la.s.sata viris necdum satiata recessit; Obscurrisque genis turpis fumoque lucernae Foeda lupanaris tulit ad pulvinar adorem."[106]

The pa.s.sages in italics contain useful information; we shall allude to some of them hereafter. Meanwhile, it is evident from the line _mox lenone_, etc., that, at a certain hour of the night, the keepers of houses of ill fame were in the habit of closing their establishments and sending their girls home. The law required them to close at daybreak, but probably a much earlier hour may have suited their interest.

Allusion has already been made to the fornices under the circus. It is well understood that prost.i.tutes 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 pa.s.sions 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 s.e.xes 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 s.e.xes, they could meet freely in the corridors and chambers, and any immorality short of actual prost.i.tution 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 a.s.semblage would obviously be a place of resort for dealers in prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes. 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 s.e.xes, even in the wash-room. As early as the Augustan era, however, the baths were regarded as little better than houses of prost.i.tution under a respectable name.[112]