THE
HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION:

ITS EXTENT, CAUSES, AND EFFECTS THROUGHOUT
THE WORLD.

[BEING AN OFFICIAL REPORT TO THE BOARD OF ALMS-HOUSE GOVERNORS
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.]

BY WILLIAM W. SANGER, M.D.,
RESIDENT PHYSICIAN, BLACKWELL’S ISLAND, NEW YORK CITY; MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE; LATE ONE OF THE PHYSICIANS
TO THE MARINE HOSPITAL, QUARANTINE, NEW YORK, ETC., ETC., ETC.

“To such grievances as society can not readily cure, it usually forbids utterance on pain of its scorn; this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness.”—Currer Bell, Shirley.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
PEARL STREET, FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1858.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and fifty-eight, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

DEDICATION.

TO THE GOVERNORS OF THE ALMS-HOUSE OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK.

Sirs,—To your honorable Board I dedicate the following pages, the result of an investigation into the causes and extent of Prostitution.

Yours was the conception, mine has been the execution of the work; to you am I indebted for many valuable suggestions; to your kindness for much encouraging approbation; and now to your hands I confide my labors, in the conviction that they will not be futile; that your patriotism, your philanthropy, and your humanity will be at once enlisted in the cause.

In so noble an endeavor it will be a source of satisfaction to remember that I assisted you in those generous exertions which will add fresh laurels to your names; that I had some share in the effort which will induce future generations to remember with pride that the first blow struck in the Western World at the gigantic vice Prostitution was aimed by the Governors of the Alms-House of the City and County of New York.

I am your obliged fellow-citizen,
William W. Sanger, M.D.

Resident Physician’s Office, Blackwell’s Island,
New York City, August 10th, 1858.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The reader will perceive from the body of this work that the “History of Prostitution” was commenced in the year 1856. It was completed and ready for the press at the close of 1857. On the morning of February 13th, 1858, the Island Hospital on Blackwell’s Island was entirely consumed by fire, which spread so rapidly as to render it impossible to save any thing from the flames. Among the property destroyed, my library and manuscripts were included. Fortunately, the first draught of this work had been previously removed from my office, and was preserved, and from that the present volume has been prepared.

Advantage has been taken of the opportunity thus afforded carefully to revise the work and introduce some additional facts, bringing the history, of New York especially, to the present time.

The chapters describing foreign prostitution are not claimed to be entirely original. They are compilations and condensations from every available source. It is believed that the authorities have been named in most cases where the ideas of others have been used; but, owing to the loss of all the original works, it is highly probable that in some instances this has been overlooked. Should the reader discover any omissions of this nature, he will be kind enough to understand that accident alone prevents the usual acknowledgements.

W. W. S.

Resident Physician’s Office, Blackwell’s Island,
New York City, August 10th, 1858.

CONTENTS.

THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.

INTRODUCTION.

Arguments are unnecessary to prove the existence of prostitution. The evil is so notorious that none can possibly gainsay it. But when its extent, its causes, or its effects are questioned, a remarkable degree of ignorance or carelessness is manifested. Few care to know the secret springs from which prostitution emanates; few are anxious to know how wide the stream extends; few have any desire to know the devastation it causes. Society has formally laid a prohibition on the subject, and he who presumes to argue that what affects one may injure all; he who believes that the malady in his neighbor’s family to-day may visit his own to-morrow; he who dares to intimate that a vice which has blighted the happiness of one parent, and ruined the character of one daughter, may produce, must inevitably produce, the same sad results in another circle; in short, he who dares allude to the subject of prostitution in any other than a mysterious and whispered manner, must prepare to meet the frowns and censure of society.

Keen was the knowledge of human nature, acute the perception of worldly sentiment in the breast of an accomplished woman lately deceased, when she wrote, “To such grievances as society can not readily cure, it usually forbids utterance on pain of its scorn; this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness.” How true the idea, many a man who has attempted to unveil a hidden crime, or probe a secret sorrow, but too well knows.

Not then to prove that prostitution exists, for that is so glaringly palpable that all must perforce concede it, but to ascertain its origin, progress, and end, is the object of these pages. The finger of scorn may be pointed at the labor; the self-righteous world may wrap itself in a mantle of prudery, and close its ears against sickening details; the complacent public may demur at an approach to sin and misery; the self-satisfied community may object to view wretchedness drawn from the obscurity of its hiding-place to the full light of investigation: nevertheless, there is now existing a moral pestilence which creeps insidiously into the privacy of the domestic circle, and draws thence the myriads of its victims, and which saps the foundation of that holy confidence, the first, the most beautiful attraction of home. There is an ever-present physical danger, so fatally destructive that the world would recoil, as from the spring of a serpent, could they but appreciate its malignity; a malignity which is daily and hourly threatening every man, woman, and child in the community; which for hundreds of years has been slowly but steadily making its way onward, leaving a track marked with broken hopes, ruined frames, and sad recollections of stricken friends; and which now, in the full force of an impetus acquired and aggravated by concealment, almost defies opposition. There is a social wrong which forces upon the community vast expenditures for an object of which they are ignorant; which swells the public taxes and increases individual outlay for a vice which has hitherto been studiously kept in concealment. These reasons were sufficiently powerful to induce the necessary researches for the accomplishment of this work, and they are considered sufficient to justify its publication.

An unseen evil, of which only the effects are visible, is more frightful than one whose dimensions are apparent. No statesman would grapple with a political question until he knew its “form and pressure;” no philanthropist can satisfactorily encounter an unknown misery. Both may judge, to some slight extent, of the evil they can not see, but the one can not venture to remove it, nor the other to modify its woes until its power is fully known. This has so far been the case with prostitution. The world has studiously drawn a screen before it, and when the sufferings of its victims became so apparent that the vice was palpable, an additional mystery was thrown around it, and the people of the nineteenth century know it but as a sin with which they can not interfere. It has all the imagined force of a monster, because of its obscurity; all the virulence of an avenging fiend, because its true powers are hidden; and even those who suffered from its poison have been led to believe that its mysteries were so inscrutable as to defy all approach.

Hitherto reticence has been the policy. This position has been held too long, for it is false in principle and injurious in tendency. The day has arrived when the shroud must be removed; when the public safety imperiously demands an investigation into the matter; when those who regard it as a small wrong may have their attention directed to its real proportions; and when those who have viewed it as an unmanageable giant may be alike undeceived.

A small matter it decidedly is not: the eternal ruin of one misguided woman would effectually preclude such an opinion; the physical ruin of an impetuous man would prohibit such an estimate, and both these are among those daily consequences which call for an investigation. There is scarcely a person in the community who can not recall some circumstance he has known to support this assertion; for so wide-spread has been the baneful influence of prostitution, that there are comparatively few but have suffered, through friends or relatives, if not in their own persons.

Nor is it unmanageable, except when concealed. Stripped of the veil of secrecy which has enveloped it, there appears a vice arising from an inextinguishable natural impulse on the part of one sex, fostered by confiding weakness in the other; from social disabilities on one side, and social oppression on the other; from the wiles of the deceiver working upon unsuspecting credulity; and, finally, from the stern necessity to live.

It is a mere absurdity to assert that prostitution can ever be eradicated. Strenuous and well-directed efforts for this purpose have been made at different times. The whole power of the Church, where it possessed not merely a spiritual, but an actual secular arm, has been in vain directed against it. Nature defied the mandates of the clergy, and the threatened punishments of an after-life were futile to deter men from seeking, and women from granting, sinful pleasures in this world. Monarchs victorious in the field and unsurpassed in the council-chamber have bent all their energies of will, and brought all the aids of power to crush it out, but before these vice has not quailed. The guilty women have been banished, scourged, branded, executed; their partners have been subjected to the same punishment; held up to public opinion as immoral; denuded of their civil rights; have seen their offenses visited upon their families; have been led to the stake, the gibbet, and the block, and still prostitution exists. The teachings of morality and virtue have been powerless here. In some cases they restrain individuals; upon the aggregate they are inoperative. The researches of science have been unheeded. They have traced the physical results of vice, and have foreshadowed its course. They have demonstrated that the suffering parents of this generation will bequeath to their posterity a heritage of ruined powers; that the malady which illicit pleasure communicates is destructive to the hopes of man; that the human frame is perceptibly and regularly depreciating by the operation of this poison, and have shown that even the desire for health and long life, one of the most powerful motives that ever influences a human being, has been of no avail to stem the torrent.

But if history proves that prostitution can not be suppressed, it also demonstrates that it can be regulated, and directed into channels where its most injurious results can be encountered, and its dangerous tendencies either entirely arrested or materially weakened. This is the policy to which civilized communities are tending, and to aid the movement it is needful that the subject be examined, even at the risk of the world’s contumely.

In some of the countries of Continental Europe the examination has been made, and the natural consequences of a searching and philosophical investigation are there seen in legislation, which aims not to dam a wild torrent, but to lead it where its rage may be harmlessly spent. When a mighty river overflows its banks, the uncontrollable flood works wide-spread ruin and devastation along its course; but the same river, confined to its natural channel, may be of immense service in carrying off a vast amount of filth and debris that otherwise would cause pestilence and death. In this Western hemisphere, and in the mother-country, Anglo-Saxon prudery has stood aloof from inquiring into a vice which every one admits to be offensive to the moral sense of the people, and has submitted to an accumulation of evils rather than seek to abate them, until the suffering and the wrong have become so boldly defined that they force themselves upon the public eye.

Assuredly it is high time to inaugurate a new line of action; to cast aside as unworthy those puerile doubts of propriety and expediency which have stood in the way of an onward progress. The very meaning of the word “propriety” supplies an argument in favor of the proposed course. Conventionally, it has been construed to mean an indefinite something which every person has moulded to suit his own predilections. Upon the same principle that a man who makes his living dishonestly would consider it a glaring impropriety to examine the laws of fraud, has the world decided it an outrage against propriety to inquire into a vice which many secretly practice, but all publicly condemn. Reasoning like this has been too often applied, and with too great an effect. Can there possibly be an impropriety in investigating a vice which threatens the purity and peace of the community, because in so doing unpleasant facts will be disclosed? Is there not a far more striking inconsistency in supinely allowing the same vice to exist and increase, without hinderance or examination?

Again: it must be conceded that the demands of propriety are universal. They are not restricted to any person or place, but press with equal force upon every member of the community in every possible situation. The common welfare is involved in their general application, and he well merits the good opinion of his fellow-men who points them to a case where propriety is outraged, and asks their aid to apply the remedy. In a word, propriety demands an exposure of all acts of impropriety, and the application of the needful cure.

Then the question arises, In what form shall the exposure be made? Truth admits of but one reply. It must be so explicit as to leave no doubt of its meaning; it must be so guarded as not to offend in its application. If the first of these rules is not observed, any disclosure will be worthless; if the remarks are vague, indefinite, or generalized, no good result can accrue. Take a simple illustration. It conveys no determinate idea to a benevolent man to say, “There is distress in a certain city;” but point him to the particular locality, and give him the precise circumstances, and his sympathy is at once aroused and effectively exerted. The same rule is equally applicable to a monster vice and to an individual hardship, and upon this principle have the disclosures of the following pages been based. The idea has been to particularize sufficiently to draw attention, but not enough to gratify a prurient inclination; to exhibit the evil in a truthful aspect, but not in a fascinating form. None can doubt the truth of Pope’s well-known lines:

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

The endeavor should be to fulfill the imperative demands of propriety, without disturbing the conventional prejudices implied by the same word.

Then, as to expediency, or the fitness to effect some good end. It must be admitted that the mere fact of proving prostitution capable of control is a good object, and it is apparent that such proof can not be afforded while the vice remains a myth. Something must be known of its haunts and its customs ere any one can decide in what shape a supervisory power can be best applied. This knowledge must be obtained in defiance of deep-rooted prejudices. Commonplace objections about the danger of touching impure objects are best met by the remark that to the pure all things are pure. Though benevolence may at times lead its devotees through scenes where moral purity is shocked, and to neighborhoods where filth and obscenity vitiate the very air they breathe, there is no contamination to those whose motives are good. Inexpediency has been urged as often and as falsely as impropriety. In their application to this subject, both are perverted from their legitimate meaning; both are made subservient to a false taste, or a mawkish sensibility which fears to encounter an imaginary danger.

The safety of the community, so far as its sanitary condition is concerned, imperatively demands an inquiry like this. It is no longer necessary to prove that syphilitic taint is propagated by the direct agency of prostitution. That fact has been demonstrated years ago, and, reasoning from it, we rightly infer that the ravages of that poison can be checked by compelling abandoned women to certain judicious observances. One thing is absolutely certain, that the public health can not be endangered by the interference, and there is a moral certainty that it may be materially benefited. The value of this investigation, so far as relates to purely physical questions, consists in not merely pointing out where the evil is, but in showing to what extent it exists, and then contrasting the state of venereal disease, its rapid increase and augmenting virulence in this country, with its condition in those nations where similar investigations have resulted in practical measures.

Public safety imperatively demands this investigation as a means of tracing the habitual resorts of criminals. It is not necessary to inform any man conversant with city life that houses of ill fame are the common resort of the most abandoned of the male part of the community. There the assassin, against whose hand no life is secure, has a safe retreat. The burglar, who commits his depredations under cover of the shade of night; the swindler, who defrauds the honest trader by false representations; the counterfeiter, who earns a precarious living by his unholy trade—these hold there high carnival. There they meet to recount their exploits and divide the spoils; to devise new schemes of wickedness, or lay plans by which simple youths may be allured to vilest practices.

There is another phase of public safety which demands this investigation, namely, the preservation of female honor. Those who frequent these haunts of vice are forever employed in casting about snares to entrap the young, the unwary, or the friendless woman. They tempt her to minister to their libidinous desires, and swell the already overcrowded ranks of frailty. While these resorts are secret, there is every facility for such infamous conduct, with but slight probability of its detection, and still slighter opportunities for prevention. Thither, too, young men, and even boys, are inveigled by those who have grown old in vice, and there are they taught the horrid mysteries of unhallowed passion. Many a promising youth has left such haunts as these not only with a ruined constitution, but with loss of character and honor; many whose names swell the criminal records of the day date their first step in crime from the hour they entered a common brothel.

Again: Public safety demands this investigation because of the superior opportunities it will afford to reformatory measures. Start not at the supposition of reforming courtesans. There is hope even for them, for they are human beings, though depraved. Their hearts throb with the same sympathies that move the more favored of their sex. Their minds are susceptible to the same emotions as those of other females. Few of them become vile from natural instincts: poor victims of circumstances, many of them would gladly amend if the proper means were used at the proper time.

“There is in every human heart
Some not entirely barren part,
Where flowers of richest scent may blow,
And fruit in glorious sunlight grow.”

This consummation can be achieved only when the pseudo-virtue of the world shall yield to true benevolence, and charity be in deed what it professes in name.

If public safety is thus urgent, private interest also has arguments in favor of investigating prostitution. No one need be told that public aid is required to give medical treatment to the unfortunate men and women tainted by this vice; nor need any one be assured that such aid, administered with every regard to economy, requires yearly a large portion of the taxes paid by individuals. It would be sheer folly to assert that any measures which can follow this inquiry will be efficacious in eradicating syphilis, but experience proves that an effective supervision would materially abate its influence, render it curable in a much shorter space of time, and reduce the expenses for each patient in a corresponding ratio.

Another large claim upon the public funds arises from the necessity of employing an extensive judicial and police organization to deal with the crime and the criminals generated and fostered in houses of ill fame. Nests of vice as they are now in their darkness and seclusion, it would be impossible to suppose a more fitting nursery for crime, or one whence more criminals would emanate. As with disease, so with crime. It can not be suppressed by placing its retreats under public notice, but it can be watched, and, once brought to the light of day, half its dangers and difficulties become surmountable.

Finally, private interest demands this investigation on mere private grounds—the individual and personal expenses caused by diseases contracted by debauchery. There is the money a working man must pay for his cure: this is his share of the loss. There is the unproductive time, and the loss of profits upon his labor: this is his employer’s sacrifice. There is the deprivation of comforts and necessaries experienced by his family and dependents: this is their penalty. Society is thus involved in a general loss on account of an act of folly, or passion, or crime (call it which you please), committed in a concealed and secret haunt, and such loss could be saved by the intervention of proper means.

Common sense asks for a full investigation of all the evils attending prostitution. In the every-day affairs of life, any man who feels the pressure of a particular evil looks at once for its cause. He may be neither a philosopher nor a logician, and may never have heard of or read any of the luminous treatises which professedly simplify science, yet he knows very well that for every effect there must be some adequate cause, and for this he generally searches diligently till he can find and remove it. But here, in the city of New York, is a population who claim to be as intelligent as any on the Western continent, who have been for years suffering from the effects of a vice in purse and person; who have paid and are paying every year large sums of money on account of it; who witness every day some broken constitution or ruined character resulting from it, and who yet have never thought of seeking out the cause! Is it now too late to enlist your sympathies in the undertaking?

Hence we conclude that propriety, expediency, public safety, private interest, and common sense demand an investigation like this now submitted to the reader. And what is the argument brought forward to oppose it? The world’s scorn—“this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness.” But is not this scorn powerless against the array of favoring motives? Will it stand the test of comparison with any one of them, much less of all? Is not its influence lost when its real character is known? The reckless carelessness which has suffered a growing vice to increase and multiply, which has permitted a deadly Upas-tree to take root and blossom in the community until its poisonous exhalations threaten universal infection; which has, by its actual indifference, fostered vice, promoted seduction, perpetuated disease, and entailed death; shall this deformed weakness now raise its trembling hands, and exhibit its tottering frame, and lift its puny voice to forbid an examination into the sources of the danger? Has not the finger of this scorn too long forbid the search for truth? Has not the hour arrived when truth will speak trumpet-tongued, and when her voice must be heard?

Now the question will arise, Has the world’s indifference produced these evils? Undoubtedly it has, and in the following manner: Laws have been placed upon the statute-book declaring prostitutes, and houses of prostitution, and all who live by such means, illegal and immoral. There the law yet stands. At uncertain intervals some poor and friendless woman is arrested as a vagrant, and, to appease the offended majesty of law, she is sent to prison, a scapegoat for five thousand of her class. It also sometimes happens that another woman equally guilty, but with money or influence, is arrested at the same time and for the same offense, and before she reaches the prison walls a legal quibble has been raised and she is free. Is there no culpable indifference in this? Houses of prostitution are proscribed by law. How many of them are ever indicted, or, if indicted, how many are suppressed? This, too, is owing to criminal neglect, and it is aggravated by the injurious effects arising from the mere circumstance of allowing a law to exist, and making no efforts to enforce it. The character of a people is judged, not by the laws that are made, but by the strictness with which those that do exist are enforced and observed. In regard to the first, there may be exhibited an acute perception of an existing evil, and a desire to reform it by legislation; but a second glance may reveal no wish to make this legislation effective. In the special matter of prostitution, the opinion is expressed elsewhere that prohibitory laws are worse than useless, and in the experience of New York City there is nothing to shake that opinion, notwithstanding the fact that the efforts made to enforce them are so “few and far between.” Had existing laws been more vigorously enforced, their inefficiency would long since have been much better understood than it now is, and people would not have rested under the delusion that every thing necessary has been done.

There are yet other cases of culpable indifference. These same proscribed houses of prostitution are suffered to exist uncontrolled, and to spread disease and increase crime and vagrancy in all parts of the city. It has been generally conceded that they can not be suppressed. What effort has been made to hold in check their baneful influence? None—literally none. The statesman has looked on appalled at an evil of whose magnitude he could form no correct idea; the clergyman has hesitated to encounter those who he judged would not respectfully receive his admonitions; the masses of society have shrunk from considering a subject which was repugnant and distasteful. Is there no guilty indifference in this? There can be but one answer to this query; but one opinion as to the share this general apathy has had in fostering the evil.

To substitute for this apathy a healthy action is the object of this investigation. It is but the means to an end. In themselves, as mere matters of information, the facts and deductions presented in the following pages can do nothing but demonstrate the necessity of exertion; but of this necessity they do afford overwhelming demonstration.

Thus much for the general arguments as to the necessity of a work of this nature. There are other special and local causes which led to its accomplishment in the present form.

“The Governors of the Alms-House of the City and County of New York,” or, as they are more generally known, “The Ten Governors,” is a body called into existence by an act of the State Legislature passed April 6, 1849, specially to take charge of the vagrant and pauper institutions of the city. The present members of the Board are the following well-known citizens:[1]

C. Godfrey Gunther, Esq., President.
Isaac J. Oliver, Esq., Secretary.
Washington Smith, Esq.[2]
Anthony Dugro, Esq.[3]
Cornelius V. Anderson, Esq.
Isaac Townsend, Esq.
Daniel F. Tiemann, Esq.
Joseph S. Taylor, Esq.
P. G. Moloney, Esq.
Benjamin F. Pinckney, Esq.

At the time these investigations commenced two other prominent men were also members of the organization, Hon. Edward C. West (now Surrogate of the city) and Simeon Draper, Esq. Both of these gentlemen had served as President of the Board of Governors with honor to themselves and satisfaction to their colleagues and the public; both took a lively interest in the projected inquiry, and to both am I indebted for much valuable assistance.

The act establishing the Board of Governors assigned to them, with their other duties, the medical care of all persons who had contracted infectious diseases in the practice of debauchery, and who required charitable aid to restore them to health. The result was that a very large number of persons, both male and female, chargeable to the citizens of New York through the medium of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island, came under their cognizance, and they became convinced that some measures were necessary in connection therewith.

Individual members had held this opinion for some time before any official action was taken, and foremost among such was Governor Isaac Townsend. This gentleman was one of the originally appointed Governors, and has been connected with the Board by re-election ever since—a circumstance which made him perfectly acquainted with all the workings of the present system, and to him the public is indebted for the conception of this undertaking. For years has he labored to bring about this result, with an indomitable energy and perseverance equaled only by his known benevolence and honesty of purpose. He frequently made the practicability of such a measure the subject of conversation with the gentleman who preceded me as Resident Physician of Blackwell’s Island, and, on my appointment (1853), the subject was again urged by him; nor could I be unaware of its importance. No official action was taken until the commencement of the year 1855. At that time Mr. Townsend was President of the Board, and one of his first acts in that capacity was to submit a list of interrogatories on the subject, which were adopted and transmitted to me. I transcribe them from the Minutes of the Board:

“At a meeting of the Board of Governors of the Alms-House, held January 23, 1855, the following interrogatories were presented by the President:

“1. What proportion of the inmates of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island under your medical charge are, in your opinion, directly or indirectly suffering from syphilis?

“2. Are, or are not, the number of such inmates steadily on the increase?

“3. Do not patients in the different institutions, particularly in the Penitentiary Hospital, often leave before the disease is cured, so that they are liable to infect other persons after their departure?

“4. Are not the offspring of parents affected with constitutional syphilis subject to many diseases of like character, which cause them to become a charge upon the city for long periods of time, and often for life?

“5. What are your views in reference to the best means of checking and decreasing this disease, and what plan, in your opinion, could be adopted to relieve New York City of the enormous amount of misery and expense caused by syphilis?

“6. You will reply in full to the above queries at the earliest possible date.

“Resolved, That a copy of the above be sent to the Resident Physician, Blackwell’s Island.”

To reply to these questions, especially to the fifth, I discovered that it would be requisite to extend my investigations beyond the limits of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island. This idea was communicated to President Townsend, who joined me in appreciating the necessity of such a movement. He also was the means of interesting Mayor Wood and other officers of the city in the investigation as subsequently carried on, while his continued exertions and earnest support aided me generally in the prosecution of the labor, and merit my most sincere and grateful acknowledgments.

The steps thus taken are fully detailed in the following letter to the Board of Governors, that letter, or preliminary report, having been called for in connection with the reports from the Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital, and from the Resident Physician of Randall’s Island, which will be found, in extenso, in [Chapter XXXVII.] of this work:[4]

“Isaac Townsend, Esq., President of the Board of Governors.

“Dear Sir,—In reply to your letter asking for answers to certain interrogatories on the subject of prostitution and its diseases, I have to state that I am not prepared to report, nor can I do so for some considerable length of time to come.

“Had I confined myself to simply answering the queries propounded as regards the institutions under my medical charge, simply given you the gross numbers, with the percentages of those who have suffered or are now suffering from venereal disease, such reply could have been sent to you long ago. A report of this kind from this department would have been looked upon by the public at large as containing the history of nearly all the prostitution in the city, and particularly would a majority of the public have believed that nineteen twentieths of the disease resulting from prostitution found its home here. Such is not the fact. Great as is the number of prostitutes annually sent here, and enormous as is the number of cases of venereal disease yearly treated here, yet these compose but a small fraction of the sum total actually existing in this city. There are but few more prostitutes on the island than are to be found on the same number of acres in certain portions of the city; and as for the venereal disease, why, gentlemen, the island has the advantage. It is the least dangerous locality.

“Believing these to be facts, I could not bring myself to think that any practical good would be accomplished by giving you the statistics of these institutions alone. It would have been merely doing what has been done before, and would have yielded no additional information for your guidance. But it appeared to me that the time had come when your attention might be solicited to the various facts attending the aggregate prostitution of the city; for, despite all our prohibitory laws, it is a fact which can not be questioned or denied that this vice is attaining a position and extent in this community which can not be viewed without alarm. It has more than kept pace with the growth of our city. Unlike the vice of a few years since, it no longer confines itself to secrecy and darkness, but boldly strides through our most thronged and elegant thoroughfares, and there, in the broad light of the sun, it jostles the pure, the virtuous, and the good. It is in your gay streets, and in your quiet, home-like streets; it is in your squares, and in your suburban retreats and summer resorts; it is in your theatres, your opera, your hotels; nay, it is even intruding itself into the private circles, and slowly but steadily extending its poison, known but to few, and entirely unsuspected by the majority of our citizens. The whole machinery of the law has been turned against these females without success; its only result having been a resolve, on their part, to confront society with the charge of harsh, cruel, and unjust treatment.

“From these considerations, I felt it my duty to obtain all the facts which could possibly be collected having any relation to the vice in question, assured that you were desirous of taking a comprehensive view of it; and hence the resolve, if possible, to trace to the fountain-head prostitution and its attendant diseases, so as to be enabled to bring the subject before you in a form which should exhibit it in its proper colors and dimensions.

“The first step in this investigation was to obtain ample and reliable information of the extent of the vice as it exists outside of these departments—a step which would have been beyond my power alone. From the bold and reformatory stand which his honor Mayor Wood had taken in regard to many matters connected with our city government, it was believed that he would render his assistance if convinced of the propriety and prospective usefulness of the investigation, and the result of an application by President Isaac Townsend to his honor fully justified the correctness of this supposition. He was found not only willing to aid in this great work, but fully alive to its necessity and importance. The plan adopted to forward the inquiry was to take a census of the city, so far as regards prostitution, including the number of houses of prostitution; the number of prostitutes; the causes which led them to become such; their ages, habits, birth-places, early history, education, religious instruction, occupation, etc., and which census is now being taken by the Chief of Police, George W. Matsell, Esq., and the Captains of Police.

“Simultaneously with this, inquiries are also being prosecuted concerning the extent of venereal disease in New York, which will afford interesting information. This, of course, will be done without individual exposure, nor will the report, when completed, assume the form of a guide-book by which persons can find houses of ill fame. I am desirous of obtaining the aggregate facts of the vice, and shall be cautious to take no steps toward gratifying a prurient curiosity or lacerating a rankling wound.

“When these facts are before you, they will be their own argument for the necessity of action.

“I do not trouble you on this occasion with any remarks upon the deadly nature of the venereal poison, but when you are informed as to the facilities for its diffusion will be the proper time to do so. Neither would it be consistent with this stage of the inquiry to enter into any discussion as to the plans that could be adopted in mitigation of the vice; for although prohibitory measures have failed to suppress, or even check it, yet, until its full extent is known, I do not imagine that you would deem it prudent to attempt to grapple a monster whose strength was not fully ascertained.

“You perceive that to obtain all the information necessary on this matter will be a work requiring both time and labor, and I respectfully ask your forbearance, with the assurance that I will lay the result of my inquiries before you at the earliest possible opportunity, and with the hope that the magnitude and importance of the subject will be an apology for the time to which it is necessarily protracted.

“I am, sir, yours, very respectfully,
“William W. Sanger, Resident Physician, Blackwell’s Island.”

To aid the police officers in the duty of taking the census alluded to above, a schedule of questions was prepared.[5] This was submitted to the Board of Governors by Governor Townsend, and a resolution was adopted at their meeting of October 23d, 1855, sanctioning the plan adopted, and authorizing him to have a sufficient number of copies printed. The mayor, the district attorney, the chief of police, and the captains of the several districts, willingly and zealously co-operated with Governor Townsend and myself, and every possible exertion was used to obtain accurate and extensive information. It became my duty to assist the officers in the execution of their task, and I am thus enabled to speak with certainty as to the authenticity of the statistics given, which were mainly collected under my own observation.

I gladly avail myself of the present opportunity to record my obligations for services rendered by his honor Fernando Wood, Mayor of the city of New York; George W. Matsell, Esq., Chief of Police; and to the Captains of Police in the different wards of the city, namely,

To Captains Halpin, Hopkins, Ditchett, Carpenter, Dowling, Letts, Turnbull, Kissner, and Dilks, in whose wards is found the greatest amount of prostitution, and upon whom fell the largest share of labor, I am more particularly indebted.

The necessary particulars were finally obtained, and are embodied in [Chapters XXXII. to XXXVII.] of this work, but there was still an important point to determine, namely, what had been done elsewhere, and what was the result of such action, to check prostitution and diminish the ravages of venereal disease. The Continent of Europe presented a field for this inquiry, and to it I turned for the information required, which is given in the various chapters devoted to the several countries in such a form as to show the measures which have been taken, the effect, and the causes which led to legislative interference, contrasted with those other parts of the world where, as yet, no remedial plans have been tried, notwithstanding the necessity which calls for them.

The reader is now in possession of the facts which led to this inquiry. Is it too much to ask his attention to the analysis and exhibition of prostitution as it is at the present time, he being well assured that no assertions will be made that are not supported by good authority, nor any conclusions drawn from doubtful premises?

So far as New York alone is concerned, the evil is known to a large portion of her citizens, although its ramifications are but very imperfectly understood; and the endeavor will be to present all possible information on the matter, and to give a truthful, unexaggerated picture of the depravity. Disagreeable as this must be from the nature of the task, it is hopeful from a belief that the result will tend to public good.

One of the most painfully interesting branches of the inquiry is that relating to the ages of the unfortunate women. Their number includes many who are but mere children; who but recently knelt at a mother’s side, and in infantile accents breathed a prayer to the Almighty; who but recently sprang with eager, joyous bound to the returning footsteps of a father; who, in a happy and innocent home, have but recently given promise of a bright and virtuous life. Therein are also included many who were deprived by death of their natural protectors, and who, thus left unwatched and uncared for, have fallen before the destroyer ere yet the age of womanhood was reached.

The places of their birth form an interesting subject for consideration. In this land the frigid North and sunny South, the busy East and fertile West have each contributed their quota, while foreign countries have sent large numbers to swell the mournful aggregate.

The most useful portion of the subject will be found, it is imagined, in replies to the question, “What was the cause of your becoming a prostitute?” These tend to expose the concealed vices of mankind, and to prove that many of the unfortunate victims are “more sinned against than sinning.” Among the reasons assigned for a deviation from the paths of virtue are some which tell of man’s deceit; others, where the machinations employed to effect the purpose raise a blush for humanity; others, where a wife was sacrificed by the man who had sworn before God and in the presence of men to protect her through life; others, where parents have urged or commanded this course, and are now living on the proceeds of their children’s shame, or where an abuse of parental authority has produced the same effect; and others still, where women, already depraved, have been the means of leading their fellow-women to disgrace. A bare allusion to these wrongs is sickening; but, while the gangrene of prostitution is rapidly extending through society, it becomes an imperative duty to examine its causes completely and impartially.

Another prolific source of female depravity will be exhibited by the several tables showing the description of employment pursued, and the wages received by women previous to their fall, and it will be a question for the political economist to decide how far mere business considerations should be an apology on the part of employers for a reduction in their rates of remuneration, and whether the saving of a small percentage on wages is not more than counterbalanced by the enormous amount of taxation enforced on the public at large to defray the expenses incurred on account of a system of vice which is the direct result, in many cases, of insufficient compensation for honest labor.

In conclusion, it must not be assumed that the information collected from two thousand women in New York City relates to all the prostitutes therein. The many difficulties surrounding the investigation, and especially the secrecy to which prohibitory laws have driven this class of persons, rendered the task impossible; but, from the best information that could be obtained of those whose knowledge of the vice was derived from actual experience, it is imagined that the replies represent about two fifths of the total number.[6] They are presented with full confidence in their general authenticity, and may be very reasonably concluded to offer a fair average of the whole. They unquestionably exhibit an appalling amount of depravity and consequent wretchedness, with but very few redeeming features, and present mournful subjects for reflection to all classes, with forcible arguments for remedial measures. Without this end in prospect it would have been scarcely justifiable, at least in a moral point of view, to institute this inquiry or make these disclosures; but it certainly may be reasonably inferred that many will feel sufficient interest in the advance of virtue to aid in the mitigation of this enormous vice which threatens all social relations; which has already introduced physical suffering into so many families; and the influence of which, increasing in a direct ratio to its existence, will very probably extend its malignant poison, mental and bodily, into all ranks and classes of the community. The necessity for action is apparent, but its successful consummation must rest with the public at large, who have the bane exhibited before them in its actual power, and the necessity of an antidote demonstrated from positive facts, and not deduced from a mere arbitrary theory.

If some antidote be applied, even though a partial one, it will be a satisfaction to reflect that the investigations have not been profitless, nor the labor in vain.

HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.

[If the reader has not already perused the Introduction to this volume, he is advised to do so at once, as therein are stated the reasons which have called it forth, and extended it to the present dimensions.]

CHAPTER I.

THE JEWS.

Prostitution coeval with Society.—Prostitutes in the Eighteenth Century B.C.—Tamar and Judah.—Legislation of Moses.—Syrian Women.—Rites of Moloch.—Groves.—Social Condition of Jewish Harlots.—Description by Solomon.—The Jews of Babylon.

Our earliest acquaintance with the human race discloses some sort of society established. It also reveals the existence of a marriage tie, varying in stringency and incidental effects according to climate, morals, religion, or accident, but every where essentially subversive of a system of promiscuous intercourse. No nation, it is believed, has ever been reported by a trustworthy traveler, on sufficient evidence, to have held its women generally in common. Still there appear to have been in every age men who did not avail themselves of the marriage covenant, or who could not be bound by its stipulations, and their appetites created a demand for illegitimate pleasures, which female weakness supplied. This may be assumed to be the real origin of prostitution throughout the world, though in particular localities this first cause has been assisted by female avarice or passion, religious superstition, or a mistaken sense of hospitality.

Accordingly, prostitution is coeval with society. It stains the earliest mythological records. It is constantly assumed as an existing fact in Biblical history. We can trace it from the earliest twilight in which history dawns to the clear daylight of to-day, without a pause or a moment of obscurity.

Our most ancient historical record is believed to be the Books of Moses. According to them, it must be admitted that prostitutes were common among the Jews in the eighteenth century before Christ. When Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, desired to defeat the cruel Jewish custom, and to bear children, notwithstanding her widowhood, she “put her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place.... When Judah saw her he thought her a harlot, for she had covered her face.”[7] The Genesiacal account thus shows that prostitutes, with covered faces, must have been common at the time. It is the more valuable, as it furnishes the particulars of the transaction. To keep up her disguise, Tamar demands a kid as her recompense. Judah agrees, and leaves his “signet, and his bracelets, and his staff” as a pledge for the kid. It appears to have been regarded as no dishonor to have commerce with a prostitute, for Judah sends his friend the Adullamite, a man of standing, to deliver the kid; but to defraud the unfortunate woman of her ill-gotten gain must have been considered shameful, for, when Judah learns that she has disappeared, he expresses alarm “lest we be shamed” for not having paid the stipulated price. It may also be noticed, as an illustration of the connection between prostitution and pure domestic morals, that when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he instantly orders her to be burned for having “played the harlot.”

Four centuries afterward it fell to the lot of Moses to legislate on the Jewish morals, no doubt sadly corrupted by their sojourn in Egypt. His command is formal and emphatic: “Do not prostitute thy daughter, lest the land fall to whoredom.... There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel.”[8] He was equally decided in his condemnation of worse practices, to which it would appear the Jews were much addicted.[9] He laid penalties on uncleanness of every kind, and on fornication; but it would appear that he rather confirmed than abrogated the customary right of a Jewish father to sell his daughter as a concubine.[10] With the practical view of improving the physical condition of the race, Moses guarded, by elaborate laws, against improper and corrupt unions. Adultery and rape he punished with death. The bride was bound, under pain of death by stoning, to prove to the satisfaction not only of her husband, but of the tribe, that she had been chaste to the day of her marriage.[11] A long list of relatives were specified among whom it was illegal to intermarry. Furthermore, Moses endeavored, with marked zeal, to check the progress of disease among both sexes. Whether the maladies mentioned in Leviticus[12] were syphilitic in their nature, it were difficult to say. Modern medical science admits that, in hot climates, want of cleanliness and frequent amorous indulgence will generate phenomena similar to the “issue” so frequently mentioned by Moses. However this be, it is certain that both Jews and Jewesses were subject to diseases apparently similar to the common gonorrhœa; that these diseases were infectious; and that Moses, in reiterated injunctions, forbade all sexual intercourse, and almost all association, with persons thus afflicted. So earnest was his desire to eradicate the evil from the people, that he extended his prohibition to women during the period of their menstrual visitation.

Having done this much for the Jews, Moses appears to have connived at the intercourse of their young men with foreign prostitutes. He took an Ethiopian concubine himself. Syrian women, Moabites, Midianites, and other neighbors of the Jews—many of them, as it appears, young and lovely, but with debauched and vicious principles—established themselves as prostitutes in the land of Israel. For many years, until the time of Solomon, they were excluded from Jerusalem and the large cities. Driven to the highways for refuge, they lived in booths and tents, where they combined the trade of a peddler with the calling of a harlot. Unlike Tamar, they did not veil the face. Reclining within the tent, with no more clothing than the heat of the climate suggested, these dissolute girls invited the complaisance of passengers who stopped to refresh their thirst or replenish their wardrobe at their booth. So long as their practices violated no law of nature, the prudent legislator pursued a tolerant policy. Before long, however, abominable rites in honor of Moloch, Baal, or Belphegor, were formally established by the “strange women” and their male accomplices. Moloch, whose disgusting exactions we find in Phœnicia, and at Carthage also, demanded male worship. The belly of the god’s statue was a furnace, in which a fierce fire was kindled and fed with animal sacrifice; around it the priests and their proselytes danced to the sound of music, sang wild songs, and debased themselves by practices of a disgusting and unnatural character. Nor was the worship of Baal less revolting. He too had his statues, in forms eminently calculated to excite the animal passions, and surrounded by cool groves in which the most shameless prostitution was carried on by all who would deposit an offering on the altars of the idol. It would even seem, from several passages in the Bible,[13] that the participators in these infamies were not invariably human beings. Against such enormities the wrath of Moses and his successors was aroused, on hygienic as well as moral and religious grounds. Participation in the rites of Moloch was punished with death.[14] Aaron’s grandson did not hesitate to commit a double homicide to mark the Divine abhorrence of the daughters of Midian; and Moses himself, warned by the frightful progress of disease among the male Jews, struck at its roots by exterminating every female Midianite among his captives, save the virgins only.

An express command forbade the establishment of groves near the Jewish temples, evidently on account of the convenience such shady retreats afforded to prostitutes. Yet on various occasions in the history of Israel we find accounts of the destruction of such groves, and of the statues of the gods in whose honor human nature was defiled.[15] Solomon, whose wisdom was singularly alloyed with sensuality, not only set the example of inordinate lust, keeping, it is said, seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, but repealed the wise restrictions of his predecessors in regard to prostitutes, allowing them to exercise their calling within the city of Jerusalem. They multiplied so fast that the prophets speak of them wandering on all the hills, and prostituting themselves under every tree, and at a later date they even invaded the Temple, and established their hideous rites in its courts. That noble edifice had become, in the time of Maccabees, a mere brothel plenum scortantium cum meretricibus.[16]

It is, however, apparent, notwithstanding the severe ordinances of the Jewish legislators, that prostitutes were a recognized class, laboring under no hopeless ban. Jephtha, the son of a prostitute, became none the less chief of Israel; and some commentators have contended that the retreat to which he condemned his daughter was simply the calling of her grandmother. Joshua’s spies slept openly in the house of the harlot Rahab, whose service to Israel was faithfully requited by the amnesty granted to her family, and the honorable residence allotted to her in Judæa. Samson chose the house of a harlot to be his residence at Gaza; his fatal acquaintance with another harlot, Delilah, is the leading trait of his story. Even Solomon did not disdain to hear the rival wranglings of a pair of harlots, and to adjudicate between them. Prostitution was in fact legally domiciled in Judæa at a very early period, and never lost the foothold it had gained. Of the manner in which it was carried on, an idea may be formed from the very vivid picture in Proverbs:[17]

“For at the window of my house,
I looked through my casement,
And beheld among the simple ones,
I discerned among the youths,
A young man void of understanding,
Passing through the streets near her (the strange woman’s) corner;
And he went the way to her house,
In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night;
And, behold, there met him a woman
With the attire of a harlot, and subtile of heart.
She is loud and stubborn;
Her feet abide not in her house:
Now she is without, now in the streets,
And lieth in wait at every corner.
So she caught him, and kissed him,
And with an impudent face said unto him,
I have peace-offerings with me;
This day have I paid my vows.
Therefore came I forth to meet thee,
Diligently to seek thy face,
And I have found thee.
I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry,
With carved works, with linen of Egypt.
I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
Aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning:
Let us solace ourselves with loves. * * *
With her much fair speech she caused him to yield,
With the flattering of her lips she forced him.
He goeth after her straightway,
As an ox goeth to the slaughter,
Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks.”

That prostitution continued to be practiced generally and openly until the destruction of the old Jewish nation, the language of the Biblical prophets does not permit us to doubt. It may be questioned whether it ever assumed more revoltingly public forms in any other country. The Babylonish conquest must have changed the parts, without altering the performance. At Babylon, the Jewish maidens, whose large, expressive eyes, voluptuous mouth, slender and graceful figure, with well-developed bust and limbs, were frequently the theme of ancient poets, peopled the houses of prostitution, and ministered to the lusts of the nobles. Nor even after the return to Jerusalem was the evil extirpated. It was to a prostitute that Christ uttered the memorable sentence, “Her sins are forgiven because she loved much.”

CHAPTER II.

EGYPT, SYRIA, AND ASIA MINOR.

Egyptian Courtesans.—Festival of Bubastis.—Morals in Egypt.—Religious Prostitution in Chaldæa.—Babylonian Banquets.—Compulsory Prostitution in Phœnicia.—Persian Banquets.

Before passing to the subject of prostitution in Greece, a glance at Egypt, and those nations of Asia which seem to have preceded Greece in civilization, may not be out of place.

Egypt was famous for her courtesans before the time of Herodotus. Egyptian blood runs warm; girls are nubile at ten. Under the Pharaohs, if ancient writers are to be believed, there existed a general laxity of moral principle, especially among young females.[18] Their religion was only too suggestive. The deities Isis and Osiris were the types of the sexes. A statue of the latter, a male image, made of gold, was carried by the maidens at festivals, and worshiped by the whole people. Nor were the rites of Isis more modest. “At the festival at Bubastis,” says Herodotus, “men and women go thither in boats on the Nile, and when the boats approach a city they are run close to the shore. A frantic contest then begins between the women of the city and those in the boats, each abusing the other in the most opprobrious language, and the women in the boats conclude the performance by lascivious dances, in the most undisguised manner, in sight of the people, and to the sound of flutes and other musical instruments.”[19] There is little reason to doubt that the temples, like those of Baal, were houses of prostitution on an extensive scale. Herodotus remarks significantly that a law in Egypt forbade sexual intercourse within the walls of a temple, and exacted of both sexes that intercourse should be followed by ablution before the temple was entered.[20]

Where piety required such sacrifices, it is not surprising that public morals were loose. It was not considered wholly shameful for an Egyptian to make his living by the hire of his daughter’s person, and a king is mentioned who resorted to this plan in order to discover a thief. Such was the astonishing appetite of the men, that young and beautiful women were never delivered to the embalmer until they had been dead some days, a miserable wretch having been detected in the act of defiling a recently-deceased virgin![21] Of course, in such a society, there was no disgrace in being a prostitute. The city of Naucratis owed its wealth and fame to the beauty of its courtesans, whose reputation spread throughout Europe, and was much celebrated in Greece. Rhadopis, a Thracian by birth, led the life of a prostitute in Egypt with such success, that she not only bought her own freedom from the slave-dealer who had taken her there on speculation, but, if the Egyptians are to be believed, built a pyramid with her savings. A large portion of her story is doubtless mythical, but enough remains to warrant the opinion that she was, though a prostitute, a wealthy and highly considered person.

In Chaldæa, too, religion at first connived at, and then commanded prostitution. Every Babylonian female was obliged by law to prostitute herself once in her life in the temple of the Chaldæan Venus, whose name was Mylitta.[22] Herodotus appears to have seen the park and grounds in which this singular sacrifice was made. They were constantly filled with women with strings bound round their hair. Once inside the place, no woman could leave it until she had paid her debt, and had deposited on the altar of the goddess the fee received from her lover. Some, who were plain, remained there as long as three years; but, as the grounds were always filled with a troop of voluptuaries in search of pleasure, the young, the beautiful, the high-born seldom needed to remain over a few minutes. This strange custom is mentioned by the prophet Baruch, who introduces one of the women reproaching her neighbor that she had not been deemed worthy of having her girdle of cord burst asunder by any man.[23] Similar statements are made by Strabo and other ancient writers. At the time of Alexander the Great the demoralization had reached a climax. Babylonian banquets were scenes of unheard-of infamies. When the meal began, the women sat modestly enough in presence of their fathers and husbands; but, as the wine went round, they lost all restraint, threw off one garment after another, and enacted scenes of glaring immodesty. And these were the ladies of the best families.[24]

The Mylitta of Chaldæa became Astarte in Phœnicia, at Carthage, and in Syria. Nothing was changed but the name; the voluptuous rites were identical. In addition to the forced prostitution in the temples, however, the Phœnicians and most of their colonies maintained for many years the practice of requiring their maidens to bestow their favors on any strangers who visited the country. Commercial interest, no doubt, had some share in promoting so scandalous a custom. On the high shores of Phœnicia, as at Carthage and in the island of Cyprus, the traveler sailing past in his boat could see beautiful girls, arrayed in light garments, stretching inviting arms to him.

Originally the sum paid by the lover was offered to the goddess, but latterly the girls kept it, and it served to enhance their value in the matrimonial market. In some places the girl was free if she chose to abandon her hair to the goddess, but Lucian notes that this was an uncommonly rare occurrence.

Very similar were the customs of the Lydians and their successors in empire, the early Persians. Their Venus was named Mithra, in honor of whom festivals were given at which human nature was horribly outraged. Fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, husbands and wives sat together at the table, while voluptuous dances and music inflamed their senses, and when the wine had done its work, a promiscuous combat of sensuality began which lasted all night. Details of such scenes must be left to other works, and veiled in a learned tongue.[25]

CHAPTER III.

GREECE.

Mythology.—Solonian Legislation.—Dicteria.—Pisistratidæ.—Lycurgus and Sparta.—Laws on Prostitution.—Case of Phryne.—Classes of Prostitutes.—Pornikon Telos.—Dress.—Hair of Prostitutes.—The Dicteriades of Athens.—Abode and Manners.—Appearance of Dicteria.—Laws regulating Dicteria.—Schools of Prostitution.—Loose Prostitutes.—Old Prostitutes.—Auletrides, or Flute-players.—Origin.—How hired.—Performances.—Anecdote of Arcadians.—Price of Flute-players.—Festival of Venus Periboa.—Venus Callipyge.—Lesbian Love.—Lamia.—Hetairæ.—Social Standing.—Venus and her Temples.—Charms of Hetairæ.—Thargelia.—Aspasia.—Hipparchia.—Bacchis.—Guathena and Guathenion.—Lais.—Phryne.—Pythionice.—Glycera.—Leontium.—Other Hetairæ.—Biographers of Prostitutes.—Philtres.

The Greek mythology supposes obviously a relaxed state of public morals. What period in the history of the nation it may be assumed to reflect is, however, by no means certain. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Homeric poems were composed for immodest audiences, and it would perhaps be fairer to lay the blame of the mythological indecencies at the door of the age which polished and improved upon them, rather than of that which is entitled to the credit of their conception in the rough.

Our first reliable information regarding the morals of the Greek women, passing over, for the present, the legislation ascribed to Lycurgus, is found in the ordinances of Solon. Draco is supposed to have affixed the penalty of death indiscriminately to rape, seduction, and adultery. It has been conjectured that the safety-valve used at that time, ordinary prostitution being unknown, was a system of religious prostitution in the temples, borrowed from and analogous to the plan already described. This, however, is mere conjecture. Solon, while softening the rigors of the Draconian code, by law formally established houses of prostitution at Athens, and filled them with female slaves. They were called Dicteria, and the female tenants Dicteriades. Bought with the public money, and bound by law to satisfy the demands of all who visited them, they were in fact public servants, and their wretched gains were a legitimate source of revenue to the state. Prostitution became a state monopoly, and so profitable that, even in Solon’s lifetime, a superb temple, dedicated to Venus the courtesan, was built out of the fund accruing from this source. The fee charged, however, appears to have been small.[26] In Solon’s time, the Dicteriades were kept widely apart from the Athenian women of repute. They were not allowed to mix in religious ceremonies or to enter the temples. When they appeared in the streets they were obliged to wear a particular costume as a badge of infamy. They forfeited what rights of citizenship they may have possessed in virtue of their birth. A procurer or procuress who had been instrumental in introducing a free-born Athenian girl to the Dicterion incurred the penalty of death. Nor was the law content with branding with infamy prostitutes and their accomplices alone. Their children were bastards; that is to say, they could not inherit property, they could not associate with other youths, they could not acquire the right of citizenship without performing some signal act of bravery, they could not address the people in the public assemblies. Finally, to complete their ignominy, they were exempt from the sacred duty of maintaining their parents in old age.[27]

These regulations, for which Solon obtained the praise of Athenian philosophers,[28] were not long maintained in force. Tradition imputed to the profligacy of the Pisistratidæ a relaxation of the laws concerning prostitutes. It was believed that the sons of Pisistratus not only gave to the Dicteriades the freedom of the city, but allotted to them seats at banquets beside the most respectable matrons, and, on certain days each year, turned them into their father’s beautiful gardens, and let loose upon them the whole petulance of the Athenian youth.[29] The law against procuresses was modified, a fine being substituted for death. “About the same time,” says the scandalous Greek chronicle, “the death-penalty for adultery was also commuted for scourging.”

Still, notwithstanding this falling off, it would appear that Athens was more moral than her neighbors, Corinth and Sparta. The former, then the most flourishing sea-port of Greece, was filled with a very low class of prostitutes. No laws regulated the subject. Any female who chose could open house for the accommodation of travelers and seamen, and, though Corinth was yet far from the proverbial celebrity it afterward obtained for its prostitutes, there is no doubt they bore a fearful proportion to the aggregate population of the port. At Sparta the case was different. In the system of legislation which bears the name of Lycurgus, the individual was sacrificed to the state; the female to the male. Women were educated for the sole purpose of bearing robust children. Virgins were allowed to wrestle publicly with men. Girls were habited in a robe open at the skirts, which only partially concealed the person in walking, whence the Spartan women acquired an uncomplimentary name.[30] A Spartan husband was authorized to lend his wife to any handsome man for the purpose of begetting children. That these laws, the skillfully contrived appeals to the sensual appetites, and the constant spectacle of nude charms, must have led to a general profligacy among the female sex, is quite obvious. Aristotle affirms positively that the Spartan women openly committed the grossest acts of debauchery.[31] Hence it may be inferred that prostitutes by profession were unnecessary at Sparta, at all events until a late period of its history.

After the Persian wars, the subject of Athenian prostitution is revealed in a clearer light. As a reaction from the looseness of the age of the Pisistratidæ, the Solonian laws were reaffirmed and their severity heightened. It has been imagined, from certain obscure passages in Greek authors, that the courtesans formed several corporations, each of which was responsible for the acts of all its members. They were liable to vexatious prosecutions for such acts as inciting men to commit crime, ruining thoughtless youths, fomenting treason against the state, or committing impiety. Against such charges it was rarely possible to establish a sound defense. If the accuser was positive, the Areopagus, notoriously biased against courtesans, unhesitatingly condemned the culprit to death, or imposed on her corporation a heavy fine. In this way, says an old author, the state frequently contrived to get back from these women the money they obtained from their lovers. Before the famous case of Phryne, they were wholly at the mercy of their profligate associates. A man only needed to threaten an accusation of impiety or the like to obtain a receipt in full. Phryne, so long the favorite of the Athenians, was thus accused of various vague offenses by a common informer named Euthias. Her friend Bacchis fortunately persuaded Hyperides, the orator, to undertake her case, and he softened the judges by exhibiting her marvelous beauty in a moment of affected passion. “Henceforth,” says the hetaira Bacchis to Myrrhina, “our profits are secured by law.”[32]

At this time, that is to say, at the height of Athenian prosperity, there were four classes of women who led dissolute lives at Athens. The highest in rank and repute were the Hetairæ, or kept women, who lived in the best part of the city, and exercised no small influence over the manners and even the politics of the state. Next came the Auletrides, or flute-players, who were dancers as well. They were usually foreigners, bearing some resemblance to the opera-dancers of the last century, and they combined the most unblushing debauchery with their special calling. The lowest class of prostitutes were the Dicteriades, already mentioned. They were originally bound to reside at the Piræus, the sea-port of Athens, some four miles from the city, and were forbidden to walk out by day, or to offend the eyes of the public by open indecency. Lastly came the Concubines, who were slaves owned by rich men with the knowledge and consent of their wives, serving equally the passions of their master and the caprices of their mistress. These all paid a tax to the state, called Pornikon Telos, which was farmed out to speculators, who levied it with proverbial harshness upon the unfortunate women. In the time of Pericles the revenue from this source was large.

All classes, too, wore garments of many colors. The law originally specified “flowered robes” as the costume of courtesans; but this leading to difficulties, a farther enactment prohibited prostitutes from wearing precious stuffs, such as scarlet or purple, or jewels. Thenceforth the custom, which appears to have been general throughout the Greek cities and colonies, prescribed cheap robes, with flowers or stripes of many colors embroidered or painted on them. To this a part of the women added garlands of roses. It was lawful in some cities for courtesans to wear light, transparent garments; but at Sparta, as may be imagined, the reverse was the rule, semi-nudity being the badge of virtuous women.[33]

Perhaps the most singular of the marks by which a Greek courtesan was known was her hair. It is said that no law prescribed the habit; if so, it must have been a sort of esprit de corps which led all courtesans to dye their hair of a flaxen or blonde color. Allusions to this custom abound in the light literature of Greece. Frequently a flaxen wig was substituted for the dyed locks. At a very late period in the history of Greece, modest women followed the fashion of sporting golden hair. This forms one of the subjects of reprimand addressed to the women of Greece by the early Christian preachers.[34]

THE DICTERIADES, OR COMMON PROSTITUTES OF ATHENS.

This class approaches more nearly than any other to the prostitutes of our day, the main difference being that the former were bound by law to prostitute themselves when required to do so, on the payment of the fixed sum, and that they were not allowed to leave the state. Their home, as mentioned already, was properly at the port of Piræus. An open square in front of the citadel was their usual haunt. It was surrounded with booths, where petty trade or gambling was carried on by day. At nightfall the prostitutes swarmed into the square. Some were noisy and obscene; others quiet, and armed with affected modesty. When a man passed on his way from the port to the city, the troop assailed him. If he resisted, coarse abuse was lavished on him. If he yielded, there was the temple of Venus the Courtesan close by, and there was the wall of Themistocles, under the friendly shelter of either of which the bargain could be consummated. Were the customer nice, the great dicterion was not far distant, and a score or more of smaller rivals were even nearer at hand, as a well-known sign was there to testify.

The Dicteria were under the control of the municipal police. The door was open night and day, a bright curtain protecting the inmates from the eye of the passer-by; and in the better class of establishments, a fierce dog, chained in the vestibule, served as sentinel. At the curtain sat an old woman, often a Thessalian and a pretended witch, who received the money before admitting visitors. Originally the fee was an obolus[35]—about three cents; but this attempt to regulate the value of a variable merchandise was soon abandoned. Within, at night, the sounds of music, revelry, and dancing might be constantly heard. The visitor was not kept in suspense. The curtain passed, he was in full view of the dicteriades, standing, sitting, or lying about the room; some engaged in smoothing their blonde hair, some in conversation, some anointing themselves with perfumery. The legal principle with regard to the dicteriades appears to have been that they should conceal nothing; no doubt in contrast to the irregular prostitutes, of whom something will be said presently. There was no rule, however, forbidding the wearing of garments in the dicterion, but the common practice appears to have been to dispense with them, or to wear a light scarf thrown over the person. This custom was observed by day as well as by night, and a visitor has described the girls in a large dicterion as standing in a row, in broad daylight, without any robes or covering.[36]

It seems that in later times any speculator had a right to set up a dicterion on paying the tax to the state. An Athenian forfeited his right of citizenship by so doing; but, as a popular establishment was very lucrative, avaricious men frequently embarked in the business under an assumed name. Comic writers have lashed these wretches severely. On paying the tax to the state regularly, the pornobosceion, or master of the house, acquired certain rights. The dicterion was an inviolable asylum, no husband being allowed to pursue his wife, or the wife her husband, or the creditor his debtor, within its walls. Public decency requires, says Demosthenes, that men shall not be exposed in houses of prostitution.[37] It was not, however, considered wholly shameful to frequent such places.

There appear to have been attached to these dicteria schools of prostitution, where young women were initiated into the most disgusting practices by females who had themselves acquired them in the same manner. Alexis vigorously describes the frauds taught in these places,[38] while there is a shocking significance in an expression of Athenæus—“You will be well satisfied with the performance of the women in the dicteria.”[39]

Besides these regular dicteriades, there were at Athens, as there have been in every large city, a number of women who exercised the calling of prostitutes, without properly belonging to any of the recognized classes. They were sometimes called free dicteriades, sometimes she-wolves, and also cheap hetairæ. Some were native Athenians who had been seduced and abandoned, and who, led by stings of conscience and idleness to pursue their career, had still an invincible repugnance to adopt the flowered robe and yellow hair of the regular courtesan. They roamed the Piræus, and even the streets of Athens, after dark, eking out a miserable subsistence by the hardest of trades, and haunting the dark recesses of old houses or the shade of trees. Others, again, were old hetairæ whose charms had faded, and who sought a scanty subsistence where they were not known, and shrank from encountering the eye of a lover where the friendly shade of night would not hide the ravages of time. Others were the servants of hotels and taverns, who were always expected to serve the caprices of visitors.

All of these led a most miserable life. Now and then we hear of one or two of them meeting a rich and inexperienced traveler, after which the heroine of the exploit naturally ascended to the rank of hetaira; but, in general, their customers were the lowest of the port people—sailors, fishermen, farm-servants. Their price was a meal, a fish, a handful of fruit, or a bottle of wine. One poor creature, who belonged to no class in particular, but acquired some celebrity by being kept by the orator Ithatocles, was named Didrachma because she offered her favors to the public generally for two drachmas, about thirty-five cents.[40]

Perhaps the most curious fact in reference to these prostitutes is the singular predominance of old women among them. It appears to have been adopted as an invariable rule for this sort of courtesans to paint their faces with a thick ointment, and it is even said that the great painters of Greece did not disdain to beguile their leisure hours by thus improving upon nature.[41] Of course, under this disguise, it was impossible to distinguish a young face from an old one. An aged prostitute thus bedizened would place herself at an open window with a sprig of myrtle in her hand, with which she would beckon to people in the street. When a customer was found, a servant would open the door and conduct him in silence to the chamber of her mistress. Before entering he paid the sum demanded, when he found himself in a room lighted only by a feeble glimmer passing through the curtain, which now hung down over the window. In such a twilight the most venerable old woman could not be distinguished from a Venus.[42]

THE AULETRIDES, OR FLUTE-PLAYERS.

Female flute-players were a common accompaniment to an Athenian banquet. The flute, which in modern times is played by men, was rarely seen in male hands in Greece. Though the fable ascribed its invention to the god Pan, and its development to the mythical king Midas, it was monopolized at a very early period by women, who consoled themselves for the ravages it wrought in their beauty by the power of fascination it imparted among a people intensely musical. Flute-playing soon became an essential rite in the service of certain deities. Ceres was invariably worshiped to the sound of the flute. And when the Athenians had once tried the experiment of listening to flute-players after dinner, they never would dine in company without them.

Thebes appears to have been the native city of the earliest famous flute-players,[43] but before long the superior beauty of the Asiatic girls—Ionians and Phrygians—drove their Theban rivals out of the field. Dancing was combined with flute-playing, and in this art the Asiatics bore the palm from the world. During the golden days of Greece, numbers of beautiful girls were every year imported into Athens from Miletus and the other Ionic ports in Asia Minor, just as in more modern times a similar trade was carried on between Trebizond and Constantinople.

An Athenian hired his flute-players as a modern European noble hires his band. They charged so much for their musical performances, reserving the right of accepting presents in the course of the evening. Some were singers as well as performers. At each course a new air was played, increasing in tenderness and expression as the wine circulated. It is stated that the sounds of a good flute-concert excited people to such a state of phrensy that they would take off their rings and jeweled ornaments to throw them to the performers: those who have witnessed a triumphant operatic soirée can readily believe the statement. But the fair artists did not wholly rely on their music for their success. The performer danced while she played, accompanying every note with a harmonious movement of the body. There is no doubt these dances were in the highest degree immoral and lascivious. Athenæus tells a story of an embassy from Arcadia waiting upon King Antigonus, and being invited to dinner. After the hunger of the venerable guests was appeased, Phrygian flute-players were introduced. They were draped in semi-transparent veils, arranged with much coquetry. At the given signal they began to play and dance, balancing themselves alternately on each foot, and gradually increasing the rapidity of their movements. As the performance went on, the dancers uncovered their heads, then their busts; lastly, they threw the veils aside altogether, and stood before the wondering embassadors with only a short tunic around the loins. In this state they danced so indecently that the aged Arcadians, excited beyond control, forgot where they were, and rushed upon them. The king laughed; the courtiers were shocked at such ill-breeding, but the dancers discharged the sacred duty of hospitality.[44]

A flute-player who had achieved a success of this kind was enabled to conclude a lucrative bargain for other performances. We find allusions to fees as high as two talents (say $2500) and fifty pieces of gold,[45] though these were evidently unusual charges. Many of the most fashionable flute-players were slaves who had been brought to Greece by speculators. They were commonly sold by auction at the dinner-table, when their owner judged that the enthusiasm of the guests had attained the highest point. An anecdote is told of one of the most esteemed names in Greek philosophy in reference to this strange custom. He was dining with a party of young men, when a youthful flute-player was introduced. She crept to the philosopher’s feet, and seemed to shelter herself from insult under the shadow of his venerable beard; but he, a disciple of Zeno, spurned her, and burst forth into a strain of moralizing. Piqued by the affront, the girl rose, and played and danced with inimitable grace and pruriency. At the close of the performance her owner put her up to auction, and one of the first bidders was the philosopher. She was adjudged to another, however, and the white-haired sage so far forgot his principles as to engage in a fierce conflict with the victor for the possession of the prize.[46] Hand to hand battles on these occasions were common in the best society at Athens, and a flute-player in fashion made a boast of the riots she had caused.[47] Of the fortunes realized by successful artists in this line, an idea may be formed from the gorgeous presents made to the Delphian oracle by flute-players, and from the fact that the finest houses at Alexandria were inscribed with the names of famous Greek auletrides.[48]

As might be inferred from the character of their dances, the auletrides were capable of every infamy. Constantly breathing an atmosphere of debauchery, and accustomed to the daily spectacle of nudities, they naturally attained a pitch of amorous exaltation of which we, at the present day, can hardly form an idea. They kept a cherished festival in honor of Venus Peribasia, which was originally established by Cypselus of Corinth. At that ceremony all the great flute-players of Greece assembled to celebrate their calling. Men were not usually allowed to be present, a regulation prompted perhaps by modesty, as the judgment of Paris was renewed at the festival, and prizes were awarded for every description of beauty. The ceremony was often mentioned as the Callipygian games; and a sketch of a scene which took place at one of these reunions, contained in a letter from a famous flute-player, justifies the appellation. The banquet lasted from dark till dawn, with wines, perfumes, delicate viands, songs, and music. An after-scene was a dispute between two of the guests as to their respective beauty. A trial was demanded by the company, and a long and graphic account is given of the exhibition, but modern tastes will not allow us to transcribe the details.[49]

A knowledge of these scandalous scenes, it may be briefly observed, would be worse than useless, were it not that they illustrate the life of Greek courtesans; and, being performed under the sanction of religion and the law, they throw no inconsiderable light on the real character of Greek society. Their value may be best apprehended by trying to realize what the effect would be if similar scenes occurred annually in some public edifice in our large cities, under the auspices of the police, with the approval of the clergy, and with the full knowledge of the best female society.

It has been suggested that these festivals were originated by, or gave rise to, those enormous aberrations of the Greek female mind known to the ancients as Lesbian love. There is, no doubt, grave reason to believe something of the kind. Indeed, Lucian affirms that, while avarice prompted common pleasures, taste and feeling inclined the flute-payers toward their own sex. On so repulsive a theme it is unnecessary to enlarge.

Many flute-players seem to have been susceptible of lasting affections. In the remains we have of the erotic works of the Greeks, several names are mentioned as those of successful flute-players whose gains were consumed by exacting lovers. It does not appear that they often, or ever, married. The most famous of all the flute-players was Lamia, who, after being the delight of Alexandria and of King Ptolemy for some fifteen or twenty years, was taken with the city by Demetrius of Macedon, and raised to the rank of his mistress. She was forty years of age at this time, yet her skill was such that she ruled despotically her dissolute lover, and left a memorable name in Greek history. The ancients asserted that she owed her name, Lamia, which means a sort of vampire or bloodsucker, to the most loathsome depravities. Her power was so great that, when Demetrius levied a tax of some $250,000 on the city of Athens, he gave the whole to her, to buy her soap, as he said. The Athenians revenged themselves by saying that Lamia’s person must be very dirty, since she needed so much soap to wash it. But they soon found it to their interest to build a temple in her honor, and deify her under the name of Venus Lamia.[50]

THE HETAIRÆ, OR KEPT WOMEN.

The Hetairæ were by far the most important class of women in Greece. They filled so large a place in society that virtuous females were entirely thrown into the shade, and it must have been quite possible for a chaste Athenian girl, endowed with ambition, to look up to them, and covet their splendid infamy. An Athenian matron was expected to live at home. She was not allowed to be present at the games or the theatres; she was bound, when she appeared in public, to be veiled, and to hasten whither she was going without delay; she received no education, and could not share the elevated thoughts or ideas of her husband; she had no right to claim any warmth of affection from him, though he possessed entire control over her.[51]

Now, to judge of the position into which this social system thrust the female sex, one must glance at the mythology, or, to speak more correctly, at the religious faith of the Greek people. It has been conjectured that they derived their idea of Venus from the East. However this be, Venus was certainly one of the earliest goddesses to whom their homage was paid. Solon erected opposite his dicterion a temple to Venus Pandemos, or the public Venus. In that temple were two statues: one of the goddess, the other of a nymph, Pitho, who presided over persuasion; and the attitudes and execution of the statues were such that they explained the character without inscription. At this temple a festival was held on the fourth of each month, to which all the men of Athens were invited. But Venus Pandemos soon made way for newer and more barefaced rivals. Twenty temples were raised in various cities of Greece to Venus the Courtesan. In one author we find allusion made to Venus Mucheia, or the Venus of houses of ill-fame. Another celebrates Venus Castnia, or the goddess of indecency. Others honor Venus Scotia, the patroness of darkness; and Venus Derceto, the guardian deity of street-walkers. More famous still was Venus Divaricatrix, whose surname, derived, it is said by a father of the Church, a divaricatis cruribus,[52] must be left in a learned tongue. And still more renowned was Venus Callipyge, whose statue is at this day one of the choice ornaments of one of the best European collections of antiquities. It owed its charm to the marvelous beauty of the limbs, and was understood to have been designed from two Syracusan sisters, whose extraordinary symmetry in this particular had been noticed by a countryman who surprised them while bathing. All these Venuses had temples, and sacrifices, and priestesses. Their worship was naturally analogous to their name, and consistent with their history. Their devotees were every man in Greece. Yet it was in this society, trained to such spectacles, and nurtured in such a creed, that matrons and maidens were taught to lead a life of purity, seclusion, and self-sacrifice.

The consequence was obvious. While ignorance and forcible restraint prevented the women from generally breaking loose, the men grew more and more addicted to the society of hetairæ, and more liable to regard their wives as mere articles of furniture. Nor was the anomaly without effect upon the kept women. They alone of their sex saw the plays of Alexander and Aristophanes; they alone had the entrée of the studio of Phidias and Apelles; they alone heard Socrates reason, and discussed politics with Pericles; they alone shared in the intellectual movement of Greece. No women but hetairæ drove through the streets with uncovered face and gorgeous apparel. None but they mingled in the assemblages of great men at the Pnyx or the Stoa. None but they could gather round them of an evening the choicest spirits of the day, and elicit, in the freedom of unrestrained intercourse, wit and wisdom, flashing fancy and burning eloquence. What wonder that the Hetairæ should have filled so prominent a part in Greek society! And how small a compensation to virtuous women to know that their rivals could not stand by the altar when sacrifice was offered; could not give birth to a citizen!

There are many reasons besides these why the contest was unequal. Tradition reported several occasions on which hetairæ had rendered signal service to the state. Leæna, for instance, the mistress of Harmodius, had bitten off her tongue rather than reveal the names of her fellow-conspirators. Recollections like these more than nullified the nominal brand of the law. Again, every wise legislator saw the necessity of encouraging any form of rational intercourse, in order to arrest the startling progress which the most degrading of enormities was making in Greece. When Alcibiades was openly courted by the first philosophers and statesmen, it was virtue to applaud Aspasia. And besides, it can not be questioned, in view of the Greek memoirs we possess, that many of the leading hetairæ were women of remarkable mind, as well as unusual attractions. Indeed, the leading trait in their history is their intellectuality, as contrasted with other classes of dissolute women in antiquity.[53] That trait can be best illustrated by referring to the lives of a few of the more celebrated hetairæ.

A Milesian prostitute, named Thargelia, accompanied Xerxes on his invasion of Greece. Some idea may be formed of the position in society occupied by prostitutes from the fact that Xerxes employed this woman as negotiator with the court of Thessaly, just as in later times modern ministers have used duchesses. Thargelia married the King of Thessaly.

Fired by her success, another Milesian girl, named Aspasia, established herself at Athens. She set up a house of prostitution, and peopled it with the most lovely girls of the Ionic cities. But wherein she differed from her rivals and predecessors was the prominence she gave to intellect in her establishment. She lectured publicly, among her girls and their visitors, on rhetoric and philosophy, and with such marked ability that she counted among her patrons and lovers the first men of Greece, including Socrates, Alcibiades, and Pericles. The last divorced his wife in order to marry her, and was accused of allowing her to govern Athens, then at the height of its power and prosperity. She is said to have incited the war against Samos; and the principal cause of that against Megara was believed to have been the rape, by citizens of Megara, of two of Aspasia’s girls. What a wonderful light these facts throw on Greek society!

Enraged beyond control at her success, the virtuous women of Athens rose against her. She was publicly insulted at the theatre; was attacked in the street; and, as a last resort, was accused of impiety before the Areopagus. Pericles, then in the decline of his power, and unable to save his friends Phidias and Anaxagoras, appeared as her advocate. But on such an occasion his eloquence failed him. He could only seize his beloved wife in his arms, press her to his breast, and burst into tears in presence of the court. The appeal succeeded; possibly the judges made allowance for popular prejudice; at all events, Aspasia was acquitted and restored to society. She lived to be the delight of a flour merchant, under whose roof her lectures on philosophy were continued with undiminished success to the day of her death.[54]

Her friend, and the inheritor of her mantle, Hipparchia, led an equally remarkable life. She was an Athenian by birth, and of good family, but, having heard the Cynic Crates speak, she declared to her parents that nothing would restrain her from yielding herself to him. She kept her word, and became the philosopher’s mistress, in spite of his dirt, his poverty, and his grossness. She is reported to have acquired great reputation as a practical professor of the cynic philosophy. Having engaged one day in a fierce discussion with a somewhat brutal philosopher of a rival sect, the latter, by way of answer to a question she put, violently exposed her person before the whole assembly. “Well,” said she, coolly, “what does that prove?” This woman was one of the most voluminous and esteemed authors of her day.[55]

Bacchis, the mistress of the orator Hyperides, illustrates the character of the Athenian kept woman from another point of view. She was extremely beautiful, and gifted with a sweet disposition. One of her early admirers had presented her with a necklace of enormous value. The first ladies of Athens, and even foreign women of rank, coveted the precious trinket in vain. She was in the height of her fame and charms when she heard the orator Hyperides plead. Smitten on the spot, she became his mistress, and observed a fidelity toward him which was neither usual with her class, nor reciprocated by her lover. On one occasion, a rival announced that the price of her complaisance would be the possession of the necklace of Bacchis. The lover had the meanness to ask for it, and Bacchis gave it without a word. Again: when all Athens knew that she was the mistress of Hyperides, an officious friend came to tell her that her lover was at that moment making love to another woman. Bacchis received the announcement tranquilly. “What do you intend to do?” asked her visitor, with impetuosity. “To wait for him,” was the meek answer. She died very young, and her lover partially atoned for his ill treatment by pronouncing a splendid oration over her remains. Very few passages in Greek literature are marked by such eloquent tenderness and genuine feeling as this fragment of Hyperides.[56]

Gnathena, and her heir and successor, Gnathenion, were famous in their day as wits; the biography of the first was written in verse by the poet Machon.[57] She began life as the mistress of the comic poet Dyphiles, but soon abandoned him to keep a sort of table d’hôte for the wit and fashion of Athens. The “best society” gathered around her board, and at the close of the meal she sold herself by auction. Athenæus has chronicled a number of her witty and sarcastic sayings, adding that the grace of her elocution imparted a singular charm to every thing she said. Her protegée, Gnathenion, grew up in time to receive the mantle which age was wresting from the shoulders of Gnathena. An anecdote is preserved which throws some light upon the profits of the calling of hetairæ. At the temple of Venus, Gnathena and her protegée met an old Persian satrap, richly clothed in purple, who was struck with the beauty of the latter, and demanded her price. Gnathena answered, a thousand drachmas (about two hundred dollars). The satrap exclaimed at such extortion, and offered five hundred, observing that he would return again. “At your age,” maliciously retorted Gnathena, “once is too much,” and turned on her heel. In her old age it appears that Gnathena was reduced to the disgraceful calling which the Greeks termed hippopornos.[58]

But the fame of these hetairæ is eclipsed by that of the only two kept women who can rank with Aspasia—Lais and Phryne.

Lais was a Sicilian by birth. Like the Empress Catharine of Russia, she was taken prisoner when her native city was captured, and sold as a slave. The painter Apelles saw her carrying water from a well, and, struck with the beauty of her figure, he bought her, and trained her in his own house. This, again, is a striking picture. Fancy a leading modern painter deliberately training a prostitute! It is to be presumed that Apelles gathered round him the best society in Greece. Lais, when her education was complete, was as remarkable for wit and information as for her matchless figure and lovely face. Her master freed her, and established her at Corinth, then in the height of its prosperity, and the largest commercial emporium of Greece.

Corinth and the Corinthian prostitutes deserve particular notice. It appears that almost every house in the place was, in fact, a house of prostitution. There were regular schools where the art of debauchery was taught, and frequent importations of young girls from Lesbos, Phœnicia, and the Ægean Islands supplied them with pupils. Ancient erotic writers are full of allusions to the danger of visiting Corinth; the proverb, Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum, which most moderns have erroneously conceived to refer to Lais alone, was, in fact, an adage justified by the experience of merchants and sailors. It would be incorrect, however, to compare Corinth with modern sea-ports, where the natural demands of sailors require a cheap supply of women. The first-class hetairæ of Corinth charged as high as a talent (say $1000) for a single night’s company, and $200 appears to have been no unusual fee. For the common sailors, the commercial shrewdness of the Corinthians had established a temple to Venus, containing a thousand young slaves, who were obliged to prostitute themselves for a single obolus (a cent).[59]

It was in this metropolis of prostitution that Lais commenced business. She soon rose to the first rank in her trade. Her capriciousness gave additional value to her charms. Even money could not purchase her when it was her whim not to yield. She refused $2000 from the orator Demosthenes, who had actually turned his property into money to lay it at her feet; but she yielded gratuitously to the muddy, ragged cynic Diogenes, and graciously shared the patrimony of the philosopher Aristippus. To the latter, who occupied no mean rank in Greek society, a remark was made to the effect that he ought to debar his mistress from promiscuous intercourse for his own sake. He replied phlegmatically, “Would you object to live in a house or sail in a ship because others had just preceded you in the one or the other?” Xenocrates, the disciple of Plato, resisted Lais successfully. She had made a wager that she would overcome his stoical coldness. Rushing into his house one evening in affected terror, she besought an asylum, as she said thieves had chased her. The philosopher sternly bade her fear nothing. She sat silent till Xenocrates went to bed; then, throwing off her dress, and revealing all her wonderful beauty, she placed herself at his side. He gruffly submitted to this encroachment. Growing bolder, she threw her arms round him, caressed him, and exhausted her arts of fascination, but Xenocrates remained unmoved. “I wagered,” she cried, “to rouse a man, not a statue;” and, springing from the couch, she resumed her dress and disappeared.

The people of Corinth desired to possess her statue, and, having spent her money in embellishing the city, perhaps she was entitled to this mark of respect. Myron, the sculptor, was deputed to model her charms. He was old and gray; but so fascinating was her beauty, that at his second visit he laid at her feet all the savings of his life. The haughty courtesan spurned him. He went away, placed himself in the hands of a skillful perfumer, had his hair and beard dyed, and his appearance rejuvenated. Then he renewed his suit. “My poor friend,” said Lais, with a bitter smile, “you are asking what I refused yesterday to your father.”

In old age Lais had leisure to repent of her caprices. She had spent her money as fast as she made it, and she retained her calling long after her charms had vanished. Epicrates has drawn a melancholy picture of a drunken old woman wandering over the quay at Corinth, and seeking to sell for three cents what had once been considered cheap at a thousand dollars. Such was the end of Lais.[60]

Phryne was more fortunate. She husbanded her attractions with judgment, and to the close of her long life retained her rank and her value. Her wealth was such that, when Alexander destroyed Thebes, she offered to rebuild the city at her own expense, provided the Thebans would commemorate the fact by an inscription. They refused. She had counted among her lovers the most famous men of the day, among whom were the orator Hyperides, whose successful defense of his mistress has already been mentioned; the painter Apelles, and the sculptor Praxiteles. It was to her that the latter gave his crowning work—his Cupid. He and Apelles were both privileged to admire and reproduce her nude charms, a privilege rigorously denied even to the most opulent of her lovers.

Phryne was a prodigious favorite with the Athenian people. She played a conspicuous part in the festival of Neptune and Venus. At a certain point in the ceremony she appeared on the steps of the temple at the sea-side in her usual dress, and slowly disrobed herself in the presence of the crowd. She next advanced to the water-side, plunged into the waves, and offered sacrifice to Neptune. Returning like a sea-nymph, drying her hair from which the water dripped over her exquisite limbs, she paused for a moment before the crowd, which shouted in a phrensy of enthusiasm as the fair priestess vanished into a cell in the temple.[61]

Other famous hetairæ achieved political and literary distinction. When Alexander the Great undertook his Asiatic expedition, his treasurer, Harpalus, a sort of Crœsus in his way, accompanied him, surrounded by the most lovely women the court of Macedon could afford. Rewarded for his fidelity by the governorship of Babylon, and still farther enriched by the spoils of that lucrative office, Harpalus sent to Athens for the most skillful and lovely hetairæ of the day. Pythionice was sent him. She was not in the bloom of youth. Some years before she had been the familiar of young Athenians of fashion; she was now the staid mistress of two brothers, sons of an opulent corn-merchant. But her talents were undeniable. She arrived at Babylon, and was installed in the palace; began to rule over the province, and governed Harpalus, it is said, with sternness and vigor. In the midst of her glory she suddenly died; poisoned, no doubt, by some one of the hundred fair ones whom she had supplanted in the governor’s affections. Harpalus, inconsolable for her loss, expended a large portion of the contents of his treasury in burying her and commemorating her fame. No queen of Babylon was ever consigned to the grave with the pomp, or the show, or the ostentatious affliction which did honor to the memory of the Athenian prostitute. Her tomb cost $50,000; and historians, admiring, in after ages, its splendor and its size, inquired, with mock wonder, whether the bones of a Miltiades, or a Cimon, or a Pericles lay under the pile!

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 worshiped, 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 cœur. 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 fashionables; 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 Archeanassa, 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, prostitutes 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 Athenæus, Alciphron’s Letters, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Aristophanes, Aristænetus, and others, to enable us to form a far more accurate idea of the Athenian hetairæ than we can obtain of the prostitutes 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 Phœnician women. Demosthenes, pleading successfully against the courtesan Neæra, 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 prostitution), 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 pharmacopœia, 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 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.

The object of the Julian laws was to preserve the Roman blood from corruption, and still farther to degrade prostitutes. These aims were partially attained by prohibiting the intermarriage of citizens with the relatives or descendants of prostitutes; 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 prostitutes.[77] Tiberius, from his infamous retreat at Capreæ, 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 class 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 ædile’s list as prostitutes, and to occupy a room at the houses of ill fame. This was pronounced 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. Prostitutes carried on their trade under the ædile’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 prostitutes 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 ædile Hostilius attempted to break open the door of the prostitute Mamilia, on his return from a gay dinner, the latter drove him off with stones, and was sustained by the courts.[79] The ædile was bound also, on complaint laid by a prostitute, to sentence any customer of hers to pay the sum due to her according to law.[80]

CLASSES OF PROSTITUTES.

It was the duty of the ædile to arrest, punish, and drive out of the city all loose prostitutes 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 class of prostitutes who were not recorded. They were distinguished from the registered prostitutes (meretrices) by the name of prostibulæ.[81] They paid no tax to the state, while their registered rivals contributed largely to the municipal 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 prostitutes 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 classes into which the prostibulæ, or unregistered prostitutes were divided. Such were the Delicatæ, corresponding to the kept-women, or French lorettes, whose charms enabled them to exact large sums from their visitors;[82] the Famosæ, who belonged to respectable families, and took to evil courses through lust or avarice;[83] the Doris, who were remarkable for their beauty of form, and disdained the use of clothing;[84] the Lupæ, or she-wolves, who haunted the groves and commons, and were distinguished by a particular cry in imitation of a wolf;[85] the Ælicariæ, 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 Bustuariæ, whose home was the burial-ground, and who occasionally officiated as mourners at funerals;[87] the Copæ, servant-girls at inns and taverns, who were invariably prostitutes;[88] the Noctiluæ, or night-walkers; the Blitidæ, a very low class 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 Forariæ, country girls who lurked about country roads; the Gallinæ, who were thieves as well as prostitutes; the Quadrantariæ, seemingly the lowest class of all, whose fee was less than any copper coin now current.[91] In contradistinction to these, the meretrices assumed an air of respectability, and were often called bonæ meretrices.[92]

Another and a distinct class of prostitutes 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 astonishing 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 prostitutes 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 classes, they rarely suffered the penalty of their conduct.

Apart, again, from all these was the large class of persons who traded in prostitutes. The proper name for these wretches was Leno (bawd), which was of both sexes, 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 Ancillulæ, 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 prostitutes, with his other calling, their various names, tonsor, unguentarius, balnearius, &c., became synonymous with leno. This miserable class was regarded with the greatest loathing at Rome.[96]

This hasty classification of the Roman prostitutes would be incomplete without some notice, however brief, of male prostitutes. 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 prostitutes 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 ædile 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 lusts.[97]

HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION.

Having examined the laws which governed prostitution at Rome, and the classes into which prostitutes were divided, it is now requisite to glance at the establishments in which prostitution was carried on.

M. Dufour and others have followed Publius Victor and Sextus Rufus in supposing that during the Augustine age there were forty-six first-class houses of ill fame at Rome, and a much larger number of establishments where prostitution was carried on without the supervision of the ædile. As it is now generally admitted that the works bearing the name of Publius Victor and Sextus 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 prostitution at Rome.[98]

Registered prostitutes were to be found in the establishments called Lupanaria. These differed from the Greek Dicteria in being of various classes, 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 prostitutes. 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 cushions, or a mere mat, with a dirty counterpane, constituted their whole furniture. Over the door of each cell hung a tablet, with the name of the prostitute who occupied it, and the price she set on her favors; on the other side with the word occupata. When a prostitute 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 prostitution, lupanaria, were of two kinds: establishments owned and managed by a bawd, who supplied the cells with slaves or hired prostitutes, and establishments where the bawd merely let his cells to prostitutes for a given sum. In the former case the bawd was the principal, 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 assignation houses; and as it appears she was paid in copper (æra 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—ancillæ ornatrices—were in readiness to repair with skill the ravages which amorous conflicts caused in the toilets of the prostitutes. Boys—bacariones—attended at the door of the cell with water for ablution. Servants, who bore the inconsistent title of aquarii, were ready to supply wine and other refreshments to customers. And not a few of the lupinaria kept a cashier, 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 prostitutes. 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 pergulæ, 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 passage 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 præferre 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
Constitit auratis, titulum mentita Lyciscæ,
Ostendit que tuum, generose Britannice, ventrem.
Excepit blanda intrantes, atque æra poposcit,
Et resupina jacens multorum absorbuit ictus.
Mox lenone suas jam dimittente puellas,
Tristris abit, et quod potuit, tamen ultima cellam
Clausit, adhuc ardens rigidæ tentigine vulvæ,
Et lassata viris necdum satiata recessit;
Obscurrisque genis turpis fumoque lucernæ
Fœda lupanaris tulit ad pulvinar adorem.”[106]

The passages 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 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.

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.

Again, though a Horace would use polite expressions in addressing Tyndaris or Lalage, the Latin tongue was much freer than any modern one. There is not a Latin author of the best age in whose writings the coarsest words can not be found. The comedies were frightfully obscene, both in ideas and expressions. A youth or a maiden could not begin to acquire instruction without meeting words of the grossest meaning. The convenient adage, Charta non erubescit, was invented to hide the pruriency of authors, and one of the worst puts in the wretched plea that, “though his page is lewd, his life is pure.” It is quite certain that, whatever might have been the effect on the poet, his readers could not but be demoralized by the lewdness of his verses.

Add to these causes of immorality the baths, and a fair case in support of Juvenal will be already made out. A young Roman girl, with warm southern blood in her veins, who could gaze on the unveiled pictures of the loves of Venus, read the shameful epigrams of Martial, or the burning love-songs of Catullus, go to the baths and see the nudity of scores of men and women, be touched herself by a hundred lewd hands, as well as those of the bathers who rubbed her dry and kneaded her limbs—a young girl who could withstand such experiences and remain virtuous would need, indeed, to be a miracle of principle and strength of mind.

But even then religion and law remained to assail her. She could not walk through the streets of Rome without seeing temples raised to the honor of Venus, that Venus who was the mother of Rome, as the patroness of illicit pleasures. In every field and in many a square, statues of Priapus, whose enormous indecency was his chief characteristic, presented themselves to view, often surrounded by pious matrons in quest of favor from the god. Once a year, at the Lupercalia, she saw young men running naked through the streets, armed with thongs with which they struck every woman they saw; and she noticed that matrons courted this flagellation as a means of becoming prolific. What she may have known of the Dionysia or Saturnalia, the wild games in honor of Bacchus, and of those other dissolute festivals known as the eves of Venus, which were kept in April, it is not easy to say, but there is no reason to believe that these lewd scenes were intended only for the vicious, or that they were kept a secret.

When her marriage approached the remains of her modesty were effectually destroyed. Before marriage she was led to the statue of Mutinus, a nude sitting figure, and made to sit on his knee,[129] ut ejus pudicitiam prius deus delibasse videtur. This usage was so deeply rooted among the Romans that, when Augustus destroyed the temple of Mutinus in the Velian ward in consequence of the immoralities to which it gave rise, a dozen others soon rose to take its place. On the marriage night, statuettes of the deities Subiqus and Prema hung over the nuptial bed—ut subacta a sponso viro non se commoveat quum premitur;[130] and in the morning the jealous husband exacted, by measuring the neck of his bride, proof to his superstitious mind that she had yielded him her virginity.[131]

In the older age of the republic it was not considered decent for women to recline on couches at table as men did. This, however soon became quite common. Men and women lay together on the same couch so close that hardly room for eating was left. And this was the custom not only with women of loose morals, but with the most respectable matrons. At the feast of Trimalchio, which is the best recital of a Roman dinner we have, the wife of the host and the wife of Habinus both appeared before the guests. Habinus amused them by seizing his host’s wife by the feet and throwing her forward so that her dress flew up and exposed her knees, and Trimalchio himself did not blush to show his preference for a giton in the presence of the company, and to throw a cup at his wife’s head when her jealousy led her to remonstrate.[132] The voyage of the hero of the Satyricon furnishes other pictures of the intensely depraved feeling which pervaded Roman society. The author does not seem to admit the possibility of virtue’s existence; all his men and women are equally vicious and shameless. The open spectacle of the most hideous debauchery only provokes a laugh. If a man declines to accede to the propositions which the women are the first to make, it must be because he is a disciple of the aversa Venus, and whole cities are depicted as joining in the hue and cry after the lost frater of a noted debauchee.

The commessationes, which Cicero enumerates among the symptoms of corruption in his time, had become of universal usage. It was for them that the cooks of Rome exhausted their art in devising the dishes which have puzzled modern gastronomists; for them that the rare old wines of Italy were stowed away in cellars; for them that Egyptian and Ionian dancing-girls stripped themselves, or donned the nebula linea.[133] No English words can picture the monstrosities which are calmly narrated in the pages of Petronius and Martial. Well might Juvenal cry, “Vice has culminated.”[134]

It is perhaps difficult to conceive how it could have been otherwise, considering the examples set by the emperors. It requires no small research to discover a single character in the long list that was not stained by the grossest habits. Julius Cæsar, “the bald adulterer,” was commonly said to be “husband of all men’s wives.”[135] Augustus, whose youth had been so dissolute as to suggest a most contemptuous epigram, employed men in his old age to procure matrons and maidens, whom these purveyors of imperial lust examined as though they had been horses at a public sale.[136] The amours of Tiberius in his retreat at Capreæ can not be described. It will suffice to say there was no invention of infamy which he did not patronise; that no young person of any charms was safe from his lust. More than one senator felt that safety required he should remove his handsome wife or pretty daughter from Rome, for Tiberius was ever ready to avenge obstacles with death. The sad fate of the beautiful Mallonia, who stabbed herself during a lawsuit which the emperor had instituted against her because she refused to comply with his beastly demands, gives a picture of the age.[137] Caligula, who made some changes in the tax levied on prostitutes, and established a brothel in the palace, commenced life by debauching his sisters, and ended it by giving grand dinners, during which he would remove from the room any lady he pleased, and, after spending a few minutes with her in private, return and give an account of the interview for the amusement of the company.[138] Messalina so far eclipsed Claudius in depravity that the “profuse debauches” of the former appear, by contrast, almost moderate and virtuous.[139]

Nero surpassed his predecessors in cynic recklessness. He was an habitual frequenter of houses of prostitution. He dined in public at the great circus among a crowd of prostitutes. He founded, on the shore of the Gulf of Naples, houses of prostitution, and filled them with females, whose dissolute habits were their recommendation to his notice. The brief sketch of his journeys given by Tacitus, and the allusions to his minister of pleasures, Tigellinus, leave no room for doubting that he was a monster of depravity.[140]

Passing over a coarse Galba, a profligate Otho, a beastly Vitellius, a mean Vespasian, and a dissolute Titus, Domitian revived the age of Nero. He seduced his brother’s daughter, and carried her away from her husband, bathed habitually in company with a band of prostitutes, and set an example of hideous vice while enacting severe laws against debauchery. After another interval, Commodus converted the palace into a house of prostitution. He kept in his pay three hundred girls of great beauty, and as many youths, and revived his dull senses by the sight of pleasures he could no longer share. Like Nero, he violated his sisters; like him, he assumed the dress and functions of a female, and gratified the court with the spectacle of his marriage to one of his freedmen. Finally, Elagabalus, whom the historian could only compare to a wild beast, surpassed even the most audacious infamies of his predecessors. It was his pride to have been able to teach even the most expert courtesans of Rome something more than they knew; his pleasure to wallow among them naked, and to pull down into the sink of bestiality in which he lived the first officers of the empire.

When such was the example set by men in high places, there is no need of inquiring farther into the condition of the public morals. A censor like Tacitus might indignantly reprove, but a Martial—and he was, no doubt, a better exponent of public and social life than the stern historian—would only laugh, and copy the model before him. It may safely be asserted that there does not exist in any modern language a piece of writing which indicates so hopelessly depraved a state of morals as Martial’s epigram on his wife.

SECRET DISEASES AT ROME.

At what period, and where, venereal diseases first made their appearance, is a matter of doubt. It was long the opinion of the faculty that they were of modern origin, and that Europe had derived them from America, where the sailors of Columbus had first contracted them. This opinion does not appear to rest on any solid basis, and is now generally rejected. The fact is, that the venereal disease prevailed extensively in Europe in the fifteenth century; but the presumption, from an imposing mass of circumstantial evidence, is that it has afflicted humanity from the beginning of history.

Still, it is strange that Greek and Latin authors do not mention it. There is a passage in Juvenal in which allusion is made to a disgusting disease, which appears to bear resemblance to venereal disease. Epigrams of Martial hint at something of the same kind. Celsus describes several diseases of the generative organs, but none of these authors ascribe the diseases they mention to venereal intercourse.

Celsus prefaces what he says on the subject of this class of maladies with an apology. Nothing but a sense of duty has led him to allude to matters so delicate; but he feels that he ought not to allow his country to lose the benefit of his experience, and he conceives it to be “desirable to disseminate among the people some medical principles with regard to a class of diseases which are never revealed to any one.”

After this apology, he proceeds to speak of a disease which he calls inflammatio colis, which seems to have borne a striking analogy to the modern Phymosis. It has been supposed that the Elephantiasis, which he describes at length, was also of a syphilitic character; and the symptoms detailed by Aretous, who wrote in the latter half of the first century, certainly remind the reader of secondary syphilis; but the best opinion of to-day appears to be that the diseases are distinct and unconnected.

Women afflicted with secret diseases were called aucunnuentæ, which explains itself. They prayed to Juno Fluonia for relief, and used the aster atticus by way of medicine. The Greek term for this herb being Bonbornion, which the Romans converted into Bubonium, that word came to be applied to the disease for which it was given, whether in the case of females or males. Modern science has obtained thence the term Bubo. The Romans said of a female who communicated a disease to a man, Hæc te imbubinat.[141]

We find, moreover, in the later writers, allusions to the morbus campanus, the clazomenæ, the rubigo, etc., which were all secret diseases of a type, if not syphilitic, strongly resembling it. It must be admitted, however, that no passage in the ancient writers directly ascribes these diseases to commerce with prostitutes.

Roman doctors declined to treat secret diseases. They were called by the generic term morbus indecens, and it was considered unbecoming to confess to them or to treat them. Rich men owned a slave doctor who was in the confidence of the family, and to whom such delicate secrets would naturally be confided. But the mass of the people were restrained by shame from communicating their misfortunes; as was the case among the Jews, the unhappy patient was driven to seclusion as the only remedy. However cruel and senseless this practice may have been as regarded the sufferer, it was of service to the people, as it prevented, in some degree, the spread of contagion.

Up to the period of the civil wars, and perhaps as late as the Christian era, the only physicians at Rome were drug-sellers, enchanters, and midwives. The standing of the former may be inferred from a passage in Horace, where he classes them with the lowest outcasts of Roman society.[142] The enchanters (sagæ) made philtres to produce or impede the sensual appetite. They were execrated, and even so amorous a poet as Ovid felt bound to warn young girls against the evil effects of the aphrodisiacs they concocted.[143] Midwives also made philtres, and are often confounded with the sagæ. The healing science of the three classes must have been small.

About the reign of Augustus, Greek physicians began to settle at Rome. They possessed much theory, and some practical experience, as the Treatise of Celsus shows, and soon became an important class in Roman society. It was not, however, till the reign of Nero, that an office of public physician was created. Under that emperor, a Greek named Andromachus was appointed archiater, or court physician, and archiatii populares were soon afterward appointed for the people. They were allowed to receive money from the rich, but they were bound, in consideration of various privileges bestowed on their office, to treat the poor gratuitously. They were stationed in every city in the empire. Rome had fourteen, besides those attached to the Vestals, the Gymnasia, and the court; other large cities had ten, and so on, down to the small towns which had one or two.[144] From the duties and privileges of the archiatii, it would appear they were subject to the ædiles.

It may seem almost superfluous to add that no careful medical reader of the history of Rome under the empire can doubt but the archiatii filled no sinecure, and that a large proportion of the diseases they treated were directly traceable to prostitution.

CHAPTER V.

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN ERA.

Christian Teachers preach Chastity.—Horrible Punishment of Christian Virgins.—Persecution of Women.—Conversion of Prostitutes.—The Gnostics.—The Ascetics.—Conventual Life.—Opinion of the Fathers on Prostitution.—Tax on Prostitutes.—Punishment of Prostitutes under the Greek Emperors.

Perhaps the most marked originality of the Christian doctrine was the stress it laid on chastity. It has been well remarked that even the most austere of the pagan moralists recommended chastity on economical grounds alone. The apostles exacted it as a moral and religious duty. They preached against lewdness as fervently as against heathenism. Not one of the epistles contained in the New Testament but inveighs, in the strongest language, against the vices classed under the generic head of luxury. Nor can it be doubted that, under divine Providence, the obvious merit of this feature in the new religion exercised a large influence in rallying the better class of minds to its support.

From the first, the Christian communities made a just boast of the purity of their morals. Their adversaries met them on this ground at great disadvantage. It was notorious that the college of Vestals had been sustained with great difficulty. Latterly, it had been found necessary to supply vacancies with children, and even under these circumstances, the number of Vestals buried alive bore but a very small proportion to the number who had incurred this dread penalty. Nor could it be denied that the chastity of the Roman virgins was, at best, but partial, the purest among them being accustomed to unchaste language and unchaste sights. The Christian congregations, on the contrary, contained numbers of virgins who had devoted themselves to celibacy for the love of Christ. They were modest in their dress, decorous in their manners, chaste in their speech.[145] They refused to attend the theatres; lived frugally and temperately; allowed no dancers at their banquets; used no perfumes, and abstained generally from every practice which could endanger their rigorous continence.[146] Marriage among the Christians was a holy institution, whose sole end was the procreation of children. It was not to be used, as was the case too often among the heathen, as a cloak for immoralities. Christ, they said, permitted marriage, but did not permit luxury.[147] The early fathers imposed severe penitences on fornication, adultery, and other varieties of sensuality.

Persecution aided the Church in the great work of purifying public morals, by forcing it to keep in view the Christian distinction between moral and physical guilt. At what time it became usual to condemn Christian virgins to the brothel it is difficult to discover. The practice may have arisen from the hideous custom which enjoined the violation of Roman maidens before execution, if the existence of such a custom can be assumed on the authority of so loose a chronicler as Suetonius.[148] However this be, this horrible refinement of brutality was in use in the time of Marcus Aurelius.[149] Virgins were seized and required to sacrifice to idols. Refusing, they were dragged, often naked, through the streets to a brothel, and there abandoned to the lubricity of the populace. The piety of the early Christians prompted the belief that on many conspicuous occasions the Almighty had interfered to protect his chosen children in this dire calamity.[150] St. Agnes, having refused to sacrifice to Vesta, was said to have been stripped naked by the order of the prefect; but, no sooner had her garments fallen, than her hair grew miraculously, and enveloped her as in a shroud. Dragged to the brothel, a wonderful light shone from her body, and the by-standers, appalled at the sight, instead of offering her violence, fell at her knees, till, at last, the prefect’s son, bolder and more reckless than the others, advanced to consummate her sentence, and was struck dead at her feet by a thunderbolt.[151] Theodora, a noble lady of Alexandria, was equally undaunted and equally faithful to her creed. The judge allowed her three days to deliberate, warning her of the consequences of obstinacy. She was firm, and was led into a house of prostitution. There, in the midst of debauched persons of both sexes, she prayed to God for help, and the sight of the half-naked virgin bent in fervent prayer struck awe into the minds of the people. At last a soldier declared that he would fulfill the judgment. Thrust into a cell with Theodora, he confessed that he was a Christian, dressed her in his clothes, and enabled her to escape. He was seized and executed; but the Christian virgin, refusing to purchase her safety at such a price, gave herself up, and died with him.[152] Similar stories are contained in several of the Christian fathers.[153]

There is, unhappily, no reason to doubt that in many instances the brutal mandate of the pagan judges was rigorously executed, and that the faith of many Christian virgins was assailed through the channel of their virtue. This appears to have been frequently the case during the persecution of Diocletian, when we hear of Christian women being suspended naked by one foot, and tortured in other savage and infernal ways. The practice led to the clear enunciation of the important doctrine of moral chastity, already stated by Christ himself in the Gospel. The Romans could not conceive a chaste soul in a body that had endured pollution, and hence for Lucretia there was no resource but the poniard. It was left for St. Augustin, St. Jerome, and the other fathers, to assert boldly that the crime lay in the intention and not in the act; that a chaste heart might inhabit a body which brutal force had soiled; and that the Christian virgins whom an infamous judge had sentenced to the brothel were none the less acceptable servants of God.[154]

The only retaliation attempted by the early Christians was the conversion of prostitutes. The works of the fathers contain many narratives of remarkable conversions of this character, and a learned Jesuit once compiled a voluminous work on the subject. The Egyptian Mary was the type of the class. She confessed to Zosimus that she had spent seventeen years in the practice of prostitution at Alexandria. Her heart being opened, she took ship for Jerusalem, paid her passage by exercising her calling on board, and expiated her sins by a life of penitence in the woods of Judæa. She lived, the legend said, forty-seven years in the woods, naked and alone, without seeing a man. A chapel was built at Paris during the Middle Ages in her honor. The painted windows, representing her in the exercise of her calling on shipboard, were in existence at a very late period.[155]

In revenge for the victories of the Christians, the pagans accused them of committing the grossest immoralities. For many centuries the early Christian congregations met under circumstances of great difficulty, in secret hiding-places, in catacombs. Their religious rites were performed mysteriously. Lights were often extinguished to foil the object of spies and informers. These peculiarities served as the pretext for many obvious calumnies. It was commonly believed, even by men of the calibre of Tacitus, that the Christian rites bore strong resemblances to those rites of Isis which, at an early period of Roman history, had created such alarm and horror at Rome. Nor were these calumnies confined to the heathen. In the third and fourth centuries, when sectarian rivalries menaced the destruction of the Church, similar accusations were freely bandied. That they were wholly unfounded in every case seems difficult to believe, in the face of the clear statements of such writers as Epiphanes. What the precise doctrines of the various sects called Adamites, Cainites, Nicolaites, and some subdivisions of Gnostics, may have been, it were perhaps superfluous now to inquire; but it seems not unreasonable to suppose that, in some instances, men of depraved instincts may have availed themselves of the cloak of Christianity to conceal the gratification of sensual habits; or, on the other hand, that minds in a state of religious exaltation may have stumbled upon impurities in the search for the state of nature. In comparatively late times we have seen, in America as well as Savoy, a few persons of weak minds give way to religious enthusiasm in a manner that warred with public decency. Similar aberrations may have been more frequent during the seething era which preceded the establishment of Christianity, and prostitution, in some shape or other, may have again become a religious rite in certain deluded or knavish sects. Nor was it unnatural, unjust though it certainly was, for the heathen to charge Christianity at large with the vices of those of its followers who worshiped in a state of nudity, and accompanied prayer with promiscuous intercourse.[156]

Even in the bosom of the true Church practices would break out from time to time which jarred sadly with the moral theory of the Apostles. Many persons of both sexes, under the influence of religious enthusiasm, sought relief for their troubled souls in solitude, and unwisely attempted to mortify the flesh by practices which too often sharpened the appetites. One only needs to read the eloquent effusions of St. Jerome to become satisfied that the course of life adopted by many early Christian recluses, of both sexes, must have led unwittingly to moral aberrations. Young men and young women, devoting themselves to a life of seclusion in the woods, living like wild beasts, without clothing and without shame, would naturally revive the system of religious prostitution in a more or less modified shape. On the other hand, in many parts of Europe, Christian churches thought it not unsafe to accept the legacies of the heathen religions in the shapes of idols, forms, and ceremonies. Saints succeeded to the honors of gods; dances in honor of Venus became dances in honor of the Virgin; statues which were originally intended to represent heathen deities were saved from destruction by being adopted as fair representations of Christian saints. Until very recent times there existed, in various parts of Europe, statues of Priapus, under the name of some saint, retaining the indecency of the idol, and associated with the belief of some simple women that the image possessed the power assigned it in mythology. In processions, during the third and fourth centuries, sacred virgins were seen to wear round their necks the obscene symbol of the old worship, and in places the holy bread retained the shape of the Roman coliphia and siligines. St. John Chrysostom complains that in places he designates, women were baptized in a state of nature, without even being permitted to veil their sex.[157] A majority of Christian teachers, unwilling to deprive the masses of a superstitious convenience afforded them by paganism, allowed them to pray to certain saints not only for fertility, but for the removal of impotence from husbands and lovers.[158]

To these immoral features must be added occasional instances of looseness in conventual life. The preamble of various edicts in France and elsewhere leaves no room to doubt that, in several instances, immoral persons had assumed the religious garb, and collected themselves together in religious communities for the purpose of gratifying sensuality.

These were the aids Christianity afforded to prostitution in its various forms. They are a mere trifle in comparison with the obstacles it threw in its way. Independently of the effect produced by the moral teaching of St. Paul and the Apostles, the rising power of the Church was vigorously exerted to modify the legislation both of the Eastern and Western empires on the subject of sexual depravities.

The fathers did not uniformly proscribe prostitution. Saint Augustin said, “Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society.”[159] Jerome recognized prostitution, and argued that, as Mary Magdalene had been saved, so might any prostitute who repented.[160] The canons of the apostles excluded from the ministry all persons who were convicted of having commerce with prostitutes, and excommunicated those who were guilty of rape, but they passed no general sentence on prostitutes.[161] But the apostolic constitution branded as sinful any sexual intercourse quæ non adhibetur ad generationem filiorum sed tota ad voluptatem spectat.[162] The same principle is asserted in various passages of the work; wine being denounced as a provocation to impurity, and the faithful are warned against the society of lewd persons (scortatores). The Council of Elvira pronounced the penalty of excommunication against bawds and prostitutes, but it expressly commanded priests to receive at the communion-table prostitutes who had married Christians.[163] St. Augustin conceived that no church should admit prostitutes to the altar till they had abandoned the calling.[164] A similar doctrine was expressed by the Council of Toledo. At a later period, as we advance in mediæval history, we find the councils recognizing prostitution, and prostitutes as a class. In 1431, at the Council of Basle, a holy father presented a paper on the subject of prostitution, in which it was implied to be the only safeguard of good morals. A century later, the Council of Milan took especial pains to identify prostitutes as a class. They were to wear a distinctive dress, with no ornaments of gold, silver, or silk; to reside in places expressly designated by the bishops, at a distance from cathedrals; to avoid taverns and hostelries. The execution of the decree was intrusted to the bishops and the civil magistrates.[165]

The vectigal or tax paid by all persons subsisting by prostitution was exacted by the emperors, from Caligula to Theodosius. It was usually collected every five years. Zosimus accuses Constantine of having enlarged and remodeled the tax, but apparently without foundation. The early Christians made it a subject of reproach to the emperors.[166] In consequence of their assaults, Theodosius abandoned that portion of the law which laid a tax on bawds, leaving the tax on prostitutes. The latter was levied as rigorously as ever. A contemporary writer describes the imperial agents hunting for prostitutes in taverns and houses of prostitution, and forcing them to purchase, by payment of the tax, the right of pursuing their calling.[167] At length, in the fifth century, prostitution and the tax on prostitutes, or chrysarguron, were formally abolished by the Emperor Anastasius I., and the records and rolls of the collectors burned. It is said that some time afterward, the emperor gave out that he had repented of what he had done, and desired to see the chrysarguron re-established. The announcement gave great joy to the debauchees, and numbers of persons prepared to avail themselves of the re-enactment of the law. The emperor let it be known that he desired to have matters placed, so far as could be, on their old footing, and would therefore desire to collect as many as possible of the old rolls and records. They were gathered together at all parts, and laid at the imperial feet. Notice was then given to the people to meet at the circus on a given day; when they were all assembled, the whole collection of documents was burned, amid the frantic applause of the populace.[168]

It has been asserted, however, that the chrysarguron was revived subsequently, and was levied under Justinian. That legislator altered the old Roman laws regarding prostitution, and relieved prostitutes from the ineffaceable ban of infamy which the republican jurisprudence had laid on them. He permitted the marriage of citizens with prostitutes, and encouraged it by his example. His own wife, the Empress Theodora, had been a ballet-dancer and a prostitute. When she attained the imperial dignity, her first thought was of her old companions. She built a magnificent palace-prison on the south shore of the Bosphorus, and in one night caused five hundred prostitutes in Constantinople to be seized and conveyed thither. They were kindly treated; their every wish was gratified; but no man entered their asylum. The experiment was a complete failure. Most of the girls committed suicide in their despair, and the remainder soon died of ennui and vexation.

Theodosius had laid heavy penalties on brothel-keepers;[169] Justinian reiterated them, and increased their weight. The seizure and prostitution of a girl he punished with death. He who connived at the prostitution of females was to be expelled from the city where he lived, and any person harboring him was to be fined one hundred gold pieces. Whatever legislation could effect to uproot the system of procurers and public prostitution, Justinian did;[170] but his laws contain no trace of any harsh policy toward prostitutes. Those unfortunate creatures he regarded with an indulgent humanity, which, for the sake of human nature, one may perhaps ascribe to the kindly sympathy of the empress.

CHAPTER VI.

FRANCE.—HISTORY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

Morals in Gaul.—Gynecea.—Capitulary of Charlemagne.—Morals in the Middle Ages.—Edict of 1254.—Decree of 1358, re-establishing Prostitution.—Roi des Ribauds.—Ordinance of Philip abolishing Prostitution.—Sumptuary Laws.—Punishment of Procuresses.—Templars.—The Provinces.—Prohibition in the North.—Licensed Brothels at Toulouse, Montpellier, and Avignon.—Penalties South.—Effect of Chivalry.—Literature.—Erotic Vocabulary.—Incubes and Succubes.—Sorcery.—The Sabat.—Flagellants.—Adamites.—Jour des Innocents.—Wedding Ceremonies.—Preachers of the Day.

The Roman accounts of the Gauls represent them as leading virtuous lives. Severa matrimonia is the expression of the historian. This would appear to apply more particularly to the women than the men. As is usually the case among semi-civilized nations, the Gauls, Germans, Franks, and most of the aboriginal nations of Northern Europe imposed upon the women obligations of chastity which they did not always accept for themselves. Adultery, and, in certain cases, fornication, they punished capitally; but, if the early ecclesiastical writers are to be believed, these rude warriors were addicted to coarse debaucheries, in which intoxicating liquors and promiscuous intercourse with females played a prominent part. The feasts which followed victories in the field, or commemorated national anniversaries, bore some resemblance to the Roman commessationes, though, of course, they lacked the refinement and the wit which occasionally strove to redeem those disgraceful banquets. So far as the females were concerned, there is no doubt the Roman writers judged correctly. Whether the severity of the climate tempered the ardor of northern sensuality, or the harshness of the law kept the passions in check, the female population of Gaul, from the time of the Roman conquest for at least two or three centuries, was undoubtedly virtuous. Prostitution was comparatively unknown. An old law or usage directed that prostitutes should be stoned, but we do not hear of this law being carried into effect.

Simultaneously with the consolidation of the kingdom of the Franks, we note that concubinage was an established institution, recognized by the law and sanctioned by the Church. All the Frank chiefs who could afford the luxury kept harems, or, as they were called in that day, gynecea, peopled by young girls who ministered to their pleasures. The plan, as it appears, bore some resemblance to that which is at present in use in Turkey and some other Mohammedan countries. The chief had one lawful and proper wife, a sort of sultana valide, and other wives whose matrimonial rights were less clearly defined, but still whose condition was not necessarily disreputable. How the people lived we are not so well qualified to say, but no doubt prostitution prevailed to some extent among them, though in all probability the public morals were purer than they became toward the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Perhaps the first authentic legislative notice of prostitution in France is to be found in the Capitularies of Charlemagne. That monarch, who seems to have seen no mischief in the system of gynecea, was severe upon common prostitution. He directed vulgar prostitutes to be scourged, and a like penalty to be inflicted on all who harbored them, kept houses of debauch, or lent their assistance to prostitutes or debauchees. In other words, Charlemagne treated the same act as a crime among the poor, and as an excusable habit among the rich.

Our information regarding society in the Middle Ages is necessarily obscure and scanty, but we have enough to learn that immorality prevailed to an alarming degree during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Probably the rich men who had their gynecea were the most virtuous class in the nation. Most of the kings set an example of loose intercourse with the ladies of the court. The armies of the time were noted for the ravages they committed among the female population of the countries where they were quartered. Both of these classes seem to have yielded the palm of debauchery to the clergy. It is a fact well known to antiquaries, though visual evidence of it is becoming scarce, that most of the great works of Gothic architecture which date from this period were profusely adorned with lewd sculptures whose subjects were taken from the religious orders. In one place a monk was represented in carnal connection with a female devotee. In others were seen an abbot engaged with nuns, a naked nun worried by monkeys, youthful penitents undergoing flagellation at the hands of their confessor, lady abbesses offering hospitality to well-proportioned strangers, etc., etc. These obscene works of art formerly encumbered the doors, windows, arches, and niches of many of the finest Gothic cathedrals in France. Modesty has lately insisted on their removal, but many of the works themselves have been rescued from destruction by the zeal of antiquaries, and it is believed some have still escaped the iconoclastic hand of the modern Church. When such was the condition of the clergy, and such the notoriety of that condition, it would be unjustifiable to expect purity of morals among the people.

Louis VIII. made an effort to regulate prostitution. It proved fruitless, and it was left to the next king of the same name, Louis IX., to make the first serious endeavor to check the progress of the evil in France. His edict, which dates from 1254, directed that all prostitutes, and persons making a living indirectly out of prostitution, such as brothel-keepers and procurers, should be forthwith exiled from the kingdom. It was partially put in force. A large number of unfortunate females were seized, and imprisoned or sent across the frontier. Severe punishments were inflicted on those who returned to the city of Paris after their expulsion. A panic seized the customers of brothels, and for a few months public decency was restored. But the inevitable consequences of the arbitrary decree of the king soon began to be felt. Though the officers of justice had forcibly confined in establishments resembling Magdalen hospitals a large proportion of the most notorious prostitutes, and exiled many more, others arose to take their places. A clandestine traffic succeeded to the former open debauchery, and in the dark the evils of the disease were necessarily aggravated. More than that, as has usually been the case when prostitution has been violently and suddenly suppressed, the number of virtuous women became less, and corruption invaded the family circle. Tradesmen complained that since the passage of the ordinance they found it impossible to guard the virtue of their wives and daughters against the enterprises of the military and the students.

At last, complaints of the evil effects of the ordinance became so general and so pressing that, after a lapse of two years, it was repealed. A new royal decree re-established prostitution under rules which, though not particularly enlightened or humane, still placed it on a sounder footing than it had occupied before the royal attention had been directed to the subject. Prostitutes were forbidden to live in certain parts of the city of Paris, were not allowed to wear jewelry or fine stuffs, and were placed under the direct supervision of a police magistrate, whose official or popular title was Le roi des ribauds (the king of ribaldry). The duties of this officer appear to have been analogous to those of the Roman ædiles who had charge of prostitution. He was empowered to arrest and confine females who infringed the law, either in their dress, their domicil, or their behavior. It was afterward urged against the maintenance of the office of Roi des ribauds that it was usually filled by reckless, depraved men, who discharged its duties more in view of their private interests and the gratification of their sensuality than from regard to the public morals. Instances of gross tyranny were proved against them, and, in the absence of evidence to show that their appointment had been beneficial to the public, but little regret was felt when the office was abolished by Francis I.

To return to Louis IX. In his old age he repented of what he had done, and returned to the spirit of his early ordinance. In his instructions to his son and successor, he adjured him to remove from his country the shameful stain of prostitution, and indicated plainly enough that the best mode of attaining that end would be by re-enacting the ordinance of 1254. Philip dutifully fulfilled his father’s request. Prostitution was again declared a legal misdemeanor, and a formidable array of penalties was again brought to bear against offending females and their accomplices. But, like many a legislative act in more modern times, Philip’s ordinance was too obviously at variance with public policy and popular sentiment to be carried into effect. It was quietly allowed to remain a dead letter, and, with probably few exceptions, the prostitutes of Paris pursued their calling unmolested.

A few years afterward, its nullification was authoritatively sanctioned by fresh sumptuary laws. A royal edict directed courtesans to wear a shoulder-knot of a particular color as a badge of their calling. The whole force of the government was rallied to enforce this rule, and also those which had been enacted by Louis IX. The records of the court contain innumerable reports of the arrests of prostitutes for violating these enactments. When they had taken up their abode in a prohibited street, they were imprisoned and dislodged; when their offense was wearing unlawful garments or jewelry, the forbidden objects were seized and sold, the constable apparently sharing the proceeds of the sale. Pimps and procurers were dealt with more severely. As usual, the statute-book contained a variety of conflicting enactments on this subject, and menaced them with all kinds of penalties, from burning alive to fine and imprisonment. It appears beyond a doubt that, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, several notorious procuresses were burned alive at Paris. Others were put in the pillory; were scourged, and had their ears cropped; while many of the richer class escaped with a fine. There are records of cases in which the procuress was exposed naked to the insults of the mob for a whole day, and toward evening the hair on her body was burned off with a flaming torch. Others again were chased through the city in a state of nudity, and pelted with stones. These barbarous penalties appear to have been very much to the taste of the people. Procuresses have always been an odious class, and it is not surprising to find that the punishment of a notorious wretch of the class was observed as a joyous holiday by the populace of the French capital. On the other hand, the prostitutes themselves were often subjects of public sympathy.

Peculiar reasons operated at this period to produce a favorable sentiment with regard to prostitutes. The horrible depravities of the Templars were becoming known. Society was horror-struck at the symptom of a revival of the worst vice of the ancients. There have been, as is known, ingenious and eloquent efforts made, in comparatively recent times, to throw a veil over the corruptions of the Templars, and to prove that they fell victims to royal jealousy, but the argument is not sustained by the facts. Documents on whose authenticity and credibility no possible suspicion can be cast, establish incontrovertibly that the sect of the Templars was tainted with unnatural vices, and that one of the chief secrets of its maintenance was the facility it afforded to debased men for the gratification of monstrous propensities. That this was the opinion which prevailed in Paris at the time of the outburst which finally led to the suppression of the order, there is no room to question. It is easy to understand how the horror such discoveries must have awakened would lead men to entertain more lenient views with regard to a vice which had at least the merit of being in conformity with natural instinct.

Thus far of Paris only. During the Middle Ages, as is well known, most of the provinces of France were self-governing communities, which administered their own affairs, and received no police regulations from the crown. A complete examination of the subject throughout France would therefore involve as many histories as there were provinces. Our space, of course, forbids any thing of the kind, and we can only glance at leading divisions.

Most of the northern people had adopted, partly from the old Germanic constitutions and partly from the Roman law, severe provisions against prostitution, but they were nowhere, apparently, put in force. Occasionally a notorious brothel-keeper or professional procuress was severely punished, but prostitutes were rarely molested. In the north and west of France, indeed, toleration was obviously the natural policy, for we are not led to believe that in that section of country the evil was ever carried to great excess. In Normandy, Brittany, Picardy, and the great northern and western provinces, a virtuous simplicity was the rule of life among the peasants, and even the cities did not present any striking contrast. In many provinces, usage, not fortified by the text of any custom, allowed the seigneur to levy toll upon prostitutes exercising their calling within the limits of his jurisdiction. Some old titles and records refer to this practice. One sets down the tax paid by each prostitute at four deniers to the seigneur. Others intimate that the tax may be paid in money or in kind, at the option of the seigneur. In many seigniories this singular tax was regarded with the contempt it deserved.

In the south of France we meet with a different spectacle. There prostitution had long been a deeply-seated feature of society. The warm passions of the southerners required a vent, and, in the absence of some safety-valve, it was obvious to all that the ungovernable lusts of the men would soon kindle the inflammable passions of the dark southern women. Public houses of prostitution were therefore established in three of the largest cities of the south—Toulouse, Avignon, and Montpellier.

That of Toulouse was established by royal charter, which declared that the profits of the enterprise should be shared equally by the city and the University. The building appropriated for the purpose was large and commodious, bearing the name of the Grand Abbaye. In it were lodged not only the resident prostitutes of the city, but any loose women who traveled that way, and desired to exercise their impure calling. It would appear that they received a salary from the city, and that the fees exacted from the customers were divided between the two public bodies to which the enterprise was granted. They were obliged to wear white scarfs and white ribbons or cords on one of their arms, as a badge of their calling.

When the unfortunate monarch Charles VI. visited Toulouse, the prostitutes of the Abbaye met him in a body, and presented an address. The king received them graciously, and promised to grant them whatever largess they should request. They begged to be released from the duty of wearing the white badges, and the king, faithful to his promise, granted the boon. A royal declaration specially exempted them from the old rule.[171] But the people of Toulouse, no doubt irritated by the want of some distinguishing mark between their wives and daughters and the “foolish women,” by common consent mobbed the prostitutes who availed themselves of the king’s ordinance. None of them could venture to appear in public without being liable to insult, and even bodily injury. Resolutely bent on carrying their point, the women shut themselves up in the Abbaye, and did their best to keep customers at a distance. Their calculation was just; the city and the University soon felt the effects of the diminution of visitors at the Abbaye. The corporation appealed to the king; and when, during the disorders which distracted France at that time, Charles VII. visited Toulouse, a formal petition was presented to him by the capitones, praying that he would take such steps as his wisdom might seem fit to mediate between the prostitutes and the people, and restore to the Abbaye its former prosperity. The king acted with energy. He denounced the assailants of the prostitutes in the severest language, and planted his own royal fleurs de lis over the door of the Abbaye as a protection to the occupants.[172] But the people did not respect the royal arms any more than they did the “foolish women.” On the contrary, assaults on the Abbaye became more numerous than ever. The prostitutes complained incessantly of having suffered violence at the hands of wild youths who refused to pay for their pleasures; and the civic authorities proving incompetent to check the disorder, the prostitutes found themselves compelled to seek refuge in a new part of the city, where, it is to be presumed, they enlisted adequate support among their own individual acquaintances. For a hundred years they inhabited their new domicil in peace and quiet. The University then dislodging them in order to occupy the spot, the city built them a new abbaye beyond the precincts of the respectable wards. It was called the Chateau vert, and its fame and profits equaled that of the old abbaye.

About the middle of the sixteenth century the city yielded to the scruples of some moralists of the day, and ceded the revenues of the Chateau vert to the hospitals; but the grant being made on condition that the hospitals should receive and cure all females attacked by venereal disease, it was found, after six years’ trial, that it cost more than it yielded. The hospitals surrendered the chateau to the city. It happened, just at this time, that many eminent philosophers and economists were advocating a return to the old ecclesiastical policy of suppressing prostitution altogether. After a discussion which lasted several years, the city of Toulouse adopted these views, and closed the Chateau vert. A magistrate, high in authority, left on record his protest against this course, founded on the scenes of immorality he had himself witnessed in the suburbs, and the country in the neighborhood of Toulouse; but the city authorities adhered to their opinion, and contented themselves with arresting some of the most shameless of the free prostitutes.[173] From that time forth, prostitution at Toulouse was subject to the same rules as in the rest of France.

The history of prostitution at Montpellier was analogous. At an early period, the monopoly which the crown had granted to the city being farmed out to individuals, fell into the hands of two bankers, in whose family it remained for several generations. During their tenure, a brothel was established in the city by a speculator of the day, but the holders of the monopoly prosecuted him, and obtained a perpetual injunction restraining him from lodging or harboring prostitutes.

At Avignon prostitution was legalized by Jane of Naples just before the cession of the city to the Pope. The ordinance establishing a public brothel seems to have been drawn with care, and, though doubts have lately been thrown on its authenticity, they are not so well founded as to justify its rejection. Prostitutes were ordered to live in the brothel. They were bound to wear a red shoulder-knot as a badge of their calling. The brothel was to be visited weekly by the bailli and a “barber,” the latter of whom was to examine the girls, and confine separately all who seemed infected. No Jew was allowed to enter the brothel on any pretext. Its doors were to be closed on saints’ days, and special regulations guarded against the prevalence of scenes of riot and disorder.[174]

This ordinance seems to have remained in force during the whole occupation of Avignon by the Popes, and its penalties were occasionally inflicted on offenders. But if Petrarch and other contemporary writers are to be believed, the city was none the less a refuge for debauchees, and a scandal to Christendom. Petrarch complains that it was far more depraved than old Rome, and a popular proverb confirms, at least in part, his opinion.[175]