Satyricon, vol 6, Editors Notes | Page 3

they are as far apart as the poles. The revenge, then, taken
by Asia, gives a startling insight into the real meaning of Kipling's
poem, "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." In
Livy (xxxiv, 4) we read: (Cato is speaking), "All these changes, as day
by day the fortune of the state is higher and more prosperous and her
empire grows greater, and our conquests extend over Greece and Asia,
lands replete with every allurement of the senses, and we appropriate
treasures that may well be called royal,--all this I dread the more from
my fear that such high fortune may rather master us, than we master it."
Within twelve years of the time when this speech was delivered, we
read in the same author (xxxix, 6), "for the beginnings of foreign luxury
were brought into the city by the Asiatic army"; and Juvenal (Sat. iii, 6),
"Quirites, I cannot bear to see Rome a Greek city, yet how small a
fraction of the whole corruption is found in these dregs of Achaea?
Long since has the Syrian Orontes flowed into the Tiber and brought
along with it the Syrian tongue and manners and cross-stringed harp
and harper and exotic timbrels and girls bidden stand for hire at the
circus." Still, from the facts which have come down to us, we cannot
arrive at any definite date at which houses of ill fame and women of the
town came into vogue at Rome. That they had long been under police
regulation, and compelled to register with the aedile, is evident from a
passage in Tacitus: "for Visitilia, born of a family of praetorian rank,

had publicly notified before the aediles, a permit for fornication,
according to the usage that prevailed among our fathers, who supposed
that sufficient punishment for unchaste women resided in the very
nature of their calling." No penalty attached to illicit intercourse or to
prostitution in general, and the reason appears in the passage from
Tacitus, quoted above. In the case of married women, however, who
contravened the marriage vow there were several penalties. Among
them, one was of exceptional severity, and was not repealed until the
time of Theodosius: "again he repealed another regulation of the
following nature; if any should have been detected in adultery, by this
plan she was not in any way reformed, but rather utterly given over to
an increase of her ill behaviour. They used to shut the woman up in a
narrow room, admitting any that would commit fornication with her,
and, at the moment when they were accomplishing their foul deed, to
strike bells, that the sound might make known to all, the injury she was
suffering. The Emperor hearing this, would suffer it no longer, but
ordered the very rooms to be pulled down" (Paulus Diaconus, Hist.
Miscel. xiii, 2). Rent from a brothel was a legitimate source of income
(Ulpian, Law as to Female Slaves Making Claim to Heirship).
Procuration also, had to be notified before the aedile, whose special
business it was to see that no Roman matron became a prostitute. These
aediles had authority to search every place which had reason to fear
anything, but they themselves dared not engage in any immorality there;
Aulus Gellius, Noct. Attic. iv, 14, where an action at law is cited, in
which the aedile Hostilius had attempted to force his way into the
apartments of Mamilia, a courtesan, who thereupon, had driven him
away with stones. The result of the trial is as follows: "the tribunes
gave as their decision that the aedile had been lawfully driven from that
place, as being one that he ought not to have visited with his officer." If
we compare this passage with Livy, xl, 35, we find that this took place
in the year 180 B C. Caligula inaugurated a tax upon prostitutes
(vectigal ex capturis), as a state impost: "he levied new and hitherto
unheard of taxes; a proportion of the fees of prostitutes;--so much as
each earned with one man. A clause was also added to the law directing
that women who had practiced harlotry and men who had practiced
procuration should be rated publicly; and furthermore, that marriages
should be liable to the rate" (Suetonius, Calig. xi). Alexander Severus

retained this law, but directed that such revenue be used for the upkeep
of the public buildings, that it might not contaminate the state treasure
(Lamprid. Alex. Severus, chap. 24). This infamous tax was not
abolished until the time of Theodosius, but the real credit is due to a
wealthy patrician, Florentius by name, who strongly censured this
practice, to the Emperor, and offered his own property to make good
the deficit which would appear upon its abrogation (Gibbon, vol. 2, p.
318, note). With the