Satyricon, vol 6, Editors Notes

Satyricon, vol 6, Editor's Notes

The Project Gutenberg EBook The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, v6
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Title: The Satyricon, v6 (Editor's Notes)
Author: Petronius Arbiter
Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5223] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 8, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE SATYRICON OF PETRONIUS ARBITER
Complete and unexpurgated translation by W. C. Firebaugh, in which are incorporated the forgeries of Nodot and Marchena, and the readings introduced into the text by De Salas.

NOTES
PROSTITUTION.
There are two basic instincts in the character of the normal individual; the will to live, and the will to propagate the species. It is from the interplay of these instincts that prostitution took origin, and it is for this reason that this profession is the oldest in human experience, the first offspring, as it were, of savagery and of civilization. When Fate turns the leaves of the book of universal history, she enters, upon the page devoted thereto, the record of the birth of each nation in its chronological order, and under this record appears the scarlet entry to confront the future historian and arrest his unwilling attention; the only entry which time and even oblivion can never efface.
If, prior to the time of Augustus Caesar, the Romans had laws designed to control the social evil, we have no knowledge of them, but there is nevertheless no lack of evidence to prove that it was only too well known among them long before that happy age (Livy i, 4; ii, 18); and the peculiar story of the Bacchanalian cult which was brought to Rome by foreigners about the second century B.C. (Livy xxxix, 9-17), and the comedies of Plautus and Terence, in which the pandar and the harlot are familiar characters. Cicero, Pro Coelio, chap. xx, says: "If there is anyone who holds the opinion that young men should be interdicted from intrigues with the women of the town, he is indeed austere! That, ethically, he is in the right, I cannot deny: but nevertheless, he is at loggerheads not only with the licence of the present age, but even with the habits of our ancestors and what they permitted themselves. For when was this NOT done? When was it rebuked? When found fault with?" The Floralia, first introduced about 238 B.C., had a powerful influence in giving impetus to the spread of prostitution. The account of the origin of this festival, given by Lactantius, while no credence is to be placed in it, is very interesting. "When Flora, through the practice of prostitution, had come into great wealth, she made the people her heir, and bequeathed a certain fund, the income of which was to be used to celebrate her birthday by the exhibition of the games they call the Floralia" (Instit. Divin. xx, 6). In chapter x of the same book, he describes the manner in which they were celebrated: "They were solemnized with every form of licentiousness. For in addition to the freedom of speech that pours forth every obscenity, the prostitutes, at the importunities of the rabble, strip off their clothing and act as mimes in full view of the crowd, and this they continue until full satiety comes to the shameless lookers-on, holding their attention with their wriggling buttocks." Cato, the censor, objected to the latter part of this spectacle, but, with all his influence, he was never able to abolish it; the best be could do was to have the spectacle put off until he had left the theatre. Within 40 years after the introduction of this festival, P. Scipio Africanus, in his speech