Satyricon, vol 7, Marchena Notes | Page 7

half women; while those whose tastes were masculine and courageous wanted to become double men again.
Phedre has put into the mouth of AEsop an explanation of that love which would certainly not have been relished by the Greeks. He says that while Prometheus was occupied with modelling his man and woman, he was invited to a feast given by Jupiter, to the Gods; he came back intoxicated and, by mistake, applied the sexual parts of one to the body of the other.
For the rest, the Greeks were all in accord in their profound contempt for women. The theatrical writers, especially, who studied more particularly the general opinions and catered to them in order to obtain the applause of the public, were distinguished by their bitterness against the sex. Euripides maintained that Prometheus deserved to be chained to Mount Caucasus with the vulture gnawing at his entrails, because he had fashioned a being so pernicious and hateful as woman. The shade of Agamemnon, in the Odyssey advised Ulysses not to put any faith in Penelope and did not stop talking until he had enumerated the entire list of the vices of the sex. The first Latin authors imitated the Greeks in their invectives against women; the comedies of Plautus, especially, teem with virulent attacks upon them.
At Rome, however, the great freedom permitted to women, soon brought about other opinions in regard to them; they often played an important role in public and private affairs, and the men convinced themselves that, like men, women were capable of the greatest crimes and of the most heroic virtues. The noble stoicism of Arria is not the only example of courageous virtue displayed by the Roman women at a time when crowned monsters governed the empire. The young Paulina opened her veins with her husband, the philosopher, Seneca; Mallonia preferred to die in torments rather than give herself up to the odious he-goat of Capri. Who does not admire the noble independence, the conjugal love, and the matronly virtues of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus?
Moreover, men began to avow their love for women, and we have here occasion to observe the rapid progress of gallantry among the Romans. However, the love for boys was no less universally in vogue in Rome, and Cicero charges, in his letters to Atticus, that the judges who had so scandalously white-washed Clodius of the accusation of having profaned the mysteries of the "Good Goddess," had been publicly promised the favors of the most illustrious women and the finest young men of the first families. Caesar himself, in his early youth had yielded to the embraces of Nicomedes, King of Bithynia; moreover, after his triumph over the Gauls, on the solemn occasion when it was customary to twit the victor with all his faults, the soldiers sang: "Caesar subdued the Gauls, Nicomedes subdued Caesar. But Caesar who subdued the Gauls, triumphed, and Nicomedes, who subdued Caesar did not." Cato said of him that he was loved by the King, in his youth and that, when he was older, he loved the queen and, one day, in the senate, while he was dwelling on I know not what request of the daughter of Nicomedes, and recounting the benefits which Rome owed to that monarch, Cicero silenced him by replying: "We know very well what he has given, and what thou hast given him!" At last, during the time when the first triumvirate divided all the power, a bad joker remarked to Pompey: "I salute thee, O King," and, addressing Caesar, "I salute thee, O Queen!" His enemies maintained that he was the husband of all the women and the wife of all the husbands. Catullus, who detested him, always called him "the bald catamite," in his epigrams: he set forth that his friendship with Mamurra was not at all honorable; he called this Mamurra "pathicus," a name which they bestowed upon those who looked for favors among mature men or among men who had passed the stage of adolescence.
The masters of the empire never showed any hesitancy in trying and even in overdoing the pleasures which all their subjects permitted themselves. Alas! A crown is such a weighty burden! The road of domination is strewn with so many briars that one would never be able to pass down it if he did not take care that they were pressed down under the roses. The Roman emperors adopted that plan; they longed for pleasures and they took the pleasures which offered themselves without delay and in a spirit of competition. Caligula was so little accustomed to waiting that, while occupied in offering a sacrifice to the Gods, and the figure of a priest having pleased him, he did not take time to finish the sacred ceremonies before taking his pleasure of him.
A