Satyricon, vol 7, Marchena Notes | Page 7

affirms that the first men were doubles
which multiplied their force and their power. This, they abused and, as
punishment, Jupiter struck them with lightning and separated them. By
their love for each other they came together again to regain their
primitive state. But the effeminates sought out only the women because
they were only half men, 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