Satyricon, vol 7, Marchena Notes | Page 9

in this matter: when they painted "Pleasure" they
never failed to represent him wearing trousers. Those disciples of
Joseph Calasanz who took their places in the education of children,
followed their footsteps with zeal and fervor. Lastly, the cardinals, who
have a close acquaintance with the Holy Ghost, are so prejudiced in
favor of Greek love that they have made it the fashion in the Holy City
of Rome; this leads me to wonder whether the Holy Ghost has changed
His mind in regard to this matter and is no longer shocked by it; or
whether the theologians were not mistaken in assuming an aversion
against sodomy which He never had. The cardinals who are on such
familiar terms with him would know better than to give all their days
over to this pleasure if He really objected to it.
I shall terminate this over-long note with an extract from a violent
diatribe against this love which Lucian puts into the mouth of Charicles.
He is addressing Callicratidas, a passionate lover of young boys, with
whom he had gone to visit the temple of Venus at Cnidus.
"O Venus, my queen! to thee I call; lend me your aid while I plead your
cause. For everything over which you deign to shed, be it ever so little,
the persuasion of your charms, reaches absolute perfection, above all,
erotic discourses need your presence, for you are their lawful mother.
In your womanhood, defend the cause of woman, and grant to men to
remain men as they have been born. At the beginning of my discourse,
I call as witness to the truth of my arguments the first mother of all
created things, the source of all generation, the holy Nature of this
universe, who, gathering into one and uniting the elements of the
world- earth, air, fire and water--and mingling them together, gave life
to everything that breathes. Knowing that we are a compound of
perishable matter, and that the span of life assigned to each of us was
short, she contrived that the death of one should be the birth of another,

and meted out to the dying, by way of compensation, the coming into
being of others, that by mutual succession we might live forever. But,
as it was impossible for anything to be born from a single thing alone,
she created two different sexes, and bestowed upon the male the power
of emitting semen, making the female the receptacle of generation.
Having inspired both with mutual desires, she joined them together,
ordaining, as a sacred law of necessity, that each sex should remain
faithful to its own nature--that the female should not play the male
unnaturally, nor the male degrade himself by usurping the functions of
the female. Thus intercourse of men with women has preserved the
human race by never- ending succession: no man can boast of having
been created by man alone; two venerable names are held in equal
honor, and men revere their mother equally with their father. At first,
when men were filled with heroic thoughts, they reverenced those
virtues which bring us nearer to the Gods, obeyed the laws of Nature,
and, united to women of suitable age, became the sires of noble
offspring. But, by degrees, human life, degenerating from that nobility
of sentiment, sank to the lowest depths of pleasure, and began to carve
out strange and corrupt ways in the search after enjoyment. Then
sensuality, daring all, violated the laws of Nature herself. Who was it
who first looked upon the male as female, violating him by force or
villainous persuasion? One sex entered one bed, and men had the
shamelessness to look at one another without a blush for what they did
or for what they submitted to, and, sowing seed, as it were, upon barren
rocks, they enjoyed a short-lived pleasure at the cost of undying shame.
"Some pushed their cruelty so far as to outrage Nature with the
sacrilegious knife, and, after depriving men of their virility, found in
them the height of pleasure. These miserable and unhappy creatures,
that they may the longer serve the purposes of boys, are stunted in their
manhood, and remain a doubtful riddle of a double sex, neither
preserving that boyhood in which they were born, nor possessing that
manhood which should be theirs. The bloom of their youth withers
away in a premature old age: while yet boys they suddenly become old,
without any interval of manhood. For impure sensuality, the mistress of
every vice, devising one shameless pleasure after another, insensibly
plunges into unmentionable debauchery, experienced in every form of
brutal lust. "Whereas, if each would abide by the laws prescribed by

Providence, we should be satisfied with intercourse with women, and
our lives would be undefiled by shameful practices. Consider