p to
the desires of strangers in the temple of Venus, and were not permitted
to refuse anyone."[41]

[Footnote 41: Bourgeois.]

St. Augustine speaks of these religious debaucheries as still practiced
in his day in Phoenicia. They were even continued until Constantine
destroyed the temples in which they were prosecuted, in the fourth
century.

Among the Greeks the same corruptions prevailed in the worship of
Bacchus and Phallus, which was celebrated by processions of half-nude
girls "performing lascivious dances with men disguised as satyrs." In
fact, as X. Bourgeois says, "Prostitution was in repute in Greece."
The most distinguished women were courtesans, and the wise Socrates
would be justly called, in modern times, a libertine.

The abandonment to lust was, if possible, still more complete in the
times of the Roman emperors. Rome astonished the universe "by the
boldness of its turpitudes, after having astonished it by the splendor
of its triumphs."

The great Caesar was such a rake that he has been said to have "merited
to be surnamed every woman's husband." Antony and Augustus were equally
notorious. The same sensuality pervaded the masses as reigned in the
courts, and was stimulated by the erotic poems of Ovid, Catullus, and
other poets of the time.

Tiberius displayed such ingenuity in inventing refinements in
impudicity that it was necessary to coin new words to designate them.
Caligula committed the horrid crime of incest with all his sisters,
even in public. His palace was a brothel. The Roman empress, Messalina,
disguised herself as a prostitute and excelled the most degraded
courtesans in her monstrous debaucheries. The Roman emperor Vitellius
was accustomed to take an emetic after having eaten to repletion, to
enable him to renew his gluttony. With still grosser sensuality he
stimulated his satiated passions with philters and various aphrodisiac
mixtures.

Nero, the most infamous of the emperors, committed rapes on the stage
of the public theaters of Rome, disguised as a wild beast.

If this degraded voluptuousness had been confined to royalty, some
respect might yet be entertained for the virtue of the ancients; but
the foul infection was not restrained within such narrow bounds. It
invaded whole empires until they fell in pieces from very rottenness.
What must have been the condition of a nation that could tolerate such
a spectacle as its monarch riding through the streets of its metropolis
in