a
lover among the gallery gods at the back."

On "cum fortiter faceres," compare line 25 of the Oxford fragment of the
sixth satire of Juvenal; "hic erit in lecto fortissimus," which Housman
has rendered "he is a valiant mattress-knight."

CHAPTER 17. "In our neighborhood there are so many Gods that it is
easier to meet one of them than it is to find a man."

Quartilla is here smarting under the sting of some former lover's
impotence. Her remark but gives color to the charge that, owing to the
universal depravity of Rome and the smaller cities, men were so worn out
by repeated vicious indulgences that it was no easy matter for a woman to
obtain satisfaction at their hands.

"Galla, thou hast already led to the nuptial couch six or seven
catamites; thou went seduced by their delicate coiffure and combed
beards. Thou hast tried the loins and the members, resembling soaked
leather, which could not be made to stand by all the efforts of the
wearied hand; the pathic husband and effeminate bed thou desertest, but
still thou fallest into similar couches. Seek out some one rough and
unpolished as the Curii and Fabii, and savage in his uncouth rudeness;
you will find one, but even this puritanical crew has its catamites.
Galla, it is difficult to marry a real man." Martial, vii, 57.

"No faith is to be placed in appearances. What neighborhood does not
reek with filthy practices'?" Juvenal, Sat. ii, 8.

"While you have a wife such as a lover hardly dare hope for in his
wildest prayers; rich, well born, chaste, you, Bassus, expend your
energies on boys whom you have procured with your wife's dowry; and thus
does that penis, purchased for so many thousands, return worn out to its
mistress, nor does it stand when she rouses it by soft accents of love,
and delicate fingers. Have some sense of shame or let us go into court.
This penis is not yours, Bassus, you have sold it." Martial, xii, 99.

"Polytimus is very lecherous on women, Hypnus is slow to admit he is my
Ganymede; Secundus has buttocks fed upon acorns. Didymus is a catamite
but pretends not to be. Amphion would have made a capital girl. My
friend, I would rather have their blandishments, their naughty airs,
their annoying impudence, than a wife with 3,000,000 sesterces." Martial
xii, 76.

But the crowning piece of infamy is to be found in Martial's three
epigrams upon his wife. They speak as distinctly as does the famous
passage in Catullus' Epit