water, to his lady, in a silver ewer." Several of the
emperors attempted to correct these evils by executive order and
legislation, Hadrian (Spartianus, Life of Hadrian, chap. 18) "he assigned
separate baths for the two sexes"; Marcus Aurelius (Capitolinus, Life of
Marcus Antoninus, chap. 23) "he abolished the mixed baths and restrained
the loose habits of the Roman ladies and the young nobles," and Alexander
Severus (Lampridius, Life of Alex. Severus, chap. 24.) "he forbade the
opening of mixed baths at Rome, a practice which, though previously
prohibited, Heliogabalus had allowed to be observed," but,
notwithstanding their absolute authority, their efforts along those lines
met with little better success than have those of more recent times. The
pages of Martial and Juvenal reek with the festering sores of the society
of that period, but Charidemus and Hedylus still dishonor the cities of
the modern world. Tatian, writing in the second century, says (Orat. ad
Graecos): "paederastia is practiced by the barbarians generally, but is
held in pre-eminent esteem by the Romans, who endeavor to get together
troupes of boys, as it were of brood mares," and Justin Martyr (Apologia,
1), has this to say: "first, because we behold nearly all men seducing to
fornication, not merely girls, but males also. And just as our fathers
are spoken of as keeping herds of oxen, or goats, or sheep, or brood
mares, so now they keep boys, solely for the purpose of shameful usage,
treating them as females, or androgynes, and doing unspeakable acts. To
such a pitch of pollution has the multitude throughout the whole people
come!" Another sure indication of the prevalence of the vice of sodomy
is to be found in Juvenal, Sat. ii, 12-13, "but your fundament is smooth
and the swollen haemorrhoids are incised, the surgeon grinning the
while," just as the physician of the nineties grinned when some young
fool came to him with a blennorrhoeal infection! The ancient jest which
accounts for the shaving of the priest's crown is an inferential
substantiation of the fact that the evils of antiquity, like the legal
codes, have descended through the generations; survived the middle ages,
and been transmitted to the modern world. A perusal of the Raggionamente
of Pietro Aretino will confirm this statement, in its first premise, and
the experiences of Sir Richard Burton in the India of Napier, and Harry
Franck's, in Spain, in the present century, and thos