Satyricon, vol 6, Editors Notes | Page 2

the spectacle put off until he had left the theatre.
Within 40 years after the introduction of this festival, P. Scipio
Africanus, in his speech in defense of Tib. Asellus, said: "If you elect to
defend your profligacy, well and good. But as a matter of fact, you
have lavished, on one harlot, more money than the total value, as
declared by you to the Census Commissioners, of all the plenishing of
your Sabine farm; if you deny my assertion I ask who dare wager 1,000
sesterces on its untruth? You have squandered more than a third of the
property you inherited from your father and dissipated it in
debauchery" (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, vii, 11). It was about this
time that the Oppian law came up for repeal. The stipulations of this
law were as follows: No woman should have in her dress above half an
ounce of gold, nor wear a garment of different colors, nor ride in a
carriage in the city or in any town, or within a mile of it, unless upon

occasion of a public sacrifice. This sumptuary law was passed during
the public distress consequent upon Hannibal's invasion of Italy. It was
repealed eighteen years afterward, upon petition of the Roman ladies,
though strenuously opposed by Cato (Livy 34, 1; Tacitus, Annales, 3,
33). The increase of wealth among the Romans, the spoils wrung from
their victims as a portion of the price of defeat, the contact of the
legions with the softer, more civilized, more sensuous races of Greece
and Asia Minor, laid the foundations upon which the social evil was to
rise above the city of the seven hills, and finally crush her. In the
character of the Roman there was but little of tenderness. The
well-being of the state caused him his keenest anxiety. One of the laws
of the twelve tables, the "Coelebes Prohibito," compelled the citizen of
manly vigor to satisfy the promptings of nature in the arms of a lawful
wife, and the tax on bachelors is as ancient as the times of Furius
Camillus. "There was an ancient law among the Romans," says Dion
Cassius, lib. xliii, "which forbade bachelors, after the age of
twenty-five, to enjoy equal political rights with married men. The old
Romans had passed this law in hope that, in this way, the city of Rome,
and the Provinces of the Roman Empire as well, might be insured an
abundant population." The increase, under the Emperors, of the number
of laws dealing with sex is an accurate mirror of conditions as they
altered and grew worse. The "Jus Trium Librorum," under the empire, a
privilege enjoyed by those who had three legitimate children,
consisting, as it did, of permission to fill a public office before the
twenty-fifth year of one's age, and in freedom from personal burdens,
must have had its origin in the grave apprehensions for the future, felt
by those in power. The fact that this right was sometimes conferred
upon those who were not legally entitled to benefit by it, makes no
difference in this inference. Scions of patrician families imbibed their
lessons from the skilled voluptuaries of Greece and the Levant and in
their intrigues with the wantons of those climes, they learned to lavish
wealth as a fine art. Upon their return to Rome they were but ill-pleased
with the standard of entertainment offered by the ruder and less
sophisticated native talent; they imported Greek and Syrian mistresses.
'Wealth increased, its message sped in every direction, and the
corruption of the world was drawn into Italy as by a load-stone. The
Roman matron had learned how to be a mother, the lesson of love was

an unopened book; and, when the foreign hetairai poured into the city,
and the struggle for supremacy began, she soon became aware of the
disadvantage under which she contended. Her natural haughtiness had
caused her to lose valuable time; pride, and finally desperation drove
her to attempt to outdo her foreign rivals; her native modesty became a
thing of the past, her Roman initiative, unadorned by sophistication,
was often but too successful in outdoing the Greek and Syrian wantons,
but without the appearance of refinement which they always contrived
to give to every caress of passion or avarice. They wooed fortune with
an abandon that soon made them the objects of contempt in the eyes of
their lords and masters. "She is chaste whom no man has solicited,"
said Ovid (Amor. i, 8, line 43). Martial, writing about ninety years later
says: "Sophronius Rufus, long have I been searching the city through to
find if there is ever a maid to say 'No'; there is not one." (Ep. iv, 71.) In
point of time, a century separates Ovid and Martial; from a moral
standpoint,