Satyricon, vol 6, Editors Notes | Page 7

too, and her feet are out of proportion! Of the
matron, except for the face, nothing is open to your scrutiny unless she
is a Catia who has dispensed with her clothing so that she may be felt
all over thoroughly, the rest will be hidden. But as for the other, no
difficulty there! Through the Coan silk it is as easy for you to see as if
she were naked, whether she has an unshapely leg, whether her foot is
ugly; her waist you can examine with your eyes. As for the price
exacted, it ranged from a quadrans to a very high figure. In the
inscription to which reference has already been made, the price was
eight asses. An episode related in the life of Apollonius of Tyre
furnishes additional information upon this subject. The lecher who
deflowered a harlot was compelled to pay a much higher price for
alleged undamaged goods than was asked of subsequent purchasers.
"Master," cries the girl, throwing herself at his feet, "pity my
maidenhood, do not prostitute this body under so ugly a name." The
superintendent of maids replies, "Let the maid here present be dressed
up with every care, let a name-ticket be written for her, and the fellow
who deflowers Tarsia shall pay half a libra; afterwards she shall be at
the service of the public for one solidus per head."
The passage in Petronius (chap. viii) and that in Juvenal (Sat. vi, 125)
are not to be taken literally. "Aes" in the latter should be understood to
mean what we would call "the coin," and not necessarily coin of low
denomination.

PAEDERASTIA.
The origin of this vice (all peoples, savage and civilized, have been
infected with it) is lost in the mists which shroud antiquity. The Old

Testament contains many allusions to it, and Sodom was destroyed
because a long-suffering deity could not find ten men in the entire city
who were not addicted to its practice. So saturated was this city of the
ancient world with the vice that the very name of the city or the
adjective denoting citizenship in that city have transmitted the stigma to
modern times. That the fathers of Israel were quick to perceive the
tortuous ramifications of this vice is proved by a passage in
Deuteronomy, chap. 22, verse .5: "the woman shall not wear that which
pertaineth to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for
all that do so are abominations unto the Lord thy God." Here we have
the first regulation against fetishism and the perverted tendencies of
gynandry and androgeny. Inasmuch as our concern with this subject has
to do with the Roman world alone, a lengthy discussion of the early,
manifestations of this vice would be out of place here; nevertheless, a
brief sketch should be given to serve as a foundation to such discussion
and to aid sociologists who will find themselves more and more
concerned with the problem in view of the conditions in European
society, induced by the late war. Their problem will, however, be more
intimately concerned with homosexuality as it is manifested among
women!
From remotest antiquity down to the present time, oriental nations have
been addicted to this practice and it is probably from this source that
the plague spread among the Greeks. I do not assert that they were
ignorant of this form of indulgence prior to their association with the
Persians, for Nature teaches the sage as well as the savage. Meier, the
author of the article "Paederastia" in Ersch and Grueber's encyclopedia
(1837) is of the opinion that the vice had its origin among the
Boeotians, and John Addington Symonds in his essay on Greek Love
concurs in this view. As the two scholars worked upon the same
material from different angles, and as the English writer was
unacquainted with the German savant's monograph until after Burton
had written his Terminal Essay, it follows that the conclusions arrived
at by these two scholars must be worthy of credence. The Greeks
contemporary with the Homeric poems were familiar with paederasty,
and there is reason to believe that it had been known for ages, even then.
Greek Literature, from Homer to the Anthology teems with references
to the vice and so common was it among them that from that fact it

derived its generic; "Greek Love." So malignant is tradition that the
Greeks of the present time still suffer from the stigma, as is well
illustrated by the proverb current among sailors: "Englisha man he
catcha da boy, Johnnie da Greek he catcha da blame." The Romans are
supposed to have received their first introduction to paederasty and
homosexuality generally, from the Etruscans or from the Greek
colonists in Italy, but Suidas (Tharnyris) charges the inhabitants of