The Satyricon Part 21

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 citizens.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d." Here we have the first regulation against fetis.h.i.+sm 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 h.o.m.os.e.xuality 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 a.s.sert that they were ignorant of this form of indulgence prior to their a.s.sociation 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 h.o.m.os.e.xuality generally, from the Etruscans or from the Greek colonists in Italy, but Suidas (Tharnyris) charges the inhabitants of Italy; with the invention of this vice and it would appear from Athenaeus (Deiphnos. lib. xiii) that the native peoples of Italy and the Greek colonists as well were addicted to the most revolting practices with boys. The case of Laetorius (Valerius Maximus vi, 1, 11) proves that as early as 320 B. C., the Romans were no strangers to it and also that it was not common among them, at that time.

As the character of the primitive Roman was essentially different from that of the contemporary Greek, and as his struggle for existence was severe in the extreme, there was little moral obliquity during the first two hundred and fifty years. The "coelibes prohibeto" of the Twelve Tables was also a powerful influence in preserving chast.i.ty. By the time of Plautus, however, the practice of paederasty was much more general, as is clearly proved by the many references which are found in his comedies (Cist. iv, sc. 1, line 5) and pa.s.sim. By the year 169 B. C., the vice had so ravaged the populace that the Lex Scantinia was pa.s.sed to control it, but legislation has never proved a success in repressing vice and the effectiveness of this law was no exception to the rule. Conditions grew steadily worse with the pa.s.sage of time and the extension of the Roman power served to inoculate the legionaries with the vices of their victims. The destruction of Corinth may well have avenged itself in this manner. The acc.u.mulation of wealth and spoils gave the people more leisure, increased their means of enjoyment, and educated their taste in luxuries. The influx of slaves and voluptuaries from the Levant aided in the dissemination of the vices of the orient among the ruder Romans. As the first taste of blood arouses the tiger, so did the limitless power of the Republic and Empire react to the insinuating precepts of older and more corrupt civilizations. The fragments of Lucilius make mention of the "cinaedi," in the sense that they were dancers, and in the earlier ages, they were. Cicero, in the second Philippic calls Antonius a catamite; but in Republican Rome, it is to Catullus that we must turn to find the most decisive evidence of their almost universal inclination to sodomy. The first notice of this pa.s.sage in its proper significance is found in the Burmann Petronius (ed. 1709): here, in a note on the correct reading of "intert.i.tulos, nudasque meretrices furtim conspatiantes," the ancient reading would seem to have been "internuculos nudasque meretrices furtim conspatiantes" (and I am not at all certain but that it is to be preferred). Burmann cites the pa.s.sage from Catullus (Epithalamium of Manlius and Julia); Burmann sees the force of the pa.s.sage but does not grasp its deeper meaning. Marchena seems to have been the first scholar to read between the lines. See his third note.

A few years later, John Colin Dunlop, the author of a History of Roman Literature which ought to be better known among the teaching fraternity, drew attention to the same pa.s.sage. So striking is his comment that I will transcribe it in full. "It," the poem, "has also been highly applauded by the commentators; and more than one critic has declared that it must have been written by the hands of Venus and the Graces. I wish, however, they had excepted from their unqualified panegyrics the coa.r.s.e imitation of the Fescennine poems, which leaves in our minds a stronger impression of the prevalence and extent of Roman vices, than any other pa.s.sage in the Latin cla.s.sics. Martial, and Catullus himself, elsewhere, have branded their enemies; and Juvenal in bursts of satiric indignation, has reproached his countrymen with the most shocking crimes. But here, in a complimentary poem to a patron and intimate friend, these are jocularly alluded to as the venial indulgences of his earliest youth" (vol. i, p. 453, second edition).

This pa.s.sage clearly points to the fact that it was the common custom among the young Roman patricians to have a bed-fellow of the same s.e.x. Cicero, in speaking of the acquittal of Clodius (Letters to Atticus, lib. i, 18), says, "having bought up and debauched the tribunal"; charges that the judges were promised the favors of the young gentlemen and ladies of Rome, in exchange for their services in the matter of Clodius' trial. Manutius, in a note on this pa.s.sage says, "bought up, because the judges took their pay and held Clodius innocent and absolved him: debauched, because certain women and youths of n.o.ble birth were introduced by night to not a few of them (there were 56 judges) as additional compensation for their attention to duty" (Variorum Notes to Cicero, vol. ii, pp. 339-340). In the Priapeia, the wayfarer is warned by Priapus to refrain from stealing fruit under penalty of being a.s.saulted from the rear, and the G.o.d adds that, should this punishment hold no terrors, there is still the possibility that his mentule may be used as a club by the irate landowner. Again, in Catullus, 100, the Roman paederasty shows itself "Caelius loves Aufilenus and Quintus loves Aufilena--madly." As we approach the Christian era the picture darkens. Gibbon (vol. i, p. 313) remarks, in a note, that "of the first fifteen emperors, Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct," but Claudius was a moron.

We come now to the bathing establishments. Their history in every country is the same, in one respect: the spreading and fostering of prost.i.tution and paederastia. Cicero (Pro Coelio) accuses Clodia of having deliberately chosen the site of her gardens with the purpose of having a look at the young fellows who came to the Tiber to swim. Catullus (x.x.xiii) speaks of the cimaedi who haunt the bathing establishments: Suetonius (Tib. 43 and 44) records the desperate expedients to which Tiberius had recourse to regain his exhausted virility: the scene in Petronius (chap. 92). Martial (lib. i, 24) "You invite no man but your bathing companion, Cotta, only the baths supply you with a guest. I used to wonder why you never invited me, now I know that you did not like the look of me naked." Juvenal (ix, 32 et seq.), "Destiny rules over mankind; the parts concealed by the front of the tunic are controlled by the Fates; when Virro sees you naked and in burning and frequent letters presses his ardent suit, with lips foaming with desire; nothing will serve you so well as the unknown measure of a long member." Lampridius (Heliogab. v), "At Rome, his princ.i.p.al concern was to have emissaries everywhere, charged with seeking out men with huge members; that they might bring them to him so that he could enjoy their impressive proportions." The quotations given above furnish a sufficient commentary upon the bathing establishments and the reasons for lighting them. In happier times, they were badly lighted as the apertures were narrow and could admit but little light. Seneca (Epist. 86) describes the bath of Scipio: "In this bath of Scipio there were tiny c.h.i.n.ks, rather than windows, cut through the stone wall so as to admit light without detriment to the shelter afforded; but men nowadays call them 'baths-for-night-moths.'" Under the empire, however, the bathing establishments were open to the eye of the pa.s.ser-by; lighted, as they were by immense windows. Seneca (Epist. 86), "But nowadays, any which are disposed in such a way as to let the sunlight enter all day long, through immense windows; men call baths-for-night-moths; if they are not sunburned as they wash, if they cannot look out on the fields and sea from the pavement. Sweet clean baths have been introduced, but the populace is only the more foul." In former times, youth and age were not permitted to bathe together (Valer. Max. ii, 7.), women and men used the same establishments, but at different hours; later, however, promiscuous bathing was the order of the day and men and women came more and more to observe that precept, "noscetur e naso quanta sit hasta viro," which Joan of Naples had always in mind. Long-nosed men were followed into the baths and were the recipients of admiration wherever they were. As luxury increased, these establishments were fitted up with cells and attendants of both s.e.xes, skilled in ma.s.sage, were always kept upon the premises, in the double capacity of ma.s.seurs and prost.i.tutes (Martial, iii, 82, 13); (Juvenal, vi, 428), "the artful ma.s.seur presses the c.l.i.toris with his fingers and makes the upper part of his mistress thigh resound under his hands." The aquarioli or water boys also included pandering in their tour of duty (Juvenal, Sat. vi, 331) "some water carrier will come, hired for the purpose," and many Roman ladies had their own slaves accompany them to the baths to a.s.sist in the toilette: (Martial, vii, 3.4) "a slave girt about the loins with a pouch of black leather stands by you whenever you are washed all over with warn water," here, the mistress is taking no chances, her rights are as carefully guarded as though the slave were infibulated in place of having his generous virility concealed within a leather pouch. (Claudia.n.u.s, 18, 106) "he combed his mistress' hair, and often, when she bathed, naked, he would bring water, to his lady, in a silver ewer." Several of the emperors attempted to correct these evils by executive order and legislation, Hadrian (Spartia.n.u.s, Life of Hadrian, chap. 18) "he a.s.signed separate baths for the two s.e.xes"; 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 n.o.bles," 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 mult.i.tude 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 those of any intelligent observer in the Orient, today, will but bear out this hypothesis. The native population of Manila contains more than its proportion of catamites, who seek their sponsors in the Botanical Gardens and on the Luneta. The native quarters of the Chinese cities have their "houses" where boys are kept, just as the Egyptian mignons stood for hire in the lupanaria at Rome. A scene in Sylvia Scarlett could be duplicated in any large city of Europe or America; there is no necessity of appeal to Krafft-Ebbing or Havelock Ellis. But there is still another and surer method of gauging the extent of paederastic perversion at Rome, and that is the richness of the Latin vocabulary in terms and words bearing upon this repulsive subject. There are, in the Latin language, no less than one hundred and fifteen words and expressions in general usage.

But it is in Martial that we are able to sense the abandoned and cynical att.i.tude of the Roman public toward this vice: the epigram upon Cantharus, xi, 46, is an excellent example. In commentating upon the meticulous care with which Cantharus avoided being spied upon by irreverent witnesses, the poet sarcastically remarks that such precautions would never enter the head of anyone were it merely a question of having a boy or a woman, and he mentions them in the order in which they are set forth here. No one dreads the limelight like the utter debauchee, as has been remarked by Seneca. We find a parallel in the old days in Shanghai, before the depredations of the American hetairai had aroused the hostility of the American judge, in 1907-8. Men of unquestioned respectability and austere asceticism were in the habit of making periodic trips to this p.o.r.nographic Mecca for the reason that they could there be accommodated with the simultaneous ministrations of two or even three soiled doves of the stripe of her of whom Martial (ix, 69) makes caustic mention: "I pa.s.sed the whole night with a lascivious girl whose naughtiness none could surpa.s.s. Tired of a thousand methods of indulgence, I begged the boyish favor: she granted my prayers before they were finished, before even the first words were out of my mouth. Smiling and blus.h.i.+ng, I besought her for something worse still; she voluptuously promised it at once. But to me, she was chaste. But, AEschylus, she will not be so to you; take the boon if you want it, but she will attach a condition." In all that could pertain to accomplished skill in their profession, the "limit was the ceiling," they were there to serve, and serve they did, as long as the recipient of their ministrations was willing to pay or as long as his chits were good. With them, secrecy was the watchword. Tiberius, probably more sinned against than sinning (he has had an able defender in Beasley) is charged, by Suetonius, with the invention of an amplification and refinement of this vice. The performers were called "spinthriae," a word which signified "bracelet." These copulators could be of both s.e.xes though the true usage of the word allowed but one, and that the male. They formed a chain, each link of which was an individual in s.e.xual contact with one or two other links: in this diversion, the preference seems to have been in favor of odd numbers (Martial, xii, 44, 5), where the chain consisted of five links, and Ausonius, Epigram 119, where it consisted of three.

THE SATYRICON OF PETRONIUS ARBITER

CHAPTER NOTES

CHAPTER 9. Gladiator obscene:--

The arena of his activities is, however, that of Venus and not Mars. Petronius is fond of figurative language, and in several other pa.s.sages, he has made use of the slang of the arena: (chap. 61 ), "I used to fence with my mistress herself, until even the master grew Suspicious"; and again, in chapter 19, he says: "then, too, we were girded higher, and I had so arranged matters that if we came to close quarters, I myself would engage Quartilla, Ascyltos the maid, and Giton the girl."

Dufour, in commentating upon this expression, Histoire de la Prost.i.tution, vol. III, pp. 92 and 93, remarks: It is necessary to see in Petronius the abominable role which the "obscene gladiator" played; but the Latin itself is clear enough to describe all the secrets of the Roman debauch. "For some women," says Petronius, in another pa.s.sage, "will only kindle for canaille and cannot work up an appet.i.te unless they see some slave or runner with his clothing girded up: a gladiator arouses one, or a mule driver, all covered with dust, or some actor posturing in some exhibition on the stage. My mistress belongs to this cla.s.s, she jumps the fourteen rows from the stage to the gallery and looks for a lover among the gallery G.o.ds at the back."

On "c.u.m fort.i.ter 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 G.o.ds 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, Ba.s.sus, expend your energies on boys whom you have procured with your wife's dowry; and thus does that p.e.n.i.s, 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 p.e.n.i.s is not yours, Ba.s.sus, you have sold it." Martial, xii, 99.

"Polytimus is very lecherous on women, Hypnus is slow to admit he is my Ganymede; Secundus has b.u.t.tocks 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 pa.s.sage in Catullus' Epithalamium of Manilius and Julia, or Vibia, as later editors have it.

"Wife, away, or conform to my habits. I am no Curius, Numa, or Tatius. I like to have the hours of night prolonged in luscious cups. You drink water and are ever for hurrying from the table with a sombre mien; you like the dark, I like a lamp to witness my pleasures, and to tire my loins in the light of dawn. Drawers and night gowns and long robes cover you, but for me no girl can be too naked. For me be kisses like the cooing doves; your kisses are like those you give your grandmother in the morning. You do not condescend to a.s.sist in the performance by your movements or your sighs or your hand; (you behave) as if you were taking the sacrament. The Phrygian slaves m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed themselves behind the couch whenever Hector's wife rode St. George; and, however much Ulysses snored, the chaste Penelope always had her hand there. You forbid my sodomising you. Cornelia granted this favor to Gracchus; Julia to Pompey, Porcia to Brutus. Juno was Jupiter's Ganymede before the Dardan boy mixed the luscious cup. If you are so devoted to propriety--be a Lucretia to your heart's content all day, I want a Lais at night." xi, 105.

"Since your husband's mode of life and his fidelity are known to you, and no woman usurps your rights, why are you so foolish as to be annoyed by his boys, (as if they were his mistresses), with whom love is a transient and fleeting affair? I will prove to you that you gain more by the boys than your lord: they make your husband keep to one woman. They give what a wife will not give. 'I grant that favor,' you say, 'sooner than that my husband's love should wander from my bed.' It is not the same thing. I want the fig of Chios, not a flavorless fig; and in you this Chian fig is flavorless. A woman of sense and a wife ought to know her place. Let the boys have what concerns them, and confine yourself to what concerns you." xii, 97.

"Wife, you scold me with a harsh voice when I'm caught with a boy, and inform me that you too have a bottom. How often has Juno said the same to the l.u.s.tful Thunderer? And yet he sleeps with the tall Ganymede. The Tirynthian Hero put down his bow and sodomised Hylas. Do you think that Megaera had no b.u.t.tocks? Daphne inspired Phoebus with love as she fled, but that flame was quenched by the OEbalian boy. However much Briseis lay with her bottom turned toward him, the son of AEacus found his beardless friend more congenial to his tastes. Forbear then, to give masculine names to what you have, and, wife, think that you have two v.a.g.i.n.as." xi, 44

CHAPTER 26.

"Quartilla applied a curious eye to a c.h.i.n.k, purposely made, watching their childish dalliance with lascivious attention."

Martial, xi, 46, makes mention of the fact that patrons of houses of ill fame had reason to beware of needle holes in the walls, through which their misbehaviour could be appreciatively scrutinized by outsiders; and in the pa.s.sage of our author we find yet another instance of the same kind. One is naturally led to recall the "peep-houses" which were a feature of city life in the nineties. There was a notorious one in Chicago, and another in San Francisco. A beautiful girl, exquisitely dressed, would entice the unwary stranger into her room: there the couple would disrobe and the hero was compelled to have recourse to the "right of capture," before executing the purpose for which he entered the house. The entertainment usually cost him nothing beyond a moderate fee and a couple of bottles of beer, or wine, if he so desired. The "management" secured its profit from a different and more prurient source. The male actor in this drama was sublimely ignorant of the fact that the walls were plentifully supplied with "peep-holes" through which appreciative onlookers witnessed his Corybantics at one dollar a head. There would sometimes be as many as twenty such witnesses at a single performance.

CHAPTER 34. Silver Skeleton, et seq.

Philosophic dogmas concerning the brevity and uncertainty of life were ancient even in the time of Herodotus. They have left their mark upon our language in the form of more than one proverb, but in none is this so patent as "the skeleton at the feast." In chapter lxxviii of Euterpe, we have an admirable citation. In speaking of the Egyptians, he says: "At their convivial banquets, among the wealthy cla.s.ses, when they have finished supper, a man carries round in a coffin the image of a dead body carved in wood, made as life-like as possible in color and workmans.h.i.+p, and in size generally about one or two cubits in length; and showing this to each of the company, he says: 'Look upon this, then drink and enjoy yourself; for when dead you will be like this.' This is the practice they have at their drinking parties." According to Plutarch, (Isis and Osiris, chapter 17.) the Greeks adopted this Egyptian custom, and there is, of course, little doubt that the Romans took it from the Greeks. The aim of this custom was, according to Scaliger, to bring the diners to enjoy the sweets of life while they were able to feel enjoyment, and thus to abandon themselves to pleasure before death deprived them of everything. The verses which follow bring this out beautifully. In the Copa of Virgil we find the following: "Wine there! Wine and dice! Tomorrow's fears shall fools alone benumb! By the ear Death pulls me. 'Live!' he whispers softly, 'Live! I come.'"

The practical philosophy of the indefatigable roues sums itself up in this sentence uttered by Trimalchio. The verb "vivere" has taken a meaning very much broader and less special, than that which it had at the time when it signified only the material fact of existence. The voluptuaries of old Rome were by no means convinced that life without license was life. The women of easy virtue, living within the circle of their friends.h.i.+ps, after the fas.h.i.+on best suited to their desires, understood that verb only after their own interpretation, and the philologists soon reconciled themselves to the change. In this sense it was that Varro employed "vivere," when he said: "Young women, make haste to live, you whom adolescence permits to enjoy, to eat, to love, and to occupy the chariot of Venus (Veneris tenere bigas)."

But a still better example of the extension in the meaning of this word is to be found in an inscription on the tomb of a lady of pleasure. This inscription was composed by a voluptuary of the school of Petronius.

ALIAE. RESt.i.tVTAE. ANIMAE. DVLCISSIMAE.

BELLATOR. AVG. LIB. CONIVGI. CARISSIMAE.

AMICI. DVM. VIVIMVS. VIVAMUS.

In this inscription, it is almost impossible to translate the last three words. "While we live, let us live," is inadequate, to say the least. So far did this doctrine go that latterly it was deemed necessary to have a special G.o.ddess as a patron. That G.o.ddess, if we may rely upon the authority of Festus, took her name "Vitula" from the word "Vita" or from the joyous life over which she was to preside.

CHAPTER 36.

"At the corners of the tray we also noted four figures of Marsyas and from their bladders spouted a highly seasoned sauce upon fish which were swimming about as if in a tide-race."

German scholars have adopted the doctrine that Marsyas belonged to that mythological group which they designate as "Schlauch-silen" or, as we would say in English, "Wineskin-bearing Silenuses." Their hypothesis seems to be based upon the discovery of two beautiful bas-reliefs of the age of Vespasian, which were excavated near the Rostra Vetera in the Forum. Sir Theodore Martin has a note on these bas-reliefs which I quote in extenso: "In the Forum stood a statue of Marsyas, Apollo's ill-starred rival. It probably bore an expression of pain, which Horace humorously ascribes to dislike of the looks of the Younger Novius, who is conjectured to have been of the profession and nature of Shylock. A naked figure carrying a wineskin, which appears upon each of two fine bas-reliefs of the time of Vespasian found near the Rostra Vetera in the Forum during the excavations conducted within the last few years by Signor Pietro Rosa, and which now stand in the Forum, is said, by archaeologists, to represent Marsyas. Why they arrive at this conclusion, except as arguing, from the spot where these bas-reliefs were found, that they were meant to perpetuate the remembrance of the old statue of Marsyas, is certainly not very apparent from anything in the figure itself." Martin's Horace, vol. 2, pp 145-6.

Hence German philologists render "utriculis" by the German equivalent for "Wineskins."

"The Romans," says Weitzius, "had two sources of water-supply, through underground channels, and through channels supported by arches. As adjuncts to these channels there were cisterns (or castella, as they were called). From these reservoirs the water was distributed to the public through routes more or less circuitous and left the cisterns through pipes, the diameter of which was reckoned in either twelfths or sixteenths of a Roman foot. At the exits of the pipes were placed stones or stone figures, the water taking exit from these figures either by the mouth, private parts or elsewhere, and falling either to the ground or into some stone receptacle such as a basket. Various names were given these statuettes: Marsyae, Satyri, Atlantes, Hermae, Chirones, Silani, Tulii."

No one who has been through the Secret Museum at Naples will find much difficulty in recalling a few of these heavily endowed examples to mind, and our author, in choosing Marsyae, adds a touch of sarcastic realism, for statues of Marysas were often set up in free cities, symbolical, as it were, of freedom. In such a setting as the present, they would be the very acme of propriety.

"The figures," says Gonzala de Salas, "formerly placed at fountains, and from which water took exit either from the mouth or from some other part, took their forms from the several species of Satyrs. The learned Wouweren has commented long and learnedly upon this pa.s.sage, and his emendation 'veretriculis' caused me to laugh heartily. And as a matter of fact, I affirm that such a meaning is easily possible." Professor E. P. Crowell, the first American scholar to edit Petronius, gravely states in his preface that "the object of this edition is to provide for cla.s.s-room use an expurgated text," and I note that he has tactfully omitted the "wineskins" from his edition.

In this connection the last sentence in the remarks of Wouweren, alluded to above, is strangely to the point. After stating his emendation of "veretriculis or veretellis" for "utriculis," he says: "Unless someone proves that images of Marsyas were fas.h.i.+oned in the likeness of bag-pipers," a fine instance of clarity of vision for so dark an age.

CHAPTER 40.

"Drawing his hunting-knife, he plunged it fiercely into the boar's side, and some thrushes flew out of the gash."

In the winter of 1895 a dinner was given in a New York studio. This dinner, locally known as the "Girl in the Pie Dinner," was based upon Petronius, Martial, and the thirteenth book of Athenaeus. In the summer of 1919, I had the questionable pleasure of interviewing the chef-caterer who got it up, and he was, at the time, engaged in trying to work out another masterpiece to be given in California. The studio, one of the most luxurious in the world, was transformed for the occasion into a veritable rose grotto, the statuary was Pompeian, and here and there artistic posters were seen which were nothing if not reminiscent of Boulevard Clichy and Montmartre in the palmiest days. Four negro banjo players and as many jubilee singers t.i.tillated the jaded senses of the guests in a manner achieved by the infamous saxophone syncopating jazz of the Barbary Coast of our times. The dinner was over. The four and one half bottles of champagne allotted to each Silenus had been consumed, and a well-defined atmosphere of bored satiety had begun to settle down when suddenly the old-fas.h.i.+oned lullaby "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" broke forth from the banjoists and singers. Four waiters came in bearing a surprisingly monstrous object, something that resembled an impossibly large pie. They, placed it carefully in the center of the table. The negro chorus swelled louder and louder--"Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie."

The diners, startled into curiosity and then into interest, began to poke their noses against this gigantic creation of the baker. In it they detected a movement not unlike a chick's feeble pecking against the sh.e.l.l of an egg. A quicker movement and the crust ruptured at the top.

A flash of black gauze and delicate flesh showed within. A cloud of frightened yellow canaries flew out and perched on the picture frames and even on the heads and shoulders of the guests.

But the lodestone which drew and held the eyes of all the revellers was an exquisitely slender, girlish figure amid the broken crust of the pie. The figure was draped with spangled black gauze, through which the girl's marble white limbs gleamed like ivory seen through gauze of gossamer transparency. She rose from her crouching posture like a wood nymph startled by a satyr, glanced from one side to the other, and stepped timidly forth to the table.

CHAPTER 56. Contumelia--Contus and Melon (malum).

All translators have rendered "contus" by "pole," notwithstanding the fact that the word is used in a very different sense in Priapeia, x, 3: "traiectus conto sic extendere pedali," and contrary to the tradition which lay behind the gift of an apple or the acceptance of one. The truth of this may be established by many pa.s.sages in the ancient writers.

In the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, Just Discourse, in prescribing the rules and proprieties which should in govern the education and conduct of the healthy young man says: "You shall rise up from your seat upon your elders' approach; you shall never be pert to your parents or do any other unseemly act under the pretence of remodelling the image of Modesty. You will not rush off to the dancing-girl's house, lest while you gaze upon her charms, some wh.o.r.e should pelt you with an apple and ruin your reputation."

"This were gracious to me as in the story old to the maiden fleet of foot was the apple golden fas.h.i.+oned which unloosed her girdle long-time girt." Catullus ii.

"I send thee these verses recast from Battiades, lest thou shouldst credit thy words by chance have slipped from my mind, given o'er to the wandering winds, as it was with that apple, sent as furtive love token by the wooer, which out-leaped from the virgin's chaste bosom: for, placed by the hapless girl 'neath her soft vestment, and forgotten--when she starts at her mother's approach, out 'tis shaken: and down it rolls headlong to the ground, whilst a tell-tale flush mantles the cheek of the distressed girl." Catullus 1xv.

"But I know what is going on, and I intend presently to tell my master; for I do not want to show myself less grateful than the dogs which bark in defence of those who feed and take care of them. An adulterer is laying siege to the household--a young man from Elis, one of the Olympian fascinators; he sends neatly folded notes every day to our master's wife, together with faded bouquets and half-eaten apples." Alciphron, iii, 62. The words are put into the mouth of a rapacious parasite who feels that the security of his position in the house is about to be shaken.