Sins of the Cities of the Plain (14 page)

     Caligula’s mutual prostitutions with his pantomimic friend were well known, as was also his connection with certain hostages. Indeed, the state of
Roman
decency may be presumed when we are told that V. Catullus, a young man of consular family, bawled out publicly that he had been having the Emperor until his back ached.

     Claudius stuck to women, although he saw no harm in boys being debauched. Even his own son-in-law (to show the prevalence of the vice), we may observe, was stabbed and murdered while in the act of having his favourite boy.

     Nero, of course, is not behindhand, and shows himself a true Roman Emperor by having the young Aulus Plautius by force, and then having him executed — the terrible result of worn-out desires, the irresistible impulse to remove from the face of the earth the man or woman you have satiated yourself with.

     Our old friend Vitellus, when he came to the throne, managed the states entirely by the advice of the lowest classes, at the head of whom was the freedman Asiaticus, and his cabinet council was nothing but a series of mutual and unnatural pollutions.

     Leaving Titus and the Eunuch, and Catamites, we will say one word on Galba, who bears the palm of Roman sodomites. He had no taste for women, nor had many a better man. He likes males, which was nothing uncommon; but he only fancied them when they were past their prime, and there he stood alone in his sodomy — he had not even the excuse of saying that the plump hips and smooth face of the boy resembled a girl. As another celebrated piece of royalty was fond of bad oysters, his taste was for old men—
for
men who had lived too long to enjoy pleasure or to give pleasure to anyone. But Galba, even when old Icelas brought the news of Nero’s death, as he was sitting surrounded by friends, rose, kissed the old gentleman, and requesting him to make “a clear coast,” led him into a private room, and had him. We can only say it would have been much more like Galba, if he had had the old gentleman there and then before all the company.

CHAPTER XVI. Tribadism

     Dogging the heels of sodomy walks tribadism, the vice which every man in his heart looks on with kindly eyes. This sister vice appears to have existed from all ages. It is at least as old as sodomy, and still lives, age, flourishes amongst the supposed modest maidens of our day. In all recivilized Europe it exists among single women who have been debarred from men, generally in a narrowed sense, rarely taking other form than mutual frigging. But amongst some prostitutes of the upper class, and a few matrons of educated vicious tastes, it flourishes, the Frenchwomen bearing the palm. In the latter case gamahuching came into free play; one woman loves another as jealously as ever a man could, and we have known instances in England of great unhappiness ensuing from one tribade giving up her inamorata for another man or woman; and in one memorable instance the forlorn one taking a revenge that very nearly involved the ruin of both.

     The Count de Grammont mentions an instance in his memoirs of Miss Hobart, the maid of honour at the court of Charles the Second, being forbidden the royal presence for endeavouring to violate another maid of honour.

     It is not clear how she was doing it, and it certainly is a mystery why that debauched monarch should have been so severe upon her.

     No one can read Juvenal without being convinced that in Martial’s time tribadism flourished in Rome. His descriptions of the feast of the Bona Dea leave no doubt of it.

     If he did leave any doubt Martial clears it up by the pointedness of some of his epigrams. It flourished even to women with enlarged clitorises (hermaphrodites) having boys.

     This is perfectly rational. Sodomy and tribadism go hand in hand. Where one reigns the other flourishes, and in their development they are nearly identical vices. Boys debarred from women frig themselves, frig each other, and then have each other, and are fortunate if they do not grow up to be sodomites. Girls debarred from men do the same with their on sex, and bloom into perfect tribades by a gamahuche.

     This is one end of the stick; the other is as when a man, having plunged into all the possible debauchery with females, at last resorts to sodomy, or where a woman, say a prostitute of good position with many friends gets satiated and tired when she has exhausted every lech of the male fancy; then she turns to her own sex for a new and piquant pleasure.

     It is not long since we were sitting in a cafe in the Haymarket when a Frenchwoman of about thirty walked across the room to a young English girl and offered her ten shillings to be allowed to kiss her cunt.