Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/74

 Augustus when the great emperor was only Octavianus. The conspiracy which ended tragically the career of Sertorius came to a climax because of the mixing in it of two beautiful young pederasts, Manlius and Aufidius: the lover of Manlius, a high officer in the army, was weak enough to disclose to his minion the plot against his commander, and the secret began to spread untimely. In the life of Caius Lucius, a valiant soldier, a nephew of Marius, we are told by Plutarch of the passion of Lucius for a certain young officer in his service named Trebonius. Trebonius would not yield himself. Caius Lucius contrived to lure the young man to his tent one night, and attempted to violate him. Trebonius killed Lucius with his sword. This affair made a great scandal. One of the earliest official acts of Cato the Censor was to degrade Lucius Quintus Flamininus, a brother of the great Titus Flamininus, from office, and from his seat at public spectacles, because of a most inhuman crime. Lucius Quintus Flamininus kept a beautiful boy, whom he loved out of measure as a similisexual plaything. The lad pettishly complained once that in the circus he "had never seen a man die". Flamininus ordered that a slave should be brought at once to the dining-room where they then sat; to be executed. Plutarch tells the same gruesome tale, in his account of Titus Flamininus. Plutarch mentions the homosexualism of Pompey. There are other references of more or less pertinence to a study of homosexualism in Rome, at various epochs that far precede the real decadence of the Roman character or State. With the social laxities and lost ideals of the imperial periods, the passion had full movement. Almost each succeeding Caesar, and his court, illustrated it. We trace it onward and onward, through the reigns of Caius, of Claudius, of Nero, and so on, to the immortal passion of Trajan for Antinous, and to princes and epochs far beyond. The emotion never fails of appearing. But it was, as I have pointed out, strikingly pederastic. Hence it deteriorated; even if we