Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/102

 For he who secretly goes hunting for Illicit love, must surely of all men Most miserable be; and yet he may See in the light of the sun a willing row Of naked damsels, standing all array'd In robes transparent, like the damsels whom Eridanus waters with his holy stream, And buy some pleasure at a trifling rate, Without pursuing joys he's bound to hide, (There is no heavier calamity,) Just out of wantonness and not for love. I do bewail the fate of hapless Greece, Which sent forth such an admiral as Cydias.

Xenarchus also, in his Pentathlum, reproaches those men who live as you do, and who fix their hearts on extravagant courtesans, and on freeborn women; in the following lines—

It is a terrible, yes a terrible and Intolerable evil, what the young Men do throughout this city. For although There are most beauteous damsels in the brothels, Which any man may see standing all willing In the full light of day, with open bosoms, Showing their naked charms, all of a row, Marshall'd in order; and though they may choose Without the slightest trouble, as they fancy, Thin, stout, or round, tall, wrinkled, or smooth-faced, Young, old, or middle-aged, or elderly, So that they need not clamber up a ladder, Nor steal through windows out of free men's houses, Nor smuggle themselves in in bags of chaff; For these gay girls will ravish you by force, And drag you in to them; if old, they'll call you Their dear papa; if young, their darling baby: And these a man may fearlessly and cheaply Amuse himself with, morning, noon, or night, And any way he pleases; but the others He dares not gaze on openly nor look at, But, fearing, trembling, shivering, with his heart, As men say, in his mouth, he creeps towards them. And how can they, O sea-born mistress mine, Immortal Venus! act as well they ought, E'en when they have the opportunity, If any thought of Draco's laws comes o'er them?

25. And Philemon, in his Brothers, relates that Solon at first, on account of the unbridled passions of the young, made a law that women might be brought to be prostituted at brothels; as Nicander of Colophon also states, in the third book of his History of the Affairs of Colophon,—saying that