Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 2.djvu/146

 bon, vol. 2, p. 318, note). With the regulations and arrangements of the brothels, however, we have information which is far more accurate. These houses (lupanaria, fornices, et cet.) were situated, for the most part, in the Second District of the City (, Description of the City of Rome, pp. 144 et seq.), the Cælimontana, particularly in the Suburra that bordered the town walls, lying in the Carinæ,—the valley between the Cælian and Esquiline Hills. The Great Market (Macellum Magnum) was in this district, and many cook-shops, stalls, barber shops, et cet. as well; the office of the public executioner, the barracks for foreign soldiers quartered at Rome; this district was one of the busiest and most densely populated in the entire city. Such conditions would naturally be ideal for the owner of a house of ill fame, or for a pandar. The regular brothels are described as having been exceedingly dirty, smelling of the gas generated by the flame of the smoking lamp, and of the other odors which always haunted these ill ventilated dens. Horace, Sat. i, 2, 30, “on the other hand, another will have none at all except she be standing in the evil smelling cell (of the brothel)”; Petronius, chap. xxii, “worn out by all his troubles, Ascyltos commenced to nod, and the maid, whom he had slighted, and, of course, insulted, smeared lamp-black all over his face”; Rh