Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 2.djvu/150

 door. This emblem of Priapus was generally a carved figure, in wood or stone, and was frequently painted to resemble nature more closely. The size ranged from a few inches in length to about two feet. Numbers of these beginnings in advertising have been recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and in one case an entire establishment, even to the instruments used in gratifying unnatural lusts, was recovered intact. In praise of our modern standards of morality, it should be said that it required some study and thought to penetrate the secret of the proper use of several of these instruments. The collection is still to be seen in the Secret Museum at Naples. The mural decoration was also in proper keeping with the object for which the house was maintained, and a few examples of this decoration have been preserved to modern times; their luster and infamous appeal undimmed by the passage of centuries.

Over the door of each cell was a tablet (titulus) upon which was the name of the occupant and her price; the reverse bore the word “occupata” and when the inmate was engaged the tablet was turned so that this word was out. This custom is still observed in Spain and Italy. Plautus, Asin. iv, i, 9, speaks of a less pretentious house when he says: “let her write on the door that she is ‘occupata.’”’ The cell usually Rh