Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 2.djvu/171

 But it is in Martial that we are able to sense the abandoned and cynical attitude of the Roman public toward this vice: the epigram upon Cantharus, xi, 46, is an excellent example. In commentating upon the meticulous care with which Cantharus avoided being spied upon by irreverent witnesses, the poet sarcastically remarks that such precautions would never enter the head of anyone were it merely a question of having a boy or a woman, and he mentions them in the order in which they are set forth here. No one dreads the limelight like the utter debauchee, as has been remarked by Seneca. We find a parallel in the old days in Shanghai, before the depredations of the American hetairai had aroused the hostility of the American judge, in 1907–8. Men of unquestioned respectability and austere asceticism were in the habit of making periodic trips to this pornographic Mecca for the reason that they could there be accommodated with the simultaneous ministrations of two or even three soiled doves of the stripe of her of whom Martial (ix, 69) makes caustic mention:

“I passed the whole night with a lascivious girl whose naughtiness none could surpass. Tired of a thousand methods of indulgence, I begged the boyish favor: she granted my prayers before they were finished, before even the first words were out of my Rh