Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/367

 with respect to the latter, she also achieved a reputation for being quarrelsome and spiteful beyond the usual measure of her tribe. By her habitual and flagrant excesses, she became universally known in the capital, and she was shunned by all worthy citizens to such an extent, that they shrunk from being sullied by her touch, should they chance to meet her in the street. If a merchant encountered her in the morning he was as much scared at the sight as at that of a bird of

as if he thereby proved himself to be a dissolute person, unusually experienced in the vices of the times. But the charge is unjust, and might be urged with greater force against almost all of the Christian fathers who continually inveigh against abuses of the sexual instinct, in the intricacies of which they show themselves to be far better versed. Beginning with the Epistle of Barnabas they never tire of decrying circumstantially all sexual relations, especially those who "medios viros lambunt, libidinoso ore inguinibus inhaerescunt"; Minucius Felix, 28; cf. Arnobius, Adv. Gen., ii; Lactantius, Div. Inst., vi, 23, etc. Their rigid text is "genitalem corporis partem nulla alia causa nisi efficiendae sobolis accepimus"; ibid. Nor was it regarded as proper that the knowledge and discussion of such matters should be ordinarily thrust out of sight; on the contrary they were included in the category of topics habitually invested with interest to "society." Thus the polished Agathias in an amatory epigram (28), after lamenting the pangs and torments of love, makes his point with:
 * [Footnote: however, he has been censured, to the damage of his historical credit,

[Greek: Pant' ara Diogenês ephygen tade, ton d' Hymenaion êeiden palamê, Laidos ou chateôn].

This graphic effusion duly found its place in that book of "elegant extracts," compiled for the delectation of the Byzantine drawing-room, the Greek Anthology, where it remains enshrined amid a crowd of companions, at least ten times as remote as itself from modern ideas of decency.]"; Procopius, Anecdot., 9. Unconsciously]*