Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/129

 be a noble of illustrious rank, was assigned the duty of organizing a patrol of the streets day and night for the protection of life and property. At this time the traffic in prostitution had grown to enormous dimensions, and the country was overrun by panders who bought young maidens from poor parents for a small sum in order to devote them to public debauchery. Girls in their tenth year and upwards were enticed by promises of fine clothes and ornaments to become inmates of proprietary brothels, and were even paraded about the streets as decoys for the dissolute. The newly appointed praetors now received a mandate from the Emperor to suppress these vile habitations and to drive those who maintained them from the city. The Empress herself had been for some time engaged in the work of reclaiming these unfortunates, whom she redeemed from their owners by paying a stipulated price in each case. A disused palace on the Bosphorus was converted into a Magdalen asylum, which she called "the Penitentiary"; and here a considerable number of former courtesans were immured in the hope of their moral reformation. Some scandal, however, was occasioned by the conduct of several of those rescued, who, driven to despair by the monotony of their new life, preferred to throw themselves from the windows at night into the water to enduring the unaccustomed restraint; but we may assume the comparative rarity of this untoward result. Justinian also pronounced

him. As we have seen (p. 81), there was from the first a regional band of the kind; but perhaps this new body was general and supervisional.]
 * [Footnote: ii, 30. Twenty soldiers and thirty matricarii (firemen?) were allotted to