The Sins of the Cities of the Plain/A Short Essay on Sodomy, etc.
A Short
Essay on Sodomy, Etc.
Sodomy appears to have been one of the most important of the Roman vices and amusements; it was not by any means considered improper. We are speaking of sodomy with males, for we do not find anything much said about sodomy with women in the literature of the Roman day.
We say now a woman is all cunt, and the Marquis de Sade says that he must be a beginner indeed who has not had a boy, or made a boy his mistress. Marrial treats sodomy with women good naturedly, and no doubt the Romans practised it. Many moderns are given to having women in the bottom, and most men who have gone in for anything like dissipation have done it now and then, and we sometimes hear of marriages being made unhappy from that unfortunate taste in the husband; but we think that with modern Europeans (except in Turkey, Greece, and part of Italy) it is quite the exception to find a man wedded to that practice; but with the ancient Romans it must have been a vice too common to be even alluded to.
If women are all cunt now what must they have been then?
Sodomy with males, with the above exceptions, is still rarer in the present day, and although we have made the most careful research, we do not know of many professional male sodomites in London; and when we were boys we remember a gentleman who kept a tall young fellow, a Creole, near Leicester Square. Our criminal reports show that such things do take place, and it is not long since that I was in court and heard a gipsy found guilty, first of all of having his own donkey, and afterwards a neighbour's little boy.
The offence is common in France. Ambrose Tardieu speaks of having investigated two hundred and seventeen cases of passive sodomy—not always cases of French subjects—and speaks of the extraordinary enlargement of the sphincter ani arising therefrom. The vice is evidently attractive, from the number of things different admirers of it have inserted in their anus, in default of something better, such as knitting-needles, bottles and glasses; and he especially speaks of bottles of Hungary waters and eau de Cologne being inserted in the bottom-hole, also pieces of wood, and he mentions that in the latter case the whole fist of the surgeon could be introduced into the anus.
Another person, for a bet, put a tumbler up his bottom; and two children, the brother five years old and the sister seven, were caught one day putting spoons, carrots, and potatoes up each other's bottoms; and he mentions that the anus of the little girl was so dilated that it was nearly confounded with her vagina.
These facts give us some idea of the enlargement of the anus that may arise from sodomy, and help to explain some of Martial's epigrams.
There have also been some interesting remarks privately published by a recent traveller through the realms of the King of Bokhara.
He speaks of that monarch having two wings to his harem, one for boys and one for girls. When the King would have connexion with one of his boys, the latter is well purged and brought to the King fasting, scents and oil being injected up his bottom. Then the boy has his dinner to give him courage and spirits to amuse the King, after which his Majesty has the boy in the presence generally of two or three of the royal wives. This traveller speaks of the salacious ways of these boys, the enlargement of their bottom-holes, and growths around the orifice, which made it appear very like the private parts of a woman.
Tardieu speaks of this growth too, but he also speaks of other developments, as well as the consequences of passive sodomy, such as piles and various disagreable matters. We think, too, that the King of Bokhara's habit of purging his boys before having connexion with them corroborates Tardieu's statement and the observations of many others, that the effect of being continually buggered (and Tardieu suggests as well the use of laxative ointments), is to so relax the sphincter ani that it will not retain the faces.
In the most civilized places of the present day sodomy with males is rarely practised—with females it is practised oftener; but in Rome it was the habit, the recognized habit, and it only became hateful when the man always received the attention and never gave. In those days men loved a lusty fellow as much as women do now, and the lusty fellow could give as much pleasure to a man as he could to a woman, and be thought none the worse for it.
The vice was so general and fashionable that the chastest of the Cæsars, Augustus, was charged by many mouths with practising it; but Suetonius says, excepting his weakness for deflowering little girls, all the charges brought against him were calumnies.
Tiberius revelled in sodomy, and was surrounded by lusty Catamites, and rendered his name imperishable by indelibly connecting it with the Spintriæ. At this chaste court Vitellus was apprenticed, and soon acquired the name of Spintria, raising his family by his prostitution, and showing when he in his time came to the throne, what a long train of evil one bad man in power can lay.
Caligula's mutual prostitutions with his pantomimic friend were well known, as was also his connexion with certain hostages; and the state of Roman decency may be presumed when we are told that V. Catullus, a young man of consular family, bawled out publicly that he had been having the Emperor until his back ached.
Cladius stuck to women, although he saw no harm in boys being debauched. Even his own son-in-law (to show the prevalence of the vice), we may observe, was stabbed and murdered while in the act of having his favourite boy.
Nero, of course, is not behindhand, and shows himself a true Roman Emperor by having the young Aulus Plautius by force, and then having him executed—the terrible result of worn-out desires, the irresistible impulse to remove from the face of the earth the man or woman you have satiated yourself with.
Our old friend Vitellus, when he came to the throne, managed the state entirely by the advice of the lowest classes, at the head of whom was the freedman Asiaticus, and his cabinet council was nothing but a series of mutual and unnatural pollutions.
Leaving Titus and the Eunuch, and Catamites, we will say one word on Galba, who bears the palm of Roman sodomites. He had no taste for women, nor had many a better man. He liked males, which was nothing uncommon; but he only fancied them when they were past their prime, and there he stood alone in his sodomy—he had not even the excuse of saying that the plump hips and smooth face of the boy resembled a girl. As another celebrated piece of royalty was fond of bad oysters, his taste was for old men—for men who had lived too long to enjoy pleasure or to give pleasure to anyone. But Galba, even when old Icelas brought the news of Nero's death, as he was sitting surrounded by friends, rose, kissed the old gentleman, and requesting him to make "a clear coast," led him into a private room, and had him. We can only say it would have been much more like Galba, if he had had the old gentleman there and then before all the company.