Note 51 — Chapter II · ON PEDICATION
Reading edition
Juvenal’s Messalina (VI., v. 123) prostitutes herself “under the fictitious name-board of Lycisca.” Petronius: “I see men gliding in stealthily between the name-boards and the naked prostitutes; I understood, alas, too late, that I had been introduced into a bad place.” (Satyr. ch. 7.) Martial, XI., 46:
“When you pass the threshold of a chamber with name-board over the door, whether it be a boy or a girl that greeted you with a smile....”
That the prostitutes changed their names is apparent from a passage in Plautus (Poenulus, V., iii, 20, 21):
“For to-day they were to change their names, and will lend their bodies for infamous traffic.”