Note 130 — Chapter VI · OF TRIBADS

All this was actually represented in Paris, 1791, on the stage of a theatre, where, according to the author of the Gynaeology III., 423, a man completely naked had connection with a woman as naked as himself, both representing savages, accompanied by the plaudits of both sexes. There is however nothing new under the sun. With the Romans it had long been customary, after the public games were finished, to bring prostitutes into the arena, and set them to work, so that the spectators might have an opportunity to perform what they had been looking at with greedy eyes; a herald proclaimed what was to come. Tertullian, De Spectaculis, ch. 17: “Prostitutes, the victims of public incontinence, are brought upon the stage, shamefaced with respect to the women only; to the men they were known; they are exposed to the laughter of all, high and low; their dwellings, their prices, even their recommendations were proclaimed by the crier.” Isidorus, Origines, XVIII., 42: “The theatre is like a brothel; when the games are over, public women are prostituted there.” The rape of the Sabines described in Livy (II., 18) would seem to have been a not dissimilar form of amusement: “In this year young Sabines in Rome having, in the midst of the games, abducted some prostitutes, the tumult ensuing thereupon degenerated into a riot, in fact nearly into a battle.”