Note 189 — FIRST SECTION.

Seneca, Controv., I. 2., Deducta es in lupanar, accepisti locum, pretium constitutum est. (You were taken to a brothel, you took your place, your price was fixed). Ovid, Amores, I. 10., Stat meretrix cuivis certo mercabilis aere. (There stands the harlot that any man can buy for a fixed sum). The fee was called captura (fee) (compare Schulting, on Seneca, loco citato, and Casaubon on Suetonius, Caligula 40.), quaestus meretricius (harlot’s hire) (Cicero, Philipp. II. 18.) or simply quaestus (hire); merces (cost) and pretium stupri (price of fornication); aurum lustrale (brothel, literally den, money). The women used to demand its payment. Juvenal, Sat. VI. 125. Excepit blanda intrantes atque aera poposcit. (Blandly she welcomed her visitors as they entered and asked for the fee). Hence the expression “basia meretricum poscinummia” (harlots kisses that ask for money) in Apuleius, Met., X. p. 248. For the rest prices were very various among the brothel-harlots as they were with the others. Comp. Martial, X. 75., IX. 33., III. 54. The lowest fee was one As or 2 obols (three pence); hence girls of the sort were called by the Romans also diobolares meretrices (two-obol harlots) (Festus) or diobolaria scorta (two-obol whores) (Plautus, Poen., I. 2. 58.). Comp. p. 90 above.