Note 268 — SECOND SECTION. Influences which served to hinder to a greater or less degree the inception of Diseases consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs.

Ammianus Marcellinus, XXVIII., Tales, ubi comitantibus singulos quadraginta ministris, tholos introierint balnearum, ubi sunt, minaciter clamantes, si apparuisse subito ignotam compererint meretricem, aut oppidanae quondam prostibulum plebis, vel meritorii corporis veterem lupam, certatim concurrunt, palpantesque ad venam deformitate magna blanditarum ita extollunt, ut Semiramin. (Such men, when with forty servants attending each master they have entered the rotundas of the Baths, where they remain with loud threatening shouts, if they should note an unknown courtesan to have put in an appearance, or some prostitute once popular with the common herd, or some old harlot who has sold her person for years, they strive who shall be first on the spot, and wheedling her to the top of her bent, with mighty exaggeration of flattery, praise her beauty as though she were a Semiramis). Lampridius, Life of Heliogabalus ch. 26., Omnes de circo, de theatro, de stadio, de omnibus locis et balneis, meretrices collegit in aedes publicam. (All the prostitutes from circus, from theatre, from race-course, from all places and from the Baths, he brought together into public establishments). Comp. Suetonius, Caligula ch. 37.