* * * * * The Romans cultivated sexuality, particularly in a heterosexual direction, with great vigor and lustfulness. It was largely through the growing consciousness of Rome as an imperial power, and through the increase in industry and commerce, in wealth and consequent luxury and idleness, that perversions of all kinds increased and multiplied to such an abnormal extent that in the first century A.D. the Romans themselves, through their own poets, commented on the situation and contrasted it, with some sense of nostalgia, with the severe and rigid and essentially stabilized moral code that prevailed in the old pre-imperial days. * * * * * During the Roman Empire, with the increase of childless families, women were able to give more scope to their femininity, their sexual appeal, and their erotic allurements. As a consequence, there was an upsurge of marital license, on the part of both husband and wife, but notoriously so in the case of the women. This situation reached the most shameless depths, as the poet Juvenal testifies: and as the Church Fathers later on asserted, in their wholesale condemnations of pagan practices. Early in the first century A.D. the insidious decline of domestic morality became so manifest that imperial decrees required marriage in the case of men under sixty and of women under fifty: and these ordinances also restricted the freedoms of bachelorhood. Marriage was thus officially encouraged, and large families were granted special privileges and monetary awards from the imperial treasury. But these and similar measures were abortive in their primary purpose. For prostitution flourished and grew and became so flagrant and yet so characteristically identified with later Roman society that there were at least a score of designations for the public harlot, according to her social status, her price, and her locale. Thus lust and eros were rampantly triumphant. Harlotry was manifestly rife in Old Testament days, for there is repeated allusion to the practice: in the symbolism of Oholah and Oholibah, in the Psalms and in the prophets, particularly Isaiah and Jeremiah, in the Book of Judges, and in Samuel. In addition, there is mention of the allurements of the harlot: her chamber fragrant and enticing with spices and perfumes, aloes and myrrh and cinnamon. There is reference to the personal seductive persuasiveness of the harlot’s coaxing words, the urgency of her erotic devices. * * * * *