* * * * * Among the Greeks, the concept of love in the modern sense was rare. Nor was the medieval attitude to amatory sensibilities, embodied in courtly love, any more prevalent. Love, in a general sense, was treated as an aberration from normal life, a kind of sickness, a lack of balance in the elements of the entity. Yet there was, of course, as the Greek Anthology and other poetic testimony indicate, lust and passion and erotic intimacy. There was, too, a greater freedom in this relationship between men and public women, nor did this association affect in a negative sense the marriage relationship. There were these professional public hetairae, female companions who often had marked intellectual endowments, whose association with poets and dramatists, statesmen and philosophers brought not the slightest stigma on such men in their artistic or public career. Aspasia of Miletus was one of the most outstanding of this group. She was the mistress of the statesman Pericles. Gnathaena and Lais were equally known. It was said that Plato was in love with the hetaira Archeanassa of Colophon. The comic poet Menander was associated with Glycera. Phryne, the priestess of Aphrodite, as she was termed, was the most beautiful of them all, the model for the sculptor Praxiteles’ Aphrodite. The seductive equipment of the hetaira was as various as in modern times, and as effective. It included diaphanous robes, of Coan silk, veils and scarves, mirrors and unguents and rouge, jewelry for neck and ears and arms. And the hetaira replenished her armory and refurbished her memory of her techniques: for there were at hand, for her constant use, manuals that contained guidance, amatory and financial and social, specific instructions in a multiplicity of hypothetical but more than probable cases, and ominous warnings as well. CHAPTER III ROMANS In the first century B.C. the licentiousness of the Roman matron was already a subject for grim condemnation. Horace, who was virtually the Poet Laureate of the Augustan Age, laments the degeneration of morality. The temples are abandoned, he bewails, and lie in ruins. The sacred marriage vows are broken. The uprightness of the old domestic life is gone. Our own generation is plunging headlong into destruction. Against the women in particular he inveighs as follows: The matron, when bidden, arises and goes forth publicly, not without the knowledge of her husband, whether some pedlar invites her, or the captain of a Spanish sailing vessel, who buys her shame at a high price. * * * * *