Augustus did not escape this shame[34], Tiberius[35] and Nero gloried in it. Nero married Tigellinus[36], and was himself espoused by Sporus[37], Trajan[38], the best of rulers, was accompanied by a _paedagogium_, while he marched from victory through the Orient. What he named his _paegogium_, while he marched from victory to victory through the Orient. What he named his _paedagogium_ was a troop of pretty lads, well developed, whom he called day and night to come to his arms. Antinous served as mistress to Hadrian,—a rival to Plotina, but more fortunate than she was[39]. The emperor mourned over his death, and placing the dead man amongst the Gods, he raised altars and temples in his honour. Antonius Heliogabalus, nephew of Severus, was accustomed, an old author says[40], to have pleasures administered to him through all the orifices in his body; his contemporaries looked upon him as a monster. Before this Venus grave philosophers danced in company with pederasts. Alcibiades and Phaedo slept with Socrates[41], when they wanted to get their tutor into good humour. It is from this kind of amours practised by the venerable man, that is derived the erotic phrase: to love _Socratically_. Every action and every word of Socrates were held as sacred by all sects of philosophers; they built a temple and erected an altar in his honour; all his actions had legal force, and his words the authority of an oracle. The philosophers did not turn away from the example set by their Hero (for Socrates took rank with the Heroes) and new national divinity. Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator, living some centuries before Socrates, refused the title of a good and deserving citizen to any man who had not a friend that served him as a concubine. He willed it that virgins should perform naked on the stage, so that the view of their charms freely exposed, should dull in men that sensual longing which by the aid of nature draws them to women, that they might thus reserve all their passion for their friends and companions. For what men see every day loses half its effect. Again, why speak of the Poets?[42] Anacreon[43], was hotly in love with Bathyllus; almost all pleasantries of Plautus have this subject for their aim; they are of this kind: “I shall do like the lads, I will cower down over a hamper.”[44] Or again: “The soldier’s poniard did it fit your sheath?”[45] That grand master of the art of poetry, Maro, who won the surname of Parthenias by his ingenuousness and innate modesty, cherished a certain Alexander, whom Pollio had given to him as a present, and he has celebrated him under the name of Alexis[46]. Ovid suffered from the same malady; he however preferred young girls to lads, because in his amusement he wanted reciprocal pleasure, and not a selfish enjoyment. He said he loved the pleasure “of the simultaneous ejaculation of both parties”[47], and for this reason he was less given to the love of boys.