Young girls and wives finding themselves neglected, the first by those they loved, the other ones by their husbands, instead of offering their services only as females, resolved to play the part of the lads. The depravity became so great that this complaisance was actually extorted from brides, as it was before from married women; in fact the husband went at the young wife pederastically, and the two sexes were joined in one and the same body. In the facetious poems of the ancients, Priapus[48] threatens every thief of vegetables from his garden that comes near his weapon, to make him sacrifice what in the first night the bride accords to her ardent husband, for fear that he may wound another part. Making use of his imagination with the licence ever granted both to painters and poets, Valerius Martial[49] pretends to hear is wife grumble that she also had buttocks, and that he had not need of boys. “Juno” she says, “also pleased Jupiter from that side.” The poet is not to be convinced, he answers her that the part taken by a boy is one thing, and that of the wife another, and that she ought to be satisfied with hers. Under the name-boards[50] and the lamps[51] in the brothels sat[52] boys as well as girls, the first dressed in the feminine stola, the latter in the manly tunic, and with their hair dressed like boys. Under the guise of one sex was found the other. Asia[53] was the original home of this pest, then Africa got infected, and soon the scourge invaded Greece and the adjoining countries of Europe[54]. In Thrace Orpheus was the importer and supporter of this unclean pleasure. The Thracian women, finding themselves held in contempt.... “During the sacred feasts and the nocturnal orgies of Bacchus, tore the youth to pieces, and bestrewed the wide plains with his limbs.” (Virgil, _Georg._ IV., 521, 522.) It is alleged that in those ancient times the Celts[55] ridiculed those amongst them who kept aloof from this practice; such could expect neither civil employment nor honours. Those, that preserved the purity of their morals were shunned as impure. “In a town where everyone is mad, it is not good to be alone sane, and by reason of its not being good it is not advisable.” (Dialogue VI.) This ends our brilliant extract from Aloysia Sigaea.