But gonorrhœa is a very old story, and was undoubtedly prevalent in the ancient world. Luys indeed says that gonorrhœa is as old as mankind, and was named by Galen himself, though regular physicians and surgeons scorned to treat it. It is strange that there is so little reference to this disease in the vast amount of pornographic literature which has come down to us. Martial, for instance, or Ovid; nothing would seem too obscene to have passed by their salacious minds; yet neither of them so much as hint that such a thing as gonorrhœa existed. But it is possible that such a disease might have been among the things unlucky or “tabu.” All nations and all ages have been more or less under the influence of tabu, which ranges from influence on the most trivial matters to settlement of the gravest. Thus, many men would almost rather die than walk abroad in a frock coat and tan boots, or, still more dreadful, in a frock coat and Homburg hat, though that freakish costume appears to be common enough in America. In this matter we are under the influence of tabu--the thing which prevents us, or should prevent us, from eating peas with our knife, or making unseemly noises when we eat soup, or playing a funeral march at a cheerful social gathering. In all these things the idea of _nefas_--unlucky--seems more or less to enter; similarly we do not like to walk under a ladder lest a paint-pot should fall upon us. Many people hate to mention the dread word “death,” lest that should untimely be their portion. Just so possibly a licentious man like Ovid may have been swayed by some such fear, and he may have refrained from writing about the horrid disease which he must have known was ever waiting for him. But though it may seem to have been impossible that any prostitute should have escaped gonorrhœa in Byzantium, just as it is impossible in modern London or Sydney, yet there is no evidence that Theodora so suffered; what hints we have, if they weigh on either side at all, seem to make it unlikely. She had a child after her marriage with Justinian, though women who have had untreated gonorrhœa are very frequently or generally sterile. Nor is there any evidence that Justinian ever had any serious illness except the bubonic plague, from which he suffered, and recovered, during the great epidemic of 546. I assume that the buboes from which he doubtless suffered at that time were not venereal but were the ordinary buboes of plague. He had been Theodora’s husband for many years before that terrible year in which the plague swept away about a third of the population of the Roman Empire, where it had been simmering ever since the time of Marcus Aurelius. If Theodora really had gonorrhœa, Justinian must have caught it, and it is unlikely that he would have called her his “honoured wife.”