The history of European prostitution, as of so many other modern institutions, may properly be said to begin in Rome. Here at the outset we already find that inconsistently mixed attitude towards prostitution which to-day is still preserved. In Greece it was in many respects different. Greece was nearer to the days of religious prostitution, and the sincerity and refinement of Greek civilization made it possible for the better kind of prostitute to exert, and often be worthy to exert, an influence in all departments of life which she has never been able to exercise since, except perhaps occasionally, in a much slighter degree, in France. The course, vigorous, practical Roman was quite ready to tolerate the prostitute, but he was not prepared to carry that toleration to its logical results; he never felt bound to harmonize inconsistent facts of life. Cicero, a moralist of no mean order, without expressing approval of prostitution, yet could not understand how anyone should wish to prohibit youths from commerce with prostitutes, such severity being out of harmony with all the customs of the past or the present.[142] But the superior class of Roman prostitutes, the _bonæ mulieres_, had no such dignified position as the Greek _hetairæ_. Their influence was indeed immense, but it was confined, as it is in the case of their European successors to-day, to fashions, customs, and arts. There was always a certain moral rigidity in the Roman which prevented him from yielding far in this direction. He encouraged brothels, but he only entered them with covered head and face concealed in his cloak. In the same way, while he tolerated the prostitute, beyond a certain point he sharply curtailed her privileges. Not only was she deprived of all influence in the higher concerns of life, but she might not even wear the _vitta_ or the _stola_; she could indeed go almost naked if she pleased, but she must not ape the emblems of the respectable Roman matron.[143]