The only really useful information we derive from these erotic effusions relates to the poets themselves. All the five we have mentioned moved in the best society at Rome. Some of them, like Horace, saw their fame culminate during their lifetime; others filled important stations under government. Ovid was intimate with the Emperor Augustus, and his exile is supposed to have been caused by some improper discoveries he made with regard to the emperor's relations with his daughter. Yet it is quite evident that all these persons habitually lived with prostitutes, felt no shame on that account, and recorded unblushingly the charms and exploits of their mistresses in verses intended to be read indiscriminately by the Roman youths. Between Ovid and Martial the distance is immense. Half a century divided them in point of time; whole ages in tone. During the Augustan era, the language of poets, though much freer than would be tolerated to-day, was not invariably coarse. No gross expressions are used by the poets of that day in addressing their mistresses, and even common prostitutes are addressed with epithets which a modern lover might apply to his betrothed. But Martial knows no decency. It may safely be said that his epigrams ought never again to be translated into a modern tongue. Expressions designating the most loathsome depravities, and which, happily, have no equivalent, and need none, in our language, abound in his pages. Pictures of the most revolting pruriency succeed each other rapidly. In a word, such language is used and such scenes depicted as would involve the expulsion of their utterer from any house of ill fame in modern times. Yet Martial enjoyed high favor under government. He was enabled to procure the naturalization of many of his Spanish friends. He possessed a country and a town house, both probably gifts from the emperor. His works, even in his lifetime, were carefully sought after, not only in Rome, but in Gaul, Spain, and the other provinces. Upon the character and life of courtesans in his day he throws but little light. The women whose hideous depravity he celebrates must have been well known at Rome; their names must have been familiar to the ears of Roman society. But this feature of Roman civilization, the notoriety of prostitutes and of their vile arts, properly belongs to another division of the subject. ROMAN SOCIETY. It was often said by the ancients that the more prostitutes there were, the safer would be virtuous women. "Well done," said the moralist to a youth entering a house of ill fame; "so shalt thou spare matrons and maidens." As this idea rests upon a slender substratum of plausibility, it may be as well to expose its fallacy, which can be done very completely by a glance at Roman society under the emperors.