Up to the period of the civil wars, and perhaps as late as the Christian era, the only physicians at Rome were drug-sellers, enchanters, and midwives. The standing of the former may be inferred from a passage in Horace, where he classes them with the lowest outcasts of Roman society.[142] The enchanters (_sagæ_) made philtres to produce or impede the sensual appetite. They were execrated, and even so amorous a poet as Ovid felt bound to warn young girls against the evil effects of the aphrodisiacs they concocted.[143] Midwives also made philtres, and are often confounded with the _sagæ_. The healing science of the three classes must have been small. About the reign of Augustus, Greek physicians began to settle at Rome. They possessed much theory, and some practical experience, as the Treatise of Celsus shows, and soon became an important class in Roman society. It was not, however, till the reign of Nero, that an office of public physician was created. Under that emperor, a Greek named Andromachus was appointed _archiater_, or court physician, and _archiatii populares_ were soon afterward appointed for the people. They were allowed to receive money from the rich, but they were bound, in consideration of various privileges bestowed on their office, to treat the poor gratuitously. They were stationed in every city in the empire. Rome had fourteen, besides those attached to the Vestals, the Gymnasia, and the court; other large cities had ten, and so on, down to the small towns which had one or two.[144] From the duties and privileges of the _archiatii_, it would appear they were subject to the ædiles. It may seem almost superfluous to add that no careful medical reader of the history of Rome under the empire can doubt but the archiatii filled no sinecure, and that a large proportion of the diseases they treated were directly traceable to prostitution. CHAPTER V. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN ERA. Christian Teachers preach Chastity.--Horrible Punishment of Christian Virgins.--Persecution of Women.--Conversion of Prostitutes.--The Gnostics.--The Ascetics.--Conventual Life.--Opinion of the Fathers on Prostitution.--Tax on Prostitutes.--Punishment of Prostitutes under the Greek Emperors. Perhaps the most marked originality of the Christian doctrine was the stress it laid on chastity. It has been well remarked that even the most austere of the pagan moralists recommended chastity on _economical_ grounds alone. The apostles exacted it as a moral and religious duty. They preached against lewdness as fervently as against heathenism. Not one of the epistles contained in the New Testament but inveighs, in the strongest language, against the vices classed under the generic head of luxury. Nor can it be doubted that, under divine Providence, the obvious merit of this feature in the new religion exercised a large influence in rallying the better class of minds to its support.