The Satyricon — Volume 06: Editor's NotesPetronius Arbiter
General
The Satyricon — Volume 06: Editor's Notes
Petronius Arbiter
Rome -- Fiction; Satire, Latin -- Translations into English
The passage in Petronius (chap. viii) and that in Juvenal (Sat. vi, 125)
are not to be taken literally. "Aes" in the latter should be understood
to mean what we would call "the coin," and not necessarily coin of low
denomination.
PAEDERASTIA.
The origin of this vice (all peoples, savage and civilized, have been
infected with it) is lost in the mists which shroud antiquity. The Old
Testament contains many allusions to it, and Sodom was destroyed because
a long-suffering deity could not find ten men in the entire city who were
not addicted to its practice. So saturated was this city of the ancient
world with the vice that the very name of the city or the adjective
denoting citizenship in that city have transmitted the stigma to modern
times. That the fathers of Israel were quick to perceive the tortuous
ramifications of this vice is proved by a passage in Deuteronomy, chap.
22, verse .5: "the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man,
neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are
abominations unto the Lord thy God." Here we have the first regulation
against fetishism and the perverted tendencies of gynandry and androgeny.
Inasmuch as our concern with this subject has to do with the Roman world
alone, a lengthy discussion of the early, manifestations of this vice
would be out of place here; nevertheless, a brief sketch should be given
to serve as a foundation to such discussion and to aid sociologists who
will find themselves more and more concerned with the problem in view of
the conditions in European society, induced by the late war. Their
problem will, however, be more intimately concerned with homosexuality
as it is manifested among women!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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