Nero, of course, is not behindhand, and shows himself a true Roman Emperor by having the young Aulus Plautius by force, and then having him executed--the terrible result of worn-out desires, the irresistible impulse to remove from the face of the earth the man or woman you have satiated yourself with. Our old friend Vitellus, when he came to the throne, managed the state entirely by the advice of the lowest classes, at the head of whom was the freedman Asiaticus, and his cabinet council was nothing but a series of mutual and unnatural pollutions. Leaving Titus and the Eunuch, and Catamites, we will say one word on Galba, who bears the palm of Roman sodomites. He had no taste for women, nor had many a better man. He liked males, which was nothing uncommon; but he only fancied them when they were past their prime, and there he stood alone in his sodomy--he had not even the excuse of saying that the plump hips and smooth face of the boy resembled a girl. As another celebrated piece of royalty was fond of bad oysters, his taste was for old men--for men who had lived too long to enjoy pleasure or to give pleasure to anyone. But Galba, even when old Icelas brought the news of Nero's death, as he was sitting surrounded by friends, rose, kissed the old gentleman, and requesting him to make "a clear coast," led him into a private room, and had him. We can only say it would have been much more like Galba, if he had had the old gentlemen there and then before all the company. [Illustration: Decoration] TRIBADISM Dogging the heels of sodomy walks tribadism, a vice which every man in his heart looks on with kindly eyes. This sister vice appears to have existed from all ages. It is at least as old as sodomy, and still lives, aye, flourishes amongst the supposed modest maidens of our day. In all civilized Europe it exists among single women who have been debarred from men, generally in a narrowed sense, rarely taking other form than mutual frigging. But amongst some prostitutes of the upper class, and a few matrons of educated vicious tastes, it flourishes, the Frenchwomen bearing the palm. In the latter case gamahuching comes into free play; one woman loves another as jealously as ever a man could, and we have known instances in England of great unhappiness ensuing from one tribade giving up her inamorata for another man or woman; and in one memorable instance the forlorn one taking a revenge that very nearly involved the ruin of both. The Count de Grammont mentions an instance in his memoirs of Miss Hobart, a maid of honour at the court of Charles the Second, being forbidden the royal presence for endeavouring to violate another maid of honour. It is not clear how she was doing it, and it certainly is a mystery why that debauched monarch should have been so severe upon her. No one can read Juvenal without being convinced that in Martial's time tribadism flourished in Rome. His descriptions of the feasts of the Bona Dea leave no doubt of it.