Lycimnia, and almost all the women to
whom, under real or assumed names, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid,
Horace, and others, addressed their erotic compositions, were Roman
married women. Horace is the only one who celebrated a freedwoman in
some of his odes. This is due, however, to his taste for variety and
perhaps also, to his birth, for he himself was the son of a freedwoman.
Ovid's Art of Love and the Satires of Juvenal reveal the extent to which
gallantry was the fashion at Rome and Cato would never have praised the
conduct of that young man who had recourse to a public house if that had
been an ordinary course of procedure.

In Europe of the middle ages, the priests and abbots helped to some
extent in reviving the profession of the courtesans. Long before, Saint
Paul had stated in his Epistles that it was permitted to the apostles
of the Lord to take with them everywhere a sister for charity. The
deaconesses date from the first century of the church. But the celibacy
of the clergy was not universally and solidly established until about the
eleventh century, under the pontificate of Gregory VII. During the
preceding century, the celebrated Marozie and Theodore had put their
lovers successively upon the chair of St. Peter, and their sons and
grandsons, as well. But after the priests had submitted to celibacy they
ostensibly took the concubines of which, alas! our housekeepers of today
are but feeble vestiges. The Spanish codes of the middle ages were often
concerned with the rights of the concubines of priests (mancebas de los
clerigos) and these chosen ones of the chosen ones of the Lord invariably
appeared worthy of envy. Finally the courtesans appeared in all their
magnificence in the Holy City, and modern Rome atoned for the rebuffs and
indignities these women had been compelled to endure in ancient Rome.
The princes of the church showered them with gifts, they threw at their
feet the price of redemption from sin, paid by the faithful, and the age
of Leo X was for Rome a wonderful epoch of fine arts, belles lettres, and
beautiful women. But a fanatical monk from Lower Germany fell upon this
calm of the church and this happy era of the harlots; since then the
revenues of the sacred college have continued to decrease, the beautiful
courtesans have abandoned the capital of the Christian world, and their
pleasures have fled with them. And can anyone longer believe in the
perfection of the human ra