tue displayed by the Roman women at a time when crowned
monsters governed the empire. The young Paulina opened her veins with
her husband, the philosopher, Seneca; Mallonia preferred to die in
torments rather than give herself up to the odious he-goat of Capri.
Who does not admire the noble independence, the conjugal love, and the
matronly virtues of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus?

Moreover, men began to avow their love for women, and we have here
occasion to observe the rapid progress of gallantry among the Romans.
However, the love for boys was no less universally in vogue in Rome, and
Cicero charges, in his letters to Atticus, that the judges who had so
scandalously white-washed Clodius of the accusation of having profaned
the mysteries of the "Good Goddess," had been publicly promised the
favors of the most illustrious women and the finest young men of the
first families. Caesar himself, in his early youth had yielded to the
embraces of Nicomedes, King of Bithynia; moreover, after his triumph over
the Gauls, on the solemn occasion when it was customary to twit the
victor with all his faults, the soldiers sang: "Caesar subdued the Gauls,
Nicomedes subdued Caesar. But Caesar who subdued the Gauls, triumphed,
and Nicomedes, who subdued Caesar did not." Cato said of him that he was
loved by the King, in his youth and that, when he was older, he loved the
queen and, one day, in the senate, while he was dwelling on I know not
what request of the daughter of Nicomedes, and recounting the benefits
which Rome owed to that monarch, Cicero silenced him by replying: "We
know very well what he has given, and what thou hast given him!" At
last, during the time when the first triumvirate divided all the power,
a bad joker remarked to Pompey: "I salute thee, O King," and, addressing
Caesar, "I salute thee, O Queen!" His enemies maintained that he was the
husband of all the women and the wife of all the husbands. Catullus, who
detested him, always called him "the bald catamite," in his epigrams: he
set forth that his friendship with Mamurra was not at all honorable; he
called this Mamurra "pathicus," a name which they bestowed upon those who
looked for favors among mature men or among men who had passed the stage
of adolescence.

The masters of the empire never showed any hesitancy in trying and even
in overdoing the pleasures which all their subjects permitted themselves.
Alas! A crown is such a weighty burden! The roa