office upon them. As the children grew up, their mother straightway
sent them on the stage, for they were handsome girls. She did not send
them on all at once, but as each one arrived at a fit age so to do.
The eldest girl, Comito, had already become one of the most celebrated
prostitutes of her time.

Theodora, the next eldest, was dressed in a little sleeved tunic, such
as a slave-girl would wear, and waited on her sister, carrying on her
shoulders the stool in which she was wont to sit in public. Theodora
was still too young to have intercourse with a man after the manner of
women, but she satisfied the unnatural passions of certain wretches,
even the vilest slaves, who followed their masters to the theatre and
amused their leisure by this infamy. She remained for some time also
in a brothel, where she practised this hateful form of vice.

As soon, however, as she reached the age of puberty, as she was
handsome, her mother sent her into the theatrical troupe, and she
straightway became a simple harlot, as old-fashioned people called it;
for she was neither a musician nor a dancer, but merely prostituted
herself to everyone whom she met, giving up every part of her body to
debauchery. She associated chiefly with the theatrical "pantomimes,"
and took part in their performances, playing in comic scenes, for she
was exceedingly witty and amusing; so that she soon became well known
by her acting. She had no shame whatever, and no one ever saw her put
out of countenance, but she lent herself to scandalous purposes
without the least hesitation.

She excelled in raising a laugh by being slapped on her puffed-out
cheeks, and used to uncover herself so far as to show the spectators
everything before and behind which decency forbids to be shown to men.
She stimulated her lovers by lascivious jests, and continually
invented new postures of coition, by which means she completely won
the hearts of all libertines; for she did not wait to be solicited by
anyone whom she met, but herself, with joke and gestures, invited
everyone whom she fell in with, especially beardless boys.

She never succumbed to these transports; for she often went to a
supper at which each one paid his share, with ten or more young men,
in the full vigour of their age and practised in debauchery, and would
pass the whole night with all of them. When they were all exhausted,
she would go to their servants, thirty in number, it may be, and
fornicate with ea