That marvellous Satyricon which unites the wit of Moliere[FN#382] with the debaucheries of Piron, whilst the writer has been described, like Rabelais, as purissimus in impuritate, is a kind of Triumph of Pederasty.  Geiton the hero, a handsome, curly-pated hobbledehoy of seventeen, with his calinerie and wheedling tongue, is courted like one of the sequor sexus:  his lovers are inordinately jealous of him and his desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart.  But no dialogue between man and wife in extremis could be more pathetic than that in the scene where shipwreck is imminent.  Elsewhere every one seems to attempt his neighbour:  a man alte succinctus assails Ascyltos; Lycus, the Tarentine skipper, would force Encolpius and so forth:  yet we have the neat and finished touch (cap. vii.):—­“The lamentation was very fine (the dying man having manumitted his slaves) albeit his wife wept not as though she loved him.  How were it had he not behaved to her so well?”

Erotic Latin glossaries[FN#383] give some ninety words connected with pederasty and some, which “speak with Roman simplicity,” are peculiarly expressive.  “Averse Venus” alludes to women being treated as boys:  hence Martial, translated by Piron, addresses Mistress Martial (x. 44):—­

          Teque puta, cunnos, uxor, habere duos.

The capillatus or comatus is also called calamistratus, the darling curled with crisping-irons; and he is an Effeminatus, i.e., qui muliebria patitur; or a Delicatus, slave or eunuch for the use of the Draucus, Puerarius (boy-lover) or Dominus (Mart. xi. 7I).  The Divisor is so called from his practice Hillas dividere or caedere, something like Martial’s cacare mentulam or Juvenal’s Hesternae occurrere caenae.  Facere vicibus (Juv. vii. 238), incestare se invicem or mutuum facere (Plaut.  Trin. ii. 437), is described as “a puerile vice,” in which the two take turns to be active and passive:  they are also called Gemelli and Fratres = compares in paedicatione.  Illicita libido is = praepostera seu postica Venus, and is expressed by the picturesque phrase indicare (seu incurvare) aliquem.  Depilatus, divellere pilos, glaber, laevis and nates pervellere are allusions to the Sotadic toilette.  The fine distinction between demittere and dejicere caput are worthy of a glossary, while Pathica puella, puera, putus, pullipremo pusio, pygiaca sacra, quadrupes, scarabaeus and smerdalius explain themselves.

From Rome the practice extended far and wide to her colonies, especially the Provincia now called Provence.  Athenaeus (xii. 26) charges the people of Massilia with “acting like women out of luxury”; and he cites the saying “May you sail to Massilia!” as if it were another Corinth.  Indeed the whole Keltic race is charged with Le Vice by Aristotle (Pol. ii. 66), Strabo (iv. 199) and Diodorus Siculus (v. 32).  Roman civilisation carried pederasty also to Northern Africa, where it took firm root, while the negro and negroid races to the South ignore the erotic perversion, except where imported by foreigners into such kingdoms as Bornu and Haussa.  In old Mauritania, now Marocco,[FN#384] the Moors proper are notable sodomites; Moslems, even of saintly houses, are permitted openly to keep catamites, nor do their disciples think worse of their sanctity for such licence:  in one case the English wife failed to banish from the home “that horrid boy.”