In dealing with brothel keepers and their trade we must certainly betray no weakness as though something were to be said on both sides, but must sternly forbid them and insist that no one, be he poor or be he rich, shall pursue such a business, thus levying a fee, which all the world condemns as shameful, upon brutality and lust.
Such men bring individuals together in union without love and intercourse without affection, and all for the sake of filthy lucre. They must not take hapless women or children, captured in war or else purchased with money, and expose them for shameful ends in dirty booths which are flaunted before the eyes in every part of the city, at the doors of the houses of magistrates and in marketplaces, near government buildings and temples, in the midst of all that is holiest.
Neither barbarian women, I say, nor Greeks—of whom the latter were in former times almost free but now live in bondage utter and complete—shall they put in such shameful constraint, doing a much more evil and unclean business than breeders of horses and of asses carry on, not mating beasts with beasts where both are willing and feel no shame, but mating human beings that do feel shame and revulsion, with lecherous and dissolute men in an ineffectual and fruitless physical union that breeds destruction rather than life.
Yes, and they respect no man nor god—not Zeus, the god of family life, not Hera, the goddess of marriage, not the Fates, who bring fulfillment, not Artemis, protectress of the child-bed, not mother Rhea, not the Eileithyiae, who preside over human birth, not Aphrodite, whose name stands for the normal intercourse and union of male and female.
No, we must proclaim that neither magistrate nor lawgiver shall allow such merchandising or legalize it, whether our cities are to house a people of the highest virtue or to fall into a second, third, fourth, or any other class, so long as it is in the power of any one of them to prevent such things.
But if old customs and diseases that have become entrenched in the course of time fall to the care of our ruler, he shall by no means leave them without attention and correction, but, with an eye to what is practicable, he shall curb and correct them in some way or other. For evils are never wont to remain as they are; they are ever active and advancing to greater wantonness if they meet no compelling check.
It is our duty, therefore, to give some heed to this and under no condition to bear this mistreatment of outcast and enslaved creatures with calmness and indifference, not only because all humanity has been held in honor and in equal honor by God, who begat it, having the same marks and tokens to show that it deserves honor, to wit, reason and the knowledge of evil and good, but also because of the following consideration, which we must always remember: that for flagrant wrong fostered by license it is difficult to set a limit that it will no longer, through fear of the consequences, dare to transgress. Indeed, beginning with practices and habits that seem trivial and allowable, it acquires a strength and force that are uncontrollable, and no longer stops at anything.
Now at this point we must assuredly remember that this adultery committed with outcasts, so evident in our midst and becoming so brazen and unchecked, is to a very great extent paving the way to hidden and secret assaults upon the chastity of women and boys of good family, such crimes being only too boldly committed when modesty is openly trampled upon, and that it was not invented, as some think, to afford security and abstinence from these crimes.
Perhaps now someone may say, rather rudely, something like this: "O you wise rulers and lawgivers, who tolerated such practices in the beginning and imagined you had actually discovered some wondrous elixir to produce chastity in our cities, your motive being to keep these open and unbarred brothels from contaminating your barred homes and inner chambers, and keep men who practice their excesses abroad and openly at little cost from turning to your freeborn and respected wives with their many bribes and gifts!"
For men do grow weary of what is excessively cheap and freely permitted, but pursue in fear and at great expense what is forbidden simply because it is forbidden. I think you will see this more clearly if you just consider.
For where men condone even the matter of adultery in a somewhat magnificent fashion and the practice of it finds great and most charitable consideration, where husbands in their simplicity do not notice most things and do not admit knowledge of some things but suffer the adulterers to be called guests and friends and kinsmen, at times even entertaining these themselves and inviting them to their tables at festivals and sacrifices as, I imagine, they might invite their bosom friends, and display but moderate anger at actions that are most glaring and open—where, I say, these intrigues of the married women are carried on with such an air of respectability, in that community it will not be easy to feel quite sure of the maidenhood of the unmarried girls or ever to be confident that the words of the wedding song sung at the marriage of the girls are truthful and honest.
Is it not inevitable that in these cities many things occur which are like the old legends?— omitting, of course, the angry and meddlesome fathers—that a great many persons copy the storied amours of the gods and gold pours down in showers through the roofs (and with little difficulty, since the chambers are not of brass or stone), and yes, by heavens, that silver trickles in no small stream nor into the laps of the maidens alone, but into those of mothers also and nurses and tutors—to say nothing of many other handsome gifts which sometimes enter stealthily through the roof and sometimes openly no doubt at the very bedside!
Is it not likely, too, that much occurs in rivers and beside springs which is like those happenings of ancient times that the poets describe? Only perhaps they do not occur in the open publicly, but in homes of truly great felicity, at costly lodges in parks and city suburbs, in luxurious artificial bowers and in splendid groves; for it is not a question of poor daughters of penniless kings, the kind that carry water and play on beaches beside the rivers, bathing in cool water, or on wide-spreading beaches of the sea; no, they are the wealthy daughters of wealthy parents in princely establishments that possess all these things in private far surpassing anything in public splendor and magnificence.
But perhaps they would nevertheless be expecting children to be born in that city, children of the kind that Homer refers to when he mentions Eudorus, son of Hermes and Polydora, and makes use of an euphemism, as I see it, in referring to his birth:
"Virgin's son whom bore Polydora, fair in the chorus."
I suspect that at Sparta as well some boys of a similar paternity received this appellation, since quite a number are called Parthenians. Consequently, if the majority born in such immoral cities did not perish through utter lack, I imagine, of divine protection, then nothing would save the world from being overrun by demigods. But as it is, some die at birth, while those that do survive live on to old age in obscurity in the status of slaves, since those who gave them being can give them no further support.
Now then, in a city where the girls' condition is as bad as we have described, what are we to expect the boys to be? What education and training should we expect them to receive? Is there any possibility that this lecherous class would refrain from dishonoring and corrupting the males, making their clear and sufficient limit that set by nature? Or will it not, while it satisfies its lust for women in every conceivable way, find itself grown weary of this pleasure, and then seek some other worse and more lawless form of wantonness?
Yes, the seduction of women—especially, one might almost say, of the freeborn and virgins—has been found easy and no task for a man who pursues that kind of game with money; and even against the highly respected wives and daughters of men really respected, the libertine who attacks with the device of Zeus and brings gold in his hands will never fail.
But the further developments, I presume, are perfectly evident, since we see so many illustrations. The man whose appetite is insatiate in such things, when he finds there is no scarcity, no resistance, in this field, will have contempt for the easy conquest and scorn for a woman's love, as a thing too readily given—in fact, too utterly feminine—and will turn his assault against the male quarters, eager to befoul the youth who will very soon be magistrates and judges and generals, believing that in them he will find a kind of pleasure difficult and hard to procure.
His state is like that of men who are addicted to drinking and winebibbing, who after long and steady drinking of unmixed wine, often lose their taste for it and create an artificial thirst by the stimulus of sweatings, salted foods, and condiments.
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