42 'PHYSICAL SCIENCE BK. i 



every instrument that will rouse passion : so re- 

 sourceful is it in goading to madness its own morbid 

 fury. There was one Hostius Quadra whose 

 obscenity formed a model for everything that was 

 lewd on the stage. He was rich and avaricious, a 

 very slave to his millions. He was eventually 

 murdered by his own slaves, but the late Emperor 

 Augustus considered his murder undeserving of 

 punishment, and as good as declared that he had 



2 been justly slain. This man's lust knew no distinc- 

 tion of sex. Among other things, he had mirrors 

 constructed of the kind just mentioned, that re- 

 flected images of abnormal size, causing, for ex- 

 ample, a finger to exceed the size of an arm in 

 length and thickness. He so arranged his mirrors 

 that he. could see all his accomplices' movements, 

 and could gloat over the imagined proportions 



3 of his own body. He raised a levy of scamps 

 like himself in all the public baths, where he chose 

 men of the regulation height ; this but whetted his 

 appetite to have his scenes of riot reproduced in 

 false unnatural proportions. Go to, you that say 

 the mirror was invented for purposes of adornment I 

 I could not soil my pen by recording the foul words 

 and deeds of that monster : he deserved to be torn 

 by his own jaws. To aggravate his guilt, mirrors 

 faced him on every side that he might be a witness of 



4 his own infamy. Deeds of darkness, which lie heavy 

 on the conscience, the imputation of which ordinary 

 men will indignantly spurn, weighed so lightly with 

 him that he thrust them before his face, and into 

 his very eyes. Crimes, in faith, usually dread the 

 sight of themselves. Even in those lost to shame, 

 and exposed to every insult, the eye is still delicately 

 susceptible. But that beast thought his unparalleled 



