CUSTOMS AND MANNERS. 



223 



males themselves, in their dress, their language, and even in 

 their pleasures. The youth whose beard began to form itself, 

 feeling as it were an attachment to his puerile dependency, 

 viewed with tenderness and complacency a cast whose milk 

 was his first aliment. The husband, dissatisfied with the cold 

 retribution of a divided bed, sought a compensation in the 

 female slave. The horror of his loathsome crime was con- 

 founded in the obscurity of his accomplice. The mixture of 

 the specieses became common, and thence originated the va- 

 rious sub-divisions which are more or less valued in proportion 

 to the degrees of proximity or distance from their original co- 

 lour. These spurious fruits of an abominable union ceased 

 already to be useful in the domestic occupations, or performed 

 them with an air of superiority. The fashions, personal me- 

 rit, and the education of the youth, were swayed anddire6led 

 by these vile souls. Their influence, and the common depra- 

 vation, were carried to such a length, that the Roman women, 

 even these Roman women, gloried in having some resemblance, 

 either in the mind or person, with their female slaves. The 



avenues of pleasure and of love " 



Here the parchment was so much worm-eaten, that it v/as 

 impossible for us to ascertain to what length these declama- 

 tions may have been carried. In one respeft we congratulated 

 ourselves on this circumstance ; for if the author of the manu- 

 script had been enabled, through us, to explain himself still 

 further, his translators might have been exposed to the risk, 

 that this noble public, and the persons engaged in its service, 

 might regard this fragment as a metaphorical satire, which 

 certainly never entered into their thought. 



Plate 



