Fornix tibi et uncta popina Incutiunt urbis desiderium, video; et quod Angulus iste feret piper et thus ocius uva; Nec vicina subest vinum praebere taberna Quae possit tibi; nec meretrix tibicina, cuius Ad strepitum salias terrae gravis.
(The brothel and greasy cookshop make you long for the city, I can see; and the fact that this little nook (i.e. Horace’s Sabine farm) will yield the pepper-plant and thyme sooner than the grape, and no neighbourly tavern is at hand to give you wine, and no harlot flute-player to whose din you may thump the floor with your heavy feet). _Martial_, VII. 60., complains of the great number of such places. Here and at the money changer’s shops, but especially the latter, the Procurers were to be found. _Plautus_, Trucul. I. 1. 47.,
Nam nusquam alibi si sunt, circum argentarias Scorti lenones quasi sedent quotidie.
(For if they are nowhere else, at any rate round the banks harlots and pandars sit as it were daily). Comp. _Stockmann_ “De Popinis” (Of Cookshops). Leipzig 1805. 8vo.
[202] Codex Theodos. bk. IX. tit. VII. 1. p. 60. edit. Ritter.
[203] _Horace_, Epodes, XVII. 20., Amata nautis multum et institoribus (A woman much loved by sailors and traders).—_Petronius_, Satir. 99.—_Juvenal_, Sat. VIII. 173-175. _Seneca_, Controv., I. 3.
[204] _Columella_, Res Rustica, I. ch. 8., Socors et somniculosum genus id mancipiorum, otiis, campo, circo, theatris, aleae, popinae, lupanaribus consuetum, nunquam non easdem ineptias somniat. (That slothful and sleepy tribe of domestic slaves, habituated to ease, games, circus, theatres, dice, cookshop, brothels, would ever be dreaming the same sort of follies).
[205] _Suetonius_, Claudius, ch. 40., Nero, ch. 27—_Tacitus_, Annal., XIII. 25.
[206] _Paulus Diaconus_, XIII. 2., Horum mancipes tempore procedente pistrina publica latrocinia esse fecerunt: cum enim essent molae in locis subterraneis constitutae, per singula latera earum domuum tabernas instituentes, meretrices in eis prostare faciebant, quatenus per eas plurimos deciperent, alios qui pro pane veniebant, alios qui pro luxuriae turpitudine ibi festinabant. (The owners of these as time went on turned the public corn-mills into mischievous frauds. For the mill-stones being fixed in places underground, they set up stalls on either side of these chambers and caused harlots to stand for hire in them, so that by their means they deceived very many,—some that came for bread, others that hastened thither for the base gratification of their wantonness).