and Nicomedes, who subdued Caesar did not." Cato said of him that he was
loved by the King, in his youth and that, when he was older, he loved the
queen and, one day, in the senate, while he was dwelling on I know not
what request of the daughter of Nicomedes, and recounting the benefits
which Rome owed to that monarch, Cicero silenced him by replying: "We
know very well what he has given, and what thou hast given him!" At
last, during the time when the first triumvirate divided all the power,
a bad joker remarked to Pompey: "I salute thee, O King," and, addressing
Caesar, "I salute thee, O Queen!" His enemies maintained that he was the
husband of all the women and the wife of all the husbands. Catullus, who
detested him, always called him "the bald catamite," in his epigrams: he
set forth that his friendship with Mamurra was not at all honorable; he
called this Mamurra "pathicus," a name which they bestowed upon those who
looked for favors among mature men or among men who had passed the stage
of adolescence.

The masters of the empire never showed any hesitancy in trying and even
in overdoing the pleasures which all their subjects permitted themselves.
Alas! A crown is such a weighty burden! The road of domination is
strewn with so many briars that one would never be able to pass down it
if he did not take care that they were pressed down under the roses. The
Roman emperors adopted that plan; they longed for pleasures and they took
the pleasures which offered themselves without delay and in a spirit of
competition. Caligula was so little accustomed to waiting that, while
occupied in offering a sacrifice to the Gods, and the figure of a priest
having pleased him, he did not take time to finish the sacred ceremonies
before taking his pleasure of him.

A remarkable thing is that among almost all peoples, the baths are the
places where the prostitution of men by their own sex is the most common.