Page:The Sins of the Cities of the Plain.djvu/227

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CITIES OF THE PLAIN
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that the effect of being continually buggered (and Tardieu suggests as well the use of laxative ointments), is to so relax the sphincter ani that it will not retain the faces.

In the most civilized places of the present day sodomy with males is rarely practised—with females it is practised oftener; but in Rome it was the habit, the recognized habit, and it only became hateful when the man always received the attention and never gave. In those days men loved a lusty fellow as much as women do now, and the lusty fellow could give as much pleasure to a man as he could to a woman, and be thought none the worse for it.

The vice was so general and fashionable that the chastest of the Cæsars, Augustus, was charged by many mouths