The
Street of Women in the Grand City of Sogolotha Mambrola, a guide for the
traveller:
There
are on the Street of Women, meretrices (harlots) of every race and grade: pedanae, who lurk the corners and solicit; quasillariae, poor servants who escape for a few minutes with a basket containing their daily
task, prostitute themselves for a few coppers and return furtively and
hurriedly to their wool spinning; copae, the wine shop girls, who get a man drunk, then go to bed with him; peregrinae, foreign women who tempt by promising novel practices; saltatrices and fidicinae, the dancers and flute players who combine musical entertainment with their
other trade, hiring themselves out for banquets; mimae, the actresses of the Circus and other theatres, who use the stage chiefly as
an advertisement to attract customers to buy their love; lupinariae, who occupy well-run houses, where each has her own room, with her name and
price above the door, capable of being reversed to read "Busy", when she is entertaining a guest; even the sagae, hideous old women, worn out as prostitutes, who deal in love philtres, procurement,
midwifery, abortive potions, and witchcraft; finally, the famosae - the famous ones. Buying the favours of a famosa is the most expensive pleasure in the world. However, one can find, just beyond
the houses of the famosae, the apartments of the delicatae, charming girls, not as unreasonably expensive as the great courtesans, but
fresher and younger, and well enough gifted and accomplished in pleasing
a guest.