THE
HARLOT
119
burning
the royal palace of Persepolis , and after
his
death
married
Ptolemy
,
King
of
Egypt
;
and was
it
not
at
the feet of Lais that such men
as
Demosthenes
and
Diogenes
were
to
be
found
?
Was
it
not also
Catullus
who sang
to
the fickle Lesbia
:
Give me kisses thousand fold
,
Add
to
them
a
hundred more
;
Other thousands still
be
told
,
Other hundreds o'er and o'er
.
And Propertius
to
the wayward
Cynthia
:
Cynthia's unsnaring eyes
my bondage tied
:
Ah wretch
!
no
loves
,
till
then
,
had touched
my breast
,
Love bent
to
earth these looks
of
steadfast pride
,
And
on
my neck
his foot triumphant press'd
.
So
it
is
to
-
day
.
Conventionalism
is
passing along
its
way chaotic and disordered
.
Mutinus
is
worshipped
at
every street corner
,
and the goat
of
Mendes slavers
over the revellers
as
they wend their way home with
their Gitons and Messalinas
.
“
The decay
of
a
people
,
as
well
as
a
family
,
begins
with the preponderance
of
selfishness
,
so
says Max
Nordau
;
and similarly
Paul Carus writes
,
“
We know
of
no
decline
of
any nation
on
earth
,
unless
it
was
preceded
by
an
intellectual
and
moral
rottenness
,
which
took
the
shape
of
some
negative
creed
or
scepticism
,
teaching the maxim that man lives for the
pleasure
of
living
,
and that the purpose
of
our life
is
merely
to
enjoy ourselves
."
?
Even
as
early
as
the
middle
of
the seventeenth century
,
Adrian
Beverland
in
his
Justinianæi
de
stolatae
Virginitatis
[
sic
]
noticed
this
social
collapse
:
“
dum
puellas
nostrates
adeo
1
i
Conventional Lies
.
Max Nordau
.
?
Fundamental Problems
,
p
.
vii
.