The ‘globally outstanding’ University of Durham has plans to help its undergraduates who pay their way by prostituting themselves. Three heavyweight ancients, all from different perspectives, might have rather approved of the scheme.
St Augustine, looking at the world as it was, regretted his conclusion but decided that if prostitutes were banned, society ‘would be reduced to chaos through unsatisfied lust’.
By contrast, the most famous old Roman of them all, Cato ‘Carthage must be destroyed’ the Elder (234-149 bc), seeing a young aristocrat emerging from a brothel, applauded on the grounds that, with sexual desires satisfied, he could spend his time on more important things (though he did object when he saw him re-emerging from the brothel the next day).
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