WE have now said enough about the work of Venus performed by the virile member; it remains for us to explain how a sacrifice may be offered to Venus without one. This may be done by means of the tongue or of the clitoris. We have accordingly first to treat of the cunnilingues, those who lick women’s privates and then of the tribads.

As it is the office of the fellator or fellatrix to suck the virile parts, so it is the business of cunnilingues to lick the female. The cunnilingue operates by introducing his tongue into the vulva. Martial, XI., 62 has described his monstrous act very clearly:

“Manneius, husband with his tongue, adulterer with his mouth,—more foul than the mouths of harlots of the Summoenium; whom seeing, as he stood naked, from a window, the filthy procuress closed her brothel; whose middle she had rather kiss than his head. He who of old knew all the channels of the inwards, and could declare with a sure and certain voice, whether ’twas a boy or girl in the mother’s belly (be glad, all vulvas, for your part is done), can no longer erect his fornicating tongue. For lo! as he lurks with tongue plunged in the swelling vulva and hears the babes wailing inside their mother, a shocking malady paralyses his greedy mouth,—and now he can no more be either clean or unclean.”

By the same paralysis of the tongue Zoilus was struck; Martial, XI., 86:

“An evil star, Zoilus, has struck your tongue of a sudden, even while licking a vulva. Of a surety, Zoilus, you must now use your member.”

BÆticus, the castrated priest of CybelÉ, against whom Martial has directed Epigram III., 81, was a cunnilingue:

“What have you, BÆticus, a priest of CybelÉ to do with the female pit? That tongue of yours by rights should lick men’s middles. For what was your member amputated with a Samian potsherd, if the woman’s parts had so much charm for you? You must have your head castrated; true, you are a castrated Gallus in your secret parts, but none the less you violate the rites of CybelÉ; you are a man so far as concerns your mouth.”

If this passage were in the least doubtful, Epigram 77 of the same book might offer difficulties, not otherwise:

“Some latent sickness of your stomach I suspect. Why, I wonder, BÆticus, are you an eater of filth?”

In fact the fellator as well as the cunnilingue may be called eaters of filth, as in the passage of Galen quoted previously, where both of them are called coprophagi (dung-eaters). BÆticus however has only to do with the female pit; he is a cunnilingue, not a fellator. On the contrary, the lewd tongue of Tongilion (III., 84) is that of a fellator, not of a cunnilingue; for the tongue of a cunnilingue plays the part of a lover, being active; while that of a fellator acts the part of a prostitute, remaining passive. Sometimes for want of attention the most learned commentators are at fault in elucidating these playful passages. One of the twin brothers, who in our friend of Bilbilis (the poet Martial) (III., 88), are licking different groins, was a cunnilingue. The neighbor of Priapus, “by whose fault it is unhappy LandacÉ swears she can hardly walk, she is so enlarged,” is covertly designated as a cunnilingue (Priapeia LXXVIII.); yet for all that Scioppius maintains he was only a fornicator; but why should we turn away from the proper sense of the word on account of the enlarged aperture? As if the vulva could not be enlarged, or relaxed by the tongue of the cunnilingue equally as much as by active co-habitation!

Tiberius CÆsar in his retreat at Capri does not seem to have disdained the voluptuousness of the cunnilingue. Blasted by every other kind of abomination, of what else is the Emperor accused in the Atellanian song, mentioned by Suetonius (Tiberius, ch. 45), which was so much applauded:

“An old buck licking the vulvas of goats,” but this of being a cunnilingue? Do you want to see Tiberius employed at his licking?

Plate XXII., in Monuments de la vie privÉe des douze CÉsars, represents it.

So also Sextus Clodius, whom Cicero frequently reproaches with the impurity of his mouth and the obscenity of his tongue (Pro Domo, chs. 10 and 18; Pro Coelio, ch. 32), appears to us to have been a cunnilingue. Hence, that hit of Cicero, in his Pro domo, ch. 18:

“My good Sextus, allow me to tell you, as you are already a good dialectician, you are also a good licker.”

Certainly if he was one, he was bound to lick Clodia, the sister of Publius Clodius^[102], the wife of Metellus, the woman that was intimate with all the world. Cicero, Pro domo, ch. 31:

“Ask Sextus Clodius as to this, cite him to appear; he is keeping quite in the background. But if you will have him looked for, he will be found near your sister (he is addressing Publius Clodius), lurking somewhere with his head low.”

Pay attention, pray, to this expression: “the head low,” it will soon re-appear, when we speak of the Greeks.

The Greeks, in fact, felt no repugnance to the pleasure in question. Epigrams LXXIV., LXXV., and LXXVI., in the Analecta of Brunck, vol. III., p. 165, allude to this:

“Homer taught you to call voice ****; but who taught you to have the tongue **** (in a slit)?”

The unknown poet plays upon the ambiguity of the word ****, which is used with respect to the tongue in an honest sense, when derived from ****, I speak, but as a vile usage when derived from ***, a slit.

“Avoid Alpheus’ mouth, he loves Arethusa’s bosom, plunging head-first into the salty sea.”

In this epigram also the poet draws upon the ambiguity of the words mouth, bosom (bay), head-first, salt sea, which may refer to the river Alpheus in Arcadia and to Arethusa, a spring near Syracuse, but also to the mouth of a cunnilingue, that goes and plunges into the vulva of a woman; not to mention yet another idea connected with this, to which we shall return presently.

“Cheilon and **** have the same letters, and why? It is because Cheilon will lick things that are like and unlike.”

This mockery is addressed to the cunnilingue Cheilon. The epigram tells him that he has somehow a right of licking, as his name, composed of the same letters as ****, announces at once the licker, whether he may lick the lips of a mouth, similar to his own, or those of a vulva, which are very dissimilar.

The distich of Meleager upon Phavorinus, published by Huschkius in his Analecta critica (p. 245), seems to bear upon the same subject:

“You doubt whether Phavorinus does the thing. Doubt no more; he told me himself he did,—with his own mouth.”

As Martial uses often very happily the word narrat (III., 84), when he speaks of the abuse of the tongue for fellation, and Horace the same, so Meleager says **** (he told) of the man, who employs his for licking the vulva.

The following epigram of Ammanius from the Analecta of Brunck, vol. II., p. 386, is somewhat more obscure:

“It is not because you suck your pen that I dislike you; ’tis because you do so,—without a pen.”

The scholiast imagined by author wanted to upbraid a lazy pupil who passed his time sucking his pen, as do others biting their nails, and to scold him at the same time for sucking without a pen, meaning for being a cunnilingue. But it may be taken to refer, and I think with more reason, to a man who is in the habit of putting out his tongue for the obscene act of the cunnilingue, and who is so accustomed to it that he puts it out in the ordinary intercourse of life.

This monstrous practice was pushed to such lengths that, it is almost incredible, there were people who, not content to lick vulvas which were dry, did it when they were humid with the menses or any other secretion. Aristophanes says of Ariphrades in the Knights, v. 1280-83:

“He is not only lewd; his fancy goes astray; he pollutes his tongue with shameful pleasures, licking up in his orgies the abominable dew, fouling his beard and tormenting women’s privates.”

Tormenting women’s privates, licking the dews, staining the beard, there you have the man whom humid vulvas do not disgust! there you have a beard like that of the Ravola of Juvenal, IX., 4, “when he with beard all moist was rubbing against the groin of RhodopÉ.” However, not to be dogmatic, it may be admitted that Ravola’s moist beard may have been intended merely the wet hair of a fornicator’s pubis. From the above passage of Aristophanes we may deduce surely enough that the expression “working with the tongue,” which he also uses, rather ambiguously, with respect to the same Ariphrades, applies to a cunnilingue rather than to a fellator, Wasps, 1847-77:

“Then Ariphrades, the best endowed of all, of whom his father said once, he never had a teacher, but prompted by nature, of his own free will, learned how to work his tongue, visiting every brothel!”

The same personage re-appears in the Peace, 885, where he is described without any circumlocution as imbibing the feminine secretion by way of a sauce:

“And throwing himself on her he will drink up all her juice.”

The Greeks, however, had in this kind of voluptuousness a host of imitators amongst the Romans. Mamercus Scaurus is known to us through Seneca (De Beneficiis, IV., ch. 31), in this light:

“Did you not know when you appointed Mamercus Scaurus as Consul, that he swallowed the menses of his servant girls by the mouthful? Did he make a secret of it? Did he pretend to be a blameless man?”

Similarly with Natalis, letter LXXXVII.:

“Lately Natalis, that man with a tongue as malicious as it is impure, in whose mouth women used to eject their monthly purgation....”

Both of them were consequently “imbibers of menses,” an appellation which, as we have seen in chapter III., Galen applies to cunnilingues.

Now too we can clearly understand the meaning of Nicharchus’ epigram against Demonax, vol. III., p. 334 of Brunck’s Analecta:

“Do not, Demonax, regard all things with downcast head, and do not spoil your tongue with over-gratification; the sow has threatening bristles. You live amongst us, but you sleep in Phoenicia, and though no son of SemelÉ, you are thigh-reared.”

He never looks up, exactly like the Cinede Maternus of Martial, I., 97; he gratifies his tongue, which likes erection; whether the vulva be covered with hair or depilated, he does not mind; during the day he lives in Greece, but sleeps in Phoenicia, because he stains his mouth with the monthly flux, which is, as every one knows, of the Phoenician dye, viz., purplish red^[103]; like another Bacchus, he draws his nourishment from a thigh.^[104] This scarcely needs an explanation. You can picture the cunnilingue, with his mouth glued between the thighs, at work.

This strange depravity was still in favor in succeeding centuries. Ausonius, in his Epigrams CXX., CXXIII., CXXV., CXXVI., CXXVII., and CXXVIII., has bequeathed a very unenviable notoriety to the names of Castor and of Eunus:

Epigram CXX.:

“Castor^[105] wanted to lick the middle part of men, but he could not persuade any one to go with him; however the fellator did not miss his treat; he went and licked his own wife’s privates.”

Epigram CXXIII., entitled In Eunum liguritorem.—On Eunus the Licker:

“Eunus, why do you pay court to Phyllis, the perfume seller? Men say your tongue knows her parts, but not your member! Mind you make no mistakes in the names of her scents and perfumes, and that Seplasia’s atmosphere play you no tricks; think not costus and cysthus have the same odor,—that sardines and nard exhale the same savor. Poor Eunus! the things that he tastes and smells are very different; his mouth and his nose have tastes widely dissimilar!”

He says mockingly: think not the sundry wares in the shop of Phyllis your little perfume seller of Capua (Seplasia is in fact a street of the town of Capua, where perfumes were sold), are all of the same odor and savor. The costus^[106] does not smell like the cysthus^[107], the nard^[108] has a different flavor from the sardines,—a sort of little fish preserved in salt. By this salty condiment Ausonius means to imply precisely the same as the author of the Greek epigram signifies, when he speaks of the Salt Sea, and which he himself has called salgama, meaning the secretion of the humid vulva. But Eunus shows no discrimination between what he licks and what he smells; the two have nothing in common. He inhales perfumes which smell beautifully, and licks the vulva, which smells abominably. His nose obeys one law, his tongue another.

Epigram CXXV., directed against the same Eunus:

“The salgamas are no balmy odors; give place, all other perfumes. I would rather not smell at all, either good or bad.”

Here again the poet plays with the words. The perfumes which Phyllis sells he calls balms, and salgamas those which her vulva exhales. Properly speaking, salgamas are roots and greens, which are preserved in salt for winter use, and the odor of which is not pleasant to every one’s nose. His saying that he would rather smell nothing at all than smell something bad is borrowed from Martial VI., Epigr. 55, against Coracinus, who was a cunnilingue:

“Rather than smell bad scents I would not smell at all.”

Epigram CXXVI.:

“Lais, Eros and Itys, Chiron and Eros, Itys once again,—if you write the names, and take the initial letters, they make a word, and that word is what you do, Eunus. What that word is and means, decency lets me not say in plain Latin.”

The initial letters of the six Greek names form the word ****, he licks. The phallic poet (Priapeia LXVII) plays in the same way upon the word paedicare (to pedicate):

“Take the first syllable of PenelopÉ; add to it the first of Dido; then to the first of Canis append the first of Remus: what they make, I will do to you, thief, if I catch you in my garden. This is the penalty your crime will meet.”

Ausonius plays on the words doing and making. The initials of the Greek words make a word he cannot say in Latin,—it is too indecent. Yet Eunus has no hesitation in doing it,—putting it in action.

Epigram CXXVII.:

“Eunus, when you lick the groins of your wife, she being with child; ’tis because you would be betimes in teaching the tongues to your babes yet unborn.”

You seem, he says, to send out your tongue to meet your unborn children, and fulfilling your duty as a Grammarian, to teach them lessons of tongue, and the interpretation of obscure terms.^[109] The Manneius of Martial, whom we have spoken of above, was also in the habit of licking pregnant women’s privates.

Epigram CXXVIII., entitled On the same Eunus, the Learned Licker:

“Eunus, the little Syrian pedagogue, licker of privates, Opican doctor (’tis Phyllis he owes his knowledge to), beholds the feminine engine in fourfold different fashions: Opening it triangularly, he makes it the letter Delta (?); seeing the pair of folds side by side along the valley of the thighs with the line in the middle where the slit of the vagina opens, he says it is a Psi (?); in fact its shape is triple-cloven then. Then when he has put his tongue in, it is a Lambda (?), and he makes out therein the true design of a Phi (F). Why! ignoramus, do you think you see a Rho (?) written, where merely a long Iota (?) should be put? Contemptible doctor, foul pedant, you deserve the Tau (?) yourself; the crossed Theta (?) should by rights be put against your name.”

Ausonius calls Eunus an Opican, because these filthy practices were, according to Festus, most common among the Osci or Opici. He then indulges in a series of jests, or rather represents Eunus as doing so, on the shape of the female organ^[110]. He says it seems to him either quadrangular, or triangular, in the latter case corresponding to the Greek [Greek: D] (similarly Aristophanes called it a Delta,—“their delta plucked clean of hair,” Lysistrata, 151), and also likens it to the letter **, owing to the folds which surround the vulva on either side^[111], and form the outer lips, the lane in the middle being the opening of the vulva, and so together form the trifid letter **; in the Technopaegnium, 140, he calls it a three-pronged fork, the slit being the middle and the lips the outer prongs. Then he says that Eunus is a Lambda when he is licking, on account of the first letter of the word ****. All this is clear enough, and I do not understand how the very learned Vinet can complain of its obscurity. Neither has it given me much trouble to make out what Ausonius means by the letters Rho and Iota. The solution seems to me to be as follows: “Do not tell us, Eunus, that your pike in action resembles the letter (?) of the Greeks, a letter which evidently looks like a lance with balls; in your amorous diversions you use no other lance than your tongue, which, as you will not deny, looks more like a javelin without balls, something like the letter Iota; you cannot deceive me, who well know that you would rather be taken for a fornicator than for a cunnilingue, like that Gargilius, of whom Martial, III., 96, says:

“You do not enter, only lick my mistress; yet you boast yourself adulterer and copulator!”

Lastly and finally by the Tau he threatens his man with the gallows, and by the Theta with death. Of this there can be little doubt; it is a proved fact that the letter Theta, the initial of the word ****, signified with the Greeks condemnation to death^[112]. With regard to Tau, there is room for doubt; instead of Tau some of the copies of Ausonius give (d), and although this sign may, according to Scaliger, very well signify the rope for hanging, the difficulty I feel is this, that a composite letter, a small letter, an abbreviation of doubtful antiquity, thus placed amongst simple, capital, unabbreviated letters seems to come in very inappropriately. It may be that Ausonius originally wrote ****; then * having been left out by an inadvertence of the copyist, the ** might easily have been turned into **. The Tau, as the reader will see at once, represents a gallows. Tertullian, Adversus Maricionem: “This letter Tau of the Greeks is with us the T, a sort of cross.”

As was the case with irrumation, so with even more reason the licking of women’s privates was particularly adopted by old men, whose tool will not raise its head^[113].

Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue VII., says: “He (Gonzalvo of Cordova), was likewise a mighty cunnilingue by reason of his great age.”

“Why does Blatara lick? because he cannot manage otherwise.”

The same author, VI., 26:

“Lotades has lost the power of stiffening; so licks.”

And again, XII., 88:

“Thirty young boys you have at command, and as many girls; yet you have only one member, and that will not rise. What then will you do?”

Lick, no doubt, as we are told Linus did, in Epigr. XI., 25:

“This too frisky mentula, Linus, so well known to girls in plenty, will longer stand; so mind your tongue.”

Sextillus (Martial, II., 28), was in all probability also a cunnilingue:

“Have your laugh at those, Sextillus, that call you cinede, and show them your middle finger^[114]. You are not, Sextillus, a pedicon nor yet a fornicator, nor does Vetustilla’s burning mouth tempt you.—You are none of these, I allow, Sextillus; then what are you? I know not, but remember! there are two sorts yet.”

Two sorts are still left for Sextillus, to suck the virile member and to lick the vulva, while he is neither a fornicator, nor a cinede, nor a pedicon, nor an irrumator. Which did he choose to be? This we are not told. Eunuchs, just as impotent as aged men, adopt the practice for the same reason.^[115] Gregory Nazianzen says in his funeral sermon on Basil the Great:

“They of the gynaeceum, those men, who amongst women are men, and amongst men women; who have nothing virile about them but their impiety; those that cannot give themselves up to voluptuousness in the natural way, have recourse to their tongue as their only alternative.”

The cunnilingues exhaled an evil smell from the mouth, and their kisses were as much shunned as those of fellators. Martial, XII., 87:

“You say the mouths of pedicons smell badly; if this is true, Fabullus, as you say, tell me! what think you of the breath of cunnilingues?”

And the same, XII., 59:

“The neighbors kiss you every one, from the bearded cowherd, whose kisses have flavor of the he-goat, down to the fellator and the cunnilingue fresh from his business.”

Cunnilingues and fellators are compared to he-goats by Catullus (XXXVII.), on account of their fetid breath:

“Think you you alone have members, that you alone are entitled to satisfy women, and may consider all other men he-goats?”

Do not suppose for a moment that Catullus is speaking here of castrated he-goats, which would be against the sense of the word, one invariably used to designate entire he-goats. The sense is the same, but got at in another way. He says: “Do you believe that you alone have members fit to do the girls’ business? that all the others betray by their goatish breath their vile trade as cunnilingues or fellators, and consequently the inertness of their mentulas, their feebleness, their inability for erection? You will better appreciate the sting of Atellane verse respecting Tiberius CÆsar: “An old buck licking the she-goats’ parts.”

It was thought better to be taken for a fornicator than for a cunnilingue; in the first place, because your friends would not kiss you; Martial, VII., 94:

“I had rather confront a hundred cunnilingues.”

Suetonius, De Illustribus Grammaticis, ch. 23:

“He (Remmius Palaemon) was passionately fond of women, so much so as to prostitute his mouth to please them, and it is said that he was one day rebuked in the following way by a man who in the throng could not contrive to avoid one of his kisses: “Master,” he said, “if you see a man in a hurry to get away, will you lick him off?”

In the second place for fear of scaring away your guests. Aristophanes says of Ariphrades, in the Knights, 1285, 86:

“Whoever does not execrate that man, may he never drink from the same cup with us”—lastly, for fear of letting it be plainly known how shrunken one was, and how miserable one’s member. Martial, III., 96:

“You lick my mistress, but you do not enter her; yet you boast yourself adulterer and copulator!”

Hence the cunnilingues took no less care than the fellators to hide the fetidness of their breath by means of essences and perfumes, Martial, VI., 55:

“Always scented with cassia and cinnamon, and your skin darkened with perfumes from the Phoenix’ nest, you reek of the leaden jars of Nicerotus’ shop. You mock at us, Coracinus, because we are unscented. Rather than smell sweet like you, I’d not smell at all.”

To remove every doubt as to Coracinus being a fellator or a cunnilingue, we will quote Epigr. IV., 43, where he is expressly called a cunnilingue:

“I did not say you were a cinede, Coracinus; I am not so rash and reckless. What I did say in a light, insignificant matter, one perfectly well known, that you will not deny yourself,—I said, Coracinus, you were a cunnilingue.”

It was believed that Venus revenged injuries done to herself or to hers, not only by condemning the guilty to submit to be the passive party, but by turning them into cunnilingues. Hence the pathic tastes of Philoctetes:

“With which the destitution of Lemnos inspired the heir of Heracles.”

To use the very words of Ausonius, Epigr. LXXI; and by inflicting these tastes Venus is said to have avenged the wounds of Paris, Martial, II., 84:

“The sons of Poeas was effeminate and prone to man-love; thus they say did Venus avenge Paris’ wounds.”

In the same epigram Martial rallies Sertorius on being cunnilingue, giving as a possible reason his having killed Eryx, the son of Venus:

“Why does Sicilian Sertorius lick women’s privates; because, Rufus, it would seem it was he killed Eryx.”

Cunnilingues appear to have been generally pale-faced; it is for medical men to say why. This may help you to discern the salt in Martial’s epigram on Charinus, I., 78:

“Charinus is well and strong, and still he is pale;

Charinus drinks with moderation, and still he is pale;

Charinus digests well, and still he is pale;

Charinus loves the open air and sun, and still he is pale;

Charinus dyes his skin, and still he is pale;

Charinus licks a woman’s privates, and still pale is he.”

That is to say, amongst the causes that should prevent paleness the one last enumerated is the veritable cause of his paleness. Fellators would also seem to have had pale faces, Catullus, LXXX:

“How is it, Gellius, that those rosy lips of yours grow whiter than the winter’s snow, when at morn you leave your house, and the eighth hour calls you from your long-protracted soft repose? I know not what to think. Can it be true what rumor whispers, that you devour the middle parts of men? This at any rate is evidenced by wretched Virro’s sunken flanks and your own lips masked with the milky juice sucked from him.”

The withered flanks are those of Virro, the irrumator, the lips those of Gellius; the passage is somewhat ambiguous, and only thus to be explained. One Virro, accustomed to take the passive part, has been already mentioned by us, in quoting Juvenal, IX., 35. I do not know whether it is the same:

“Though Virro has caught sight of you all naked, and the foam has come to his lips.”

Pathics, too, no less than fellators, appear to have pallid faces. Juvenal, II., 50:

“Hispo submits to young men; he is pale with either kind of infamy.”

He served as patient to young men, and was moreover a fellator, as is shown by the difference which the poet institutes between him and women, who do not lick each other’s secret parts:

“Taedia does not lick Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla.”

Women, in fact, are rarely cunnilingues, although there are examples. Martial only mentions one woman as belonging to that category; we shall come across her again in the next chapter.