THE tribads, also called frictionists^[116] from the Greek ****, I rub, are women, with whom that part of the genital apparatus which is called the clitoris, attains such proportions, that they can use it as a mentula, either for fornication or pedication. The clitoris,^[117] which is a very sensitive caruncle (a small fleshy cone), capable of movement and resembling the verge, gets into erection with all women, not only during the coitus, the delights of which it is said to enhance immensely by increased titillation, but also in consequence of mere amorous longing; with tribads, either by a freak of nature or in consequence of frequent use, it attains immoderate dimensions^[118]. The tribad can get it in erection, enter a vulva or anus, enjoy a delicious voluptuousness, and procure if not a complete realization of cohabitation, at least something very near to it, to the woman who plays the passive part. What more is there to say? She plays the man’s part with the omission of the ejaculation of the semen, not that this sort of coitus is an altogether dry affair, as women are in the habit of emitting their liquid during the joys of love^[119].

This depravity of voluptuousness, whether caused by the warmth of the climate, or by a peculiarity of the soil or waters, or other reasons unknown to us, was especially common with the women of Lesbos; this is attested by all the old writers. Lucian, in his “Dialogues of courtesans,” No. V. (Works, vol. VII., p. 349.): “This is one of those tribads, as they are to be found in Lesbos, who will have nothing to do with men, and do the men’s business with women.” If such things were an every day occurrence with the Lesbian women, we must believe that they were pushed to them by natural instigation^[120], and to allay an intolerable pruriency. Who has not heard of that most celebrated queen of all tribads, Sappho, herself a Lesbian? Some authors, Maximum of Tyre the first among them, have with the best intention tried to exonerate her from his infamous vice; but hear her in Ovid (and he represents the Ancients in sentiment and feeling), repudiating her would be apologists, Heroides, XV., 15-20:

“Neither the maidens of Pyrrha, nor those of Methymna^[121], nor all the host of Lesbian beauties please me. Vile to me seems Anactoria, vile the fair Cydno, Atthis is no more so dear to my eyes as once she was, nor yet a hundred others I loved not innocently^[122]. Villain! yours is now what belonged to many women....”

and verse 201:

“Lesbian women, beloved, who made me infamous!”

Sappho speaks first in general of those that have submitted to her caresses, the maidens of Pyrrha and Methymna; then she mentions by name Anactoria, Cydno and Atthis,—to whom Suidas adds Telesippa and Megara:

“Her favorites, whom she loved well, were three in number, Atthis, Telesippa, Megara, and for those she burnt in impure passion.”

These passages from the Ancients are clear enough, and do not admit of any doubt; they even assist us in explaining other sentences, which otherwise seem obscure or ambiguous; for instance the “masculine Sappho” of Horace (Epistles I., XIX., 28); “making plaint against the maids of her country” (Odes II., XIII., 25); also Ovid, Art of Love, III., 331.

“Sappho should be well known, too; what more wanton than she?” Tristia, II., 363:

“What was the lore Lesbian Sappho taught, but to love maids?”

and Martial, VII., 68^[123].

“Sappho, the amorous, praised our poetess; the latter was more pure, the former not more perfect in art.”

Lucian’s witty and licentious pen has made famous another tribad, Megilla, in the above quoted Dialogue. This Dialogue is not outrageously obscene, for it breaks off just at the moment when things would have had to be said very plainly; nevertheless, the virginal modesty of our Wieland has not dared to translate it into German. The philosopher of Samosata brings Leaena upon the scene, and makes her disclose by what artifices Megilla gained her consent. Leaena asks Megilla:

“Are you then made like a man, and do with Demonassa (whom Megilla used after the manner of tribads), as men do?” “I have not got exactly all that, my Leaena,” answers Megilla, “but I am not entirely without it. However, you will see me at work, and in a very pleasant manner. I have been born like all of you, but I have the tastes, the desires and something else of a man. Let me do it to you, if you do not believe me, and you will see that I have everything that men have. Give me leave to work you, and you will see.” Leaena confesses that she at last consented, moved by her solicitations and promises, and no doubt also by the novelty of the thing. “I let her have her way,” she says, “yielding to her entreaties, seconded by a magnificent necklet and a robe of fine linen. I took her in my arms like a man; she went to work caressing me, panting with excitement and evidently experiencing the extreme of pleasure.” Clonarion asks her inquisitively:

“But what did she do to you Leaena, and how did she manage?” But Leaena eludes the question. “Do not ask me anything more; these are nasty doings; by Urania, I shall not breathe a word more!” she answers, to the great regret of the reader, who would like to penetrate further this mystery.

Amongst the tribads is still to be named Philaenis, the same, no doubt, who according to Lucian (Amores, ch. 28—Works vol. V., p. 88), wrote about erotic postures: “Let our women’s apartments be filled by women like Philaenis, dishonored by androgynic^[124] loves!”—Sophoclidisca in Plautus, to whom Paegnion says: “Do not caress me, subagitatrix!” (Persa, act II., 41);—and Folia of Ariminum, who according to Horace (Epodes, V., 41) was “of masculine lubricity.” However writers as a rule touch upon these points more lightly than is agreeable to the curiosity of the reader. For the same reason the too great reserve of Seneca (Controversia, II) is to be regretted, where he says at the end:

“Hybreas having to plead in favor of a man who had surprised and killed a tribad, described the grief of the husband; on such a subject one must not ask for a too particular investigation.”

Much more complete, full and explicit is our good friend of Bilbilis (Martial). Hear him! he is disclosing the tribadic doings of Balba, so clearly that it could not be done better; I., 91:

“As no one, Bassa, ever saw you go with men; as rumor never assigned you a lover, as every office about you was fulfilled by a troop of women, no man ever coming nigh you, you seemed to us, I admit, a very Lucretia. But, oh! shame on you, Bassa, you were a fornicator all the time! You dare to conjoin the private parts of two women together, and your monstrous organ of love feigns the absent male. You have contrived a miracle to match the Thebian riddle: that where no man is, there adultery should be!”

Surely it is clear enough what Bassa did, in conjoining the privates of two women together. By no means! There are expounders, and very good ones, too, who have quite misunderstood this very easy passage, and have imagined that Bassa misused women by introducing into their vagina a leathern contrivance, an olisbos, a godemiche; we shall speak at the end of this chapter of this kind of pleasure, but it was quite unknown to Bassa, who simulated the man in her own person.

Nothing could be more monstrous than the libertine passion of Philaenis; she did not content herself with introducing her stiff clitoris in the vulva of tribads, Martial, VII., 69:

“Tribad of tribads, you, Philaenis, you are well justified in calling her your mistress whom you work;” or in those of other young girls, and to get a dozen of them under her in a day; but she even pedicated boys; Martial, VII., 67:

“Philaenis the tribad pedicates boys^[125], and stiffer than a man in one day works eleven girls.”

In order to leave nothing untasted in the way of virile lusts she was also a cunnilingue; same epigram, at the end:

“After all that, when she is in good feather,—she does not suck, that is too feminine; she devours right out girls’ middle parts. May all the gods confound you, Philaenis, who think it manly work to lick the vulva.”

Philaenis, when overmuch in rut, caused herself also to be served by cunnilingues; this is clear enough from Martial, IX., 41:

“When Diodorus, wanting the Tarpeian crowns, left Pharos behind and sailed for Rome, Philaenis vowed that to celebrate her mate’s return an innocent maid should lick her, such a one as the chaste Sabine women still cherish.”

She vowed if her husband returned to have her vulva licked by a young girl, well-known for her innocence and chastity; to have it done by prostitutes was for Philaenis nothing new; she wanted on that occasion to experiment with a virgin, exactly like men, who always want something new and strange to spur their lust. How rare it was for women to use other women for that purpose appears from Juvenal II., 47-49:

“... There will no other instance be found so abominable in our sex; Taedia does not lick Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla.”

But what could you find stronger, more energetic and plainer to enlighten the reader completely on this subject than the following verses in Satire VI., 308-333, where Juvenal’s ire against the tribadic orgies in Rome breaks out in words of fire?

“At night they stop their litters here, make water here, and flood with long syphons the Goddess’ statue, and ride turn and turn about and go through the motions under the eye of the conscious moon; then they make for home. When the morning light returns, you walk through your wife’s piss, to visit your great friends. Known are the secret rites of the Bona Dea, when the flute excite their wanton loins, when drunk with music and with wine they rush along, whirling their locks and howling, these Maenads of Priapus! How they yearn for instant copulation! how their voice trembles with passionate longing! what floods of old wine gush down their dripping thighs! A prize is offered, and Laufeia challenges the brothel-master’s girls, and wins the first place for nimble hips; while herself is mad for the pleasure Medullina’s artful movements give her. Amongst these dames merit carries off the palm from noble blood. There nothing must be feigned, all must be done in very truth and deed,—enough to set on fire, however chilled with age, Laomedon’s son and old Nestor with his rupture! Then is seen mere lust that will brook not a moment’s more delay, women in her bare brutality, while from every corner of the subterranean hall rises the reiterated cry: “The hour is come, admit the men.” Is the lover asleep? she bids the first young man to hand snatch up his hood and come at once. Is none to be found? resort is had to slaves. No hope of slaves? a water-carrier will be hired to come. If he comes not, and men there are none, she will not wait an instant more but get an ass to mount her from behind.”

The tribadic orgies were divided into two kinds; in one of them the Roman dames, giving free course to their lust, defiled the altar of chastity; in the other they celebrated the mysteries of the Bona Dea. You see in the first place the tribads go at night in litters to the altar of chastity, there pass their water^[126] against the statue of the Goddess, and having perhaps spirted their urine up to her face^[127] they at all events wet the area all about, (their husbands walking right through it in the morning, when they go to see their patrons), and then they ride or allow themselves to be ridden alternately; here we have more than one Philaenis, tribad of tribads! Other ladies go to celebrate the mysteries of the Bona Dea, well known to the public since the adventures of Clodius^[128]. You observe them rousing themselves with the sounds of flutes and trumpets, as also with fumes of wine, to undergo valiantly the jousts of mutual love; you see their amorous frenzy, their hair flying in the wind; you note their sighs of longing, and how they piss with excitement. A prize is set, as in the feast of Pope Alexander VI., to be given to the most intrepid tribad: Laufeia calls upon the brothel-girls to let her ride them, and carries off the crown^[129]; there is none there of better heart than Medullina, expert in plying her loins and buttocks; there all etiquette ceases, mistresses and servants alike contest for the palm of obscenity; there is no sham, all is tribadic reality^[130]; but, after all, finally nature got the upper hand again, the tribad disappeared, and the woman became again a woman, leaving alone tribadism, as a phantom only of pleasure, and not satisfying them; from all parts a cry is raised: “Now is the time for the men to come in: go and find young men; if you cannot find any, then slaves will do; if they are lacking, bring the first men you can find in the streets.” And if all fails, in their shameless wantonness, they will offer their buttocks to an ass^[131]. On the origin of tribads^[132] Phaedrus has a fable, IV., 14:

“Another asked the reason why tribads and cinedes were created. The old man thus explained: The same Prometheus, modeller of the human clay, that if it knock against Fortune is shivered in pieces, once when he had been fashioning all day long separately those parts that modesty keeps hidden beneath a garment, to fit them presently to the bodies he had made, was unexpectedly invited to supper by Bacchus. There he imbibed the nectar in large drafts, and returned late home with unsteady foot; then what with fumes of wine and sleepiness, he joined the female parts to male bodies, and fixed male members on to the women. Thus it is we find lust indulging in depraved pleasures.”

The masculine member applied to women is evidently that clitoris of such proportions in erection, that the tribads can use it like a penis; the female apparatus fitted on to man is nothing else but the posterior orifice, which itches in the case of cinedes, just as the vulva titillates women. Tribads were not wanting in the times of Tertullian; he calls them frictrices. De Pallio, ch. 4:

“Look at those she-wolves who make their bread by the general incontinence; amongst themselves they are also frictrices.”

The same author says in the De Resurrectione Carnis, ch. 16: “I do not call a cup poisoned which has received the last sigh of a dying man; I give that name to one that has been infected by the breath of a frictrix, of a high-priest of CybelÉ, of a gladiator, of an executioner, and I ask if you will not refuse it as you would such persons’ actual kisses.”

Nor was the trade of tribad out of date in the time of Aloysia Sigaea:

“Nay! do not think me”, says Tullia, Dialogue II., “worse than others. This taste is spread almost over the universe. Italians, Spaniards, French, are all alike as to the tribadism of their women; if they were not ashamed, they would always be rutting in each other’s arms.”

More, she quotes herself some examples of the hot transports of tribads, Dialogue VII.:

“Enemunda, the sister of Fernando Porcio, was very beautiful, and not less so was a friend of hers, Francisca Bellina. They frequently slept together in Fernando’s house. Fernando laid secret snares for Francisca; the latter knew that he desired to have her, and was proud of it. One morning the young man, stung by his desires, rose with the sun, and stepped out upon the balcony to cool his hot blood. He heard the bed of his sister in the next room cracking and shaking. The door stood open; Venus had been kind to him and had made the girls careless. He enters; they do not see him, blinded and deafened by pleasure. Francisca was riding Enemunda, both naked, full gallop. ‘The noblest and most powerful mentulas are every day after my maidenhead,’ said Francisca, ‘I should select the finest, dear, but for you; so fain am I to gratify your tastes and mine.’ Whilst speaking she was jogging her vigorously. Fernando threw himself naked into the bed; the two girls, almost frightened to death, dared not stir. He draws Francisca, exhausted by her ride, into his arms and kisses her: ‘How dare you, abandoned girl,’ he says, ‘violate my sister, who is so pure and chaste? You shall pay me for this; I will revenge the injury done to our house; answer now to my flames as she has answered to yours.’ ‘My brother! my brother!’ cries Enemunda, ‘pardon two lovers, and do not betray us to slander!’ ‘No one shall know anything,’ he answered, ‘let Francisca make me a present of her treasure, and I will make you both a present of my silence.’”

The conversation of Ottavia with Tullia, acting as tribad, in the same work (Dialogue II) is still bolder and more to the point:

Tullia: Pray do not draw back; open your thighs.

Ottavia: Very well! Now you cover me entirely, your mouth against mine, your breast against mine, your belly against mine; I will clasp you as you are clasping me.

Tullia: Raise your legs, cross your thighs over mine, I will show you a new Venus; to you quite new. How nicely you obey! I wish I could command as well as you execute!

Ottavia: Ah! ah! my dear Tullia, my queen! how you push! how you wriggle! I wish those candles were out; I am ashamed there should be light to see how submissive I am.

Tullia: Now mind what you are doing! when I push, do you rise to meet me; move your buttocks vigorously, as I move mine, and lift up as high as ever you can! Is your breath coming short?

Ottavia: You dislocate me with your violent pushing; you stifle me; I would not do it for any one but you.

Tullia: Press me tightly, Ottavia, take ... there! I am all melting and burning, ah! ah! ah!

Ottavia: Your affair is setting fire to mine—draw back!

Tullia: At last, my darling, I have served you as a husband; you are my wife now!

Ottavia: I wish to heaven you were my husband! What a loving wife I should make! What a husband I should have! But you have inundated my garden; I am all bedewed! What have you been doing, Tullia?

Tullia: I have done everything up to the end, and from the dark recesses of my vessel love in blind transports has shot the liquor of Venus into your maiden barque.

Leo Africanus, in his Description of Africa, p. 336 (edition Elzevir, of 1632), mentions the tribads of Fez:

“But those who have more common sense, call these women (he is speaking of witches) “Sahacat,” a word which corresponds with the Latin fricatrices, because they take their pleasure with each other. I cannot speak more plainly without offending decency. When good-looking women visit them, these witches fall at once in hot love with them, not less hot than the love of young men for girls, and they ask them in the guise of the devil to pay them by suffering their embraces. So it happens that very often when they think they have been obeying the behests of demons, they have really only had to do with witches. Many, too, pleased with the game they have played, seek of their own impulse to enjoy intercourse again with the witches, and under pretence of being ill, summon one of them or send their unfortunate husbands to fetch her. Then the witches, seeing how matters stand, asseverate that the wife is possessed by a demon, and can only be liberated by joining their association.”

You ask whether tribads are still to be found in our days? If there are none now, there certainly were some in existence in Paris only a short time before the Great Revolution, if we are to trust the author of Gynaeology, III., p. 428. There was a veritable college of tribads in Paris, who went by the names of Vestals, holding regular meetings in particular localities. There were a great many members, and of the highest classes; they had their statutes with respect to admission; the affiliated were divided into three degrees: aspirants, postulants, the initiated. Before the postulant could be admitted to the secret of the order, she had to undergo for three days a difficult probation: shut up in a cell tapestried with lewd pictures, and ornamented with carved Priapi of magnificent proportions, she had to keep up a fire with I do not know how many ingredients, and arranged in such a manner that it would go out if there was taken too much or too little of any of the materials; on the four altars of the temple, which was adorned with statues of Sappho, of the Lesbians she had loved, and of the Chevalier d’Eon, who for so many years successfully dissimulated his sex, and with splendid hangings, perpetual fires were burning. Kept English women, too, did not recoil at tribadism, as the same author states, III., p. 394. He affirms that not long before the close of the last century, confederacies of tribads, called Alexandrine confederacies, were still in existence in London, though in a small number only.

Enough now of those who are, strictly speaking, included under the name of tribads; but the word has a more extended signification. The term is also applied to those women who in default of a real mentula, make use of their finger or of a leathern contrivance, which they introduce into their vulva, and so attain a fictitious enjoyment. Germany, I have lately heard, has been ringing with complaints about this abuse. As regards the leathern engine^[133], called by the Greeks olisbos, the women of Miletus, above all others, made it their instrument of pleasure. Aristophanes, in the Lysistrata, 108-110:

“For since the day the Milesians left us in the lurch, not an olisbos have I set eyes on, eight inches long,—that might give us its leathern aid....”

Suidas under the word “****”:

“A virile member made of leather which was used by Milesian women, as being tribads and immodest. It was also made use of by widows.”

The same author under the word “****”:

“Cratinus also says on this head: Lewd women will be using the olisbos.”

Hesychius quotes the same passage.

If you ask whether modern women, who have suffered the wrong of seeing their beauty slighted, actually have recourse to this leathern substitute, Aloysia Sigaea (Dialogue II) shall answer you:

“The Milesian women made for themselves imitations in leather, eight inches long and thick in proportion. Aristophanes tells us that the women of his day habitually made use of such. And to this very day Italian, Spanish and Asiatic women honor this instrument with a place in their toilet apparatus; it is their most precious possession, and one very highly appreciated.”

It is an undoubted fact that the Roman matrons cherished a species of inoffensive snake^[134], the cold skin of which served as a refrigerator in summer, Martial, VII., 86:

“If Glacilla winds an icy serpent round her neck....”

Lucian Alexander (Works, vol. IV., p. 259):

“In that country one sees serpents of an enormous size, but so quiet and mild that they are fondled by women, sleep with the children, do not get angry on being trodden on or handled, and suck the nipples of the breast like a nursling.”

This being so, our eminent Bottiger was probably right, when he wrote page 454 of his Sabina^[135] a profoundly scientific work in German, that very likely snakes were used as instruments to satisfy the lubricity of amorous women. You may understand now what happened, or what might have happened to Atia, the mother of Augustus, of whom Suetonius (Augustus, ch. 94) wrote:

“I read in the treatise of Asclepiades of MendÉ called the Theologumena, how Atia the mother of Augustus, having gone at midnight to the temple of Apollo, to assist at a solemn sacrifice, fell asleep, and so did the other women present; how a serpent suddenly glided close to her, and after some little time withdrew again, and how on waking she purified herself, as though she had left the arms of her husband.”

There would be nothing surprising in the fact that a serpent of that sort should have investigated even without incitation on Atia’s part, a certain locality which was well known to it by the lubricity of other women, and that Atia felt on awakening the very same sensation as though she had undergone a real coitus.